Vehicles lost to attrition

[MartinSWE]

I like the idea of vehicle attrition. Remeber reading about the Battle of Stalingrad where a German mechanised formation was decimated during the winter due to mice (!) seeking refuge inside their vehicles and gnawing through the electrical stuff causing them achines to malfunction.

 

[Kovax]

I like the idea of vehicle attrition. Remeber reading about the Battle of Stalingrad where a German mechanised formation was decimated during the winter due to mice (!) seeking refuge inside their vehicles and gnawing through the electrical stuff causing them achines to malfunction.

...part of which may have been merely an excuse for not diverting a couple of panzer divisions at a time deemed inappropriate by the local commander. I recall reading something about it, where it actually did occur on a few vehicles, but was more frequently used as an excuse.

 

[Wyrm]

After battle vehicle recovery wasnt some minor thing - its effect was very significant on all battlefields.

Vehicle recovery should determine, how many lost tanks, artilery etc. each side gets when battle ends.

Perhaps most importantly, how may of your own damaged vehicles can be recovered instead of lost to the enemy. This was one thing that really made a dent on the German war machine after the tide turned. Not only did they lose the battles, but tanks that were only lightly damaged and could easily have been patched up and sent back into battle were abandoned on the battlefield and became total losses as the enemy took control of the area.

 

[columbusbobby23]

If the game is set to be released in 3 or 4 months, it's probably feature locked at this point.

But if not I think the main emphasis of this vehicle attrition idea should be centered around the vehicles chassis. If a vehicle is damaged past the point of field repairs, it could be used for parts to repair other damaged units or it could be placed in a pool for you to get a bonus on building a newer variant of that particular chassis. Since we are talking about attrition outside of battle, there is no reason to not get some kind of value from a broken down vehicle that can be salvaged.

 

[Beagá]

After battle vehicle recovery wasnt some minor thing - its effect was very significant on all battlefields.

Vehicle recovery should determine, how many lost tanks, artilery etc. each side gets when battle ends.

In a game with thousands of battles are you honestly saying you will stop to see that 5 tanks were recovered in Idon´tknowwhereslov?

I can say dozens of things were important in real life. Doesn´t mean they should be in the game.

Even in a game like Darkest Hour which has less provinces and thus less battles overall, the amount of pop-up is so massive that soon you will turn off fancy casualty trackers at least for planes and only look Manpower losses in battle.

So IMO no, an attrition modifier affected by Reliability is more than enough. Could be affected by experience and terrain fought, and that´s it. This isn´t an operational game to bother with minutiae.

 

[Jazumir]

Beaga, you are argueing an assumed way of how the information is presented, not the idea in general. If, instead of pop-ups, there´d be updated summaries for you to check, telling you how many enemy tanks you captured in strategic zone X during the time between y and z, how about that?

 

[Beagá]

The point still stands that you will have to stop your game and look for that info, thus breaking the flow of gameplay. Also care to explain how the hell you will define what a strategic area are is? How many provinces it is? Where it starts and where it stops? Will you have to do it or the AI?

Which is the WHOLE point of why the feature is bad gameplay-wise in a game where you have DOZENS of stuff already happening, often more important. Planes being lost, ships being ordered, research being selected.

You want to put it in the game fine. I for one will simply disable all pop-ups and only check the attrition I will have if I considering moving to province A to B. Not how many tanks I lost in Idon´tknowwhereislov and how many I recovered once I advanced into WTFkistan.

 

[Jazumir]

Strategic zones as in defined for purposes of airwar by the game. The point is simply to give you an overview for example, if you tend to win or lose, say, tank battles in russia right now. Cause if you win a lot, you will capture relatively many enemy tanks. If OTOH, you captured twice as many tanks during the same period last year, it may tell you something, too. That sort of thing.

I´d imagine it more like a ledger entry, not bazzilion of popups (neccessarily).

 

[1alexey]

Beaga, you are argueing an assumed way of how the information is presented, not the idea in general. If, instead of pop-ups, there´d be updated summaries for you to check, telling you how many enemy tanks you captured in strategic zone X during the time between y and z, how about that?

