I am disappointed already

[IainMcNeil]

Just to clarify on technology. There are multiple branches for each technology area. Say you invested in armour research. This has 3 branches - offensive, defensive, AT. Research is split between the 3 areas, and each has a random factor built in so each progresses at different rates. You can also choose to focus on one branch at the cost of the others. This will mean there are subtle variations in armour abilities from side to side.

[SMK-at-work]

I'd like to see tech being tradeable too - eg the US develops Sherman tanks, and can equip the British with them even if hte Brits are still producing Crusaders.

Yes, but IMHO it would only make sense if there were nation specific tech levels. I would not like to have all allied countries having the same tank,

And yet that is exactly what happened on the allied side - even the Soviets fielded about 5000 Shermans, and every other allied army from New Zealand to Poland used them!

And tech was transferable - later British tank designs used US 75mm guns, P51's were a war winner only when the British Merlin was fitted, British radar technology was the starting point for the Americans, and the proximity fuse was invented by the Poms and perfected by the Yanks.

However even without getting lots of German equipment the "minor" axis allies managed to up-tech themselves - IIRC Hungarian tanks started the war with a 40mm/2 pdr derivative, went to the German short 75 then the long 75. Italian pre-war fighters with the German DB601 & 605 series engines were formidable planes in 1942-43, the Hetzer JagdPanzer was based upon a Hungarian design, Hungarians made a successs of the Me-210 that German pilots found a nightmare, and even sold them back to Germany!!

So having national technologies in silo's so they never mix isn't a good idea either.

which by the way would be the same an the German opponent at the same tech level, just with a different pseudo-historical designation.

Well the Germans did send small numbers of their various equipments to allies - tanks and a/c mainly, but they always had the problem that they never had enough for themselves let alone fully equipping other nations.

The US had surplus production capacity - they could make more "things" than they had manpower to use, hence the rest of the allies got the benefit, and this needs to be accounted for.

The only way I've sen this done before (I forget where) is that production of "things" results in "points" of various types - eg the USA produces 150 "armour" points, 100 "fighter" points, 125 "Bomber" points, 300 "Infantry equipment" points, 200 "transport" points, etc.

You then have to marry up manpower with equipment - to make a non-mechanised infantry corps would require a certain number of manpower, infantry equipment and transport points, a tank corps would require some armour, infantry & transport points, and so on. Conceivably players could design their own equipment mixes for custom unit types even - sort of like the custom ships you get to build in the MOO series!

Given the amount of computing resource we have I see no problem in keeping track of the tech level of each point as it is produced - which means that when you upgrade a unit you do so by replacing it's existing points in some category by better ones. The old points go back to the resource pool, and can be scrapped, or used to upgrade other units - eg Lee/Grant tanks from North Africa were shipped to Burma when replaced by Shermans and obsolete tanks were often used as chassis for SPG's of various types. Or maybe scrapped to feed some resources back to production.

You might also have training pools - you need to have enough armour points in your training pool to have suitably trained manpower for armoured units - hence you can use obsolete tanks for training - British Covenanters and Canadian Rams for example.

To prevent it getting tooooo complicated (;)) I'd suggest that all points of a particular type in a single corps be the same tech level - but again for the grogier it would be more desireable to keep track of every individual point, so corps would have different capabilityes depending upon the spread of tech levels that made them up!

[IainMcNeil]

The problem is never really about computing power - the problem is in how all these things are fed back to the player & how the player manipulates them.

This is where clever design is required and unfortunately all the coding time.

[honvedseg]

Contrary to and/or in addition to what stalins_organ mentioned, the US ended up using the British 17 Pounder (76mm) toward the end of the war possibly more than the Brits used the Yank 75. Also, the Hetzer SP AT gun was based on the Czech Skoda (Pz38t) chassis, not a Hungarian design.

The Hungarians entered the war with the light Toldi I and II tank (a reworked Swedish design) armed with a 20mm gun, and eventually began producing the Turan medium tank with a 40mm gun (British Bofors AA derivative) about a year into the war. By mid-war, the revised Toldi III was equipped with the 40mm gun and the Turan II was "upgunned" to a short 75mm, with a few 75mm long-barrel prototypes finally under construction about the time that Germany occupied Hungary to prevent its defection to the allies. A heavily armored 105mm SP gun called the Zrinyi, similar to the StuG, and a lighter SP 40mm AA/AT gun on a lengthened Toldi chassis called the Nimrod were also produced. The German occupation halted any further developments. The Germans refused to license most of their older designs to their allies, preferring to sell complete vehicles and aircraft.

Differences in technology resulted in the Russians having superior metallury, resulting in lightweight engines and better armor on their T-34 than comparable German tanks, whereas the Germans produced better explosives, generating higher muzzle velocities and therefore more effective guns for the same caliber.

