Internal mechanics are important for realistic gameplay, and can fix a lot of problems without necessarily making the UI more complex. Below is a wishlist of fixes/upgrades to the game’s internal mechanics, in alphabetic order:
Air Warfare
1.1 Fighters should have an “escort” mission. This will allow airborne drops and atomic strikes to be made easier without overhauling the entire strategic bombing/air superiority mechanics.
Combat
2.1 Introduce Artillery Superiority. Air superiority is a good mechanic, but artillery’s indirect fire capabilities should also be included as an anti-ORG method. Failing to include this makes artillery unrealistically powerless, while adding it will make artillery more useful without changing/increasing existing stats.
2.2 Introduce more combat toggle features. Toggle features make gameplay more dynamic, especially when used to gain a sudden tactical advantage.
2.3 Regimental structure should dictate how combat width is split. When the game was first made, 40-width infantry divisions were OP because the entire weight of the division was used all at once, like a phalanx. The devs have since introduced splitting damage, but this should follow regimental compositions. Doing this will allow divisions to split into widths that align with specific terrain types, even if the overall width does not align. With 5 regiments per division, this means a player could customize his division for up to 5 different widths!
2.4 Self-Propelled Artillery, Tank Destroyers, SPAA, and heavy/super-heavy tanks should be available as support companies. These would allow squishy divisions to gain some armor upgrades on a shoestring budget. Support companies are smaller than regular battalions, so France in 1940 can deploy their few heavy tanks in penny packets among multiple divisions, and fuel-starved Germany in 1945 can strengthen their infantry divisions without requiring lots of tank IC and fuel.
2.5 Soft Attack should degrade entrenchment, hard attack should degrade land/coastal forts. Machine guns and mortars have little effect on concrete bunkers, but armor-piercing munitions would. Tank destroyers IRL spent more time knocking out bunkers than actually fighting tanks.
2.6 Terrain and tactics change combat width. Right now, combat width is rigid and inflexible, which causes issues for historical division size/composition, but allowing tactics & terrain to act as multipliers on combat width would make historical division designs more viable. Mountains have the habit of canalizing the movement of tanks/motor/mech IRL, while human waves tend to be on broad fronts.
2.7 Units in low supply should not attack or fight unless command power operations like “Aggressive Assault,” “Probing Attack,” or “Last Stand” are activated. The gameplay needs to balance between units being held back by low supply and fighting on in spite of it, so requiring command power to be used for the latter would help achieve this balance and prevent the Germans from conquering Russia, or Italy conquering Egypt, too quickly.
2.8 Urban and amphibious warfare need to be fixed. Both are single-province battles that IRL were more complicated than they are portrayed in-game. Instead of creating more provinces, fixing the mechanics will make them more meaningful.
Game AI
3.1 AI in peacetime should prioritize garrisoning victory points and forts. Right now, the AI has every reason to fill every frontline, and this encourages division spam. Changing this behavior in peacetime will reduce demand for divisions.
3.2 AI should prioritize building supply depots over land/coastal forts. Towards the end-game, AI will run out of things to build and so will start spamming out forts because they’re cheap, instead of improving their supply. The AI should be programmed to prioritize supply over forts by default.
Naval
4.1 Naval repairs should scale to the level of the seaport. Level 1 seaports should not be able to repair ships with 6% health/94% damage.
4.2 Add in a “Naval preparatory bombardment” operation. There is currently no way to soften up an island/shoreline’s defenses before launching a naval invasion, but such softening operations occurred frequently and could last a month. Mechanically, it’d resemble strategic bombing with battleships.
4.3 Introduce a “blockade” mission for navies.
4.4 Allow screen ships to be lend-leased.
Production & Manpower
5.1 Researching new levels of equipment should reduce the base cost of obsolete models. Most nations IRL put more effort into making existing equipment cheaper than they did developing more expensive production methods.
5.2 Add a reserves mechanic. This can either be in the recruitment tab or a law, but there needs to be a way to bottleneck and dynamically cap the number of units on the map, to prevent division spam.
5.3 Add an alert for “excess imports.”
Resistance
6.1 If resistance attacks fail, and there is no external sponsor, then resistance levels go down. Resistance fighters cannot repeatedly fail attacks without any consequences whatsoever. The guerrillas will take casualties, they lose their street cred, and most garrisons IRL did not get mowed down and slaughtered every month by the hundreds like clockwork. If the resistance is being supported from outside, this mechanic can be overridden.
Supply
7.1 Airfields should have the same supply/motorization toggle features as seaports and supply depots. It’s odd that we have air resupply, but can’t give an airfield truck or horse-drawn logistics. Full integration would make air resupply more viable and intuitive.