In reality what player cares is basically getting a breakdown of equipment loses and How to decrease those. How complicated the simulation is, doesn`t meter as long as results are similar to what they should be.

 

[safe-keeper]

The point still stands that you will have to stop your game and look for that info, thus breaking the flow of gameplay [and so on]

Based on this, and your replies in my thread on notes, etc., I get the impression you're really arguing against a complex game.

Thing is, HOI is incredibly deep, complex and big (scale-wise). There are lots of provinces, techs, unit types, ministers, and the list goes on, and on top of that you field enormous armies. This means there is a lot of information to be processed, which in turn means we need good ways to have this data shown to us.

Not sure what exactly I want to be shown data on, but a summary/overview of vehicle attrition would be useful at times, I suppose. Perhaps a graph of some kind.

 

[scroggin]

This just occured to me -- in the Paradox games, you lose men to attrition, which you continuously have to replace with fresh reserves from your manpower pool. Now, I was just reading an article on how unreliable Tiger tanks were, and the thought occured to me -- why not have attrition affect vehicles, too?

Outside of the battlefield most breakdowns were repaired not lost, this should be show as a loss of org not as attrition.

 

[Wyrm]

Outside of the battlefield most breakdowns were repaired not lost, this should be show as a loss of org not as attrition.

It would still make more sense to have vehicle attrition affect the number of combat ready vehicles rather than org. Even if they will be repaired, they will not be available for combat.

 

[podcat]

This just occured to me -- in the Paradox games, you lose men to attrition, which you continuously have to replace with fresh reserves from your manpower pool. Now, I was just reading an article on how unreliable Tiger tanks were, and the thought occured to me -- why not have attrition affect vehicles, too? I figure that the same way you lose men outside of battle, you should also lose vehicles, which have to be replaced. Vehicles can break down, be disabled by landmines, wrecked in accidents, ambushed by partisans, what have you. Areas with high attrition should cause even more of these losses; for example, you should expect more tanks to be lost trying to cross a snowy mountain on poor roads than driving down a highway deep in friendly territory.

I feel that if this was implemented, it'd make terrain types matter even more, making for more strategic depth, and also make the "Reliability" stat feel much more realistic and important, and less like just an abstracted number that helped calculate attack strength. What do you think?

thats basically what reliability & attrition does in hoi4

 

[Beagá]

Jolly good, it´s the most intuitive way of doing it.

But will damaged stuff from attrition go to a repair pool or they are lost? Don´t mind if they are simply lost, I understand how tricky it is to put more and more data/calculations in the game.

 

[Kovax]

Outside of the battlefield most breakdowns were repaired not lost, this should be show as a loss of org not as attrition.

....except that loss of ORG has no effect on fighting ability until the unit runs out of ORG completely. Either combat ability should be modified by both STR and ORG, or else there needs to be a way to exclude units which are unfit for combat in the Strength value.

 

[podcat]

Jolly good, it´s the most intuitive way of doing it.

But will damaged stuff from attrition go to a repair pool or they are lost? Don´t mind if they are simply lost, I understand how tricky it is to put more and more data/calculations in the game.

They are lost to keep things simple and easy to calculate.

 

[Stenner]

They are lost to keep things simple and easy to calculate.

I am so down for this. Especially for Japan. Wanna keep that edge with cost-savingly low Reliability? Pay for it in planes.

Wait, it works for planes right? Flying through storms, out at sea, over AA and whatnot.

 

[3ishop]

They are lost to keep things simple and easy to calculate.

In HoI3 you have the combat casualty trickle back rate, couldn't something simlar be applied? Thanks for responding btw!

 

[Secret Master]

thats basically what reliability & attrition does in hoi4

I can see myself taking the Soviet approach with the early T-34s.

Reliability? Who cares? The current run of T-34s will be destroyed on the battlefield before they wear out anyway, so we might as well focus on something else. Like maybe an 88mm gun in 1940, just for the lulz.

 

[Centurion1973]

They are lost to keep things simple and easy to calculate.

Is there some trickleback based on winning/losing the battle? IRL many tanks were lost or recovered based on whether or not did your side own the battlefileld after the battle, because most lost tanks werent total loss.