[SMK-at-work]

Contrary to and/or in addition to what stalins_organ mentioned, the US ended up using the British 17 Pounder (76mm) toward the end of the war possibly more than the Brits used the Yank 75.

AFAIK the US never used the 17 pounder at all. The 76mm gun used by the USA in Shermans was hte same calibre as the 17 pdr, but it was derived from the US's own 3" anti-aircraft gun and was not related to the 17 pdr in any other way.

Also, the Hetzer SP AT gun was based on the Czech Skoda (Pz38t) chassis, not a Hungarian design.

yes the Hetzers was built on the 38T chassis, but the concept of the small tank hunter with sloped armour all around came directly from the Romanian Maresal AFV (sorry - I knew it was one of the "minor" Balkan allies - see http://www.worldwar2.ro/arme/?article=244

Differences in technology resulted in the Russians having superior metallury, resulting in lightweight engines and better armor on their T-34 than comparable German tanks, whereas the Germans produced better explosives, generating higher muzzle velocities and therefore more effective guns for the same caliber.

The only area the Russians had superior metals tech AFAIK was in aluminium casting, whiech allowed them to make the T34 & KV engine blocks from cast aluminium, saving considerable weight but also taking a lot of the resource from the aircraft industry which soldiered on for years with wooden a/c as a result - the La-5 being introduced in 1943 as the last mostly-wooden built single engined fighter in the world.

Much of the explosives used by the USSR during WW2 was supplied by the Americans - about 317,000 tons, or over half of the total Soviet consumption of about 600,000 tons! This included 22 million artillery shells! In addition the Anglo-Americans supplied 103,000 tons of Toluene - a major ingredient in hte manufacture of TNT.

German guns got hight muzzle velocitied because they were generally longer in calibre - eg teh T34 76mm started the war at 30 calibres and went to 41, the Pz-IV 75mm (long) was initially 43 calibres for s hort period then 48, the Panther was 70 calibres. The Soviet 85mm was 51 calibres, and the 122mm 43 calibres.

The longer calibres enabled more propellant to be used, allowing a higher muzzle velocity to be achieved - I can't find any info on propellant weights used for German tanks - Soviet data is at http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?opt ... 53&lang=en - for example the 85mm S18 tank gun fired a 9.2 kg AP shot with a 2.43-2.63 kg charge and a total ammo round weight of 16kg - the difference between the shot and the total round weight was 6.8kg.

The Panther 75mm gun fired a 6.8kg AP shot from a 14.3 kg ammo round - a difference of 7.5kg - for a much smaller round hence ther ewas actually more explosives in the charge compared to the weight of hte shot hence a higher muzzle velocity.

The Russians were perfectly capable of producing very long guns - their 57mm AT gun fitted to a couple of hundred T34's was 73 calibres long, but it took a lot more to produce something like that than a medium calibre 76mm, and numbers were more important than fabulous penetration that was much more than was needed!

[tora_tora_tora]

off the topic

Lee and Grant are formidable tanks for Imperial Japan Army in Burma, and talking about Sherman,
I just sigh and wonder at the diffrences between European theater and Pacifc theater.

[SMK-at-work]

no need to wonder - they're pretty clear!!

The Japanese simply lacked AT capabilities - they had small numbers of mostly of small nd relatively ineffective AT weapons, and small numbers of tanks that made the Grant look really good!

[jon_j_rambo]

Lee & Grant were rather badass in U.S. Civil War too.

[tora_tora_tora]

If it is OK, and don't need lots of coding, I want map editor to make pacific theater mod.

there are several things that I want
1 easy to mod convoy system, from South East Asia to Japan mainland is vital sea lane for Japan.
2 technology resarch modding, carrier warefare is common, flat tops against flat tops, and aerial wars between
islands by tactical air units, then amphibious warfare( marines landing islands). So I guess it is different from German Eastern Front.
3 including in terrain features, coral leaf and airfields, coral leafs makes harbors, airfield is the reason allies and Imperial Japan want
that islands.

[xtiaan72]

Well, sorry, but please stop being polemic. I've never wrote I want to replay history. After all, this pretends to be a world war 2 game and so I don't know what it hurts if there is somethin in the game which resembles history

My comment was not directed at you and I certainly meant no offence. Was only suggesting giving players as many options as possible for modding. So a good modding community can thrive around this game. Good idea, no? Obviously almost anyone that would post on this board, at this point, is very interested in WWII and is well read on the subject. The ideas you are floating out here are productive and good. But there is room for everybody's ideas.


