VTOL's and Infantry

Ok since many of you have been raising concern, and giving ideas on this I will try to be clear on my reasoning and make a more complete ruling here.

If any of these decisions effect your empire, given we have more or less all just started, you may fully refund and purchase different military equipment prior to submitting your files for July 12th.

A) Since a Strategic Map Square equals 3km^2 I envision that you need more than a "Squad" of infantry (usually 7 people) to ensure a capturing job is done correctly. Therefore a platoon is ideal, a depleted platoon will work too, as long as it is more than 7 troopers. As for Battle Armor they can capture terrain, but not if they drop to half their number or below in their platoon (that usually means 2). (Let's face it Battle Armor are more intimidating!)

B) Infantry and Battle Armor mounted in APC's or Battle Armor riding on the handholds of Mechs can very easily dismount, do their thing, and remount, making it simple to perform capturing missions. This means hovercraft can cover a lot of terrain, almost like VTOLs, but they are hindered by terrain in combat and can't get through woods at all. They are naturally slowed on the strategic map like Mechs traveling through the various terrain, and unlike VTOLs. Not to mention their motive system is the easiest to immobilize of the armored units. This is offset by the fact they can traverse water in combat and on the strategic map.

C) Heavy/Assault Mechs and Infantry/Battle Armor were chosen for a reason as the ONLY units to capture/secure terrain on the strategic map. THEY ARE SLOW! Believe it or not it is not a good idea to capture to much territory early on. You can't easily defend it. As many of you found out you need a continuous front line with troops on all territories to prevent breakthroughs and swarms of units from capturing your economic territories behind you. The larger your Empire is the harder to defend till you have enough troops and reserves. Besides the larger you are the more pirate attacks too!

I envision lighter units as being needed largely for recon, anti-recon, hit-and-run, and harassment roles. Infantry on VTOL's make ideal cheap mobile artillery spotters too!

D) VTOLs are basically the fastest units in the game and some of the cheapest. They can cover the most territory. VTOLs with mounted infantry or Battle Armor can easily drop them off fast enough via ziplines (albeit only 4 can exit at a time), but would need to land to remount those troops. This takes awhile given they need to find a suitable landing site. If we say squads can't capture terrain that would mean most of the lightest and fastest VTOL's are no longer a threat to collapsing an entire economic flank of territory while your units are tied down fighting. What about the Ripper Infantry Transport at $377,000 C-Bills, or custom built player units that could carry a platoon you say? How about we say that VTOL infantry can still capture terrain, just it is slower, a VTOL/infantry or battle armor pair would need to spend 4 strategic map movement points in one hex to secure it. Thus a Ripper VTOL that moves 12/18 and could capture 12 zones in one turn can now only capture 3. Yes it is a nerf, but I agree that these very cheap units shouldn't capture an entire region on their own flying over them.