Casualties

[Striker475]

Personally, I dont think its hard for them to model at all. Remember, Vicky models entire pop stats based on province populations.
Basically, what is needed is a starting population count (as of Jan 1, 1936, or of the closest estimate if needed).

From there, simply take population growth in the countries based on a line of best fit, assuming the war did not occur. This would give you a trend line of the national population without World War II. Now, I know it gets a bit difficult and v. AH without the war, due to the postwar baby boom, but it sort of measures up, especially considering a place such as the United States which was only in the war for four years.
That gives you your pop calculations for the span of the times.

Following on from that, simply subtract losses from the values being pumped out. Remember, the growth of the population based on that trend line will not change (since HoI doesn't measure immigration rate changes or birth rate changes like Vicky, rather keeping the rate as a constant growth, only affected by tech eg agriculture/medicine/plastics). From this, as long as you are given values of divisional size, then you should effectively have the makeup of your population, and should be able to calculate losses.

Surely the above isn't too hard to program?

Also, if someone decides to light me up on the 'no because its sensitive' bandwagon, two of my great-grandfathers fought at Gallipoli and the Somme, all the way to the end of the war (one with Albert Jacka's 14th Bn, 4th Brig, 1st AIF Div.), and a great-uncle fought on Bougainville. I'm inherently proud of what they've achieved, and yet, I do not believe we can truly honour them unless we are able to remember the sacrifices they and other millions of men and women made across the world. Unless we do remember their sacrifice, then we will forget, and that opens the door for tyranny to reign once more.
And please remember we are talking raw casualty stats from the actual battles, NOT civilian casualties. I fully agree with Paradox on the latter subject; it's far too touchy, and is very open to lead down a slippery slope which would result in far too many people being offended.

 

[seattle]

Many WW2 games have casualty stats.
Two examples:

Commander - Europe at War
Making History - The Calm and the Storm

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Those stats not only add a vast amount of flavour and IMMERSION, the new magic word, they are also a vital part of warfare and should play a key role in the game mechanics.
Naturally a sane person would try to keep own casualties as low as possible and monitor that stat frequently. Replay value is increased considerably by trying to keep casualties lower each playthrough.

Each nation should have a specific casualty tolerance, further modified by political system and status of being an aggressor or defender.

Example:
USA as a war-weary democracy with a diverse population and a civil war trauma naturally has a low tolerance towards casualties.
In WW2 the only that tolerance increased dramatically because the country was attacked and that in a fiendish manner.
If in HoI3 the US-player declares war on Germany or Japan or anyone else for that matter, without being attacked, then the casualty-tolerance should be set on very low. Casualties cause massive dissent, or maybe even better war-weariness as in Vicky.

A nation like the Soviet Union, China, Japan and to a slightly lesser extent Germany should have a very high casualty tolerance, even if being the aggressor.

This feature would single-handedly cause people to play realistically or be doomed to fail. An aggressive USA or France would have to achieve blitzkrieg-victories. A single Verdun and the population would revolt and the player be kicked out of office.

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Opinions on my idea?

 

[unmerged(58571)]

Arrrgh, not another casualties-cause-dissent respawn!
Whac-a-mole is boring.

 

[Ostheim]

Arrrgh, not another casualties-cause-dissent respawn!
Whac-a-mole is boring.

Open your mind...arrogance is annoying.

 

[Ostheim]

It's not arrogance, he's just sick of people not reading the thread and then posting the exact same thing over & over. This idea has been proposed dozens upon dozens of time since HoI1, if one wants to agree with it or expand upon it, fine, but don't just post the exact same idea with the exact same examples.

The nature of forums and forum users aren't likely to change. Rehashing some ideas through another person's words and perspective is not something to make equally 'useless' replies to.

Whac-a-troll

 

[Darth Tracid]

first and last personal-attack warning.

 

[Pzt_Dragoon47]

They don't HAVE to measure it in manpower. I always saw manpower as a resource instead of people and the strength of my divisions as the actual amount of people, as the cost of mp is different for each government.

Why can't it be set up so that each division has its own base manpower value? Like the 4th panzer division has X tanks and Y soldiers? That way it can be easily integrated into the statistics of the game without being caught up in all the different mp problems that come with different forms of government.

I mean, usually the base value for a squadron of fighters would stay the same throughout the military unless there was some sort of logistical problem right? Just like a standard number, like maybe 12,000 men for an infantry division or something along those lines.

