Do we really need hours ?

[unmerged(29126)]

I have often heard the term "grand-strategy" used in combination with HOI1.
IMHO the need to coordinate divisonal-level attacks to the precise hour does not fit in there.

So what do we need the hours for ?

Day/Night cycle certainly, but that could be emulated by having two or four phases per day instead of 24 ... this would probably also free some CPU-time ...
Production, Research, diplomacy, supply, etc. not really needed

Air/Sea/Land battle and Air/Sea/Land movement ... ok, some areas need it some don't

Moving land units over long distances should be left to Strat.Deploy (railway) anyway ...
Short-range deployment (by road), in an organized way, on a divisonal level should take 1/2 a day per province at least.
I don't think land battle on this scale can be initiated 100% and broken off 100% within an hour.

Airmovement was already semi-instantaneous in HOI1, airbattles in ONE province where several hours long. Both are probably getting abstracted in HOI2, to what degree we do not know yet ... but air-units should probably be limited to two sorties a day (6 hour turn-around time).

Seabattles/Seamovement I know too little about ...

Anyway, an hour-by-hour progress of the game sounds more like (grand) operational level to me in which case commandos etc. would gain a lot more impact. If we're gonna command entire army groups I feel it should be enough to define a day (or night) of attack ... and each round of combat should be measured in days not hours ... would need a lot of refiddling though ... and it's peobably way too late anyway

Please let me know if you disagree ...

 

[Wämö]

Yes, we need hours. It was an important part of operations of all kind.

 

[J.J.E.]

Yes, we need hours. It was an important part of operations of all kind.

I agree. Just think about the detailed planning of Operation Overlord, which was almost planned down to the minute. You should be able to order troops to attack at dawn etc.

 

[Quivis]

It worked fine and I liked it so why do you want to change something that is good :wacko:

 

[aprof]

Just on a practical basis: if you get rid of "hours" and replace them with "morning," "midday" "afternoon" and "night," the game will be 1/6th as long.

 

[Quivis]

Just on a practical basis: if you get rid of "hours" and replace them with "morning," "midday" "afternoon" and "night," the game will be 1/6th as long.

Yea Now I don't like this idea even more

 

[unmerged(29126)]

Yes, but you're talking minute planning at Btn level. How long did it take to have an entire division on the beach ? Several hours at least. Also about the attacking at dawn ... which division sized operation was initiated by ALL units of that division at the given hour ?

All I'm trying to say here is that at divison, corps, army and army-group level, giving an option to attack at one specific hour gives a wrong impression of precision ... it's like giving too many digits behind the decimal in algebra ...

Division-scale combat could easily be "smeared out" over an entire day without loosing any authenticity ...
In HOI1:
3x12div stacks do not attack at 2 hour intervals, and if they do they do not add to the strategic (or tactical for that matter) depth, if anything it's less effective.
What abou CAS ? The HOI1 system of bombing the crap/org out of an enemy one hour before my troops hit the beach does not give me anymore satisfaction than ordering an amphib operation with 8th Airforce in support.

Naval-movement (not battle) is the only thing that I cannot find a solution for.

Barbarossa was started at dawn (fighting for the rest of the day), so was the invasion of Poland, D-Day, Ardennes etc.

I cannot think of any strategic operation that merits a commencement at a specific hour.

If we need on-the-hour command-ability we should also get more grand operational choices (maybe that's what I'm really trying to get at )

 

[Earl Uhtred]

The lad is on to something.

 

[unmerged(29126)]

Just on a practical basis: if you get rid of "hours" and replace them with "morning," "midday" "afternoon" and "night," the game will be 1/6th as long.

Ok, that WOULD be a bummer ... the question is: would it ?
What takes time in HOI1 is not the progression of time itsself but the decisions that you have to make and the subsequent orders ...

Switching from 21:00 - 22:00 hardly takes an instant. What takes time is lasooing 3 stacks and giving them an attack order, now whether that order is attack at 9:00 3-4-40 or attack on 3-4-40 is hardly of importance timewise ...

You still would have to make the same research, minister, diplomacy, industry decisions, but now the results would be rounded off to the next day and not the next hour. Anybody ever get annoyed that 1 of your new tank-divs just takes a little bit longer (7 hours) to get finished than the other 2 ?


Remember, Resource consumption, supply/oil are already calculated at 2400 hrs everyday.

