Will tanks/planes reflect the tanks/planes of the period/county or will they be same?

[Dalwin]

Not Panzer III and Panzer IV though, as they are both "Medium" tanks

You can break it down to Light, Medium, Heavy tanks, but otherwise when you don't have enough Panzer IV tanks, Panzer III would be used to fill the medium.

I am really interested in seeing their XP pools, I would at least assume you have 3 pools, Land, Air, Navy pools, but would like to see it more advanced then that.

Somewhere in the 30+ pages of DD6 was a point where we were talking about how the upgrades would be deployed and setting the priorities for how those were handed out to units. I said that I wanted it such that I could have every division get one battalion of the new tanks before any division got a second battalion. Podcat confirmed that this was how it would be.

 

[Poh]

Regarding xp im pretty sure its been stated that it will be divided in Land/Air/Sea. So you would be able to use the xp from the pzIV to upgrade a Panther. Also as said by Dalwin its the same xp that is used in the divion templates.

XP-upgrades are small upgrades to individual parts, like the HoI3 techs were. Of course, you can always get several at once if you have enough XP, indeed it'll probably be wiser in most cases to wait until you can afford several upgrades before switching to produce a new variant.

Oh. Have you decided on how many times each individual part can be upgraded?

 

[keynes2.0]

Well that doesn't promote historical results very well. The americans have bad incentives to start churning out M4s in 1942 if they can rush M26 technology and put their XP into that instead.

 

[Poh]

Well that doesn't promote historical results very well. The americans have bad incentives to start churning out M4s in 1942 if they can rush M26 technology and put their XP into that instead.

Surely that would depend on ahead of time penalties on research, xp-cost of upgrades, incentive to spend xp instead of hoarding it, potential ahead of time xp-costs and the function of the S-curve that determine the effectiveness of production. Theres alot of potential factors that can be used to balance this.

 

[keynes2.0]

But couldn't the US game the system by just shifting production to other things while they finish off the '43 research early? Unless researching 6 months early is so prohibitively difficult as to be useless I can't see why the US would want to put the XP it earned passively in '41 into the older instead of the newer design.

 

[Comrade_Green]

Factories gain efficiency in building a certain weapon, they then produce more of it as time goes on if they don't change. The factories then lose efficiency in production if there is a change, minor changes in the tank variant which would be XP upgrades result in a minor loss of factory production. Entirely new designs I believe reset factory production levels entirely. So switching to an entirely new design results in a loss of tanks available. So depending on how much production is affected, you could end up with 500 of your older tanks or half that of your new tech 1943 tanks. But if you need loads of tanks to maintain full strength because of heavy fighting it may not be in your interest to switch over.

The production line costs are covered in dev diary 5:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...tion-Lines&p=17366418&viewfull=1#post17366418

 

[Darkrenown]

Would it be possible for '41 tanks to be better then '43 tanks if the '41 tanks are heavily upgraded and the '43 tanks are new?

It's not really nailed down yet, but provisionally I'd say: No, or at least not in all areas. Perhaps you can match or exceed the '43 tank in one or two areas if you upgrade your '41 tank heavily, but the '43 tanks should be better all-round.

 

[grumphie]

am i the only one wishing that expierience somewhat accried over?

while it certainly makes sense that a medium tank from 41 is better optimised than a new one from 43, if the tanks are basicly the same sort of tank at least soem things should be able to be implemented. think finding out that one critical armor part in that design was weak and strenthening that would improve its overall survivability would be equally possible to implement in a new version. also, if your engineers have a lot of expierience with how a 41 tank works and have a lot of data on it at least soem of that should be useable on the 43 version

 

[varsovie]

He implied it was a strategically bad decision. If your choices are stepping on hornets (building Panther) and lava (building cheap fodder) it´s hard to say it was strategically bad isn´t it? For all their flaws at least on the defense both Tiger and Panther were better then Panzer IV and StuG, which could be pierced by dozens of weapons in their front armor, and were even more screwed in counter attack as it´s a situation you will usually be shot first. In which tank you wnat to be shot, Tiger or Panzer IV?

Besides, as I said, putting yourself in acorner by mass producing old weapons is hardly smart as eventually you WILL need better stuff. Zero and BF 109 showed that more than well enough.

Germany probably lost more panther to mechanic issues, mud and lack of fuel (and air attack) than armor vs armor combat. The design flaws are mechanical, not in term of armor or armament (unlike the panzer line), and a broken panther/tiger had to be pulled back to the manufacture to get fixed most of the time, while T-34 and Shermans while "inferiors" where easier to fix. Heck a broken Sherman engine could be totally changed in the field with a makeshift crane.
TBH the fist generation of tanks the Wehrmacht used in the east was probably more czech and french than german and got success due to their speed more than combat prowess.

