TI Space Nations/Colonial Armies

This page is part of the TI Space Nations mod.

Colony nations have their own armies and fight ground wars on their worlds. With troop transport ships, armies can also travel between worlds.

Raising armies

Colony nations raise armies with the normal Build Army priority (60 in the standard game). The armies are named 1st … 8th <province> Colonial Guard.

Army limit = the smaller of

• the number of provinces that are not fully occupied, and
• 1 + one army per 50,000 residents,

minus the armies that are currently aboard a transport. A nation without a military has no armies.

Movement

• Colonial armies move, fight, occupy and annex across the borders of their world, including marches all the way around it. Travel times use the real distance on that world.
• Earth armies never leave Earth.
• Colonial armies may stand on Earth, on their home world and on any colony world a transport brings them to. Other moves between worlds (for example "go home") are refused.
• Grey unclaimed land can be crossed by every army.

Troop transport

Ship modules

Module	Research	Crew	Mass	Rules
Troop Transport Bay	Troop Transport Bay project (6,000 , after City Core and Marine Assault Unit)	90	3,000 t	Utility module, one per ship, only on hulls of cruiser length or larger. Can be fitted next to batteries.
Drop Pods	Drop Pods project (8,000 , after Troop Transport Bay)	30	1,500 t	Utility module, one per ship, cruiser or larger. Needed to land on enemy ground.

Embark Army

Embark Army is a fleet operation:

• The fleet needs 3 ships with a working Troop Transport Bay, must be in an interface orbit of the world, not transferring, not in combat, not docked, and not already carrying an army.
• It takes the strongest eligible colonial army of yours in the region below.
• Takes 5 days and costs 150 boost and 100 operations, paid when you confirm. A battle cancels it (the cost is not refunded).

Disembark Army

Disembark Army lands the army in a region below the fleet: on Earth, on the army's home world or on any colony world.

• Takes 3 days and costs nothing.
• Your own and allied regions are always open.
• Enemy regions need working Drop Pods on all 3 transport ships, and are closed if the region has space defenses.

The journey

The trip is an ordinary fleet transfer - the transport can be intercepted.

• The army is lost if the fleet drops below 3 bay ships (destroyed, scuttled, split off or captured), if the fleet is disbanded, or if the army's nation disappears. Notification: <army> is lost - <fleet> can no longer carry the army.
• Damaged bays keep the army aboard but block landing until they are repaired.
• Merging a whole loaded fleet into an empty fleet takes the army along. If two loaded fleets are merged, the second army is lost.
• An army aboard a transport still counts against its nation's army limit.
• The fleet does not show that it carries an army - keep track yourself.

Upkeep away from home

A colonial army on another world, or aboard a transport, costs its nation 2 per month (instead of the vanilla 1 away from home or 0.5 at home). The nation's IP tooltip lists these armies, landed and aboard, on a line of their own: Colonial armies away from their home world (landed elsewhere or aboard transports) are reducing this nation's Investment Points by 2 per army…

Conquest

A nation at war that takes the capital province of a city captures the city's hab for its executive faction (like a vanilla hab capture: some modules are lost, a research share and one project can be stolen). Peaceful transfers - settlement, unification, peace deals - only move the land, never the hab.

Surface-to-orbit fighters

Colony nations can build STO fighter squadrons with the normal Build STO Squadron priority (50 in the standard game; no launch boost needed).

• Slots per province: city crew ÷ 2,500, between 1 and 8 (4 for a city with 10,000 crew). Provinces without a city have none.
• Needs a military, the STO unlock and the setting Colony STO fighters.
• Colony fighters only fight in the interface orbits of their own world and never join battles at Earth; Earth fighters never join battles at colony worlds.
• Only the executive faction of a colony nation or union on that world brings its colony fighters into a battle. Before the battle, the text under Add Exofighters names the world: Spend <boost> to launch surface-to-orbit fighters from the nations of Mars you control to this combat.
• A colony squadron is named after the nation's capital province (for example Arcadia Planitia Squadron); Earth nations keep the vanilla random region names.
• Automatic hab defense with STO fighters stays Earth-only. Outside a battle on its world, the nation panel shows 0 available fighters.

Space defenses

Space Defenses work as in vanilla; the cost is scaled by the province's area (0.5 × to 2 × Earth's median region). Regions with space defenses cannot be landed on - neither by the aliens nor by a drop-pod assault.

See also

• Armies and Terrestrial Warfare - vanilla ground combat
• AI troop lifts - how the AI uses transports
• Fleets - fleet operations