useless variants!?

[steindroff]

No. You just need 20 engines, not 20 tanks. Let's say a tank is 15% engine, and 85% the rest (guns, armor, etc). If you just need new engines, you're not gonna produce new tanks, but it's easier to still keep whole tanks in the game. So you say that 3 tanks = 20 engines, so when you produce these 3 tanks, you've effectively repaired your tanks.
It's effectively much easier and to the (nearly) same effect to abstract spare parts and damaged tanks like that than simulating spare parts production, damage equipment pool or other stuff that just adds to micromanagement.

So you mean, that for each tank, you can build round about 6 - 7 engines instead!? ... and bring them to your breakdowned tanks?? Either I don't understand you, or it just make no sence ... :blink: Cause you can't build 3 tanks and than make 20 engines out of it to repair the others!
But I agree, that an extra pool for damaged equipment will be too much micromanagement ..

 

[Poh]

So you mean, that for each tank, you can build round about 6 - 7 engines instead!? ... and bring them to your breakdowned tanks?? Either I don't understand you, or it just make no sence ... :blink: Cause you can't build 3 tanks and than make 20 engines out of it to repair the others!
But I agree, that an extra pool for damaged equipment will be too much micromanagement ..

Yeah you understand it alright. The idea is that you view a tank engine as 15%(random number) of a tank (the ressource and industial load it takes to produce an engine compared to a tank). So producing 3 tanks can also be seen as producing 20 engines or whatever sparepart is needed. The whole idea is that you can view a produced spare part as a fraction of a produced tank. This can then be used to simulate reliability issues and breakdowns by having a constant loss of tanks/week.
Tbh its just an attrition on equipment.

 

[phantomrider]

I would like to point out you shouldn't lose equipment simply because of reliability. There should be 2 equipment pools, 1 damaged/unusable equipment pool, and 1 in working condition.

I don't think I agree with this comment. In a similation like HOI3 or 4 possibly you don't "lose" equipment (unless you have to retreat and lose your repair shops) but if your equipment is "broken" it is unavailable for use in combat and your division should suffer a penalty because of this. Most complex equipment have both a routine maintenance (fix things before they really break) and a predictable rate of breakdown (plus historically an actual rate of breakdown). Less reliable equipment may look really good on paper but if it is always in the repair shop when you need it it really isn't there to be use the equipment is not really useful or effective. For example, you can have the best airplane in the world but if it can only fly 1 sortie (mission-take offf and landin) a month and your enemy has a much less good airplane that can do 2 sorties a day you have lost control of the air. (and you might find that your enemy flies a combat air patrol over your air base so that when you try to roll out your super plane it gets strafed on the runway before it can fly (US tactics against the Me-262).

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

So you mean, that for each tank, you can build round about 6 - 7 engines instead!? ... and bring them to your breakdowned tanks?? Either I don't understand you, or it just make no sence ... :blink: Cause you can't build 3 tanks and than make 20 engines out of it to repair the others!
But I agree, that an extra pool for damaged equipment will be too much micromanagement ..

Simply reducing production numbers to keep all units in 100% working condition is a huge problem. Tanks literally would break down after 100 to 400 miles depending on the tank (we can assume that this would be affected by reliability).

Now let's say we launch barbarossa, Tanks are travelling several hundred miles ( 4 provinces ) and your solution is to reduce production to keep them all at 100%? That means that there will never be supply problems, all your units will always be 100% strength unless the units are actually destroyed in battle.

What should happen:
Unit has 400 tanks with 0 reliability points.
1st province you lose 50 in battle, and 50 break down. 50 move to unusable pool.
2nd province you now have 300 available, you lose 20 in battle, but since your attacking without stopping the losses to breakdowns increase to 80.
3rd province you now have 200 available, but you have outrun the enemy. You lose 140 tanks to breakdown.
4th province you now have 60 available, you army should be forced to stop unless you want to have no equipment left.

If you want to simulate repairing those broken tanks by simply abtracting it into the production line where 3 produced tanks repairs 20 broken tanks, that's fine, but being able to keep your entire division equipment at 100% and take away units from production is a huge problem and takes away the point of even having reliability as an upgrade and makes infrastructure even less important (something HOI3 faced). It also unbalances the game by allowing attacks to continually keep advancing without any stop (something that really affects the Eastern Front and China theater tremendously)

I don't see how this increases micromanagement at all (except maybe adding a button to equipment pool view to use equipment to repair units).