And latter in the war, cheaper armors were nearly always better, just look the K/D ratio of STUGIII and hetzer and compare the amount of resources required for one of those compared to a Panther.

 

[keynes2.0]

It's not really nailed down yet, but provisionally I'd say: No, or at least not in all areas. Perhaps you can match or exceed the '43 tank in one or two areas if you upgrade your '41 tank heavily, but the '43 tanks should be better all-round.

Here's hoping that you guys manage to make the differences between generations have flavour and not be generic. For instance in '41 and '39 you really have medium tanks start to come into their own so soft attack values should go up a lot as they first started getting powerful enough for breakthroughs. '43 tanks on the other hand shouldn't have much better soft attack values then '41 tanks but would be a big improvement in hard attack as all nations started putting in the big turrets with the anti-tank main guns.

Entirely new designs I believe reset factory production levels entirely. So switching to an entirely new design results in a loss of tanks available.

Which is why I think that a historical entry-date US, first ramping getting war production in January of '42 would want to switch to '43 medium tanks as soon as possible and avoid making many M4s. If you can just use your accumulated XP on either tank you might as well put it in the newer design. Unless the US is expecting imminent invasion it would be trading a few months delay in tank numbers for the ability to game the system.

And with the soviets as well, the T-34 was a pretty good design for it's time but the BT-7 was even better. But it would be a very suboptimal strategy to be putting XP into the BT-7 until '41 only to start pouring it into the T-34 as soon as that starts coming off the line.

 

[tommylotto]

I know that it makes the XP system considerably more complicated, but it would be cool to see land combat experience divided into two types -- general experience and specific equipment experience. All combat would generate general combat experience as well as specific equipment experience for the equipment actually used in the combat that generated the experience. (Infantry combat would not generate tank combat experience, for example.) General combat experience could be used for any reason -- to purchase new division templates or to purchase equipment upgrades for any equipment type. Specific equipment experience could only be used to purchase upgrades for that specific equipment. And then certain upgrades could only be bought with specific equipment experience and could not be bought with general combat experience.

For example, you should not be able to upgrade Panther reliability with infantry combat experience or for that matter maybe PzIV combat experience as well.

 

[Poh]

But couldn't the US game the system by just shifting production to other things while they finish off the '43 research early? Unless researching 6 months early is so prohibitively difficult as to be useless I can't see why the US would want to put the XP it earned passively in '41 into the older instead of the newer design.

Land xp will be needed for both Land division templates and all the different types of land units. Also you probably wont have much Land-xp since you will only recieve a small amount of being at peace which firstly will go towards your division templates i imagine. Since the xp is based on your units/total units in action the US will be further restricted by not getting decent levels of Land-xp before they invade Africa or mainland Europe.

Regarding the production efficiency we know the following. 20%/50%/80% drop in efficiency depending Upgrade/Same Chassis/Same archtype. Since a upgrade from '41 to '43 tech is a arch type you will lose 80% of the stored efficiency. At the same time efficiency is stored as an average of the factories that take part in the production. So you cant just have 5 factories produce '41 and then ramp it up to 10 factories that produce '43 tanks. That would essential be the same as starting from 0% efficiency. As you would first cut the xp in half by adding more factories then losing 80% of the remaining xp.
Another point would be the nature of the S-curve where the main part of the production increase is in the middle of curve. 0-20% is slow and 80-100% is slow. While 20-80% is the sweetspot regarding efficiency increase pr. time. So the '43 will need time to ramp up production if you suddenly increase the number of factories that produce medium tanks. Though we dont know the time needed to go from 0-100%.

Having MIL/NAV/CIV factories we do not know how limited the US will be regarding production before they enter the war. So we dont know how important the efficiency is going to be.

We dont know how the research system will work which can have an impact on how easy it will be for the US to research ahead etc.

But you are right its possible to produce the '43 tank from around '43 the question is if it will be a viable strategy. It was also possible for the US to shift production to another model historical they just didnt want to. Theres imho so many factors that can impact this that we dont know about yet and also quite alot of factors that can be used to balance the system to gain the right amount "choice" that i dont think there would be a "problem"

 

[keynes2.0]

I know that it makes the XP system considerably more complicated, but it would be cool to see land combat experience divided into two types -- general experience and specific equipment experience.

This.

 

[podcat]

But couldn't the US game the system by just shifting production to other things while they finish off the '43 research early? Unless researching 6 months early is so prohibitively difficult as to be useless I can't see why the US would want to put the XP it earned passively in '41 into the older instead of the newer design.

