Problem with Suppression based Artillery units

[Kerensky]

You mentioned artillery units are primarily for removing entrenchment and causing suppression instead of killing larger amounts of units.
So how are artillery units expected to gain experience in this new system? It seems they almost never get any. On a recent replay through the beta, I noticed my infantry were 3 stars, tanks 1 or 2, recon 1, and artillery was still blank, not even a hint of the first star.

Also, range 2 AD units do not protect units 2 hexes away that are being bombed.

Additionally, it would be nice to upgrade multiple units at a time, or have some kind of upgrade phase as part of the intermission. Clicking one unit, clicking upgrade, then finding the upgrade, then having to repeat all those steps for every single other unit is overly tedious.

[Kerensky]

Another few problems, cannot undeploy units once placed during deploy phase to undo mistakes, miss-clicks, or units you wanted to upgrade/overstrength but forgot to.

Also, no way to disband units. Could be abused mid mission, but would be good for the intermission phase.

[Rudankort]

You mentioned artillery units are primarily for removing entrenchment and causing suppression instead of killing larger amounts of units.
So how are artillery units expected to gain experience in this new system? It seems they almost never get any. On a recent replay through the beta, I noticed my infantry were 3 stars, tanks 1 or 2, recon 1, and artillery was still blank, not even a hint of the first star.

Great point. In fact, even in PG arty was the slowest in gaining exp, and with new scheme it should be very slow. I think, we should change the formulas so that hits, not kills, are counted for experience gains. Then arty will gain exp every time it manages to suppress the unit, which is its primary job.

Also, range 2 AD units do not protect units 2 hexes away that are being bombed.

I'm still undecided on this. On one hand, this would clearly make AD units more valuable, on the other hand, this might make them too powerful on defense. Any other opinions on this?

Additionally, it would be nice to upgrade multiple units at a time, or have some kind of upgrade phase as part of the intermission. Clicking one unit, clicking upgrade, then finding the upgrade, then having to repeat all those steps for every single other unit is overly tedious.

Agreed.

[Rudankort]

Another few problems, cannot undeploy units once placed during deploy phase to undo mistakes, miss-clicks, or units you wanted to upgrade/overstrength but forgot to.

Undeploy should work, right click a unit to undeploy it.

Also, no way to disband units. Could be abused mid mission, but would be good for the intermission phase.

Disband is implemented, but while designing the UI panel, we decided to move disband button from main screen to unit dialog (which is not done yet). Still, D hotkey works for disband. Somehow I missed this command when I listed all hot keys - sorry guys.

[IainMcNeil]

I would be heavily against artillery definding friends 2 hexes away. The game already can feel like there are no options for attack because of the supporting units and this would limit it further.

[comradep]

I would be in favour of AA units being capable of defending units in their range.

I normally don't bother with AA units, because fighters are usually a lot better and not one trick ponies (AA units are basically useless as soon as the enemy air force is gone). Allowing them to fire in support of units in range rather than adjacent to them would make them much more useful.

[Rudankort]

I would be heavily against artillery definding friends 2 hexes away. The game already can feel like there are no options for attack because of the supporting units and this would limit it further.

We were talking about anti-air units here. For artillery I agree that it should provide defensive fire one hex away only. Technically it is possible to balance long-range defensive fire (PG2 did this), but in my opinion this results in too many units covering each other.

[Kerensky]

I would be heavily against artillery definding friends 2 hexes away. The game already can feel like there are no options for attack because of the supporting units and this would limit it further.

We were talking about anti-air units here. For artillery I agree that it should provide defensive fire one hex away only. Technically it is possible to balance long-range defensive fire (PG2 did this), but in my opinion this results in too many units covering each other.

To be fair, the title of the thread is 'Artillery', lol.
On the topic of Artillery though, I would also agree with the idea of only close fire support, where artillery only provides defensive fire to friendly units that are adjacent to the artillery unit itself. Even with the Pg2 system of non-adjacent artillery providing weaker supporting fire, it could get out of control and severely punish infantry offense.

However, the idea of AD units inheriting this ability strikes me as a good balance.

