Suggestion: Increase effect of Experience

[AgentTBC]

We've been using the editor to test the effects of experience on combat in another thread, and right now the results are VERY VERY small even for a full 10,000 experience unit vs a 0 experience unit. Spending the money on experienced replacements doesn't look worth it for virtually any units.

I strongly suggest significantly increasing the effects of experience differences on combat. Right now a 5 star elite unit fighting a noob unit expects MAYBE a half-point shift in casualties in its favor vs a 0 star unit on the same attack. That's crazy small for the cost of getting a unit to 5 strength. I'm not even sure its worth doing if the effect of experience was doubled!

So, please consider significantly increasing how much of a difference experience makes in combat. Particularly but not limited to air and naval units which do not retreat and so get none of the "lower casualties during retreats" bonuses.

[Horst]

I also feel the PzC xp-system worked better by adding certain bonus points to specific classes, instead of the percentage bonuses in OOB.
Low-stat units simply don’t get enough bonuses in OOB while high-stat units, like battleships, become too powerful and invincible. An experienced stone-age barbarian with club should still win against a green laser-gunner who has no clue in which direction he should point what side of the gun.

The way it is done in PzC as example: infantry get +1 per star in Infantry Attack, but only +0.5 per star in Vehicle Attack. Anti-tank units get no bonus to Infantry Attack, but +2 in Vehicle Attack per star.
Even if OOB fluently calculates experience bonuses from 0 to 10k, it should be able to use derived decimal values for accurate combat results according to defined per-star bonuses.

[AgentTBC]

Since I said "virtually any unit" and people might not read every thread, the higher the base value of your units attack/defense the more of a difference you'll see. So it's worth getting your Battleships experienced. It may be worth getting the very top-end tanks with 20+ hard attack experience (or getting a wimpy tank experienced which you later upgrade). I don't think it's ever going to be worth getting an infantry or air unit experienced since even the top-end fighters have air attack values in the low teens.

[Bylandt11]

Particularly but not limited to air and naval units which do not retreat and so get none of the "lower casualties during retreats" bonuses.

Even for infantry, higher casualties for inexperienced units are no problem if these only cost a fraction of the elite units. And the "survivability" doesn't matter much if the old unit has no remarkable or special qualities and repairing it costs more than building a new unit.

Dear dev's, a lot of the fun of campaign games consists of slowly getting attached to your core units and grooming them to be ever more efficient on the battlefield. To have a unit perform 10% better in the last battle of the campaign than in the first battle is pretty underwhelming.

[AgentTBC]

You're right about higher casualties not mattering if the cost is low! If an experienced unit takes 1 damage and costs 20 to repair while a noob unit takes 2 damage and takes 6 to repair you're better off with the noob unit. And that's BEFORE taking into account how much it cost to get the unit to experienced status.

[apec]

Hi,
Is there a plan to modify the effect of unit experience?
Based on what discussed in this tread is almost useless investing in unit experience (apart battleships). For a single player game perspective this is a serious miss.

[grenadier98]

I'm at Midway US campaign now on Colonel difficulty. I restarted my campaign after wasting resources on elite replacements on my first try. I really enjoy the game and it's quite addictive and some game mechanics are way better than PC - first of all the supplysystem.
But I have to agree the high cost of experienced replacements and the very tiny effect of experienced troops compared to green ones should be changed. That's an aspect which makes campaign games more satisfying for the player. Experience should not turn units into the kind of out of the world superunits like some units in PC with overstrength and ridiculous heroes, but it should make more of difference as it is now. Btw I like the fact that you cannot overstrength units.

[Longasc]

Right now only few units benefit from experience and it's rather detrimental for the player to pay for elite replacements in general.

I got experienced 5 star fighters and tac bombers nevertheless and guess wht, they might do 1 point more damage than an inexperienced fighter and take 1 less. Sometimes no change.
I like that there is no overstrength mechanic and also think experience should not matter TOO much. The price for Elite replacements is for the current state of affairs by far too high.

This requires some serious thinking. I am quite with Horst in this regard, the % based system is only creating monsters from units with already exceptional stats and near useless to almost every other type of unit.