While doing that is certainly possible there are some serious tradeoffs.
- waste of research. Maybe Tojo kicks your ass now that all your naval tech is behind.
- limits on how much combat experience you can save up before you need to use it.
- Quantity has a quality of its own(tm). Are you sure a bit better tanks are worth it rather than a lot of OK ones (which might be a bit shit now that you didnt spend any xp on upgrading them).

And some other stuff.

 

[tommylotto]

And some other stuff.

Ooo. That sounds mysterious...

 

[juv95hrn]

I think the system seems really cool.

Either I churn out really good PzIIIs that rock in 1940, are decent in 1941 but start to lose power relatively in 1942 or I go with decent PzIVs early that are more viable all the way into 1942-43.

I think this system offers some nice choices, lots of "chrome" (yeah my PzIII TDs have AA mg, extra side armour vs. HEAT and close combat protection but my light tanks are just... meh) It will have some impact on the game play but more importantly cater to all the WWII affecionados love different equipment types. I don't mind at all that the *basic* unit of equipment is the same for all nations since you can tinker and upgrade them. Really nice and fun!

EDIT:

I suppose this means you can make AFVs slower, with heavier armour, better at defending. Or faster, better penetration, lower supply cost maybe, ie. better at attacking? OR maybe I use tanks for one and TDs for the otehr when it comes to upgrades? I think it is a really neat system.

 

[Beagá]

I'm not sitting on the fence, you are just reducing things to two extreme positions, neither of which is correct. You fail to acknowledge the possibility (note I say possibility, I'm not even getting to proof here, just the logical fallacy) that the Panther design flaws made the German strategic situation incrementally worse. You insist that there is no possibility other then that it lost them the war or it didn't hurt them at all. That is a logical fallacy.

But the fact is, no one proved it made the situation worse There are lots of opinions thrown, but no one still proved it decently. I´m not affirming anything - I just stated my opinion that the war is a thing with multiple variables and the choices Germany had regarding TANKS were too irrelevant to change the outcome. That´s all. I never said it was na absolute truth, but I didn´t see any arguments totally negating it.

Besides, what a weapon needs to be considered to have strategic impact? Instead of just tactical impact, or even none at all?

Please Stop. As a person who makes a living arguing, writing, and arguing in writing, you guys are making my head hurt. Just stop. Let's talk about how nations should not get different base-line tanks, but with research and combat experience each nation will have different tanks... You, know, the topic of this thread.

But that is linked with the topic. If mass producing cheap tanks is the best STRATEGIC option, well, anyone will just build cheap médium tanks... So like it or not, you HAVE to decide if trying to build new and heavier tanks was Worth it or just a complete waste specially because the game will be about producing individual tanks, instead of brigades.

As a game example - if Germany is on the defensive and you decide to begin building a better Panther than the D variant by january 1944 - should that have enough impact to actually make you turn the tide? If the answer is "no keep building cheaper stuff" then well, why get better tanks then?

That´s the crux of the problem - in real life producing old stuff inevitably makes you have strategic disadvantage UNLESS the impact of not investing was decisive to win the war. That´s why I think that staying at a technological dead end would not be exaclty good to Germany - it wouldn´t be enough to win the war, and would make them have a disadvantage as better allied tanks inevitably were created. Unless you think US would be too dumb to build Sherman with 75mm gun all the way to 1950...

 

[Dalwin]

I am not sure if this has been brought up, but if so I missed it.

Part of the quantity vs incrementally better quality decision has to come down to manpower, doesn't it? If I have a huge manpower pool to draw from won't that always tilt the equipment upgrade decision toward the quantity side? Conversely if my manpower pool is stretched, does that not by itself make better quality, even slightly better, make more sense than if I had plentiful manpower?

 

[Beagá]

I don´t think US really built Sherman simply because it had more population than Germany. It´s more that you design a weapon based on your needs (through landing Sherman with 75mm gun means that such decision making seldom was flawless... and often the needs end up being VERY underestimated). Similar case with Germany really. They didn´t know what they would face in Russia and didn´t plan accordingly.

 

[Mannstien]

I am not sure if this has been brought up, but if so I missed it.

Part of the quantity vs incrementally better quality decision has to come down to manpower, doesn't it? If I have a huge manpower pool to draw from won't that always tilt the equipment upgrade decision toward the quantity side? Conversely if my manpower pool is stretched, does that not by itself make better quality, even slightly better, make more sense than if I had plentiful manpower?

That's a good point Dalwin, to expand on it more look at the US 90 division gamble, we knew that we were an arsenal for many of the allied powers yet needed to field a significant enough army to make an impact in Europe, maintain enough manpower in the supply chain to our forces and the allies, and replenish casualties. I think in the end it's indeed a gamble as the planning on what strategic objectives your going to fuel with the manpower at hand. You also have to consider your manufacturing capacity to some extent and determine where you want to use that manpower.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_15.htm