Land Combat Experience

[SonofWinter]

Land Combat Experience

I find that this practical needs to be altered. The problem I currently have is that I’m overrunning my enemies due to my doctrines. My battles don’t last 5-10 days, they last 3-5 hours. That means my generals and my troops and my practicals are not going up and as my doctrines get discovered and my troops become more and more competent, the battles will last shorter and shorter amounts of time as I crush through my enemies.

Now personally I think there is nothing to be learned from 100,000 corpses. I would think there is more to be learned from victories and defeats. So, if my men perform brilliant encirclements and breakthroughs, they should be rewarded for those successful actions, instead of gaining lots of experience for essentially WWI tactics of throwing men into a meat grinder and hoping you win a battle. I think that some of the exp rewards should come from successful combat events. Since the loss of 1,000 men in a battle is not particularly bright, if you can make your losses 10% of that, with the correct doctrines that help you win your battles much more quickly.

Opinions?

[Wallienator]

The game can't really reward you for encircling units, as it can't detect that.. (supply system wouldnt work because you could just bomb infrastructure to bits)

[SonofWinter]

But the game can count everytime an event fires. And if an event is firing, then there should be corresponding exp for your generals and your Combat practicals. Currently my generals aren't getting any exp, because they crush the enemy with events, before they have a chance to even fight.

[Balou]

I believe the way experience is calculated could be indeed improved. Currently, it seems it's just according to the duration of the battle. This should not be more than half the story. It should be topped up with say a bonus when a battle is over, which depends on how many enemy troops have been involved. I agree that combat events should also contribute.

[SonofWinter]

I'll give an example that everyone will understand. 10,000 vs. 10,000 after 80 hours of battle, both gain a certain amount of exp and the winner caused 1,000 casualties vs. 900 from the other side. However the same battle occurs and the army of 10,000 wins in 20 hours by causing 1,000 casualties due to a breakthrough and an ambush as well as performing an assault but only looses 20 men. Does that mean that the 20 hour battle was any less decisive due to the fact that the attacking army didn't loose as many soldiers and didn't take 80 hours to win?

Certainly not.

A victory whether won through a mad rush at enemy positions or a victory through tactics should still give the same amount of experience. Just because it takes my men 20 hours to kill 1,000 enemies vs. the guys who don't know which end of the rifle they should hold, 80 hours to do the same thing, doesn't mean that I should get less experience. My battle was won before I fought it, because of careful planning and good education, by learning to set up an ambush and sending an assault that resulted in a breakthrough. Just because the other guys don't have the same knowledge doesn't mean they should get more exp for being incompetant.

Experience is learned from survivors. Corpses don't teach anything. That's why WWI didn't require all that much brain power. Modern Warfare does.

[Alex_brunius]

Now personally I think there is nothing to be learned from 100,000 corpses. I would think there is more to be learned from victories and defeats.

This means you also think that Soviet should learn nothing from the winter war, and that the good should become better, while the bad should not be able to improve or ever catch them.

I am off the opposite opinion.
You learn from mistakes. And when we are talking about your officers learning, then corpses and long bloody battles is a good indication of mistakes they can learn valuable lessons from are happening.

[SonofWinter]

This means you also think that Soviet should learn nothing from the winter war, and that the good should become better, while the bad should not be able to improve or ever catch them.

I am off the opposite opinion.
You learn from mistakes. And when we are talking about your officers learning, then corpses and long bloody battles is a good indication of mistakes they can learn valuable lessons from are happening.

You mistake my words, good Sir. I did not say that, what I said was that things need to be altered, to include the missing parts of Land Combat Experience. So that yes, you gain knowledge from the corpses but so does my general who commanded the side that won the battle.

Besides, they really didn't learn all that much from that war. Their lessons trully begun in 1941.

[mnplastic]

I think land combat experience is gained too slow in general anyway.

Now, ambushes, encirclements and breakthroughs are affects of experience but not other way round. Those who were ambushed or encircled would learn much more. Stalingrad and Kursk was example where one who have suffered previously numerous encirclements and breakthroughs inflicted the same fate to another who never experienced the same thing before.