Let's see...

[Horst]

The commanders already give straight +X bonuses, so why not doing the same with experience?

[apec]

The commanders already give straight +X bonuses, so why not doing the same with experience?

I like this approach, however this should be put in the context of the units basic stats , i.e. adding +1 attack to an early inf. unit has not the same effect of +1 attack added to late inf. units or battleships.

[Decaff]

Is it just me or does everyone have difficulty getting experience for their ground units? It seems to take forever and I've not gotten a single infantry unit to 5 stars in either campaign.

[Longasc]

I only got Battleships, Dive Bombers, Fighters and Cruisers to 5 stars. In that order.

Infantry and Tanks are hard to raise, even with constant elite replacements.

[grenadier98]

How did you do this? Battleships and Cruisers is one thing, because with some skill you can avoid them being hit, but my Fighters and Bombers take damage very often and I don't see a chance to avoid it because the often have to attack enemy units which return fire. The replacements are very expensive, too expansive...

Additionally when you repair units with normal replacements their experience drops lower than it should be. i.e. I had a Dauntless with 2910 experience and strength 8 repaired and the experience went down to 2240. I think it should be 8 * 2910 + 2 * 0 = 2328. This makes it additional expansive and hard to get experienced units.

Also I wonder if core units have some kind of a bad modifier - why do I get worse prognosis when I attack an enemy plane with one of my core Wildcats compared to a non core Wildcat? Both units have the same equipment, same readiness, same strength and the core Wildcat had even more experience?

Don't get my wrong, I really like the game and the mechanics are better compared to PC/PG,it's just the experience part which annoys me - well and some scripted events, but on the other you need them to simulate historical events, so it's ok.

[Horst]

Also I wonder if core units have some kind of a bad modifier - why do I get worse prognosis when I attack an enemy plane with one of my core Wildcats compared to a non core Wildcat? Both units have the same equipment, same readiness, same strength and the core Wildcat had even more experience?

I see no difference when I compare aux with core Wildcats of the same experience (0 or 10k). Make a screenshot next time if such unexplainable prediction results show.

[grenadier98]

Also I wonder if core units have some kind of a bad modifier - why do I get worse prognosis when I attack an enemy plane with one of my core Wildcats compared to a non core Wildcat? Both units have the same equipment, same readiness, same strength and the core Wildcat had even more experience?

I see no difference when I compare aux with core Wildcats of the same experience (0 or 10k). Make a screenshot next time if such unexplainable prediction results show.

I have another example, but this one shows perfectly what I mean.

[Horst]

That looks indeed very strange. When you initiate combat, are the results about the same or could it be only a messed-up prediction calculation?
I can't think of any logical explanation there. Let's hope a developer can enlighten us on this.

[grenadier98]

I have saved this and tried it a few times. The results for the core fighter are always worse - if attack with the non core first it is 4 : 0, followed by the core fighter with 3 : 1. If attack with the core fighter first it is 4 : 1, followed by the non core with 3 : 0.
Unfortunatly I have experienced similar worse prognosis for core units on other occasions as well. This is annoying because it makes the already hard part of developing experienced core units even harder and I would even call it unfair. Where is the logic in getting worse results for the same unit only because it is a core unit? and it even has more experience...

[Horst]

Even a half-star can already improve the odds. At least in my game, I haven't noticed such weird results.
The combat prediction is not totally accurate, as you can even damage one point if it shows 0 damage. I don't know the mechanics, but it looks like that each strength point is a decimal number. That's how it looked when I tested it by attacking a single unit several times for predicted 0s. After the same number of attacks, one strength point was always lost, so there doesn't seem to be a total invulnerability. Anyway, that's not really your issue there.

[grenadier98]

Yes, as you said - I also hope some developer can tell us about this strange thing.

[InDisguise]

Hey gents.

I'm digging out this thread from it's shallow grave rather than making a new one and cluttering the forum.

I finally have time to play again and dive into the US campaign.
Was there any change on how experience affects combat? I know experience is gained much faster now than it used to be, but is it actually doing more too? A cursory search across the forum didn't give me the answer.