 

[phantomrider]

Simply reducing production numbers to keep all units in 100% working condition is a huge problem. Tanks literally would break down after 100 to 400 miles depending on the tank (we can assume that this would be affected by reliability).

Now let's say we launch barbarossa, Tanks are travelling several hundred miles ( 4 provinces ) and your solution is to reduce production to keep them all at 100%? That means that there will never be supply problems, all your units will always be 100% strength unless the units are actually destroyed in battle.

What should happen:
Unit has 400 tanks with 0 reliability points.
1st province you lose 50 in battle, and 50 break down. 50 move to unusable pool.
2nd province you now have 300 available, you lose 20 in battle, but since your attacking without stopping the losses to breakdowns increase to 80.
3rd province you now have 200 available, but you have outrun the enemy. You lose 140 tanks to breakdown.
4th province you now have 60 available, you army should be forced to stop unless you want to have no equipment left.

If you want to simulate repairing those broken tanks by simply abtracting it into the production line where 3 produced tanks repairs 20 broken tanks, that's fine, but being able to keep your entire division equipment at 100% and take away units from production is a huge problem and takes away the point of even having reliability as an upgrade and makes infrastructure even less important (something HOI3 faced). It also unbalances the game by allowing attacks to continually keep advancing without any stop (something that really affects the Eastern Front and China theater tremendously)

I don't see how this increases micromanagement at all (except maybe adding a button to equipment pool view to use equipment to repair units).

Again with out really knowing how the combat system works (does a unit who has had unreplaced losses suffer a decrement in combat power?) it is hard to know what to recommend. I think you can assume that in WWII era (as is current) the breakdown/ineffectiveness rates of equipment are known by someone and there is no way to make it 0% ineffective (100% effective) with that technology. Long advances/movement mean greater numbers of ineffectiveness which in turn could reduce both combat power and speed of further movement. I am not sure whether the combat resolution system would just use percent ineffective or would need to keep track of actual numbers of tanks it sees as available at the front to create a percent. (the org status of a unit may be an HOI3 way of getting at this as well but I am not sure if anything other than combat reduces org. now). Supply would/should limit the rate at which a unit could recover and that certainly can happen in HOI3 where the entire German army in Russia sometimes can't move for lack of supply. So I think (not being a programer) that effectiveness rates and "reliability" could be modeled into the game... I just wish I knew how the game deals with "reliability" for tanks now -- i.e. should I just cheat (ignore reliability altogether) and just research armor engine and gun.

 

[Melackholy]

This is a shame. Historical tanks should have historical attributes. Fictional standardised tanks are fine for minors inventing their own, but not for Germany.

Word...
Pointless to have a panzer 3, that essentally is just the same as a Matilda 2, Somua S35, Pz 35/38, and so on...

Could just as well call it generic tank 1 and 2 etc...

 

[steindroff]

Yeah you understand it alright. The idea is that you view a tank engine as 15%(random number) of a tank (the ressource and industial load it takes to produce an engine compared to a tank). So producing 3 tanks can also be seen as producing 20 engines or whatever sparepart is needed. The whole idea is that you can view a produced spare part as a fraction of a produced tank. This can then be used to simulate reliability issues and breakdowns by having a constant loss of tanks/week.
Tbh its just an attrition on equipment.

ah oke .. now I understand
but still I'm not happy with this idea ... first (like I said) you can't make 20 engines out of one tank (also with view at the strategic resources) and second: if a tank break down at the front (or also in combat) you don't order a new engine (or whatever is damaged) and work it in ... you try to repair the tank with what you already have and if it's not possible the tank is lossed (in normal case) ... maybe if the front moves forward, you can collect the tank later and than repair it, but I think to simulate this it will be to much micro (and also work for PI) ...
just hope, that the breakdowns made through reliability will be that ballanced (= that low) that you can easily build new tanks for the damaged ...
of course in battle the looses should be that high that it will be very hard (inpossible!?) to rebuild as many as you loose ...

