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Will this be in the game?

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Cat 1 - elite soldiers

Cat 2 - regular soldiers

Cat 3 - older or very young or other physical defect

This has been discussed at length many times.

There was no "elite soldiers" (in the moden sense of the word) in WW2. All countries relied on conscription and gradually mobilised more soldiers depending on requirement. While individual units had specialist training (like mountain troops/assault engineers etc) they were better at a specific task (like mountain fighting/fortress busting) but not any better (often worse) at other tasks.

You raise an interesting point though. Throughout the war, countries (especially Germany) had to expand mobilisation categories to deal with manpower shortages. And this affected the army as a whole, long before the formation of the militia/volksshturm. So far DH was the only mod to try to show the strain of the mobilisation levels. Hopefully HOI4 will take the next step from the HOI model in that respect.
 
I feel HOI3 has this in the form of training laws, going from Minimal Training to Specialist Training. A way to symbolize Germany's late-war conscription could perhaps be to increase manpower, but decrease the stats of new units. But from the doctrine tree, it seems Paradox has already got this covered somehow.
 
I feel HOI3 has this in the form of training laws, going from Minimal Training to Specialist Training. A way to symbolize Germany's late-war conscription could perhaps be to increase manpower, but decrease the stats of new units. But from the doctrine tree, it seems Paradox has already got this covered somehow.

Training laws were not enough, because they affected training time/staring exp and nothing else. Mobilisation of older age groups affected the country as a whole, as well as all sorts of effects to the army.
 
Will this be in the game?

Like

Cat 1 - elite soldiers

Cat 2 - regular soldiers

Cat 3 - older or very young or other physical defect
The only (arguable) elite forces in 1939 were parts of the British Army (fighting in the 1920s in the Empire), parts of the French Empire (again fighting in the colonies), the US Marines (Banana Wars) and maybe a few Germans who got some experience in the 20s fighting at the borders of germany.
Also a thing that is really acknowledge is that veteran forces are first and foremost survivors, meaning those are the men who for some reason did not die when the others did (maybe only because they did NOT charge the Machinegun). For one thing veteran units are veteran and stay veteran because they do not do certain things.
I imagine it would have been quite difficult to get veteran units to the Allied D-Day assaults on the Beaches because they would have been keenly aware that they were being sent into a meatgrinder and would have lacked in 'elan' (meaning they would have tried to find cover as best as they could instead of charging the bunkers) which green units had because the heroes had not been yet culled to the ranks of lucky heroes.
 
The only (arguable) elite forces in 1939 were parts of the British Army (fighting in the 1920s in the Empire), parts of the French Empire (again fighting in the colonies), the US Marines (Banana Wars) and maybe a few Germans who got some experience in the 20s fighting at the borders of germany.
You really think brigades would remain experienced after 10+ years of peace? Personnel changeover would mean, that all veterans would have been replaced with new recruits, and then those would be replaced again.
 
You really think brigades would remain experienced after 10+ years of peace? Personnel changeover would mean, that all veterans would have been replaced with new recruits, and then those would be replaced again.

In case of the British Army it might very well survive so long, same with parts of the French Army (Foreign legion) and again, same with the Marine Corps.
And even if you lose some enlisted men you stiill have an experienced corps of NCOs, senior enlisted men and officers.
 
In case of the British Army it might very well survive so long, same with parts of the French Army (Foreign legion) and again, same with the Marine Corps.
And even if you lose some enlisted men you stiill have an experienced corps of NCOs, senior enlisted men and officers.
Having a good, experienced small-unit leader does not make the soldiers of the unit experienced, or veteran. It makes them more prepared, yes, but not veteran.
Look at HOI3 system - take a unit with 70% experience, remove 3/4 of its personnel, replace with fresh recruits - at best you will get a unit with 38.5% experience, at worst only 21% will remain. Very much like real life. Besides, you think Banana wars prepared men for mass mechanized warfare?
 
