How will you use your land/air/naval experience?

[Number 7]

i can see the most common strategy being the one daniel showed off in world war wednesday, when you research a new tech before you have any production lines you can immediately make a superior variant of it and put it into production.

i can imagine saving up your EXP to make a +5+5+5+5 variant of say, the panzer IV the moment it unlocks and put it into massive widescale production and try to overwhelm the USSR with extremely high quality variants (at the cost of not getting to manipulate your divisions for a while due to saving up exp!)


How would you use your experience? save up for key tech unlocks, or would you tweak things as you go and have possibly even more varied production lines in place? the game isn't out yet so we can't know for sure how we will play, but make a guess about how you will use your experience

 

[Sun_Killer]

i think the updated variants are increasing the production cost, so i am not sure if it is the best, to make an already new and expensive tank even more expensive. I hope they will reduce the penalty in switching variants a little further, so i can gradually increase the power and don´t have to save up for the 5555 monster

 

[LordOfWar16]

A 5 5 5 5 variant is an very bad idea, since the reliability will massively suffer. You will be stuck with an variant that has only 40% reliability, since each point you spend, you loose 5% of reliability. SInce you can only put 5 points of reliability in you can only compensate for 25% reliability penalty. That will leave you with an pretty overengineered tank, that will break down very often and will suffer critical damage in combat more commonly.

I personally woult rather spend experience on older equipment rather than on new equipment, to specialize them. I dont see why i should stop producing older equipment completly, since you always need to ramp up production of new equipment. Ontop of that you can extend their lifespan by making variants of them aswell of course.

Specializing your equipment seems like the most valueable option, i.e more range for strategic bombers, more speed for tactical bombers, higher range for fighters to keep up with bombers, better armament for heavy fighters to fight enemy bombers more efficiently, etc.

Similar stuff for tanks. I would go with speed for both light and medium tanks to exploit openings in the enemy line and with better armor for heavy tanks, since i dont plan them to use that aggresively anyway.

For ships i would probably increase the speed of destroyers and battlecruisers, while i increase armor and armament for battleships, decksize for carriers and concealment and some torpedo attack for submarines.

I would of course compensate the reliability loss with spending expeirence on reliability on all my variants. Since i am going to go with flexible production lines the loss in efficiency wont be that hard when switching to an variant aswell. Its 90% for a completly new model, 50% for an variant i.e td, sp-art, sp-aa and 25% for an improved variant. Flexible lines reduce that penalty by 50% i think, but keep in mind that those values may or may not change before release.

 

[panzerzombie]

Since I´m thinking about a test run with germany and a all-heavy tank approach ( because of easier accessibiliy of chrome rather than tungsten ) I need to use the Großtraktor for a long time. It would even slow down cavalry divisions with its speed of 5kph, so I like to boost it with at least 5-5-0-0 ( and the mobile tank designer ), so I could at least use CAV and later MECH without much loss of speed ( GT Variant 7,75kph / CAV 7kph / Sdkfz11 8kph).

For Fighters and CAS I would go for a range increase to improve coverage and a slight speed increase ( iirc the agility determines who shoots first ? ).

Until I can use Type VII Uboats I may test range enhanced light cruisers as raiders but these have no priority.

EDIT: Correcting myself, airplane speed determines initiative and agility determines the %-age of air attacks vs enemy plane ( I´m not sure and assume the more agile plane utilizes 100% and the less agile a fraction of it according to the difference )

 

[LordOfWar16]

For Fighters and CAS I would go for a range increase to improve coverage and a slight speed increase ( iirc the agility determines who shoots first ? ).

Correct, the agility and speed determins who gets the initiative in an airbattle.

 

[Midden]

Yes I found it interesting that the variant system does not seem to be as much fun as it was designed to be: I.E I assumed it was supposed to be, tweaking with new experiences an existing model to get more life out of the existing model.

The variant system's interaction with the production system at the moment (as shown to us) is sub optimal. It is gamey and not fun use of the system to "save it all up and dump it all in your new researched model". The way it's working out you can produce the a Panzer 3 J model on the day you have just finished your research on your very first Panzer 3 prototype. That just seems a wrong unintended game system mistake to me.

I suspect the answer to this is not have variants have any negative effect (or a minor effect) on production efficiency, that will encourage players to tweak their existing models as soon as they earn the experience, and perhaps a lower cap for the amount of experience that can be put in the bank.

@podcat is the experience / variant gameplay working as you intended?

 

[LordOfWar16]

@Midden It doesnt work that way. Yes you can do that, but you will suffer massive critical failures and critical damage to those tanks as the result. They are extremely unrelieable. Other than that i wouldnt judge an game only because of an early world war wednesday, which frankly was an very outdated built, which was months behind and anything but balanced, hence the lack of any artillery whatsoever in daniels army.

If you pick flexible lines you can easiely swap out production as you wish, since swapping to variants of tanks only costs you 25% of efficiency, which gets halfed by those lines. So effectively you suffer an 12,5% penalty in production but produce better tanks in return.

Its much more usefull to upgrade your old equipment, since the production of new models will ramp up slowly and you dont want most of them to break down as soon as they leave the factory due to mechanical failures.

It doesnt work like researching an new tank and simply swapping everything out and you produce tons of new tanks instantly. You will produce much less if you simply swap for quiet a time, which might result in you losing the war.

 

[Maizel]

Naval XP seems to be most useful if you invest it in speed. It allows ti join the battle faster, and hunt down disengaging convoy raiders.

Land XP wI will most likely spend setting up my divisions at first, and then probably to upgrade mid level equipment, seeing that the difference between tier 1 and tier 3 equipment seems huge. But I will have to see the values of all ingame.


Do upgraded variants require more resources?