Word...
Pointless to have a panzer 3, that essentally is just the same as a Matilda 2, Somua S35, Pz 35/38, and so on...

Could just as well call it generic tank 1 and 2 etc...

+1 :excl:

 

[Kovax]

Word...
Pointless to have a panzer 3, that essentally is just the same as a Matilda 2, Somua S35, Pz 35/38, and so on...

Could just as well call it generic tank 1 and 2 etc...

No, it's far more detailed than that: "Medium tank 1, Light tank 3, etc. HOI3 even gave "fluff" descriptions, and names which were often ridiculous for the time. For example, the AT techs generally showed AT guns at least one step sooner than their historical intro date, so the PAK40 was unlocked by the 1938 tech, or something to that effect. In a few cases with smaller countries, it used the default image and name, no matter how far you advanced. I had researched all of the 1942 interceptor techs in one game with HUN, and it was still showing and listing my INT as post-WWI Freccia (sp?) biplanes.

In HOI3, we had designations like ARM II+, which indicated that it had a full set of level 2 techs (II), plus some Level 3 aspects (+). I'm not certain what the occasional ' mark after the + meant, as in ARM III+'.

 

[Melackholy]

No, it's far more detailed than that: "Medium tank 1, Light tank 3, etc. HOI3 even gave "fluff" descriptions, and names which were often ridiculous for the time. For example, the AT techs generally showed AT guns at least one step sooner than their historical intro date, so the PAK40 was unlocked by the 1938 tech, or something to that effect. In a few cases with smaller countries, it used the default image and name, no matter how far you advanced. I had researched all of the 1942 interceptor techs in one game with HUN, and it was still showing and listing my INT as post-WWI Freccia (sp?) biplanes.

In HOI3, we had designations like ARM II+, which indicated that it had a full set of level 2 techs (II), plus some Level 3 aspects (+). I'm not certain what the occasional ' mark after the + meant, as in ARM III+'.

Hope they give names to the tanks of those nations that didn't have tanks historically, or more realistically that they are allowed to produce tanks of allied or closely aligned nations.
That sucked using minor nations, no names for units produced = less feel for the game (or what you want to call it).

 

[Melackholy]

No, it's far more detailed than that: "Medium tank 1, Light tank 3, etc. HOI3 even gave "fluff" descriptions, and names which were often ridiculous for the time. For example, the AT techs generally showed AT guns at least one step sooner than their historical intro date, so the PAK40 was unlocked by the 1938 tech, or something to that effect. In a few cases with smaller countries, it used the default image and name, no matter how far you advanced. I had researched all of the 1942 interceptor techs in one game with HUN, and it was still showing and listing my INT as post-WWI Freccia (sp?) biplanes.

In HOI3, we had designations like ARM II+, which indicated that it had a full set of level 2 techs (II), plus some Level 3 aspects (+). I'm not certain what the occasional ' mark after the + meant, as in ARM III+'.

Remember the Italian starting armor in HOI 3 was a 1918++ model --> the CV-33. Which isnt a tank. The correct tank would be the Fiat 3000.. well...

 

[PanH]

Simply reducing production numbers to keep all units in 100% working condition is a huge problem. Tanks literally would break down after 100 to 400 miles depending on the tank (we can assume that this would be affected by reliability).

Now let's say we launch barbarossa, Tanks are travelling several hundred miles ( 4 provinces ) and your solution is to reduce production to keep them all at 100%? That means that there will never be supply problems, all your units will always be 100% strength unless the units are actually destroyed in battle.

What should happen:
Unit has 400 tanks with 0 reliability points.
1st province you lose 50 in battle, and 50 break down. 50 move to unusable pool.
2nd province you now have 300 available, you lose 20 in battle, but since your attacking without stopping the losses to breakdowns increase to 80.
3rd province you now have 200 available, but you have outrun the enemy. You lose 140 tanks to breakdown.
4th province you now have 60 available, you army should be forced to stop unless you want to have no equipment left.

