People's Tactics/Units

Formation step-up
You can customize your formations during play and make different kind of formations for different tasks. Each formation can consistent of up to 4 types of unit types.

Due to this system, it is not possible to put light infantry and heavy infantry in the same formation. It is possible to put light infantry, humvees, mortars and light tanks in the same formation. The best mix of unit types will depend on the scenario and your tactics. The reason to mix unit types is so that they can work together. Mainly:

Land Mobile
Mobile and armour types can tow or carry infantry and artillery types. Thus increasing the number of movement points of the formation.

Land Support
Artillery types with range=1 participate in a supporting role in land battles. They add to the firepower of the unit, and can only be destroyed if the unit is forced to retreat. They are overrun on the moment they are left without infantry or armour accompaniment. The same goes for mobile unit types, which are purely supportive in the movement and recon area, but bring no combat value whatsoever.

Armour Cover
Infantry will take cover inside armour during battle if possible. Infantry inside or behind vehicles still participate in combat, but they can only be destroyed after the armour they are covered by is destroyed.

Long Distance Artillery
A land formation which has long distance artillery (distance>1) is considered an artillery formation. Infantry and Armour added to the unit can only be used defensively. All attacks the formation participates in will be through indirect fire.

Escort Role
If air units are interdicting, transferring, airlifting or bombing the fighters in the same formation will always escort the other aircraft (transporter or bomber) and engage enemy intercepting fighters. Only after all escorts are destroyed will the transporters and bombers have to fight with the enemy escorts.

Unit type characteristics
Unit Types are the “building blocks” of People’s Tactics and are defined by the variables discussed below. The Unit Type characteristics may be checked, during a game, in two ways: if present in a unit that is not a SHQ, by clicking on its picture (this also works for the characteristics of other player’s Unit Types); if it is a Unit Type that has been researched (or that was available from the start) but not yet built, the City Production Panel has a button that allows to do so.

Name
Unit type name.

Weight
Air formations and land formations (including THQs) have a maximum weight allowance, which limits the number of items that can be placed in those formations. Sea formations do not have a weight limit, or to be more precise, all the naval Unit Types have a weight of zero.

In the default game infantry types (such as light infantry) weigh 100 units, and the maximum weight allowance is 30000. This means that a unit can have a maximum of 300 infantry. A unit with 300 infantry would be full and have no room for say, a tank.

Carrying capacity
Land Mobile (Trucks and Humvees) and Armour Unit Types have carrying capacity. This is used to transport Infantry and/or Artillery types and, if there is enough carrying capacity, the unit’s movement type is upgraded. The Transporter (Air Unit Type), Cargoship and Light Carrier (Naval Unit Types) also have carrying capacity, but it works in a different way: air formations and sea formations transport land units (only one at a time, and it must have Movement Points available at the time of embarkation). Sea formations may also carry air formations, which will adopt the role of naval aviation if the formation includes at least one Light Carrier (and due to the one unit limit, will preclude the transportation of another unit).

Movement allowance
This is the maximum movement points available to the Unit Type. When there is more than one Unit Type in the same formation, the formation’s movement allowance will usually become the lowest of all present. The exception, as noted before, is for land formations (including THQs) that have enough carrying capacity to upgrade to a higher movement type.

The movement allowance for light infantry in the default game is 3, whilst the movement allowance for trucks is 6. If a formation has enough trucks to carry all the infantry (see carrying capacity), the formation will have 6 movement points per turn.

Soft attack value
This characteristic is used to determine how much damage is done to an enemy formation's infantry when attacking.

Soft defence value
This characteristic is used to determine how much damage is done to an enemy formation's infantry when defending.

Hard attack value
This characteristic is used to determine how much damage is done to an enemy formation's armour when attacking.

Hard defence value
This characteristic is used to determine how much damage is done to an enemy formation's armour when defending.

Artillery attack value
This characteristic is used to determine how much damage is done to an enemy formation when attacking with ranged artillery unit types.

Artillery range
This is the maximum distance at which a Ranged Artillery Unit Type may fire, measured in hexes.

Reconnaissance ability
This characteristic is relevant only when the Fog of War option is enabled. It is dependent on a basic reconnaissance level set in the scenario editor (50 points, in the standard set). The number of reconnaissance points of the Unit Type items in a given formation is tallied, to ascertain the reconnaissance ability of the formation. If more than one formation belonging to the same Regime is in a given hex, those formations abilities are added, to give a total “hex” reconnaissance ability.