Anyway, I'm rambling and my idea's probably stupid anyway...I'm going to go buy some flame-retardant.

 

[Battlecry]

They don't HAVE to measure it in manpower. I always saw manpower as a resource instead of people and the strength of my divisions as the actual amount of people, as the cost of mp is different for each government.

Why can't it be set up so that each division has its own base manpower value? Like the 4th panzer division has X tanks and Y soldiers? That way it can be easily integrated into the statistics of the game without being caught up in all the different mp problems that come with different forms of government.

I mean, usually the base value for a squadron of fighters would stay the same throughout the military unless there was some sort of logistical problem right? Just like a standard number, like maybe 12,000 men for an infantry division or something along those lines.

Anyway, I'm rambling and my idea's probably stupid anyway...I'm going to go buy some flame-retardant.

Not a stupid idea by any means. This might be the easiest way to incorporate the figures people seem to want while still keeping it semi-abstract (to avoid 'dishonouring the memories' etc). Although it would have to be per-brigade, I believe. If we can find a way to make both "camps" in this discussion happy, it would be best.

Unfortunately I don't think the engine will be sufficiently detailed to account for tanks losses vs. losses in men - it's simply a % strength loss in HOI2, and I don't see any indication of this changing for HOI3.

 

[Pzt_Dragoon47]

That's where it gets more complicated no doubt, but then again, vehicles and tanks are only apparent in three of the land force types, such as motorized, mechanized, and tank divisions. Mainly soldier-based units are the paratroopers, infantry, militia, garisson, and mountain troops. Maybe the vehicle-based forces can all be classified as "vehicles" in the casualty lists, except the base number of "soldier" casualties in those units is halved to get the amount of "vehicle" casualties. Now there is a stupid idea but at least it gets my point across.

Maybe just use "men" for everything? Except the amount of men lost is based on the % of strength lost in each unit? Maybe that can solve the armor to footsoldier problem. Because, after all, the enemy can always build new tanks.

I'm used to playing Close Combat where there are casualty lists for the battles and the overall campaign so this feature would drastically increase the replay value of this game for me at least.

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Also, and the moderators may edit this post if they wish for bringing up a possibly taboo subject, (I think, I'm not sure), but didn't AGEod figure out a way to project casualties into their games? Maybe that can be used as a guideline I'm not sure, I didn't play that civil war game of theirs all too much.

 

[unmerged(122975)]

I can see a problem if division discriminates men and tanks: If I have a division made of a tank brigade and an infantry brigade and it gets attacked by an army with high soft attack and low hard attack, it will be irrealistic to say that both brigades suffered casualties in the same proportion or that it lost few tanks but a lot of men.

 

[sapper66]

It woudl not be that difficult to add realistic numbers to a casualty list. For instance teh unit(division) statistics show 35% soft targets and 65% hard targets for combat purposes... This breakdown of soft/hard(which is already in the game) would mostly likely relate to a division with 2 armor bde's and 1 inf/mech inf bde in the example setforth. To creating a casualty report to add depth and immersion woudl be relatively easy.

For example(workign with the current statistics already in teh game) say said division above (starting with 100% combat power) finishes a battle and have only 71% combat power remaining. (Lets assume a max div inf to be 12,000 soldiers...numbers can vary... and armor to be 150 tanks...numbers again can vary...but for illistration purposes)

Using the given soft/hard % already in teh statistics, current combat power vs initial combat power and max inf/tanks a simple calcultion can be derived to calculate losses:

Combat power loss x Percentage of type x max qty = losses
INF Losses (1.00-0.71) x 0.35 x 12,000=1218 inf losses
Tanks Losses (1.00-.71) x 0.65 x 150 = 29 tanks losses

Of course these numbers are not exact and are simply ratios of losses whcih in RL may not be exact. However, losses and talleys in real life are never exactly known until quite a long time after combat or the war is over when a country sustains a large number of losses(not like todays tracking, where losses in the last 20-30 yrs are relatively small and considerably easier to track)

The casualty report would include all casualties in teh unit... eventhough only a fraction of teh divisional soldiers are actually combat soldiers(many being service and service support)

These casualty reports are completely differetn and do not relate directly to manpower as a resource as many divisions require a different amount of abstract manpower even if the actual number of soldiers are closer proportioned thant thier manpower usage ratios

 

[unmerged(58571)]

I have to admit I cannot understand the point of using complicated formulae for trying to guess how many concrete soldiers each unit of manpower corresponds to for each individual division when the resulting data is utterly useless since it is neither accurate nor corresponding to anything used in-game, whereas simply keeping statistics of manpower losses, which are already calculated, provides information that is both exact by default and meaningful.

