Prestige Soft Cap

[MartyWard]

I try to say we don't need game developers to tell which units to buy. Let players make the choice. Sry my english.

I agree. Let the players play they way they want. After all it's a game.

[Iwfan53]

I echo the comments of others here who have said the soft cap should be an option that you can easily toggle on and off from the settings menu rather than something you need to alter the game files to effect (since as I am playing on an iPad that is not an option). Right now I am muddling my way through 44East with carefully conserved prestige somewhere between 14 and 16 k as I slowly upgrade one tiger 1 to a king tiger each mission or so.

I also honeslty feel the soft cap would have/should have been implemented differently. As opposed to penalizing the player for fielding expensive units it should kick in if the players prestige itself gets too high. This would encourage players to keep feeding the prestige they have into the fire to try and secure those DVs which will replenish it, instead of the current metagame marathon the eastern GC is where you need to store up oodles of prestige over the first few years then awkardly coast on it through 43, 44' and 45.


Also as one more side question, do the units you have in reserve effect the cap in any way?

[Aloo]

I echo the comments of others here who have said the soft cap should be an option that you can easily toggle on and off from the settings menu rather than something you need to alter the game files to effect (since as I am playing on an iPad that is not an option). Right now I am muddling my way through 44East with carefully conserved prestige somewhere between 14 and 16 k as I slowly upgrade one tiger 1 to a king tiger each mission or so.

I also honeslty feel the soft cap would have/should have been implemented differently. As opposed to penalizing the player for fielding expensive units it should kick in if the players prestige itself gets too high. This would encourage players to keep feeding the prestige they have into the fire to try and secure those DVs which will replenish it, instead of the current metagame marathon the eastern GC is where you need to store up oodles of prestige over the first few years then awkardly coast on it through 43, 44' and 45.


Also as one more side question, do the units you have in reserve effect the cap in any way?

This is something to consider. With the soft cap kicking in late in the game, palyers without knowledge will just get irritated. Also the cap should work the same way in all the campaigns 39-45.

[Iwfan53]

I echo the comments of others here who have said the soft cap should be an option that you can easily toggle on and off from the settings menu rather than something you need to alter the game files to effect (since as I am playing on an iPad that is not an option). Right now I am muddling my way through 44East with carefully conserved prestige somewhere between 14 and 16 k as I slowly upgrade one tiger 1 to a king tiger each mission or so.

I also honeslty feel the soft cap would have/should have been implemented differently. As opposed to penalizing the player for fielding expensive units it should kick in if the players prestige itself gets too high. This would encourage players to keep feeding the prestige they have into the fire to try and secure those DVs which will replenish it, instead of the current metagame marathon the eastern GC is where you need to store up oodles of prestige over the first few years then awkardly coast on it through 43, 44' and 45.


Also as one more side question, do the units you have in reserve effect the cap in any way?

This is something to consider. With the soft cap kicking in late in the game, palyers without knowledge will just get irritated. Also the cap should work the same way in all the campaigns 39-45.

Actually, in retrospect I would be in a favor of it not working the same way in all the campaigns, or to out it more clearly working the same "way" but not by the same measurements.

The 400 prestiege unit average is perfectly reasonable throughout the early war years, but it feels incredibly restrictive by the time you get to 44, I am probably going to be stuck getting a pittance of prestiege in 45 if most of my tanks are king tigers and most of my planes are jets.

I would thus suggest the soft cap amount should be raised by X amount (playtestes /people more familiar with the game than me can figure out a proper value for "X" p) with each campaign the way that the hard cap on experience also goes up. So if the soft cap normal started at 300 or so points in Poland, it would be 350 in France, 400 in Russia, 450 at Stalingrad, 500 at Kursk, 550 at Korsun and 600 in Berlin, this approach would still penalize people who want to field an army of nothing but Tigers and Flying Wings, but at the same time would make it easier to actually gain some noticeable prestiege in the later war years if you play well enough.