( Off topic) - Mr Rambo, sounds like your hungry for a good civil war game.....Join the club man. We should steal some M-60's off the back of a truck and force someone to make us one.

[Redpossum]

Lee & Grant were rather badass in U.S. Civil War too.

Hehe, well...

Bobby Lee was certainly "badass", but Grant was a butcher.

[te_wooglebug]

I agree that it's good to have research, with some degree of randomness. Your research should be a true strategic choice, one way that you can really affect the outcome of the game. For example, the Germans in real life came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic and therefore choking off Great Britian's lifeline. I would like to see the game reflect the desperate submarine / antisubmarine research competition that actually occured, and give each side meaningful decisions about what to research. Other examples would be more intensive development of jet aircraft (jet planes in 1943 could really have affected the outcome of the war, whereas in 1945 the German jets were just a footnote). Similarly, it would be interesting to explore what might have happened if Germany had gone to a full wartime economy at the beginning of the war, rather than trying to provide both "guns and butter" up until about 1943. There are equally interesting strategic alternatives for the Alies.

My point is that I like a wargame to allow for historically plausible alternative strategies, and that research is an important part of these strategies. There are some strategies that would unbalance the game too badly, such as Germany not invading Russia or Germany not declaring war on the U.S. after the Pearl Harbour attack, but most palusible alternative strategies would not be so unbalancing and I think they should be game options.

I also think that the problem of reloading in PBEM to get favorable research dice rolls can easily be avoided by having your research dice roll take place only when your opponent opens the file to take his turn. I would be more concerned about players reloading to get favorable combat dice rolls, which would seem to me to be a more difficult problem to solve, although I assume it has been solved since many people continue enjoy to PBEM. (If someone wants to "cheat" in single player by reloading to try for favorable dice rolls, I consider it to be none of my business: I believe people should be able play the game in whatever way they enjoy, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else.)

[vveedd]

I also think that the problem of reloading in PBEM to get favorable research dice rolls can easily be avoided by having your research dice roll take place only when your opponent opens the file to take his turn. I would be more concerned about players reloading to get favorable combat dice rolls, which would seem to me to be a more difficult problem to solve, although I assume it has been solved since many people continue enjoy to PBEM. (If someone wants to "cheat" in single player by reloading to try for favorable dice rolls, I consider it to be none of my business: I believe people should be able play the game in whatever way they enjoy, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else.)

Good idea about research dice rolls. But opponent player must not be enabling to see these results. If he can see it, he can reload game over and over until his opponent gets bad results.
As for combat results there are few tries to solve the reloading problem but still there is no final and good solution. To my opinion the best solution will be that game has support for online dice roller.

[gaiuslaelius]

Hello all,
I have just joined this forum; I've been playing strategy games (board, and then on computer) since I was 7 in 1964. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but believe that I can provide something helpful here. I hope so anyway. I have hardly read any of the posts, so if I repeat what others have said, then, my apologies.

In my opinion, the unit scale (Corps) is correct for a game of this size and scope; divisions would be possible, but would make this game a monster. That is no problem for me, but undoubtedly would be for many others who either could not or would not endure the additional complexity involved. Since the game has to sell, Corps is a must I believe. Perhaps turns could represent 2 months (3 Max). If both Nato symbols and unit icons are available, then would be best, as the icons would appeal to those who feel the need to move tanks, planes, and ships. Nato symbols are what the professionals in the military use when they wish to move Divisions, Corps, Armies, and Army Groups around. If that is available to them, then it should be here as well. Historical leaders are vital to this game; man has always been the predominant element in any war, and always will be, period. That being the case, leaders must be represented here. I would ask that the player have the ability to rename leaders, corps, aircraft units, and naval units. Anyone interested in this game will be a military history enthusiast, if not a historian, and will have his own version of what and who were the important factors in this conflict. the ability to rename units and leaders can enable the player to reflect his or her ideas in the game. Leaders should also have the ability to (very slowly) improve their abilties because of combat experience. I would ask that every single naval officer of flag rank from all the combatants be included, and that fleets and naval bases be allowed two officers (the C.O., and his Chief of Staff or second in command). Task foces in this period often had two or even three Admirals with them, so this would be historical. This same concept should be applied to air and ground units as well, since a Corps would consist of anywhere from 1-4 Divisions in it historically (along with their attached Major Generals); the same with regard to air units. Based on the map scale, I would say that stacking is going to have to be at least two ground units to a hex; otherwise, the unit density on the fronts is going to be nowhere close to history. I have one last suggestion; the concepts of resources, production, research and technology should be present in this game for the player to interact with. I did read that the manpower factor was going to be used. I don't know who came up with that idea, but it is a GREAT idea. Certainly that was a limiting factor for the Germans in the war. And if a detailed representation of combat is being considered, then either state-of-the-art graphics should be used, or documentary film from the period should be; no half measures please.