In order to see as far as X hexes away (for X greater than one, because it is allways possible to see into hexes adjacent to units or terrain owned by a player), the following (minimum) reconnaissance points must be available: Reconnaissance Basis Points * X * X / 2 (e.g., to see 3 hexes away, with the standard set BRP of 50, you would need 50*3*3/2 or 225 recon points). There is one restriction to this formula: it is not possible to see farther than the highest theoretical movement allowance present at the hex (e.g. an air formation filled to capacity with Recon planes will not see more than 12 hexes away, as 12 is the movement allowance of Recon planes).

Supply need
The maximum amount of supply that a given Unit Type item will require, once it is assigned to a combat formation (i.e., once it leaves the SHQ).

Engineer skill
The skill required to build fortifications, available only to Infantry Unit Types. The number of engineer skill points of the Unit Type items in a given formation is tallied, to ascertain the engineering capability of that formation. Fortifications may then be built (level 1) or upgraded (levels 2 and 3), if there is enough engineering skill, supply points and movement allowance to do so.

Fortifications represent static defensive works built on the side(s) of an hex, and as such are independent from each other, e.g. there could be a level 1 fortification on the East facing side and a level 3 fortification on the West facing side of an hex.

The successive levels of fortification require 250, 750 and 1,500 engineering skill AND supply points (these are deducted from the SHQ stock), and each must be built in one go (i.e., it is not possible to build, say, 2/3 of level 2 in one turn and finish it in the next turn). The unit building the fortification must also have at least 1 MP left (or 2 MPs for the third level).

Anti-air ability
This characteristic is used to determine how much damage is done to an enemy air formation operating (interdict/strategic bombing/airlift/airdrop) within a certain radius of the formation. The radius is 2 for the default game. Only land and sea formations may have an anti-air ability. AA ability is not affected by readiness, experience, officer leadership, etc.

Hit points
The amount of damage a unit type takes before it is destroyed. Along with the soft and hard defense values, this is an important factor in combat resolution.

Frontsize
A brilliant concept (no, this part of the manual was not written by Victor). In real life, men and equipment occupy a given amount of real estate. When two forces engage in combat, not all elements on each side are able to squeeze into a line and have a shot at each other (at least, not anymore). This represents that space limitation. In the standard set, Infantry types take 1 unit of space, Artillery takes 10 units of space, and Armour takes 20 units of space. Mobile types don’t engage in combat and thus have no frontsize. As ships and aircraft don’t fight the same way as land units, they have no frontsize, either.

Effectively, this means that not all units can participate in combat at the same time. So if your formation has 4 medium tanks but the frontsize calculation states that only 50% of them can attack or defend at once, this means that only two tanks contribute to your hard/soft attack/defense values in each round of combat.

If one of the four tanks dies, it will be replaced by a tank that has been in reserve up until now, so that your combat power will remain at 2 medium tanks/round. This value will not go down until there are less than two tanks available.

Strategic bombing
Combat related characteristic, reserved to aircraft, and then only to those of the bomber sub-class. Strategic bombing will come into play when doing a bombing raid on a production site. The strategic bombing statistic determines the amount of damage (in prodcution points) done to a production site.

Dogfighting
Combat related characteristic, reserved to aircraft, and then only to those of the fighter and transporter sub-classes. This is the attack value of an aircraft when engaging another aircraft in air combat.

Naval interdiction
Combat related characteristic, reserved to aircraft. This is the attack value of an aircraft when engaging naval units.

Cost
The amount of production points required to build one item.

Creating a new unit
To create a new unit:


 * Select a hex of territory that you own, by clicking on it
 * Click on the “Create unit” buton
 * A pop-up window appears, with the type of unit available — a sea formation may only be built at a Port, or at sea in the same hex of an existing sea formation belonging to the same player. If there are not enough Political Points to build a given type, that type’s button is greyed out
 * Click on the type wanted;
 * The unit counter appears in the map. If the unit is a SHQ or THQ, a pop-up window will appear asking for the unit’s name, otherwise an automatic name will appear (new units get a sequential number, beginning with 2, followed by “Bataljon” — Dutch for Battalion, the default unit “size”, unless the scenario designer defined a different one)
 * Assign a Chain of Command to the unit, by clicking on the "change command" button, on the upper echelon unit and then on the “Do new THQ/SHQ for [unit_name]” button;
 * Transfer some Unit Type items to the new unit (or it will disappear by next turn).