Ground Combat and ganging up

By Night Lord, in Rogue Trader Rules Questions

In Battlefleet Koronus, you can have multiple units attacking the same enemy position. But does the enemy get to attack at both units within range at full strength?
ie. TWO different wings of aircraft are moving on an entrenched and heavily fortified area when ONE AA unit opens fire. does the AA unit get to fire at both aircraft units within range? or does it get reduced damage at both?

As far as i understand it gets to attack both at full strength. All ground units attack all nearby ground units, and AA units ahould get their attacks against air units. This is how it is RAW i belive, although this also means that artillery can attack all units within its range.

Also, is there a reason unit size does not affect attack strength? 10 guys causing trouble to 100,000 is entirely possible, and kind of makes me raise my eyebrow.

Page 134

"A unit attacks and is attacked by all units it is in contact with."

slightly above that

"medium artillery unit has a range of 20 kilometers meaning it is in contact with another unit if within 20km."

Page 123

"An AA unit is still considered artillery"

"AA has a range of"

'Unit' size does affect damage, they just seem to have forgotten to mention it properly, then given a misleading example that suggests it doesn't.

p.125, under the heading "Units and Formations" it describes how anything Battalion sized or smaller is a 'Unit', consisting of the same type of troops (Infantry Or Armour Or Artillery), and anything larger than a Battalion is a 'Formation', a collection of Units, of any variety (Infantry And Armour And Artillery, etc). So, to correct that example of the Vaxanide Grenadiers on p. 124, it shows that, being Heavy Industrial Infantry they have a Power of 7, but it also states that the Regiment consists of 3 Battalions, so the actual Power of this Formation is (7x3) 21, meaning it makes Attacks with 4d10+21, Armour 42, other stats the same.

The next issue, of balancing the Armour of these large Formations, we can take a leaf from the Massed Volley rule of Macroweapons. Say, a number of Regiments that choose to act at their lowest Initiative can make a single Attack against a target within their mutual range. So, 4 Regiments of Vaxanide Grenadiers could make a combined Attack of (4x21) 4d10+84. That's enough to put a dent in the Warlord. Although, since the Warlord would be able to make simultaneous Attacks against all four Regiments at their individual Armour of 42, it'd clearly win the fight unless they called up further reinforcements.

Plasmafest said:

'Unit' size does affect damage, they just seem to have forgotten to mention it properly, then given a misleading example that suggests it doesn't.

p.125, under the heading "Units and Formations" it describes how anything Battalion sized or smaller is a 'Unit', consisting of the same type of troops (Infantry Or Armour Or Artillery), and anything larger than a Battalion is a 'Formation', a collection of Units, of any variety (Infantry And Armour And Artillery, etc). So, to correct that example of the Vaxanide Grenadiers on p. 124, it shows that, being Heavy Industrial Infantry they have a Power of 7, but it also states that the Regiment consists of 3 Battalions, so the actual Power of this Formation is (7x3) 21, meaning it makes Attacks with 4d10+21, Armour 42, other stats the same.

The next issue, of balancing the Armour of these large Formations, we can take a leaf from the Massed Volley rule of Macroweapons. Say, a number of Regiments that choose to act at their lowest Initiative can make a single Attack against a target within their mutual range. So, 4 Regiments of Vaxanide Grenadiers could make a combined Attack of (4x21) 4d10+84. That's enough to put a dent in the Warlord. Although, since the Warlord would be able to make simultaneous Attacks against all four Regiments at their individual Armour of 42, it'd clearly win the fight unless they called up further reinforcements.

Sorry to say but I am not seeing it (as a clarification of RAW).

First p. 125 it mentions that units go from platoon to corps in size. Pointing out that units are homogenous (IE all infantry) and formations are mixed (IE infantry with arty support). Why would the Vaxanide Grenadiers be a formation and not a unit?

Second where does it say that the Vaxanide Grenadiers are made up of 3 battalions? Why not 15?

Third the actual massed macro cannon rule is +1str and +10% to hit for each extra component. How does that equate? This is clearly a home rule which is fine but please do not present it as a clarification of RAW.

As a house rule it is interesting and does make some headway against the problems with the RAW.

D'oh, I obviously didn't present it well enough, but I sincerely did mean it as clarification of the RAW rather than attempting a house rule. My basic view is that when these rules left the designer's desk they worked, but got edited and lost a few details, hints of which show up.

By reference to Macrocannons, I didn't mean the squadron rules, I just meant the BRB Salvo rule of adding damage from different Components into a single Attack - this seems to be the very basis of the Unit/Formation rule. The Vaxanide Grenadiers being 3 Battalions is taking from the Formation's size; 1500 men = 3x 500 man Battalions. I suppose suppose building the Formation from 15x 100 man Company-sized Units is possible, but produces Power levels that are quickly unwieldy. Individual Units should be kept to the same size on both sides where possible just to avoid such a headache. A Formation can be of any size, depending on how many Units are added/removed from them over the course of a campaign, or even mid-battle. Though sorting out the effects of casualties on total Power needs some more work, at guess taking morale tests for each individual Unit in the Formation 'Stack'.

Hope this is making more sense, I'll elaborate further where needed.

Pertaining to the question at hand, it seems I was wrong as an AA unit can only take one Attack order, and so will only attack one unit, unless it is in contact with both aircraft and they attack it. It will provide the cover bonus against all aircraft.

If we choose Plasmafests Raw then the AA can split fire as it is essentially a collection of smaller units which can individually be ordered to fire, but that raises more questions then it solves.

For example, that unit which you said was a collection of 3 brigades... why that? Why not 30 small companies? it seems that would do more damage, so wouldn't i want that?

MikeV37 said:

If we choose Plasmafests Raw then the AA can split fire as it is essentially a collection of smaller units which can individually be ordered to fire, but that raises more questions then it solves.

For example, that unit which you said was a collection of 3 brigades... why that? Why not 30 small companies? it seems that would do more damage, so wouldn't i want that?

Well 30 small companies would have a Power of 210, meaning Attacks at 4d10+210, with Armour 420. It would be totally unwieldy. Using Formations built up from units of a similar size being used by all forces makes things more manageable. So for instance, Ork 'Battalions' would be about the same size as an IG 'Battalion', i.e. 500ish men, though the Orks would have more of them, and so be able to build more or larger formations.

As for splitting fire, that does appear to be what the rule says, another reason to declutter the battlemap with a smaller number of larger grouped 'units'.

yes it would be unwieldy, but is there any RAW reason against it, if that's how we choose to interpret RAW?

MikeV37 said:

yes it would be unwieldy, but is there any RAW reason against it, if that's how we choose to interpret RAW?

Doesn't appear to be, though it would complicate a system (presumably) intended to be straight forward. So if there were only a couple thousand or so troops either side, then using 100 man units would be appropriate, battles involving 100's of thousands aside would be easier with troops arrayed in larger, 500 man units, then grouped into formations.

Granted, all this is simply my interpretation of the same book, I have no extra details.