What is the manpower magic number?

PSP/DS/PC/MAC : WWII turn based grand strategy game

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patton
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What is the manpower magic number?

Post by patton »

I notice that in older versions of the game/mod, as long as manwpower was white when you made the purchase/reinforcement, your units did not suffer a quality downgrade. Now, in 1.05, even if it's white when you click, if that click takes you down to yellow, the unit drops in quality.

Is there any way to know this in advance? So far as I can tell, there is no way.
massina_nz
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Post by massina_nz »

I think you're confusing effectiveness versus quality. When you re-inforce a unit (even when manpower levels > 75%) then it suffers an effectiveness drop, becasue the unti has taken an action, like move or attack. I'm not sure how many effectiveness points are lost when you do this, but sometimes it's enough to reduce your effectivess below white effectiveness, which is 60%. Say from 63% to 57%, so the unit turns yellow.

When you re-inforce a unit with lower quality troops, then the quality stat reduces. I think the quality stat directly affects the highest effectivenss a unit can have. So the unit may now have a max effectiveness < 60%, so it may turn yellow as well.
patton
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Post by patton »

I understand that.

What I am asking is, how do you know for a given country what the manpower number is that will cause a drop in quality? As it is, I don't see a way to know until AFTER you click, and by then it is too late. If I knew ahead of time, I might choose not to reinforce a given unit but to wait another turn.

White v. yellow applies to the manpower number as well as to effectiveness. When it's white, you can reinforce or purchase at no loss of quality. When it's yellow, you suffer a quality drop of one.

The problem is that somewhere there is a "magic number" when white gives way to yellow. This is not specified. If you click when it's white but that click drops you into the yellow, then you've just permanently lowered the quality of a unit even if you didn't intend or want to.

From experience I think I've mostly figured out what the magic numbers are but they seem to be slightly variable. Worse is that even if you think you know, when you mouse hover over a unit, the game will say "Repair cost 5 production and 2 manpower" (or whatever) and you can click thinking that 2 is "safe" but then it ends up being 3, not 2, and you've just wrecked another unit.

Again, my point is that I want to know in advance so I can make an informed choice and not always be unpleasantly surprised.
pk867
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Post by pk867 »

The percentage is 75%. If mouse over the manpower value where the manpower is shown, the tooltip will show the current manpower percentage.

In GS 1.05 we tried to provide info readily available to the player by means of tooltips, graphics and such.

Paul
patton
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Post by patton »

Am I right that there was a change from v 1.02 to 1.05? I could swear that in 1.02, if you clicked to upgrade when manpower was white, you would not drop the unit's quality even if the click resulted in manpower turning yellow. However in 1.05, if the manpower number is white before you click but yellow after, then you have degraded the unit's quality.

What I would like is certainty. I want to know for sure whether this purchase or that upgrade will degrade quality. Too often I am simply surprised or I do the math in my head and think it won't be a problem and then it turns out that it is.

Also, what is the real effect of a one point drop in quality? That is, how many effectiveness points does it cost? At what rate does it slow down effectiveness regeneration?
pk867
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Post by pk867 »

As concerning manpower percentage between GS v1.00 and v1.05, no. This is the same as the vanilla game I believe.

pk867
patton
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Post by patton »

Yes, I believe that the percentage is the same. But I am 99% certain that there has been a change in something else.

Let me illustrate by example. France's magic number in 1940 is either 313 or 314. That is, above that level, the manpower number is white. At or below, it is yellow. Let's say for the sake of argument that the number is 314--at 315 it's white, at 314 it's yellow.

Now, I am 99% certain, having played several games in v. 1.02, that the following implementation applied. If I had a corps that I wanted to repair at a cost of 3 manpower, and my manpower at the time I clicked was 316 (white) but after it was 313 (yellow), that unit did NOT suffer a drop in quality. After clicking I would get the warning that manpower was low and that further purchases or reinforcements would result in lower quality. If I reinforced ANOTHER unit, that unit would get the drop in quality. In other words, what mattered was "pre-click" manpower. If it was white before the click, you'd be OK. No quality hit, even if it was yellow after the click. I suppose it's possible that I am misremembering but I remember checking this many times against actual units in 1.02 and it seemed to hold true.

In 1.05 (which I only recently upgraded to), that same click (from a white 316 to a yellow 313) WILL degrade the quality of the unit being reinforced.