[hs1611]

Also as one more side question, do the units you have in reserve effect the cap in any way?

No, only deployed units affect the softcap.

[MartyWard]

I echo the comments of others here who have said the soft cap should be an option that you can easily toggle on and off from the settings menu rather than something you need to alter the game files to effect (since as I am playing on an iPad that is not an option). Right now I am muddling my way through 44East with carefully conserved prestige somewhere between 14 and 16 k as I slowly upgrade one tiger 1 to a king tiger each mission or so.

Can't you switch it off by going to 1.14 rules?

[ThorHa]

Yakovlevo, DlC 43 East, first of the 3 Kursk scenarios, difficulty General.

Without making a major mistake and with a mixed corps ("Only" 5 Tigers, 1 Panther, 2 Fw 190, moderate overstrength between 12 and 13 on all units, mixed artillery with still some cheap units, still 8 infantry brought to the battlefield) I lost 2.700 prestige after the DV, repairs and renewed overstrength counted at the start of the next scenario Oboyan. After having read the open beta feedback I expect the same loss ratio for Oboyan, Kursk Armoury South and Prokhorovka, meaning in just 4 scenarios of DLC 43 I will have lost more than 10.000 prestige.

This is not a particular problem as my starting prestige for Yakovlevo was more than 40.000 after repair before upgrades. And it still is 34.000 at the start of Oboyan. But it triggers a question:

Roughly calculated my core average on the battlefield is in the 500 range, I should still get the majority of the scenario DV prestige award. But I am quite sure that a better force composition (more Tigers and Fw 190, Brummbaers instead of StuG III B etc.) would have yielded lower damage, although applied to more expensive units.

Is it at the end of the day a better decision to maximise quality despite the soft cap? I cant judge, do not plan to repeat a tiring scenario just for the sake of testing. But other players out may have some insights?

Regards,
Thorsten

[antoniocapo]

Yakovlevo, DlC 43 East, first of the 3 Kursk scenarios, difficulty General.

Without making a major mistake and with a mixed corps ("Only" 5 Tigers, 1 Panther, 2 Fw 190, moderate overstrength between 12 and 13 on all units, mixed artillery with still some cheap units, still 8 infantry brought to the battlefield) I lost 2.700 prestige after the DV, repairs and renewed overstrength counted at the start of the next scenario Oboyan. After having read the open beta feedback I expect the same loss ratio for Oboyan, Kursk Armoury South and Prokhorovka, meaning in just 4 scenarios of DLC 43 I will have lost more than 10.000 prestige.

This is not a particular problem as my starting prestige for Yakovlevo was more than 40.000 after repair before upgrades. And it still is 34.000 at the start of Oboyan. But it triggers a question:

Roughly calculated my core average on the battlefield is in the 500 range, I should still get the majority of the scenario DV prestige award. But I am quite sure that a better force composition (more Tigers and Fw 190, Brummbaers instead of StuG III B etc.) would have yielded lower damage, although applied to more expensive units.

Is it at the end of the day a better decision to maximise quality despite the soft cap? I cant judge, do not plan to repeat a tiring scenario just for the sake of testing. But other players out may have some insights?

Regards,
Thorsten

You ask a very interesting question which the answer to is what makes this soft cap mechanic so intriguing. The generic answer is to use equipment that is at least as good as the opposition, never of lower quality. Being as good should be ok because your core usually will have more experience than the enemy in DLC. I can offer the following suggestions to try to net some prestige or at least to approximate breaking even between scenarios:

1. Remove all transport from all your infantry. Infantry is good to overstrength due to cheap cost, and even cheaper with no transports.
2. Dont overstrength your FW-190, they are far superior to the russian planes in 43. Also the overstrength of fighters affects greatly the soft cap and also the replacement costs, which go high due to those pesky T-90 SP AA everywhere!
3. Have all 6 SE units be your Tigers! (you played for that since 1939 right?). SE units dont count for soft cap so those should be your most costly units and can overstrenght at will.
4. Surrender the russian heavy tanks: T34/43 and KV1, lots of prestige there if you get 3-5 per scenario.
5. Capture every city and specially the equipment that can be captured too. Those are extra prestige if you disband them on next deploy phase.
6. Some scenarios offer prestige per turn (all Kursks do i think), in those play to the last turn even if you could win earlier.

