Experience Documented

[macattack]

As a simulation it might be "realistic". But as a game - is it fun?

But aren't there hundreds of posts on these boards arguing about how realistic the game should be? Designers and players arguing over a 1 point tweak one way or another on a unit's stats because it has to be more historically accurate/realistic? Luck, mistakes, bravery, cowardice and sheer stupidity are realistic results in combat. And yes, I am saying that I don't mind them provided they are not given a significant value, because that is part of warfare. A wild card. Not a big wild card, but yes an occasional wild card. It keeps the game interesting.

I think what is bothering you is that you are extremely protective of your core units. Nothing is going to happen to your core outside of what you consider to be acceptable losses. I know we all do that, but I'm betting that after an entire campaign, all of your core units are 15 strength and better than half of your units have never even taken a casualty throughout the entire campaign. That is not meant to be a negative statement. I just think it's your play-style. I think you will fight an entire campaign and pain-stakingly plan to prevent any losses at all, or very minimal at worst. We all do that to some degree. But wild results are absolutely intolerable in a play-style like that.

Do you now see why you're almost talking as if in a completely different language when you say things like "statistical rarity" or "realistic combat", and that this has nothing to do with "good programming"

And I still think that's programming. The designers could just as easily have all combat results be the same as the predicted results. But do you really want to play a game like that? I would call that chess, or rock-paper-scissors, not warfare. I want occasional unpredictability within reason. I think it's realistic though not terribly probable that sometimes rock rips a hole in the paper, or the scissors takes a chip out of the rock. It certainly would make rock-paper-scissors more exciting and I think it's what makes PzC more interesting.

Back to your un-entrenched infantry in the clear against the Panzer IVG example ending in 2-6 when it should be 4-0. You notice how you didn't use 1-9, or 0-10 as your example because that would be ridiculous. It would not be within reason. But 2-6? Maybe the over-confident panzer unit proceeded recklessly?

I'm not saying your wrong. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying it's a play-style preference.

[deducter]

Back to your un-entrenched infantry in the clear against the Panzer IVG example ending in 2-6 when it should be 4-0. You notice how you didn't use 1-9, or 0-10 as your example because that would be ridiculous. It would not be within reason. But 2-6? Maybe the over-confident panzer unit proceeded recklessly?

Heh, I remember experiences like that on Manstein. Ah those infantry, killing one my PzIVD in the clear. Oh well, it's my own fault for playing on a masochistic difficulty.

However, I can't remember any case where infantry vs panzer ever went 2-6 if both units were equal in strength and in the clear.

[soldier]

Panzer General was more random than Panzer Corps. Mainly because of the profound effect initiative had there. You win initiative - you shoot first. For this reason an unlucky initiative roll could completely ruin the combat for you. And for the same reason the odds were much more off the mark than in Panzer Corps.

I also think Panzer General was/is more unpredictable than Panzer Corps. Really don't understand the people who claim its the other way around.
sorry its off topic

[rezaf]

I also think Panzer General was/is more unpredictable than Panzer Corps. Really don't understand the people who claim its the other way around.
sorry its off topic

You could just reload a savegame in the extreme cases in PG.

Since it's been established that my views on these things are downright retarded anyway: I maintain that a big problem is that you get to see ALL of the disastrous outliers happing after excellent preditioncs, but almost NONE of the outstanding outliers turning certain defeat into a huge triumph.
In other words, you attack at 0/8 and see it turn into 4/2, and seeing it kinda sucks.
But you DON'T see the same effect turning 8/0 into 2/4 in your favor, because ... raise hands if you attack facing 8/0 odds.

Yeah, I know, retarted of me. Sorry.
_____
rezaf

[Tarrak]

Since it's been established that my views on these things are downright retarded anyway: I maintain that a big problem is that you get to see ALL of the disastrous outliers happing after excellent preditioncs, but almost NONE of the outstanding outliers turning certain defeat into a huge triumph.
In other words, you attack at 0/8 and see it turn into 4/2, and seeing it kinda sucks.
But you DON'T see the same effect turning 8/0 into 2/4 in your favor, because ... raise hands if you attack facing 8/0 odds.

