Could someone help me understand this?

[TheMoe]

From what I can see, my tanks are fighting on plains ground, which I think it good for tanks, during the day, with perfect weather, though it sure looks to me like they are taking a huge penalty for weather. I'm a bit confused.

Here are the screen shots. Thanks! I'm sure I'm missing something.
Showing what I see as a weather penalty.

Fighting on plains.

Clear skies?

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

Moved to correct game.

 

[TheMoe]

Moved to correct game.

Oh how funny! Thank you! I must have mistakenly posted this in the Stellaris forum, since I play both and usually ask questions on both forums. Thanks!

 

[brainiac1530]

That's the "Unplanned Offensive" debuff. It's applied as a weather effect, but it's really just a weird hack they used to slow down the Spanish Civil War. Nationalist and Republican Spain have mechanics to remove the debuff in strategic regions of their choice. If you're in single-player, you'll just have to look around to see where it's present. The debuff being present can actually be handy in a way, to grind army XP while taking a bare minimum of casualties. Of course, if you're hoping to get something done, it's better to put your volunteers where the debuff has already been removed.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

Oh how funny! Thank you! I must have mistakenly posted this in the Stellaris forum, since I play both and usually ask questions on both forums. Thanks!

It was in HoI II.

 

[TheMoe]

That's the "Unplanned Offensive" debuff. It's applied as a weather effect, but it's really just a weird hack they used to slow down the Spanish Civil War. Nationalist and Republican Spain have mechanics to remove the debuff in strategic regions of their choice. If you're in single-player, you'll just have to look around to see where it's present. The debuff being present can actually be handy in a way, to grind army XP while taking a bare minimum of casualties. Of course, if you're hoping to get something done, it's better to put your volunteers where the debuff has already been removed.

What an amazingly helpful answer! Who in the world would have known? I really feel for newer players such as myself who are working to better understand the game and who are confused by such obscure game mechanics. Now that I know why it's there, I can appreciate the motive behind the creation of such a confusing display of seemingly contradictory information.

As far as using the mechanic to my advantage, that goes on to another hidden and confusing part of the game. How is army exp generated? Is it simply based on the amount of time and the number of troops in combat or is it awarded based on kills or depletion of enemy division percentage (the white line next to the green organization indicator)? Thanks!

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

How is army exp generated? Is it simply based on the amount of time and the number of troops in combat or is it awarded based on kills or depletion of enemy division percentage

Former. SCW now allows you to grind XP nearly for free.

 

[HighChanceOfRai]

That's the "Unplanned Offensive" debuff. It's applied as a weather effect, but it's really just a weird hack they used to slow down the Spanish Civil War. Nationalist and Republican Spain have mechanics to remove the debuff in strategic regions of their choice. If you're in single-player, you'll just have to look around to see where it's present. The debuff being present can actually be handy in a way, to grind army XP while taking a bare minimum of casualties. Of course, if you're hoping to get something done, it's better to put your volunteers where the debuff has already been removed.

Jesus Christ, why on earth is this not explainedd better? I have never figured this out

 

[blahmaster6k]

Jesus Christ, why on earth is this not explainedd better? I have never figured this out

It's something that you need to look at the state/province window to see. It was talked a lot about in the dev diaries for Spain before LaR came out, so veteran players weren't blindsided by it but I can see how it would be hard for new players to see. HoI4 is a game that has a really lengthy learning curve, but I don't really know how it would be improved. It's not really something to complain about, just something you learn eventually by playing the game.

 

[CrasherZZ]

Jesus Christ, why on earth is this not explainedd better? I have never figured this out

Agreed. Unexplained details like this are very annoying. I have quit playing in frustration at times when I stumble on some obscure but important mechanic that's not explained anywhere. Paradox has a very strange way of documenting game mechanics, meaning hardly all - just let the players figure it out for themselves.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Agreed. Unexplained details like this are very annoying. I have quit playing in frustration at times when I stumble on some obscure but important mechanic that's not explained anywhere. Paradox has a very strange way of documenting game mechanics, meaning hardly all - just let the players figure it out for themselves.

In this particular scenario, there's a news event pop-up for Spain when the modifier becomes active across the country, something like "front lines stablize in the Spanish Civil War", and reading it explains that attacking is difficult without preparing an offensive in advance - which is telling you to do the decisions to "prepare an offensive in <state>", which removes the modifier locally. It doesn't show up worldwide though, so if you're just sending volunteers you won't see it. But if you've ever played Spain you'd know about it.

