Army vs Army combat in versus debating

Hi! I just wanted to share how I personally conceptualize and break down army vs army combat in versus debating on the chance that it proves valuable. Enjoy.

When it comes to Army vs Army combat, there are sort of three roles that form a fundamental triangle of tactics:

1: Speed
2: Range + Long-Range Offensive Power
3: Defense + Short Range Offensive Power

In the Medieval World there were essentially

1: Light Infantry or Cavalry
2: Archers or Siege Weapons (like Catapults)
3: Heavy Infantry, something like spearmen

In Classical Warfare, Light Infantry or Cavalry could close the distance on ranged attacks and get them at close range where they were vulnerable. Archers or Cannonball fire could take out heavily armored infantry who couldn't move as fast, yet if you advanced a light infantry division into a heavy infantry one, or worse a cavalry into a spear formation, it would be killing them.

In Modern Styles of Warfare, these three do have analogues:

1: Assault: Infantry of all types (Mobility)
2: Artillery: Morters, Howziters etc. (Range)
3: Armor: Tanks and such (Defense)

Mobility>Range
Range>Defense
Defense>Mobility

Infantry can capture artillery platforms easiest due to numbers and speed/mobility. Artillery can destroy armor with their heavy rounds. And Armor can withstand the light arms of Assault and crush them at close range.

Transplanting this to a Fictional Army is not as hard as it seems. All one needs to do is properly divide forces into rough types based on their utility in the forces; as either a close-range mobile unit, a long-rang blaster unit, or a tanky unit.

All Units are going to have some level of all 3, but this is merely a distinction of how they fit into the larger scheme.

Now obviously in some army vs army struggles, one side will simply be completely outclassed, this is an assessment on how to consider it in circumstances where it is marginally even.

A Ground Fight between Two Armies can be seen as a combination of 9 different individual conflicts (abstracted as Red Team and Blue Team for convenience). This includes three mirror matches, and three matches with each division at disadvantage. In each case, the division must do it's best to use the strategy that defeats the type of division it is fighting. These 9:

Red Assault vs Blue Assault: Generally a measure of which can become most "armor-like" since Armor beats Assault. Measure of who has better defenses and close-range capacities and thus can withstand the other's assault.
Red Artillery vs Blue Artillery: Generally a measure of which can become most "assault-like" since Assault beats Artillery. Measure of who has better speeds and thus can disable each other's firing capacities faster.
Red Armor vs Blue Armor: Generally a measure of which can become most "artillery-like" since Artillery beats Armor. Measure of who has better range and long-range firepower and thus can blast the other more accurately from safety.

Red Assault vs Blue Artillery: Red Advantage. Measure of Red's Speed, it's natural advantage, versus Blue's Defense, it's ability to become Armor-like.
Red Artillery vs Blue Armor: Red Advantage. Measure of Red's Range, it's natural advantage, versus Blue's Speed, it's ability to become Assault-like.
Red Armor vs Blue Assault. Red Advantage. Measure of Red's Defense, it's natural advantage, versus Blue's Range, it's ability to become Artillery-like.

Blue Assault vs Red Artillery: Blue Advantage. Measure of Blue's Speed, it's natural advantage, versus Red's Defense, it's ability to become Armor-like.
Blue Artillery vs Red Armor: Blue Advantage. Measure of Blue's Range, it's natural advantage, versus Red's Speed, it's ability to become Assault-like.
Blue Armor vs Red Assault. Blue Advantage. Measure of Blue's Defense, it's natural advantage, versus Red's Range, it's ability to become Artillery-like.

This should yield 9 advantages. Now it's obviously not purely a counting machine. Getting 4 massive advantages would likely beat 5 marginal advantages. That said, it is through number and depth of the advantages that one can understand where each side's strengths lies and who is most likely to win.

In versus debating, these are often biological, magical, or heavily technologically advanced compared to a Real Army, but the same principles, in my mind should apply to any ground combat. Most ground combat is going to come down to, trying to pin down enemy Assault with your Armor, while taking out enemy Artillery with your Assault while your Artillery destroys Enemy Armor.

Some other Points:

1:

Multi-Types:

There are some units that are very good at multiple roles. Historical Examples would be things like the Heavy Cavalry with high Defense/Mobility or the famed Horse Archers with Mobility/Range. Choose the role that best fits their tactics.

What this means it that they will be very good at being like another role, which means in a mirror match or possibly even against what should be their disadvantage they can take the edge for their side, or at least minimize the depth of the edge.

2:

Terrain. Terrain provides two important things before all else. Cover and Movement Restrictions. Usually but not always, the two are correlated. Cover minimizes effectiveness of long-range assault on the area and Movement Restriction slows down movement. If Mobility becomes 0, the terrain becomes "impassable" to the unit. Heavy Terrain with high cover and movement restrictions, like say a thick forest, favors Assault, since Armor is slowed down heavily to the point of sometimes not being able to move, and Artillery can't fire accurately at range.

3:

Aquatic/Aerial Units:

Aquatic Battles have been a part of warfare for millenia. There is a difference between strictly aquatic units and amphibious units. On a strictly ground combat, Amphibious units are no different from other units. Aquatic Units can do almost or absolutely nothing in strict ground combat. In a fight with Water, Aquatic Units function as any other unit, though water physics dynamics are different enough that they likely use different types of weapons. Amphibious Units essentially get any large expanse of water on the battlefield go from impassable to normal mobility.

Aerial Units may seem a more radical change, since Air Combat is a relatively new type of warfare. However I don't find Airborne Units that difficult to integrate. Being able to fly essentially gives one a large boost to Mobility and thus making the unit far more powerful against Artillery. This means it is least useful for Assault, basically giving them an ever stronger game against Artillery. For Artillery having to fight a mirror match, Flight gives them a big advantage, same as with Armor going up against what is traditionally their weakness.

Their are in real life and occasionally in fiction there are dedicated anti-air units and ability, which completely neutralizes airbone advantages going against them and instead gives an advantage to the anti-air.

4:

More Exotic Options

Fiction has a number of more exotic abilities that can make for interesting tactics.

There are some offensive haxes that ignore defenses. These abilities essentially give the unit an infinite Artillery-Like Potential at whatever range the hax works at against anything without resistance, and work as ideal anti-Armor.

There are some movement options that allow to exist outside the same range of combat, such as orbital units (existing in space), or going into other dimensions/planes and coming out again. When it comes to these there are really two options; that the unit can attack the enemy from that inaccessible area or they can't.

If they can't, then it's actually very similar to flight, in that it provides a big boost to mobility against anything that can't attack into that area. If they can however, then it provides an effectively infinite mobility. Unless the unit is just completely unable to do any damage to what they are attacking and will just die from exertion or the defending unit has some way to attack the inaccessible area, then the attacking unit will always win.

5:

Infiltration/Stealth Units: Certain Special Units specialize in getting behind enemy lines without detection. These are hard to really account for, but the real defense is either anti-stealth abilities or intelligence large enough to detect them.




This is just my way of understanding army vs army and how to break it down and make it somewhat more manageable.