You may already know all that of course but i wanted to try help. What i read is that you had to use 1939-1943 to bank prestige as you are going to lose it all in 1944-45. In those years, i read you need to field the most high quality equipment which will make you broke fast.

Good luck to us both, we will need it, Im currently tackling Kursk Armory South in '43

edit: I found out that the Stug IIIB actually does more damage than the Brumbar due to the Stugs higher rate of fire, so maybe dont upgrade those. Plus they are cheaper and have more ammo so you use more often per scenario.

[Resolute]

These are my prestige numbers for 44/45 the last time I did the GC on Rommel:
Start of 44 East including replacements ~22k
Start of 45 East including replacements ~3.5k

So this might give you some idea.

45 East is actually a lot easier then 44 so I just managed to overstrength most of my units to 11 and get by. I highly recommend to upgrade your SE Units to Tiger II's when they become available.

[ThorHa]

Antoniocarpo, thanks for the tricks - I am using them all already, except the "no overstrength on FW 190). Still I think I will have to finish dlc 43 with 34 k (after Yakovlevo) minus 8 (after Prokhorovka) equals 26 plus some for the last scenarios where the open beta reports indicate these are a tad easier.

And I was foolish enough to repeat Yakovlevo with a lot more upgraded armour, but much less overstrength. A Pz IV with strength 13 roughly equals a Panther D with strength 11 in cost, the latter being vastly superior mainly due to its much higher Initiative.

I agree on the StuG III B, I kept my pair for now on strength 14. And I did find an additional method to keep soft cap down a bit - I use 3 Marder III M, which are with experience just good enough to shield vulnerable units from armour, but have to be kept under arty cover at all times due to their vulnerability to enemy infantry.

I pity everybody arriving in dlc 43 with less than 20 k in prestige reserve - the devs really should have placed a hint in the manual.

Regards,
Thorsten

[ThorHa]

@Resolute - you managed Berlin with that?

Regards,
Thorsten

[jaggy]

There are three values: there is a prestige 'floor', which is set at 400 stock. This means that as soon as the average value of your deployed core units exceeds this total, it will start to lower prestige income. The second setting is the prestige 'ceiling', which is 800 stock, and this is the point where the soft cap maximizes and stays at the 0.2 coefficient you mention, which is the third setting, and this will determine by how much prestige income will be lowered when the soft cap 'ceiling' is reached.

NormalPrestige 400 (the 'floor' from where the cap will start to reduce prestige income)
MaxPrestige 800 (the 'ceiling' were it will it the maximum prestige reduction)
MinKoff 20 (in %, so this means a 0.2 multiplier)

@ThVN - Just need a clarification. As to "MinKoff 20", if one wants more prestige, should this value be increased or decreased? And how is the prestige calculated using this coefficient? Is there a minimum amount of prestige (percentage-wise) that you will definitely earn regardless of how strong one's core force is? That is, even if you field, as an example 20 Tigers, etc, you will still get a default minimum percentage? Thanks in advance.

[Tarrak]

@ThVN - Just need a clarification. As to "MinKoff 20", if one wants more prestige, should this value be increased or decreased? And how is the prestige calculated using this coefficient? Is there a minimum amount of prestige (percentage-wise) that you will definitely earn regardless of how strong one's core force is? That is, even if you field, as an example 20 Tigers, etc, you will still get a default minimum percentage? Thanks in advance.

I am not ThvN but i can answer your questions as well, i hope you don't mind. Basically MinKoff sets the minimum amount of prestige percents you will always get no matter how expensive your core will be. So increasing the value will give you more prestige as soon your average core costs exceed a certain limit. You can read up the exact details how the soft prestige cap works in this thread.

