Self-imposed scarcity mechanic

[Scrapulous]

Inspired by this thread ( viewtopic.php?f=121&t=36484&sid=e6e5802 ... 8cc5c0ac94 ) by Uran21 about potentially limiting supplies of new units, I started a new Grand Campaign, imposing some house rules on myself in order to simulate limits on the availability of new units.

To summarize the sentiment in that thread briefly: using only prestige to limit unit purchasing allows a player who has hoarded prestige to purchase ahistorical amounts of new units. One extreme example is turning every armored unit into a Tiger I in December of 1942. This wouldn't have been possible because of the limited production of materiel. That thread has some good debate about different ways to limit production, but I tested the suggestion that I'm most interested in.

These are the rules I'm enforcing on my new GC playthrough:
1: When a unit becomes available, you may purchase/upgrade one of that unit.
2: When a month has passed from the time of availability, you may purchase/upgrade a second instance of that unit.
3: Continue to add one to the maximum number of units for each subsequent month that passes after the time of availability.

So the maximum number of units of any unit model (not counting units that you start with) is (1 + n), where n is the number of months that have passed since the unit model in question became available.

More rules:
4: No upgrading of units during a mission, only during the pre-mission stage. This is perhaps more strict than necessary.
5: Only one Sturmpanzer I ever.
6: SE units are exceptions: they can be viewed as their own unit type and since they are gifts from High Command and already quite restricted in gameplay, and since there is precedent for them to be considered exempt from unit caps (since they don't count against the deployed unit limits), it's justifiable in terms of game mechanics and "story" considerations. There is no unit cap on SE units: High Command gives you what it wants to give you.

So far I am at Calais in GC '40 (mission 7 of DLC 2), and this has been quite a bit of fun. My core force is much different than it usually is at this point. For example, the current date at Calais is May 21, 1940. The SdKfz 251/1 halftrack became available to me on April 9, 1940 (at the beginning of the Oslo mission - perhaps earlier according to the equipment file, but the in-game date when I was alerted about their existence was April 9). Normally in GC '40 all of my infantry and my light and medium towed ordinance all use SdKfz 251/1s. But currently, at Calais, I have only two (since it was introduced less than two months ago), one on each of my engineers. It makes a very big difference to have most of my infantry and my artillery using Opel trucks instead of halftracks to get around, especially in winter conditions. I suspect that this is somewhat more realistic than immediately buying halftracks for every unit just because I could afford it - new materiel takes time to be manufactured and more time to be distributed throughout an army.

Other examples: I have two Bf 110s, but only one has been upgraded from model C to model D, because the Bf 110D was introduced on May 10, 1940, less than a month ago. My two towed artillery pieces are a 15cm sFH 18, and the old 10.5cm K29(p) that I picked up outside Warsaw. I can't wait for June 10 (which won't be until Dijon, the second to last scenario in GC '40) to upgrade the polish piece to another sFH 18.

So far I have four armor units. One is a Pz IVD (introduced May 10, less than a month ago, upgraded from my old Pz IIC), two are Pz IIIFs (introduced April 9, less than two months ago, upgraded from my Pz IB and Pz 38(t)A). I am at my self-imposed limit for both of them, so if I wanted to buy another armor unit, I would have to choose a Pz I, Pz II or Pz 38 model.

My method is rather crude. It ignores actual production values, and it also ignores that refit of existing models is often faster than production of entirely new ones. I make no allowance for the refit concept: a Pz IVD will have a different unit cap than a Pz IVE in my system. It also will not represent well the declining German industrial capacity in the later years of the war (although other elements of the game also ignore this, such as unit quality remaining constant despite actual decline in the quality of materials - less aluminum, lower grade steel, etc). But it does force a more distributed core unit composition, and it also imposes some very interesting limits on how I can build and play my core. For example, I would like to deploy another 8.8cm FlaK 36, but I don't have enough available SdKfz 7s to tow them, so I would have to leave the new unit with a movement of 1.

But I recommend trying it for anybody who is interested in trying to play with a simulated availability model. There are probably players here who are much more knowledgable than I am who can come up with an even more accurate system than I have.

[deducter]

An interesting idea, but keep in mind in the later years scenarios can be months apart. For instance, the Tiger I becomes available in December 1942 and the beginning of Kursk is July 1941. You can have about 7 Tigers in your core according to this model, which sounds quite like a few. Some units like the Bf 109F is introduced in mid-1940, so at the start of GC41 you can buy 6-7, which is more than you would need, so effectively there is no cap.

I don't think an artificial restriction like this is needed to make the gameplay more "historical." I think I achieved a similar goal in the GCs by modding the equipment file. There's no need to artificially restrict yourself. You can get whatever your prestige allows, but you might find that you don't have nearly enough prestige to do everything.

[Scrapulous]

It's a good point, and one that I've considered. I'm planning to place a hard cap on the top-end units. Perhaps 2 Tiger class units and 4 Panthers, one Me-262, and so on.

I've been considering using this article about the numbers of armored units produced as a guide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_arm ... rld_War_II

Of course, that would mean that I'd get one Tiger class for every ten Pz IV units, which would effectively mean a cap of 0 or 1 for the Tigers and 2 or 3 for the Panthers, if you assume that battlefield distribution should follow the same proportions as numbers manufactured. That's clearly a bogus assumption - some AFVs will have a higher failure rate than others, which will mean that they'd be overrepresented if you follow the manufacturing proportions.

You can get whatever your prestige allows, but you might find that you don't have nearly enough prestige to do everything.

I understand. That's not quite the same thing as what I'm aiming for, of course. If my only limitation is prestige, then there's no reason for me not to spend it all on the most cost-effective upgrades, which isn't a luxury that battlefield commanders had.