7.2 Attrition changes based on movement and stances. Units standing still do not consume supplies as much as units on the move, and cautious plans are more thrifty than reckless ones. This mechanic would increase player control by creating toggle-able settings.
7.3 Dismounted units should have logarithmic penalties to supply, while mobile/mechanized should have exponential penalties. Smaller numbers of mobile units should have little difficulty beating dismounted infantry in a sustained fight, as this is more realistic and will discourage spamming dismounted divisions.
7.4 Islands and fleets use supply convoys. If a Japan wants to build up a small Pacific island’s state AA then that should require convoys to abstract for shipping the concrete and heavy guns, rather than growing them locally like crops.
7.5 Mixing equipment should have logarithmic penalties. Right now, capturing equipment isn’t as problematic was it was IRL, since equipment works like a fire-and-toss-aside panzerfaust. By having logarithmic penalties, players will be discouraged from mixing equipment willy-nilly.
7.6 Scale airborne and amphibious operation caps to battalions, not divisions. Limiting it to 10 divisions means that players are incentivized to create massive corps-sized divisions for these operations, rather than realistic-sized ones.
7.7 Scale attrition to battalions, rather than a flat rate. The flat rate means that cramming extra divisions into a defensive line won’t hurt the defenders’ ability to fight any worse than it already is, but still allows them to outlast the attacker by virtue of having too many bodies in the way before the attacker runs out of ORG. Scaling by battalions will ensure the more historical forces run out of ORG last.
7.8 Scale supply trucks at supply depots to battalions. Currently a supply depot uses 80 trucks at the maximum and can supply far more frontline units than is realistic. By scaling to battalions, clogging front lines can be ameliorated and mechanically discouraged.
7.9 Strategic movement should be based on supply depots. Strategic movement gives a bunch of bonuses that turn dismounted infantry into motorized infantry, and has no fuel costs, so requiring it to pass through both rail and supply depot provinces will be more realistic and require the AI to build up its supply network more than currently happens.
7.10 Supply Depots should get construction bonuses from Victory Locations and Urban Provinces. Supply Depots are more expensive than synthetic refineries, which is necessary to prevent spamming, but this also discourages the AI from improving their supply situation because the raw numbers aren’t advantageous. Offering 10% construction bonuses for each victory point (i.e., 5 victory points would give a 50% bonus while 15 victory points would give a 150% bonus) and a 20% bonus for urban provinces (which would all stack with existing construction bonuses) would mean that the AI now has a positive incentive to build them in logical/realistic places.
Thoughts? Counter-proposals? Be specific!
Air Warfare
1.1 Fighters should have an “escort” mission. This will allow airborne drops and atomic strikes to be made easier without overhauling the entire strategic bombing/air superiority mechanics.
Combat
2.1 Introduce Artillery Superiority. Air superiority is a good mechanic, but artillery’s indirect fire capabilities should also be included as an anti-ORG method. Failing to include this makes artillery unrealistically powerless, while adding it will make artillery more useful without changing/increasing existing stats.
2.2 Introduce more combat toggle features. Toggle features make gameplay more dynamic, especially when used to gain a sudden tactical advantage.
2.3 Regimental structure should dictate how combat width is split. When the game was first made, 40-width infantry divisions were OP because the entire weight of the division was used all at once, like a phalanx. The devs have since introduced splitting damage, but this should follow regimental compositions. Doing this will allow divisions to split into widths that align with specific terrain types, even if the overall width does not align. With 5 regiments per division, this means a player could customize his division for up to 5 different widths!
2.4 Self-Propelled Artillery, Tank Destroyers, SPAA, and heavy/super-heavy tanks should be available as support companies. These would allow squishy divisions to gain some armor upgrades on a shoestring budget. Support companies are smaller than regular battalions, so France in 1940 can deploy their few heavy tanks in penny packets among multiple divisions, and fuel-starved Germany in 1945 can strengthen their infantry divisions without requiring lots of tank IC and fuel.
2.5 Soft Attack should degrade entrenchment, hard attack should degrade land/coastal forts. Machine guns and mortars have little effect on concrete bunkers, but armor-piercing munitions would. Tank destroyers IRL spent more time knocking out bunkers than actually fighting tanks.
2.6 Terrain and tactics change combat width. Right now, combat width is rigid and inflexible, which causes issues for historical division size/composition, but allowing tactics & terrain to act as multipliers on combat width would make historical division designs more viable. Mountains have the habit of canalizing the movement of tanks/motor/mech IRL, while human waves tend to be on broad fronts.
2.7 Units in low supply should not attack or fight unless command power operations like “Aggressive Assault,” “Probing Attack,” or “Last Stand” are activated. The gameplay needs to balance between units being held back by low supply and fighting on in spite of it, so requiring command power to be used for the latter would help achieve this balance and prevent the Germans from conquering Russia, or Italy conquering Egypt, too quickly.