I'm not a fervent supporter of abolishing The Hours (didn't like the movie though).

But having 24 rounds of combat being calculated every day seems like an excess. The saved CPU-time could be used for calculating something else than combat ... better A.I. (how I pray for this ), another aspect of war, i.e. internal politics, post-occupation policy (actually setting up a post-war government) etc.

Also cutting down from 24 decision-making moments on any given day to, say, 4 would mean that the A.I. would have less moments of choice, and therefore less opportunity to screw up (or correct itsself, but usually the screwing up thing happens more often).

 

[unmerged(15623)]

I'm looking foward for the pop up rush that is slapped on my face every "turn" when I have many comings and goings on multiple fornts. I assume that the pop up rush that you get as Soviet Union in January 1 1937 will be nothing compared to that.

And multiplayer, yeah, it's gonna rock...

Somehow, this whole thing has an awfully turn based feel on it.

 

[unmerged(29126)]

Ok, the pop-up thingy I missed somehow. As I have most pop-ups turned-off it was something I hadn't thought of, so you have a very valid point there. But you could group several pop-ups in one daytime-briefing ... i.e. the following units have reached their destination, the following research projects have been completed etc. ... that would mean less pop-ups than now

In Multiplayer I do not see the point. Currently the person with the better micro-management and not the better strategic planner seems to have the advantage ... i.e. His planes conducted an attack before I could select and send in my fighters. Uncontested missions like that hardly ever happened. So my suggestion, while maintaining the same sort of orders it would cut down on "hectic" game-play actions ... unless you're into that kinda thing of course ...
never have played MP so maybe that's another valid point you've got there ...

As for turn-based: it already is only they are 1h turns. How often have I and the A.I. sent troops to the same empty province. One of us is usually there a couple of hours earlier than the other one yet has the same defensive benefits (think mountains, river crossing etc.) as if they'd been sitting there for yonks. Same with reinforcing a poorly defended province: 1 of my divs is attacked by 24 of the enemy's. I see it coming, send in my armoured reserve, only they arrive 3 hours too late, after the battle is already over.
My point: 1h turns are just as unrealistic as 24h turns, but one of these options is less "quirky" for a grand strategic game.

Edit: In my mind turn-based does not equal awful. Just as long as turn-based does not mean sequential turn based (you go then I go) but parallel turn-based (as in the Combat Missions series) I'm down with it.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

If I had my way, it would be as you say. Unfortunately, I don't imagine there will be changes - not for something so fundamental.

 

[unmerged(29126)]

Maybe I should've been more clear from the beginning. I never ACTUALLY thought that this would get implemented (at least not in numero 2). I was just trying to kick-start a little fundamental discussion.

I used to start a couple of of my posts with "I know it's probably already to late for this" and the likes. But that made me sound a lot humbler than I really am so I did away with that

 

[Grosshaus]

I don't see any need for showing hours besides kewl-factor, combat sequences could take care of the needed gameplay effects of night-day variation. Major assaults started at dawn always, it's pretty pointless clicking to decide the timing imho.

 

[Yaiko]

Here's why seperating the day into 4 sections would be bad:

Combat. This game has a new theme, and movement is to attack. In 99 infrastructure areas, it would only take 2 ticks of the timer in a 4 section day to full seize a province. Within a half-day, or even 6 hours you could land totally screw up the enemy and his front. It wouldn't make the AI more capable, but prove the AI's lack of foresight for grand strategy. Also realize, we're operating on a globe, you'd have to then modify the minimap too to show 4 different zones, night, day and the two inbetweens. Naval Combat would be destroyed outright. If you transports and destroyer escorts encounter a full enemy fleet, the first time you see this, combat has already been raging for 6 hours, and usually by this time you can pull out in HoI, but if you have pop-ups turned off, well, another tick of the clock and you lost your fleet.

Hours are simply more managable. One of the things I hated about Vicky is that it'd only take me a few minutes when nothing was happening to fly through a year. The military operates on an hour basis, and Movement-is-attack simply will not function as envisioned or hoped if you make the days into 4 clunky sections during a war where mostly every decision came to an hour.

 

[unmerged(29126)]

I still disagree (it's MY baby afterall )

You wouldn't have to edit the minimap cause the day-night cycle would still be active, you could even vary length of nifght and day to accomodate for different seasons. I'm suggesting that there are fewer oppurtunities to give orders and fewer calculations to be made. If the length of day changes, change the formula with which combat damage is calculated by a factor.