 

[Himliano]

If I remember reading it properly, you can do a variant of a variant... so, make a 5-5-5-5, then a variant of that with improved reliability and that's it, right?

 

[Denkt]

Experience is a system of opportunity cost, spend it now and you will have less later or keep it now and you will have less now.

You wan't to make as few switches as possible as each time you switch will cost you efficiency which in turn cost you equipment. As the next tech level is about as good as even the best variant of the previous tech level it make sense to focus on the current tech, the difference between two techs are great so the earlier you switch the better off you will be later on, in peace time you should switch pretty much at the time you get the new tech.

 

[LordOfWar16]

If I remember reading it properly, you can do a variant of a variant... so, make a 5-5-5-5, then a variant of that with improved reliability and that's it, right?

no. You can only put up to 5 points in each category. You may think of the variant of the chassis, i.e tank destroyer, sp-aa and sp-art.

 

[Himliano]

no. You can only put up to 5 points in each category. You may think of the variant of the chassis, i.e tank destroyer, sp-aa and sp-art.

Well, but is it still possible to do a maxed out version with low reliability and then do a variant of that with improved reliability?

If that is possible it can be interesting for minors. Research one model of a tech you don't plan to keep going on (for example, heavy tanks I) and use variants to pretend you have units from the next tech of that one without researching it.

 

[LordOfWar16]

Well, but is it still possible to do a maxed out version with low reliability and then do a variant of that with improved reliability?

If that is possible it can be interesting for minors. Research one model of a tech you don't plan to keep going on (for example, heavy tanks I) and use variants to pretend you have units from the next tech of that one without researching it.

no. Each Model is limited to 5 points in each category. If you upgraded an PzIII a second time it would still have the points assigned from previously. You cant snowball an PzIII to a Leopard 2 level, no.

 

[Himliano]

no. Each Model is limited to 5 points in each category. If you upgraded an PzIII a second time it would still have the points assigned from previously. You cant snowball an PzIII to a Leopard 2 level, no.

Oh, understood. I got that impression from a post some months ago. Thank you!

 

[Kyril]

As the OP mentioned, it seems to be the smartest to save up untill you unlock a new type of plane/tank/ship, so my guess is going to war with standard Me-109s, Pz IIIs and stuff, then retool when you get Pz IV and FW190s with some added spunk, hopefully in between the Fall of France and prior to Barby.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

I missed a lot, so I don't know what the number increases are for each upgrade, especially reliability. If reliability upgrades cannot effectively keep up with other upgrades after level 3 across the board or something, I would really like that because that would add the reason to specialize upgrades, or remain stock. I probably will make sure I get optimal reliability in my vehicles, but prioritize more on aircraft upgrades since I think aircraft should be the best, while tanks can just be "good enough". There is a reason the Soviets didn't make their Yaks and Sturmoviks like they did their T-34s.

I also expect to spend a lot of experience on division creation. This game I see myself being much more organized than other games, and I would like to specialize my armies for different terrain and enemy-strengths based on theatre.

 

[Number 7]

as evidenced by the latest WWW, reliability for a 5-5-5-5 is now just normal, so its back to being "king", but requiring a LOT more experience to actually do. overall you have to have a reliability level equal to the highest level of the other changes, for example 2 gun, 2 arm is fine as long as you have 2 reliability, and you get b onuses at 3 reliability.

the rebalancing thats always going on is making it a bit hard to speculate but the "save up until the tech is done" strategy still seems like a very sound one. but 5-5-5-5s are solidly out of reach unless you're really making a lot of land xp and dont want to swap your tech over

 

[lekim]

i can see the most common strategy being the one daniel showed off in world war wednesday, when you research a new tech before you have any production lines you can immediately make a superior variant of it and put it into production.

i can imagine saving up your EXP to make a +5+5+5+5 variant of say, the panzer IV the moment it unlocks and put it into massive widescale production and try to overwhelm the USSR with extremely high quality variants (at the cost of not getting to manipulate your divisions for a while due to saving up exp!)


How would you use your experience? save up for key tech unlocks, or would you tweak things as you go and have possibly even more varied production lines in place? the game isn't out yet so we can't know for sure how we will play, but make a guess about how you will use your experience

Sounds like a good exploit.

Maybe it make sense to have models automatically get better, when they are being used (equipment experience) or something, then it will better to deploy rookees and train them - even at the cost of attrition and equipment lost.

 

[Quendallon]

In the WWW last wednesday they showed that upgrading to a 5-5-5-5 variant costs 1000+ exp.
In earlier WWW's exp was capped at 500.
If that is still the case, if you want to make a 5-5-5-5 variant you need to upgrade the stock version to a variant(a), then upgrade that variant(a) when you've built up that exp again to variant(b) and then need to upgrade variant(b) to variant(c) just to get the last points. In that time you cannot alter your divisions, create variants of different tanks.
In the WWW Daniel got ~420 land exp from 18 months of fighting. So to get enough exp to do this you need to be fighting a war for ~43 months.
So to me, with what we know currently Going for a 5-5-5-5 variant is a waste of time and exp.

This is just based on what I could discern from the WWW stream. Which is still open to change yada yada insert disclaimer here.

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I agree with you that it's best to create a variant just after researching a new variant. At least as long as the system works the way it does now. But I would use my exp to make some specialized variants, alter my tanks into SPG, AT etc. and alway keep 50 or 75 exp on hand to be able to make divisional changes.

 

[Denkt]

The cap is still 500 so you can never instanly make 5-5-5-5 variant as soon as the equipment is unlocked but you can still make a good variant as soon as the equipment is unlocked if you are willing to pay the opportunity cost of saving so much experience.

reliability for a 5-5-5-5 is now just normal, so its back to being "king"

It is not that simple because if you want the fastest tank possible you do not want a 5-5-5-5 because both gun and armor slow down the tank.