2.8 Urban and amphibious warfare need to be fixed. Both are single-province battles that IRL were more complicated than they are portrayed in-game. Instead of creating more provinces, fixing the mechanics will make them more meaningful.
Game AI
3.1 AI in peacetime should prioritize garrisoning victory points and forts. Right now, the AI has every reason to fill every frontline, and this encourages division spam. Changing this behavior in peacetime will reduce demand for divisions.
3.2 AI should prioritize building supply depots over land/coastal forts. Towards the end-game, AI will run out of things to build and so will start spamming out forts because they’re cheap, instead of improving their supply. The AI should be programmed to prioritize supply over forts by default.
Naval
4.1 Naval repairs should scale to the level of the seaport. Level 1 seaports should not be able to repair ships with 6% health/94% damage.
4.2 Add in a “Naval preparatory bombardment” operation. There is currently no way to soften up an island/shoreline’s defenses before launching a naval invasion, but such softening operations occurred frequently and could last a month. Mechanically, it’d resemble strategic bombing with battleships.
4.3 Introduce a “blockade” mission for navies.
4.4 Allow screen ships to be lend-leased.
Production & Manpower
5.1 Researching new levels of equipment should reduce the base cost of obsolete models. Most nations IRL put more effort into making existing equipment cheaper than they did developing more expensive production methods.
5.2 Add a reserves mechanic. This can either be in the recruitment tab or a law, but there needs to be a way to bottleneck and dynamically cap the number of units on the map, to prevent division spam.
5.3 Add an alert for “excess imports.”
Resistance
6.1 If resistance attacks fail, and there is no external sponsor, then resistance levels go down. Resistance fighters cannot repeatedly fail attacks without any consequences whatsoever. The guerrillas will take casualties, they lose their street cred, and most garrisons IRL did not get mowed down and slaughtered every month by the hundreds like clockwork. If the resistance is being supported from outside, this mechanic can be overridden.
Supply
7.1 Airfields should have the same supply/motorization toggle features as seaports and supply depots. It’s odd that we have air resupply, but can’t give an airfield truck or horse-drawn logistics. Full integration would make air resupply more viable and intuitive.
7.2 Attrition changes based on movement and stances. Units standing still do not consume supplies as much as units on the move, and cautious plans are more thrifty than reckless ones. This mechanic would increase player control by creating toggle-able settings.
7.3 Dismounted units should have logarithmic penalties to supply, while mobile/mechanized should have exponential penalties. Smaller numbers of mobile units should have little difficulty beating dismounted infantry in a sustained fight, as this is more realistic and will discourage spamming dismounted divisions.
7.4 Islands and fleets use supply convoys. If a Japan wants to build up a small Pacific island’s state AA then that should require convoys to abstract for shipping the concrete and heavy guns, rather than growing them locally like crops.
7.5 Mixing equipment should have logarithmic penalties. Right now, capturing equipment isn’t as problematic was it was IRL, since equipment works like a fire-and-toss-aside panzerfaust. By having logarithmic penalties, players will be discouraged from mixing equipment willy-nilly.
7.6 Scale airborne and amphibious operation caps to battalions, not divisions. Limiting it to 10 divisions means that players are incentivized to create massive corps-sized divisions for these operations, rather than realistic-sized ones.
7.7 Scale attrition to battalions, rather than a flat rate. The flat rate means that cramming extra divisions into a defensive line won’t hurt the defenders’ ability to fight any worse than it already is, but still allows them to outlast the attacker by virtue of having too many bodies in the way before the attacker runs out of ORG. Scaling by battalions will ensure the more historical forces run out of ORG last.
7.8 Scale supply trucks at supply depots to battalions. Currently a supply depot uses 80 trucks at the maximum and can supply far more frontline units than is realistic. By scaling to battalions, clogging front lines can be ameliorated and mechanically discouraged.
7.9 Strategic movement should be based on supply depots. Strategic movement gives a bunch of bonuses that turn dismounted infantry into motorized infantry, and has no fuel costs, so requiring it to pass through both rail and supply depot provinces will be more realistic and require the AI to build up its supply network more than currently happens.
7.10 Supply Depots should get construction bonuses from Victory Locations and Urban Provinces. Supply Depots are more expensive than synthetic refineries, which is necessary to prevent spamming, but this also discourages the AI from improving their supply situation because the raw numbers aren’t advantageous. Offering 10% construction bonuses for each victory point (i.e., 5 victory points would give a 50% bonus while 15 victory points would give a 150% bonus) and a 20% bonus for urban provinces (which would all stack with existing construction bonuses) would mean that the AI now has a positive incentive to build them in logical/realistic places.
Thoughts? Counter-proposals? Be specific!
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