In general should be diminishing gains of experience. The current real problem is that freshly baked specialist training troops have much more experience than untrained but years of war experienced units.

[Alex_brunius]

I think land combat experience is gained too slow in general anyway.

Now, ambushes, encirclements and breakthroughs are affects of experience but not other way round. Those who were ambushed or encircled would learn much more. Stalingrad and Kursk was example where one who have suffered previously numerous encirclements and breakthroughs inflicted the same fate to another who never experienced the same thing before.

In general should be diminishing gains of experience. The current real problem is that freshly baked specialist training troops have much more experience than untrained but years of war experienced units.

I agree that what's missing is diminishing returns.

Experience gain could work something like this:

0-10% 8 times faster
10-20% 4 times faster
30-40% 2 times faster
40-50%
50-60% half speed
60-70% 1/4 speed
70-80% 1/8 speed
80-90% 1/16 speed
90-100% 1/32 speed


Then we would still not end up with all divisions having 100% experience, but blowing through and surpassing the basic training would be very quick during front-line duty.

This system already works fine for leaders. You don't see many level 8-9 leaders, but still going from 0-1 is really quick once they are in combat!

[Saulius]

Yeah mnplastic I agree it is erroneous the way it is with the fact that brand spankingly fresh shake'n'bake units that have used specialist training policy have such a high start level of experience so these recently built units have too high experience in relation to long existing and war veteran units. While I like the idea of constrcting new unit with proper training = starting experience levels, I'm not happy with this situation currently, with the bulk of generic new units having the skills of real specialists and what should be reserved for or achieved by veteran units.

The gain of combat experience is too slow ATM, especially in relation to what is bestowed by the training policy setting.

Oh, on SU 'experience' during the war, the purge destroyed a considerable amount of accumulated tactical knowledge and experience and a lot was also un-learned during that period too, but that did start to be re-learned in outer Mongolia and during the second half of the Russo-Finnish Winter War and beyond. I don't think many of the encircled and destroyed forces survived '41 to be around afterwards or to pass on their experience gained under those circumstances because they ended up dead or mostly POWs, except for may be the Odessa garrison. Before Stalingrad the Germans had plenty of experiences of being cut off and dealing with encirclement, primarily in the Winter of 1941-42 themselves including the 6th Army at Kursk and the Khakov region. It was just the case that no matter how good or not the training or experience of the troops, being totally cut off and permantly encircled always results in guaranteed annihilation.

@Alex nice idea.

[Alex_brunius]

I don't think many of the encircled and destroyed forces survived '41 to be around afterwards or to pass on their experience gained under those circumstances because they ended up dead or mostly POWs, except for may be the Odessa garrison.

How many troops that survived matters little if we are talking about the general land combat experience (the practical value). That's mostly a measurement of your officers / general doctrine ability and officers, especially higher ones tend to survive, since they are not even close to the front.

As a Soviet general or higher officer during 1941 you had alot more to fear from Stalin then from being taken PoW by the Germans

[mnplastic]

+1

[Saulius]

I know for sure Alex that in most of the battle of annihilation encircled pockets of the 1941 campaigne retained until their demise most of the officers and Generals in them largely just as much as well as their lower rank and file men, although there were attempts at times for the senior staff to abandon their troops and escape, but I doubt that was often nor was permission given by the Boss and AIUI largely only happened when order and displine had broken down completely at all levels in the pockets. I don't believe that many in such positions were successful in conducting such a self saving Houdini and even if they were they would have had to have faced Stalin or an NKVD bullet if they couldn't hold their own gun in their mouths and take a bite.

OK I can accept that the game uses 'experience' as a modifier that represents what you say...

[juv95hrn]

I find the level of land combat experience to be about right, especially in comparison to submarine commanders and air combat/naval combat which is way too high/low respectively. I seldom bother to groom leaders after general war has erupted and its by then rather rare to have leaders gain a skill level and land units rarely go above 30-40% experience if built at 25%. I don't know if it's even possible to gain much more experience than that since all STR replacements will come in at 25%.