Well yes you are right no one will attack with odds of 8/0 but sometimes i do attack with odds like f.e. 3/5 and if it suddenly turns into 0/8 it's still a nice triumph. Additionally you are omitting moments where you get attacked and that can very well happen with odds like 8/0 against you. Granted you are not going to see the prediction but experienced players knows that in certain cases it was as bad.

[Rudankort]

You could just reload a savegame in the extreme cases in PG.

Well in PzC you can reload game and... not repeat that bloody attack.

[rezaf]

Well yes you are right no one will attack with odds of 8/0 but sometimes i do attack with odds like f.e. 3/5 and if it suddenly turns into 0/8 it's still a nice triumph. Additionally you are omitting moments where you get attacked and that can very well happen with odds like 8/0 against you. Granted you are not going to see the prediction but experienced players knows that in certain cases it was as bad.

Of course you get to see brilliant moments of glory, just less than humilating defeats, as you usually don't attack with horrible odds.
Noone is saying this doesn't happen AT ALL. Nobody is saying remove all randomness. Nobody is saying remove the bad results.

If the player is attacking, of course Rudankort is right, you can reload and not attack. However, the random seed is used in a way that, attacking with another unit on the other end of the map will have the same kind of horrible result. The best you can do is waste an artillery attack or a bombing run, or attack in a place with 0/1 predictions or something similar to minimize the impact of the bad roll. No matter what you do, you HAVE to face the bad roll, there's no way around it. When the disaster happens during the enemy turn, you have to reload a savegame and replay a good portion of the game, just because there's no friggin reseed.
But wait, this was not my point!

My point is that this effect will reduce the amount of the good outliers and increase the overall percentage of bad outliers you get to see. That's all.
_____
rezaf

[Rudankort]

Rudankort, could you give your opinion on making the predictions more reliable the more experience a unit has? Is it even feasible?

Well, before I can comment on this, how exactly is this supposed to work? Let's say, the prediction generated by the game is X1-Y1. Real battle results you are going to face are X2-Y2. What will a green unit see? What will an elite 5-star unit see?

[impar]

Rudankort, could you give your opinion on making the predictions more reliable the more experience a unit has? Is it even feasible?

Well, before I can comment on this, how exactly is this supposed to work? Let's say, the prediction generated by the game is X1-Y1. Real battle results you are going to face are X2-Y2. What will a green unit see? What will an elite 5-star unit see?

A 0-star unit attacks, the predictions would be as reliable as they are now.
The 1, 2, 3, 4-star units attacks would have an increasing higher prediction reliablity until the 5-star unit attacks, where the prediction would be very close to the real result.
Dont think the 5-star prediction should be exact real battle result, it would be boring.

Apologizing for the mad Paint skillz, it would graphically look some thing like this:


The key aspect is introducing a reliablity factor to the displayed predictions depending on unit experience.
Thoughts? Feasible?

[_Flin_]

Rudankort, could you give your opinion on making the predictions more reliable the more experience a unit has? Is it even feasible?

Well, before I can comment on this, how exactly is this supposed to work? Let's say, the prediction generated by the game is X1-Y1. Real battle results you are going to face are X2-Y2. What will a green unit see? What will an elite 5-star unit see?

Well, actually it doesn't work. The only thing how you could achieve this is to remove the variance in the "dice roll", and especially prevent extreme outliers to arrive in packs.

You'd need to save the prediction and then reroll the dice if they aren't in certain boundaries against the predicition. Like 6-1 prediction. A 5-Star unit has minkill of 5 and maxloss of 2. A 1-Star unit has a minkill of 3 and a maxloss of 4. Or something like that.

While this might work and even be a nice feature, it really sounds for me like something that is so deep inside the engine mechanics that it will not happen.

[soldier]

Getting back to experience.
If it is true (and it appears to be to be) that units with higher initiative (ie tanks) are able to get more advantage out of their experience than those with low initiative, then i think there might be a problem with the combat mechanics somewhere. I would have thought that the advantages experience provides should act like a blanket covering all unit types equally and not favouring certain types in any way. Certainly experienced troops vs green recruits get little out of it but a Panther or T-34 85 seems too. I'm not sure how best to fix it but it sounds like it needs improving there.