Having a good, experienced small-unit leader does not make the soldiers of the unit experienced, or veteran. It makes them more prepared, yes, but not veteran.
Look at HOI3 system - take a unit with 70% experience, remove 3/4 of its personnel, replace with fresh recruits - at best you will get a unit with 38.5% experience, at worst only 21% will remain. Very much like real life. Besides, you think Banana wars prepared men for mass mechanized warfare?

What makes the Unit more "Veteran" is that their NCO's are competent and well versed in combat and not going to freak out or loose them self in the situation. If you had a unit that was 3/4 Veteran but all those veterans were the Enlisted "Grunts" they would be beaten by a unit that was only 1/4 Veteran with most of the veterans focused on the NCO/Officer Ranks. Ask anyone who's been in combat, the vetrancy of the rank and file doesn't mean as much as having a veteran and competent command staff.

Also an Elite unit by World War Two standards would be tricky to define, I think HOI 3 TFH did it best by adding in Rangers, Gurkha's ect but really the only country that had widescale SPEC OPS forces in a modern sense would be Germany and even then I only recall them being used during the Ardennes Offensive.
 
What makes the Unit more "Veteran" is that their NCO's are competent and well versed in combat and not going to freak out or loose them self in the situation. If you had a unit that was 3/4 Veteran but all those veterans were the Enlisted "Grunts" they would be beaten by a unit that was only 1/4 Veteran with most of the veterans focused on the NCO/Officer Ranks. Ask anyone who's been in combat, the vetrancy of the rank and file doesn't mean as much as having a veteran and competent command staff.

Depends on the doctrine:
A German unit with experience difficulties on any level might be able to balance that because officers and NCOs are suposed to listen and lowly enlisted men would be allowed to lead their units and make use of their experience, while a British or American unit would be screwed since the officers did or would not listen and the men were expected to do as told without an eye to better solutions.
 
The only (arguable) elite forces in 1939 were parts of the British Army (fighting in the 1920s in the Empire), parts of the French Empire (again fighting in the colonies), the US Marines (Banana Wars) and maybe a few Germans who got some experience in the 20s fighting at the borders of germany.
Also a thing that is really acknowledge is that veteran forces are first and foremost survivors, meaning those are the men who for some reason did not die when the others did (maybe only because they did NOT charge the Machinegun). For one thing veteran units are veteran and stay veteran because they do not do certain things.
I imagine it would have been quite difficult to get veteran units to the Allied D-Day assaults on the Beaches because they would have been keenly aware that they were being sent into a meatgrinder and would have lacked in 'elan' (meaning they would have tried to find cover as best as they could instead of charging the bunkers) which green units had because the heroes had not been yet culled to the ranks of lucky heroes.

Um, Japan....? Fighting continuously in China from 1931 onwards. Man this is a Eurocentric board sometime.
 
Um, Japan....? Fighting continuously in China from 1931 onwards. Man this is a Eurocentric board sometime.
Being a Euro, what other -centric would i be?;)
 
'Elite' is a combination of training, equipment, and experience.

The Japanese infantry had experience up the wazoo, but they didn't have a very high quality training program, and they were on the short end of the stick, equipment-wise.

There were some *very* good british and french troops, but not very many of them. The russians also don't get enough credit, they had some quite good troops as well. Even the Italians had a few really good formations.

The thing is, 'Elite' troops are hard to produce in any sort of meaningful quantity. There have always been 'SAS' and 'Seal team 6' like groups, but there have never been enough of them to make one whit of difference in a major conflict.

Some of the biggest 'special forces' combat effects have got to be the Italian frogmen attacks in WWII - they were pretty awesome.
 
When I say Elite, I dont mean units like SAS or such because they dont really impact the war. More like the training to join 101 st is tougher and not all soldiers had the physical to endure it. When you have a conscription army you divide the manpower into categories. Some to the paras, some to infantry and some to logistics. so for a 1 million manpower pool, maybee a few percent can be paras or marines. At least thats how they do it now, maybee it was different in ww2 because the concept of the units in themselves was new?