If you want to simulate repairing those broken tanks by simply abtracting it into the production line where 3 produced tanks repairs 20 broken tanks, that's fine, but being able to keep your entire division equipment at 100% and take away units from production is a huge problem and takes away the point of even having reliability as an upgrade and makes infrastructure even less important (something HOI3 faced). It also unbalances the game by allowing attacks to continually keep advancing without any stop (something that really affects the Eastern Front and China theater tremendously)

I don't see how this increases micromanagement at all (except maybe adding a button to equipment pool view to use equipment to repair units).

You don't see how it's more micromanagement to have a entirely different equipment pool, and it being harder to know if you're at full strength or not (based on destroyed, in repair tanks) ?

Abstracting the damaged tanks as dead tanks is simply much easier to represent and understand. It doesn't in any way makes infrastructure less important (that depends on the weight that a tank will have on supply lines, so that's balance), nor that units can advance infinitely (again, supplies AND effect of lost equipment does not need to be linear, so balance) makes it easier for the player to see if they are enough tanks produced for his divisions (instead of constantly have to fiddle with the number of factories used) and you don't even need to add a new mechanism for this.

Adding a broken equipment pool doesn't add anything to a game about large scale strategy.

 

[1alexey]

Simply reducing production numbers to keep all units in 100% working condition is a huge problem. Tanks literally would break down after 100 to 400 miles depending on the tank (we can assume that this would be affected by reliability).

Now let's say we launch barbarossa, Tanks are travelling several hundred miles ( 4 provinces ) and your solution is to reduce production to keep them all at 100%? That means that there will never be supply problems, all your units will always be 100% strength unless the units are actually destroyed in battle.

What should happen:
Unit has 400 tanks with 0 reliability points.
1st province you lose 50 in battle, and 50 break down. 50 move to unusable pool.
2nd province you now have 300 available, you lose 20 in battle, but since your attacking without stopping the losses to breakdowns increase to 80.
3rd province you now have 200 available, but you have outrun the enemy. You lose 140 tanks to breakdown.
4th province you now have 60 available, you army should be forced to stop unless you want to have no equipment left.

If you want to simulate repairing those broken tanks by simply abtracting it into the production line where 3 produced tanks repairs 20 broken tanks, that's fine, but being able to keep your entire division equipment at 100% and take away units from production is a huge problem and takes away the point of even having reliability as an upgrade and makes infrastructure even less important (something HOI3 faced). It also unbalances the game by allowing attacks to continually keep advancing without any stop (something that really affects the Eastern Front and China theater tremendously)

I don't see how this increases micromanagement at all (except maybe adding a button to equipment pool view to use equipment to repair units).

There are other ways of tracing general readiness like organisation/morale that is omnipresent in most Paradox games, or similar thing like Cohesion in some AGEOD games.

 

[Praetori]

Simply reducing production numbers to keep all units in 100% working condition is a huge problem. Tanks literally would break down after 100 to 400 miles depending on the tank (we can assume that this would be affected by reliability).

This bugged the hell out of me in HOI3. In the end the only thing that truly mattered was ORG and even a severely understrength armored division dealt as much whoopass as a fully stocked one. And even getting it understrength was a feat of it's own.
When having a system which tracks individual equipment and even battalions I really REALLY hope that this will reflect historically on divisional strengths, attrition and combat efficiency.

 

[Gratch11]

What’s the point of an equipment pool, if you can’t decide where that equipment goes? Playing as Germany, I want to be able to recreate historic decisions. Need a panzer division to guard the Atlantic wall? Equip it with captured French tanks and obsolete models. Produced 400 new Panthers? Reinforce veteran divisions or build new ones. And so on, and so on.

This is vital, I want my best tanks in the east as in above!!

 

[steindroff]

Hope they give names to the tanks of those nations that didn't have tanks historically, or more realistically that they are allowed to produce tanks of allied or closely aligned nations.
That sucked using minor nations, no names for units produced = less feel for the game (or what you want to call it).

I think this problem is solved, because we will be able to name our variants ... so each player will be able to choose how historicall the names of his tanks will be ...

You don't see how it's more micromanagement to have a entirely different equipment pool, and it being harder to know if you're at full strength or not (based on destroyed, in repair tanks) ?
[...]
Adding a broken equipment pool doesn't add anything to a game about large scale strategy.

+1 :excl: A special pool for damged equipment will me too much for both, player and developer ... there are many other parts of the game, PI should focus first!