[deducter]

The three areas where experience combined with overstrength I feel out of whack.

Air units, experience makes a massive difference in performance. This applies for all air units. Bombers of all types gain exp too quickly, and STR bombers, because they rare cause kills, almost never get heroes.

Artillery gains experience too quickly, and they become exceedingly powerful when experienced/overstrengthed.

Infantry do not pick up EXP benefits readily. Take the Wehrmacht infantry, it needs 3 stars before it gains a +1 attack. In close terrain they need 5 stars before getting + 1 defense. Experienced infantry should get somewhat better initiative and attack and much better defense in close terrain.

[rezaf]

You raise an excellent point there deducter.
I just finished the '39 DLC with my experimental XP settings and the slower growth in XP I ran with (I started with 10% - raised this to 25% for another run - and slowly lowered percentages for each additional star) really underlined this. I had a very hard time getting infantry and tanks to decent experience, because they're always on the frontline and prone to losing men, and replacing them is, relatively spoken, extremely expensive compared to non-frontline troops like artillery - and on top of that infantry doesn't even benefit all that much from the XP gained.
I had only a single infantry unit with two stars XP, and just barely, but all my arty and airforce was at the cap, even with 10% growth for the first star instead of 100%. I'm not sure how to address this, and even if I had an idea I'm sure it'd be dismissed, so I won't even think about it - but I think there's some room for improvement there. Like I said, good point.

Oh, and I'd recommend anyone to try and make a run of the DLC campaign with slower XP settings. It makes growth feel more natural, in my opinion, and I thought it was nice that my troops were not constantly banging against the glass ceiling that is the XP cap - which is a somewhat clumsy solution to the problem at hand. Even losing troops wasn't that much of an issue, and for infantry, I have to say I didn't really miss the overstrength that terribly. Oddly enough, I thought playing was even more relaxing, as I still believe it happens too often that despite a flawless prediction your overstrength troops take losses, and if you don't have any overstrength to lose ...

Like I said, try it, it doesn't make the game considerably more difficult. If you're unsure, raise the starting XP of green replacements to 50%, that should help you out a bit to gain XP more steadily despite taking losses.
_____
rezaf

[soldier]

You can alter the rate experience is gained
How do you do it ?

[El_Condoro]

Gamerules.pzdat in the Data folder.

[soldier]

Cool, might try that

[Rudankort]

Apologizing for the mad Paint skillz, it would graphically look some thing like this:


The key aspect is introducing a reliablity factor to the displayed predictions depending on unit experience.
Thoughts? Feasible?

So, if I understood correctly, the more experience a unit has, the more close to displayed prediction the battle outcome becomes. Experienced unit can no longer get much worse result than displayed, but also it loses ability to pull off a brilliant, better than expected performance. Why would we want to make this a feature of elite units specifically?

[_Flin_]

Why would we want to make this a feature of elite units specifically?

Because they have elite officers that have seen many a battle and can give an accurate estimate of the situation at hand and have the ability to assess possible risk with higher accuracy and report that to high command

[Rudankort]

Because they have elite officers that have seen many a battle and can give an accurate estimate of the situation at hand and have the ability to assess possible risk with higher accuracy and report that to high command

I know how to justify this feature. What I was asking is, why would we want it in the game? Why artificially limit effectiveness of elite units, at a cost of avoiding some risk (which the player should know how to avoid anyway, because by the time he gets elite units he is already a decent player)?

[impar]

What I was asking is, why would we want it in the game? Why artificially limit effectiveness of elite units, at a cost of avoiding some risk (which the player should know how to avoid anyway, because by the time he gets elite units he is already a decent player)?

Have you ever seen a player complaining about better than predicted results? The complaints usually are "I attacked with my elite tank and it was trashed by a conscript unit".
Those complaints would diminish and experience would offer a higher gaming value than just combat itself.

The degree of the reliabily could be tweaked. So that veteran units would have some advantage but only elite units would have the full benefit.

The dotted lines.