 

[unmerged(44030)]

I have to admit I cannot understand the point of using complicated formulae for trying to guess how many concrete soldiers each unit of manpower corresponds to for each individual division when the resulting data is utterly useless since it is neither accurate nor corresponding to anything used in-game, whereas simply keeping statistics of manpower losses, which are already calculated, provides information that is both exact by default and meaningful.

I have to admit I cannot understand the point of not using exact numbers for the amount of casualties. As people have already stated, no complicated formulas are needed.

 

[unmerged(58571)]

I'm not advocating against exact numbers (quite the contrary, actually), I'm advocating against trying to change an exact number of abstract manpower into a guessed number of concrete soldiers when there, quite deliberately, is no exact relationship. It's like trying to express the exact value of e as a rational number.

 

[unmerged(40779)]

I have to admit I cannot understand the point of using complicated formulae for trying to guess how many concrete soldiers each unit of manpower corresponds to for each individual division when the resulting data is utterly useless since it is neither accurate nor corresponding to anything used in-game, whereas simply keeping statistics of manpower losses, which are already calculated, provides information that is both exact by default and meaningful.

Well the whole point here is that each "point" of MP must be equal to certain number of men. Otherwise it wouldn't really mean anything. I just can't understand why it wouldn't be just as easy to talk about men instead of manpower. In the statistics-page it should also tell how many men has each nation lost this far, and have a list of your land battles with casualty rate.

Also, about dividing between men and tanks... it oversimplifies it, methinks. If we start to separate infantry and tanks, we should also separate trucks, artillery and other heavy pieces they might be dragging along.

But, would it not be possible to have three strength bars instead of two? One for organisation, one for men/infantry, one for "Heavy Equipment". Say you have an armoured division fighting enemy infantry division. Now, depending on the HA of the infantry and the toughness percentage of your division, you propably lose more men than heavy equipment but your tanks roll the enemy infantry over. Then you face an enemy armoured division with even higher toughness than yours, for their tech level, and additional AT. Now your HE losses are higher than infantry ones. Both bars affect the fighting capability of the division, but infantry losses make higher casualties, the HE losses are more expensive to replace.

I think this is an idea already proposed by someone, and probably too radical for the process is already on... doubt that they will do any real changes to the land battle system anymore. But still, MP=men. Why not talk about them as such?

 

[unmerged(40779)]

I'm not advocating against exact numbers (quite the contrary, actually), I'm advocating against trying to change an exact number of abstract manpower into a guessed number of concrete soldiers when there, quite deliberately, is no exact relationship. It's like trying to express the exact value of e as a rational number.

This makes no sense to me. Of course ManPower represents a number of men. Energy represents a certain tonnage of coal, usually. Metal those of iron and steel. However, as there are different sources for energy it would be hard to talk about tonnes there... but there just men(and sometimes women), for which the MP is there to represent. For hardly any real reason.

 

[unmerged(58571)]

Well the whole point here is that each "point" of MP must be equal to certain number of men.

Huh? The whole point of using MP is to avoid having to care about exact numbers of men by abstracting them.

 

[unmerged(40779)]

Huh? The whole point of using MP is to avoid having to care about exact numbers of men by abstracting them.

If you can abstract exact number of men, I see no reason why you couldn't do it the other way around...

EDIT: And why would it be such a burden to "care" about exact numbers anyways?

 

[Bullfrog]

If you can abstract exact number of men, I see no reason why you couldn't do it the other way around...

EDIT: And why would it be such a burden to "care" about exact numbers anyways?

It comes from HoI and HoI2, where instead of having 10000 men per division like in Vicky, the number was "abstracted" to avoid standardizing numbers in divisions regardless of nationality. Since divisions were standard in game, their exact makeup was abstracted to keep people from arguing about said number. For example a historical Italian division versus a British one, in game they're the same in MP, but in real life much different.

In HoI3, there will be varying numbers of brigades as building blocks...so we could certainly pull off a more realistic standard number per brigade, since full divisions would not need to be on par any longer.

 

[unmerged(40779)]

For me, it never made it any more realistic to have Italy and Soviet union (prior 41) to use the same MP amount than it would have done to have exact numbers... but in HoI3, like you said, there should be no problem at all in the strength-differ aspect.