[Resolute]

@Resolute - you managed Berlin with that?

Regards,
Thorsten

Yes. Berlin is def. the hardest scenario in 45 East and that was the one where I blew all the prestige I had (~3.2k) to overstrength most of my Tiger II's to 13-14.

[antoniocapo]

A Pz IV with strength 13 roughly equals a Panther D with strength 11 in cost, the latter being vastly superior mainly due to its much higher Initiative.

Also using the Panther and Tigers even if not overstrength discourages the AI from attacking you, so you fight on your own terms which is more advantageous saving prestige from losses. I had to replace all my PZIII and IV as the AI liked to attack them even if i "won" each engagement i took too many losses and it also affected my frontline and strategic position. Sometimes forcing me to buy replacements during the scenario which are too costly. I prefer a Tiger at 10 than a PZIVH at 14-15 any day. And King Tigers is autobuy for all the SE when available.

Many better players than I also use AA and AT as they are cheaper and can be devastating if used properly. However i think it might be too late as i have not a single experienced AA or AT unit in reserve and its already the middle of 1943.

[captainjack]

In my limited experience, you can still develop green AT in 42 East and (with care) in 43 East. AT are relatively cheap, so are cheap to patch up and if you can get them to at least 2* they start to hit quite hard, but you have to learn to use them more defensively than tanks. I think that learning to use them in 43 East could be quite a challenge, although you could always stick them in a defensive line (there will be plenty of these in 43 and 44) park as much artillery behind them as you can spare and wait. That seems to work quite well.

On artillery, I prefer the extra ammo and better HA of the Stug 3b over the extra armour and higher SA of the first upgrade, but the Brummbar has good defence and enough ammo for equal or better performance so I always upgrade to Brummbar at the first opportunity. I'm still trying to get my head round the trade off between higher rate of fire and slightly better attack (presently I'm thinking of sdkfz 7/1 vs 7/2, but arty will have the same issues). I think that higher attack is usually better if using dice chess, but if using full random, at very low chance of kills you might be better off with one or two extra attacks to increase the possibility of getting one or two lucky shots.

[Resolute]

I started to really like the StuH42 due to its switch mode. The values aren't that great but with a decent attack hero they can really help finishing weak enemy units off.

[ThorHa]

Antoniocarpo, my former PG experience got me starting to develop 3 decent AT in 1940, where they are actually slightly superior to tanks, same for the usual odd pair of 88 AA, which in 1940 is the overall best unit to have in your core. Although you have to learn how to use them best (deploy directly behind an armour screen, weather the enemy attack with some strength losses on your armour, advance 88 one hex, fire artillery first and then kill ).

What the manual definitely is missing is the reduced freedom of core composition compared to Panzer General. While in PG - as the devs themselves stated correctly - a wide mix of approaches works just fine (from big wing proponents to tank fanatics, with or without arty) in my current experience the only reliable prestige saver is lots of artillery, up to 25 or even 30% of your core, IF covered by defensive fighters and or AA. This strategy is so much superior to any alternative that it narrows the strategic choices of a player very much, which is a clear consequence of game design choices.

Regards,
Thorsten

[kverdon]

I'm replaying the Grand Campaign West on FM on my IPAD and finding the Prestige Soft Cap almost makes extremely difficult. It is bad enough in the Grand Campaign East but at least there you can build up a large amount of prestige to get you through 1944 to 1945. In the West you get stripped of almost all your prestige in the beginning of 1942/43 and then slowly gain it back while also trying to rebuild your core forces. Without bucket of reserve prestige by the end of 1944 it becomes very difficult to rebuild after each scenario and you find yourself in a downward spiral as you go into 1945. I've not been over-strengthening units over 12. I only have 1 Me262 and the only saving grace is that most of the 1945W scenarios at the start do not require Air assets. Hopefully I will be able to finish the campaign.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

How many of the '44-'45 Eastern scenarios give any pp/turn at all?

- BNC