 

[CrasherZZ]

In this particular scenario, there's a news event pop-up for Spain when the modifier becomes active across the country, something like "front lines stablize in the Spanish Civil War", and reading it explains that attacking is difficult without preparing an offensive in advance - which is telling you to do the decisions to "prepare an offensive in <state>, which removes the modifier locally." It doesn't show up worldwide though, so if you're just sending volunteers you won't see it. But if you've ever played Spain you'd know about it.

Thanks for detailed explanation. I haven't played a game yet when I didn't send Volunteers to the SCW. That's probably standard operating procedure for most players. So it did help me grind out XP even if I didn't know about it. I did notice that battles took a lot longer in the SCW but so do some of my battles in mountains of China so I never gave it too much thought.

 

[TheMoe]

It was in HoI II.

My goodness. HOI II? I didn't even know that was a thing. Must have been long before my time. Thank you!

 

[TheMoe]

Former. SCW now allows you to grind XP nearly for free.

Thanks! This really helps. I was thinking I had to actually be killing people. The 90% reduction in attack now makes perfect sense, from an XP grinding perspective. I assume the same is for air XP? Just have to have planes flying in theater (on missions) as opposed to actually shooting down enemy planes?

 

[brainiac1530]

I was thinking I had to actually be killing people.

Oddly enough, it's entirely possible, or at least it was, to get army XP without even firing a shot, since you could get it by fighting with unequipped units.

You also get a bit of air XP for training air wings, but with a lower multiplier. Fighters gain the most XP per mission, but they also tend to suffer major losses. But, if you're trading at a favorable enough ratio, the total wing XP can definitely go up. It seems as though fighters on air superiority don't count as "being on mission" for this purpose if there are no enemy aircraft on mission in that zone. CAS can get pretty badly shredded if they bomb units with AA, so they can easily go backwards too. It would seem that, in general, national XP gain is somehow proportional to unit XP gain, but the actual calculations tend to be a bit opaque. There are also some actions, like overruns, that seem to give experience to army leaders but not to either units or to the national pool.

AIR_WING_XP_TRAINING_MISSION_GAIN_DAILY = 3.3,         --Daily gain when running training exercise mission
AIR_WING_XP_AIR_VS_AIR_COMBAT_GAIN = 0.8,             --Wings in combat gain extra XP   
AIR_WING_XP_GROUND_MISSION_COMPLETED_GAIN = 0.28,     --Bombers bombing, CAS cassing, NBs nbing, kamikazees kamikazeeing, etc.   
AIR_WING_XP_RECON_MISSION_COMPLETED_GAIN = 0.05,     --recon mission

 

[TheMoe]

Oddly enough, it's entirely possible, or at least it was, to get army XP without even firing a shot, since you could get it by fighting with unequipped units.

You also get a bit of air XP for training air wings, but with a lower multiplier. Fighters gain the most XP per mission, but they also tend to suffer major losses. But, if you're trading at a favorable enough ratio, the total wing XP can definitely go up. It seems as though fighters on air superiority don't count as "being on mission" for this purpose if there are no enemy aircraft on mission in that zone. CAS can get pretty badly shredded if they bomb units with AA, so they can easily go backwards too. It would seem that, in general, national XP gain is somehow proportional to unit XP gain, but the actual calculations tend to be a bit opaque. There are also some actions, like overruns, that seem to give experience to army leaders but not to either units or to the national pool.

AIR_WING_XP_TRAINING_MISSION_GAIN_DAILY = 3.3,         --Daily gain when running training exercise mission
AIR_WING_XP_AIR_VS_AIR_COMBAT_GAIN = 0.8,             --Wings in combat gain extra XP  
AIR_WING_XP_GROUND_MISSION_COMPLETED_GAIN = 0.28,     --Bombers bombing, CAS cassing, NBs nbing, kamikazees kamikazeeing, etc.  
AIR_WING_XP_RECON_MISSION_COMPLETED_GAIN = 0.05,     --recon mission

Very helpful! So wonderful to see the code as well! Thanks for taking the time to answer so completely. BTW, fighting with unequipped units really made me laugh!