If the average ground unit cost 1/2 to maintain, then having 20 of them on a major world would cost 10 EP per turn to maintain. Now, if a portion of those units were lighter forces that cost only 1/3 to 1/4 to maintain, you could drop the cost to a degree, and even moreso if some or all of the ground units are placed into reserve status.Charles Lewis wrote:I'm not sure making ground units much cheaper is a good thing. Consider the cost of the US fielding a few divisions in a pair of low-intensity conflicts.
The enlargement of ground forces would still have the effect of making it expensive to maintain an active fighting force abroad; you are going to need more troops to have a chance of taking a major planet; invasions of major planets would become very costly affairs for both sides.
Possibly a hard limit equal to 4 x Census? Any more than that and you would need to emplace some sort of barracks or something to help house the additional troops.Rainer wrote:That might not be a bad thing though there should be some incentive not to stack dozens of units on every frontier low census planet. Otherwise you could have situations where you simply stack enough units on a planet so that you can be absolutely sure that the enemy cannot eliminate them all in one turn.