When providing protective Air Defense fire (not when normally firing):

Full strength firing at the hex the AD units occupies.
Full strength firing at any adjacent hex.
Half strength firing at any hexes that are not adjacent to the AD unit.

This would prevent defensive air umbrellas that are too strong, unless a player overloads how many AD unit they are using on defense, which probably means their ground defense is lacking.
Plus I feel it's necessary for heavy AD units. I mean, the 88 in the tutorial has a range of 3. So it can cover an area of 37 hexes, right? However, when performing it's "Air Defense" duty, only 7 of those hexes are actually protected, the hex where the AD itself is, plus the 6 adjacent hexes. How useless is that? You could bomb with 30 aircraft and suffer no penalties, and then the 88 gets to shoot once and only at one aircraft. That's the current system, and that just sounds like AD units are even MORE worthless, especially heavy AD units.

However, covering all 37 hexes at full power could be too strong, especially with overlapping AD units, so institute a penalty for non-adjacent hexes covered by AD units.
I honestly don't see the downside, but if someone can play devil's advocate, I'd be curious to hear the counter argument.

For the record, I still think AD units need to be useful when enemy air units are not present (able to fire at ground units as their action). You seemed to have hinted at this with the currently unused "Tank in Crosshairs" button, but I still feel the need to reinforce this idea.

[IainMcNeil]

If air defence units are able to shoot in their turn I see no need tomake them tougher. Currently you cannot go near anywhere with air defence in my experience. It only takes 2 hits to kill most air units.

I think I would prefer a system that made air defence have a weaker effect over a larger area and prevented them firing offensively.

I think we need visual feedback to show if artillery or air defence is supporting an attack/defence to show the user what is happening.

[comradep]

Iain, AA units need to be able to kill air units in about two turns otherwise they're basically useless. You don't have units to wound the enemy, you have units to kill enemies. If even good AA units only inflict 2 or 3 points of damage, what's the point of having them around?

In the tutorial, I could still bomb AA units with my fragile Ju 87's. In PG2, if I absolutely had to go somewhere I zapped an AA unit with a Ju 88 or a similar bomber with reasonable protection against AA fire. A 15 strength Ju 88 would be at around 12 or so after most of those attacks, and the AA unit would be near death. Of course, you could also just shoot the AA unit with some ridiculously powerful range 7 artillery unit (21cm K38, for example).

If anything, AA units tended to be underpowered and pretty much useless in most WWII PG titles. They could be awesome in People's General.

[IainMcNeil]

This is a tricky one.

Currently the damage rates of units are very high so units are dying a lot. It's very hard to attack without leaving a unit vulnerable to being destroyed in the enemy turn. I know there are ways around with fire then move but to teh average gamer these tactics are a step beyond what they will be doing. People do not like to lose their veteran units. If there is a way to recover these between scenarios then its not a huge issue. If not then we need to make units generally more resilient.

We need to decide how lethal we want combat to be and the design decisions follow on from that.

[comradep]

In previous PG games, you could end up killing about 40-50 units per mission. There will be casualties, plenty of them, and the artillery as it is now is already less lethal than it is in other PG games.

Units being destroyed in 2-3 attacks is typical for PG.

[IainMcNeil]

I know, but that is going to be frustrating if you lose the experienced units. As long as we have a mechanism for players to revive their elite units between missions I don't mind combat being brutal. Otherwise people will just continuously reload to avoid losing their favourites. While you could say this is spoiling the game, the realisty is this is the way most pepel play if you punish them and make them lose things they are attached to so game mechanics these days do nto allow that to happen.

[comradep]

I often replayed missions that went poorly. With the current non-random after load combat result system in place, people will already be encouraged to pay more attention to their good units.

Overstrength units can also survive an extra hit or two, and will often take either less damage from an attack or deliver a significant punch themselves.

[adherbal]

Perhaps instead of fighting to the last man, units should retreat when attacked by a more powerful opponent, taking less damage in return (but also dealing much less damage to the attacker). This should allow units to survive much longer. If retreat is impossible or penalised (additional casualties) through enemy ZoC that would make surrounding enemy units more worthwhile, and something you really want to avoid for your elite units.

