CEAW Grand Strategy: Repair versus New

[metolius]

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on repair versus building new units, and also at what point to do repairs.

Naturally, much depends on the specific conditions of a game and even a unit, but I'm looking for some general guidelines.

A few thoughts to start the discussion:

+ You can repair a land unit for 60% of the cost of building a new unit of the same kind, so on the whole, it seems like a good idea to repair. Sea units repair at 80% of the cost of new units.
+ Repaired units usually are still suffering from some efficiency loss from whatever caused the step losses in the first place, and so are subject to greater losses in subsequent attacks. That can eat up PPs after a while. Seems particularly pertinent to minor countries' units, with their lower initial effectiveness.
+ Repairing experienced units 'dilutes' the experience. To minimize this, it seems useful to keep your experienced (elite) units fully repaired. Of course, when they are being repaired, they can't be used...
+ Some people diligently repair the Polish, Danish, Belgian, etc. units as much as possible, on the hope that it might slow the Germans down an extra turn (or two!). Is it worth it?

[massina_nz]

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on repair versus building new units, and also at what point to do repairs.

Naturally, much depends on the specific conditions of a game and even a unit, but I'm looking for some general guidelines.

A few thoughts to start the discussion:

+ You can repair a land unit for 60% of the cost of building a new unit of the same kind, so on the whole, it seems like a good idea to repair. Sea units repair at 80% of the cost of new units.
+ Repaired units usually are still suffering from some efficiency loss from whatever caused the step losses in the first place, and so are subject to greater losses in subsequent attacks. That can eat up PPs after a while. Seems particularly pertinent to minor countries' units, with their lower initial effectiveness.
<snip>

I almost aways repair a damaged unit once it gets below 7 steps. The effecitveness penalty for a naval unit (of a repair) is not so bad, becasue normally they are in a safe port.

[massina_nz]

<snip>
+ Some people diligently repair the Polish, Danish, Belgian, etc. units as much as possible, on the hope that it might slow the Germans down an extra turn (or two!). Is it worth it?

IMHO yes if the unit is preventing the Axis from moving towards their objective, otherwise, no.

[pk867]

Hi,
The Dev team did discuss this, because especially when you have limited funds instead spending all on one, we could spread the repairs around. But at the time we had higher priorities for advancing the expansion. Don't know if it is doable, but it will add extra time to each game turn. So there is a trade off. If the majority votes then we can at least add it to the list of items for the next update. There is no promise of it making it into the game, but at least under consideration.

pk867

[PinkPanzer]

The way the majority of combat works including land combat is: 1)Attacker shock attack causing defender effectiveness loss 2) Defender attack causing attacker step and effectiveness losses then finally 3) Attacker attack causing step and effectiveness losses to the defender.

So when attacking it's theoretically bext to maximize your shock attack with full strength units. The downside is that you might lose momo of your offensive or a good weather turn repairing a lot of units.
On the defence you kill first so you can probably have less fully repaired units.

I think the best way to use a unit hit with big step and effectiveness losses is to pull it back into your reserves, fully repair it the next turn, let it rest some turns to regain efficency, then commit it to battle, preferably at your schwerpunkt attack or counterattack. That way you always have a reserve, which is easy to forget to have.

[IainMcNeil]

If this is done it needs to be as an option in game that people can turn on. I'd hate to see it as the default.

[timhicks]

On a similar vien of thought, how about scrapping units, I've sometimes wished that I could scrap a unit, and get back the PP's and the manpower. When you don't want to pay to repair a unit , or the unit no longer has a role, then it would be useful to 'recycle' it.

Some examples I can think of, are the german strategic bomber , or the Italian armour. After a few years, the opponents ground air defence and fighters get to a level, and your bomber will lose a step whenever it does anything. You can't justify repairing it, (unless you can think of a safe mission for it), so it just stagnates.

Another example is the Italian armour, people don't buy Italian armour labs, so if the unit survives until 1943-44, it's going to be obsolete. Again you won't ever want to spend PP's on repair , so the only possible use for this unit, is to attack partisans which have zero effectiveness.

If the Italians are alive and have good infantry, then it would be great to use the PP's and manpower on that instead.

Maybe 60% of the PP's and 100% of the Manpower (of the remaining steps) of the unit, could be put back into the Pot. Of course only Major power units could be scrapped, only those people who have a manpower pool, and not partisans.

[metolius]

One thought on the one-point of repair at a time idea -- if it were also possible to use a shift-click to do one point repairs, while normal clicking would still do the same thing it does now, that might address any concerns people have about changing the existing interface.