About the fleets ... naval damage in HOI1 was excessive in my opinion. A fleet that encounters another fleet should assess its chances and then fight or run or fight then run (if the enemy lets it, i.e. is slower). Manually telling a fleet to withdraw is an operational measure, whereas giving a fleet a mission in a specific seazone and rules of engagements would be strategic. With the last-but-one screenie it seemd possible that stand-off attacks, or running circles around fleets with lower speed and range could be possible. The spotting and engagement rules as in HOI1 weren't really realistic anyway. No way to avoid contact for instance.

About land combat: the current estimate of the damage-model deals a certain amount of SA/HA points per hour and does so every hour, therefore it can screw an inferior unit beyond belief within a short time. A modified damage calculation formula could easily deal with that, deal damage once a day. You wouldn't be able to manually withdraw units as much but you shouldn't be able to as a grand strategist. The current combat system punishes you when you're one hour late (in the extreme) which should not be the case in divisional abstract combat. Being 1 day late is harder to do and also highly negligent (which should be punished), unit movement could still be based on hours (will there be enough hours for them to get there by the next phase: yes/no)

About the AI: giving th AI more decisions to make (24x a day) does not make it more prophetic/good at strategy. Limiting its decison capabilities as I have suggested would (probably) give it less chances to correct itsself but also a longer reaction time. In my experience the AI sends troops to reinforce a pitched battle, even if its losing, so when the troops are at 20 strength and 0 org a new bunch turns up just to get chewed up themselves, then another, then another, piecemeal. I'd rather a have a whole bunch arrive the next day in one go (amphib landings anyone ?).

And the military does operate on an hourly schedule, however actions of anything larger than a division (3 regiments, 9 battalions + support units) are hardly initiated by all its elements at the same time.

And I do agree that the hour-by-hour system works, its just detrimental to the armchair-general feeling that I would have liked, the entire operation feels too much like a hands-on operation to me. I do know that Mr. A.H. (and I use "Mr." as a sarcastic derogatory term here) actually meddled with house-to-house combat in Stalingrad, but he was off his rockers ...

 

[Quivis]

I think it would be difficult to show that in winter night is longer than in summer with this "morning," "midday", "afternoon" and "night" cycle

 

[unmerged(21104)]

I believe the most important problem this would bring ... is Movement ... This game is about movement ... Moving troops on the map to bring down the enemies power. By reducing the time from hours to day/night (for EXAMPLE) ... and if moving troops from province A to B takes 4 hours... and from C to B takes 6 hours ... it wouldnt make any diference anymore because they would both arrive at the same time, since the smallest time slice is 12 hours ... (day/night) ... while in the hours game .. one division would have 2 hours of advance in the terrain and would be on the 'defensive' (more bonus) instead of being an 'encounter' (no bonus *kinda*).
just some small example of the BIG problems this would bring ...

 

[unmerged(29126)]

I just deleted an entire paragraph of myself cause I was starting to write rubbish (some might say I've been doing that all along)

I still don't like the hourly system because I don't like the difference that one hour makes. In one hour not a lot can be accomplished in land warfare when army-groups are concerned (a company can take up a good defensive position in that time, in a square-kilometer scale), yet one unit arriving ONE HOUR earlier than another unit gets the entire defensive bonus ! The other unit was already 98% in the province !
Being ONE DAY late is a different matter though, the "first" unit could conceivably have done a lot more to deserve its defensive status.

In a concerted attack by 3x12div stacks all 36 divisions can bring 100% of their firepower to bear within the same hour ... :wacko:

Not so :wacko: if we're talking about a 12 hour period.

Would speed differences be less important yes, but on a strategic level I don't believe it matters much if a unit moves 10 mph or 11 mph

There might be other BIGGIEs I haven't thought about, but land movement (which is quite heterogenic/unpredictable at best) in my mind is not one of them.

Naval movement I can truly not wrap my head around, a ship doing 33 knots could pass from Land's End to the Dover cliffs in about what time ?

Naval battle on the other hand could be regulated by automatic disengagement if you're fast enough and odds are bad (the way it should have been done for AI AND human player in the first place)

Ok, I'm not gonna read through what I just wrote. My appologies for any typos and slightly-aggro language.

Good night and Godspeed

 

[Citizen_X]

Hours re umprescinduble!