In conclusion even if there are some things that could be improved regarding land combat experience there a lot of other issues that are much more out of whack than that area.

[SonofWinter]

Let me see, I have 2.2 Land Combat Experience as Germany after the Invasion of Poland and Hungary and 19.9 Air Combat Experience. Heck, even my navy out paces my Land Combat Experience eventually. And I'm playing Germany. How the hell does my Naval Combat Experience out pace my Land Combat Experience?

I'll tell you how. My generals out perform everyone. Everytime they meet someone on the battlefield they have every one of their doctrines ready to play. They do encirclements (a combat event, not the act of surrounding pockets), they do assaults and they do breakthroughs and crush the competition.

The question I have is, if you destroy a unit in a pocket, does the enemy loose those officers, or does their pool stay the same?

[mnplastic]

Officers are destroyed too except Generals.

[SonofWinter]

So there is no chance of killing generals when you wipe out a Russian pocket or 30 INF divisions? That sort of sucks.

[ltccone]

Land Combat Experience

I find that this practical needs to be altered. The problem I currently have is that I’m overrunning my enemies due to my doctrines. My battles don’t last 5-10 days, they last 3-5 hours. That means my generals and my troops and my practicals are not going up and as my doctrines get discovered and my troops become more and more competent, the battles will last shorter and shorter amounts of time as I crush through my enemies.

Now personally I think there is nothing to be learned from 100,000 corpses. I would think there is more to be learned from victories and defeats. So, if my men perform brilliant encirclements and breakthroughs, they should be rewarded for those successful actions, instead of gaining lots of experience for essentially WWI tactics of throwing men into a meat grinder and hoping you win a battle. I think that some of the exp rewards should come from successful combat events. Since the loss of 1,000 men in a battle is not particularly bright, if you can make your losses 10% of that, with the correct doctrines that help you win your battles much more quickly.

Opinions?

I totally agree with you. In my last DI:G game Rommel (who I left as a division commander the ENTIRE war just to see if I could get him promoted) never got higher than eighty-something percent experience, and NO promotions, despite having fought in Poland, France, the UK, the USSR, Canada, and the USA.

My only commanders who gained promotions were the ones involved in the grinding battles at Gibraltar and Leningrad. That is just ridiculous!

[SonofWinter]

I totally agree with you. In my last DI:G game Rommel (who I left as a division commander the ENTIRE war just to see if I could get him promoted) never got higher than eighty-something percent experience, and NO promotions, despite having fought in Poland, France, the UK, the USSR, Canada, and the USA.

My only commanders who gained promotions were the ones involved in the grinding battles at Gibraltar and Leningrad. That is just ridiculous!

I agree, while all the USSR players disagree because then the German generals might actually keep some sort of a competitive advantage in the long run. Essentially the idea is, sure you can have techs but your German generals will never get better because you need to loose your whole army before they gain any exp. So currently the rules as they stand are, only the person who has 3 million troops to loose can gain any exp and the person who defeats the 3 million with 300K of losses doesn't get any reward for it.

But that's the whole clique of anti-Germany people talking. As for Rommel, I've done the same thing, he destroys people on the battlefield, overruns their positons and comes out with 0.30 of 1% for it. So, he'll never reach lvl. 6, unless he has an army of Russian zerg troops.

[ltccone]

I agree, while all the USSR players disagree because then the German generals might actually keep some sort of a competitive advantage in the long run. Essentially the idea is, sure you can have techs but your German generals will never get better because you need to loose your whole army before they gain any exp. So currently the rules as they stand are, only the person who has 3 million troops to loose can gain any exp and the person who can defeats the 3 million with 300K of losses doesn't get any reward for it.

But that's the whole clique of anti-Germany people talking. As for Rommel, I've done the same thing, he destroys people on the battlefield, overruns their positons and comes out with 0.30 of 1% for it. So, he'll never reach lvl. 6, unless he has an army of Russian zerg troops.

You should get a minimum amount of experience for each battle, with a time multiplier.