I'm not a fan of reviving destroying elite units, or even "buying" elite reinforcements. The use of elite units, and casualties they suffered in battle had major impacts in all wars. I'm in favor of making them survive longer - units destroyed to the last man where very rare and dramatic events, think Stalingrad. But if you lose veterans you'll have to train your fresh recruits into new ones.

[IainMcNeil]

I'm not sure of teh gameplay implications of this type of change to teh model.

I would far prefer just to let players buy back their elite units for a price. Much safer and guaranteed to avoid player frustration.

Remember you guys are the hard core - we want this game to sell to a much wider market who do not want to replay scenariosn - they never want to be penalised at all. This is the way modern game design for mass market games has changed. E.g. In RPG's you never lose a character, in action games you respan very close to where you died. It is what peopel want and what we have to deliver if we want to break out of the wargames niche and bring this style of game back to a wider audience where it used to be in the glory days of PG.

[Rudankort]

From realism point of view I can agree with Lukas, but from gameplay point of view I would prefer to keep elite units more vulnerable and replacable than to make them more tough than now. In PG "unstoppable invincible elite core" was a major problem, we don't want to make it even worse. But we don't want vulnerable and non-replacable elites either, or casual players will hate us.

PS. Hardcore player can easily play without elite replacements (just don't use the command), or change one constant in data files to make them prohibitively expensive and usable only in grave emergency.

[IainMcNeil]

I agree completely Alex.

Could we make the difficulty level change the price of eilte replacements? That way on harder settings they get more expensive and so players have to use them more sparingly rather than have to mod teh data to get the challenge they want?

[Rudankort]

Could we make the difficulty level change the price of eilte replacements? That way on harder settings they get more expensive and so players have to use them more sparingly rather than have to mod teh data to get the challenge they want?

I could implement that, but right now difficulty levels differ by the amount of prestige available to the player, and this has about the same effect: on easy you can afford everything you want, and on harder settings you should spend more carefully and perhaps prefer normal replacements to elite ones in many cases. At the same time we keep game rules consistent between difficulty levels, which I think is good.

[boredatwork]

I'm not sure how much deviation from the original PG is desired but my ideal PG style game would have mechanics in place that would conspire to prevent any unit from ever reaching the XP cap, much less 90% of the core force. The current system of almost RPG like development with awards and kill tracking and medals (and leaders in PG2) is great - the problem is it's too easy to hit the cap at which point, aside from kills and the infrequent upgrades, developing your units comes to a stand still.

The simpler alternative would be simply give a "pop out menu" that would display up to 6 replacements options (depending on the experience of the unit in question) - that would get exponentially more expensive per "level" for example something like:

0 star: 25% of cost
1 star: 50% of cost
2 star: 75% of cost
3 star: 125% of cost
4 star: 175% of cost
5 satr: 250% of cost

That way using 5 star replacements on any but a hundfull of units would be prohibitively expensive.



IMO the ideal would be divorce experience from prestige entirely and instead have a manpower management system - a series of 5 "replacement pools" (1 for each star of XP (+an unlimited amount of 0 star conscripts)) that would be populated by: a set amount of 1 or 2 star green & regular replacements from high command per scenario; a % of your casualties suffered in previous battles - (ie some casualties from a 4 star unit will eventually heal and be avaiable in the 4 or 5 star pool); as well as being able to "understrength" or disband units to return some of their experienced manpower back to the pools. Whenever you created a new unit, reformed a dead one, or repaired a damaged one you would have to choose which of the available pools to draw replacements from.

I think that would be a simple way to add an additional bit of overall force development and force a player to make some real decisions - do I want to concentrate all my experience in a few super elite units or spread it out accross the entire force? Should I "spend" all of my 4 star points on a new unit or should I keep a reserve available in case one of my important units suffers casualties. Should I repair this unit now or disband it so as to use it's experienced points to keep other units at high XP levels and reform it with lesser experienced men?

If an elite unit dies, remove 2 points of strength from 5 other high XP units to the pool then reform the elite unit unit from that manpower, accepting a reduction in average XP from the units you raided from.

I accept though that this might involve more micro management than some people might enjoy.