This is not really what concerns me, however. What concerns me is the uncertainty. Even when I think I know what the result of that click will be, the game often surprises me. Since there are times when I don’t want to degrade my units, I want to KNOW before I click.
pk867
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Post by pk867 »

ok,

I have not seen that with the v1.05. Where the manpower being white and repairing a unit would reduce in quality. Unless a unit that is repaired, the unit has experience,
a large amount of repair will reduce the experience which will cause a reduction of quality. Quality is raised by experience, not just through tech levels.

Maybe that is what is happening?

pk867
patton
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Post by patton »

Well, I don't think that is what is happening. My first game in 1.05, I am playing the Allies and currently managing the defence of France. I don't believe that I have ANY experienced French units, though I would have to double check that. It appears that in their normal state a French INF corps has a quality of 4. But if I click to reinforce and the manpower number is yellow after the click, then I get the warning and quality drops to 3.

But again, I am not 100% sure. I will check again the next time I play a turn.
Plaid
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Post by Plaid »

Degradation of unit's stats (surv and qual) when you repair it with manpower penalties looks quite random to me. Sometimes they degrade, sometimes not (same for losing exp, if unit had any). Looks somehow depending on number of steps you replace ( if you repait unit from 9 to 10 i.e. 1 step, chance, that stats will lower much less, than if you replace from 5 to 10).
Peter Stauffenberg
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Post by Peter Stauffenberg »

I've seen the same myself. What I learnt from the code is that the game engine works with fractions, but only shows integers. So the actual quality can be 4.5 and be shown as 5.

I think it's like this. Let's say you have a 7 step unit of quality 5, but you repair it to 10 steps when having a -1 quality penalty. Then the new quality will be:
(7*5+3*4) / 10 = (35+12)/10 = 4.7. So the game will show the quality at still 5 while in combat the true quality is 4.7.

When this 4.7 quality unit drops to 6 steps and is repaired to 10 then you get the following:
(4.7*6 + 4*4)/10 = (28.2 + 16) / 10 = 4.42 which is shown as 4.

You see the same when you make repairs oe upgrades and look at the estimatet repair cost. E. g. it shows a repair cost of 2, but when you pay you see the game deducts 3 PP's. The income and cost also retains fractions within the game engine. So if you see you have 110 PP's it means you have between 109.5 and 110.4. The actual repair cost is a certain fraction of the full unit cost. This number might contain fractions and the exact number is deducted.
patton
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Post by patton »

Thanks.

Is there any way to know with certainty BEFORE you click whether you will be incurring a quality drop or not?
Peter Stauffenberg
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Post by Peter Stauffenberg »

No, but it really doesn't matter. As I wrote you keep fractional quality so if you drop from e. g. 5 to 4 it means you maybe dropped 0.1 or 0.2. What's important is that ALL new steps you add to the units will be of the lower quality. So it's important to see if the manpower level is white or yellow. If it's white you can upgrade and not suffer a drop. If it's yellow you will get a drop from the steps you repair.

So you don't have to worry about seeing a drop or not. As long as you know you repair units when the manpower penalty applies you weaken your unit. All you need to know is that if the number hasn't dropped yet then the true value is closer to the higher number than the lower. If it has dropped then it's closer to the lower number.
patton
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Post by patton »

Stauffenberg wrote:So it's important to see if the manpower level is white or yellow. If it's white you can upgrade and not suffer a drop. If it's yellow you will get a drop from the steps you repair.
Well, that does not seem to be quite right. In the game I am playing now, even when manpower is white, I often get a quality drop IF the manpower number is yellow after the upgrade (click).
Peter Stauffenberg
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Post by Peter Stauffenberg »

You have to take ANOTHER effect into consideration. You get a quality and survivability boost from XP levels. I think it's like this.
1 star: +1 quality
2 stars: +1 quality + 1 survivability
3 stars: +2 quality +1 survivability
4 stars: +2 quality +2 survivability

When you repair units the same happens with XP. You replace a unit with e. g. 2 stars with 0 star XP. That lowers the overall XP and you might drop from e. g. 2 stars to 1 star. That means the unit will lose one survivability.

If you see a quality drop when repairing it's probably because the unit had 1 star and dropped to no stars.
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