To the designers- thanks for making this product. I don't know how it will turn out, but I support what you do. Recreating history that the player can interact with is a worthy endeavor, and you all have the computer and / or historical knowledge to make it all happen. I have the historical, but not the computer knowledge, so I certainly respect and appreciate your efforts. The best of luck to you; if I can ever be of assistance, give me a holler.

And by the way-Grant was nowhere near the butcher than Lee was; Grants "butcher" reputation was inmvented by his detractors, and was based on ONE engagement- Cold Harbor. His Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns were masterpieces, and were pulled off at moderate cost in lives. By contrast, Lee attacked again and again and again' he won battles, but (contrary to what many believe) never won a decisive victory, and bled the Army of Northern Virginia white. Just MHO.

[Redpossum]

And by the way-Grant was nowhere near the butcher than Lee was; Grants "butcher" reputation was inmvented by his detractors, and was based on ONE engagement- Cold Harbor. His Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns were masterpieces, and were pulled off at moderate cost in lives. By contrast, Lee attacked again and again and again' he won battles, but (contrary to what many believe) never won a decisive victory, and bled the Army of Northern Virginia white. Just MHO.

Delighted to discuss this with you, but let's not derail this thread. Let's start a new thread in the General Discussion forum instead, ok?

[te_wooglebug]

vveedd:

But opponent player must not be enabling to see these results. If he can see it, he can reload game over and over until his opponent gets bad results

Good point. I hadn't thought of it, but I agree with you

As for combat results there are few tries to solve the reloading problem but still there is no final and good solution. To my opinion the best solution will be that game has support for online dice roller.

Since I don't play multiplayer (due to time constraints and a desire to aviod having my ego shattered by losing to good players ), I didn't realized that problem hadn't been solved. Your solution sounds like a good one.

gaiuslaelius:

would say that stacking is going to have to be at least two ground units to a hex; otherwise, the unit density on the fronts is going to be nowhere close to history.

Like you I'm concerned about the decision to not have stacking in the game. I don't see how else they can simulate the local superiorty in numbers that so many campaigns depended on. The Battle of the Bulge , the allied breakout from Normandy, and the Soviet offensive that pocketed the sixth German army in Stalingrad are just three examples (out of many) where the ability of one side to build up a local superiority of forces was key to the outcome of the battle. Also, without stacking it's hard to have "retreat" results from combat (because units can't retreat onto the same hex as another unit), which I think deracts from the realistic "feel" of the game and makes the game less good as a simulation.

Strategic Command uses a system without stacking, and I feel it is one of the reasons that while it is a great game, it is not a very realistic simulation of World War II combat. To me Strategic Command feels a bit generic, and I think that the lack of stacking, as well as the lack of specific unit designations and specific leaders for the units, made it less good than it could have been. I also find that the lack of stacking in Strategic Command, coupled with the inability to conduct multihex attacks, increases the amount of micromanagement by forcing you to make several different attacks with seperate units (some of which may have to be repositioned to make space for the next unit) rather than one co-ordinated attack.

In sum, I think the lack of stacking is likely to result in a less realistic game, with fewer strtegic options and more micromanagement. Perhaps the designers of Commander-Europe at War have come up with a way to get around these problems, but If not I hope they will reconsider their decision to not include stacking.

[gaiuslaelius]

And by the way-Grant was nowhere near the butcher than Lee was; Grants "butcher" reputation was inmvented by his detractors, and was based on ONE engagement- Cold Harbor. His Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns were masterpieces, and were pulled off at moderate cost in lives. By contrast, Lee attacked again and again and again' he won battles, but (contrary to what many believe) never won a decisive victory, and bled the Army of Northern Virginia white. Just MHO.

Delighted to discuss this with you, but let's not derail this thread. Let's start a new thread in the General Discussion forum instead, ok?

Okay Possum- sounds great guy. You start the thread please? I'm still picking up the ropes to the forum.
Hail and <S>

As for stacking- my belief is that this adequately represents (as far as any simulation allows) the concept of concentration of force in any particular area against weaker forces of the enemy. Certainly I think it is going to have to be done; but that is up to the designer of course.

[vypuero]

Stacking is definitely not needed except possibly with air. The reason is that the map is large enough that your forces cannot maintain much more than a solid line of battle at best, except in very narrow areas. That way, you truly can do tactics like concentration, breakthroughs that isolate enemies behind the lines or besiege cities, etc. There is retreating also, but I think that if there is no "room" to retreat the unit should be forced to surrender instead.

[pzv]

Having joined this discussion late I'd like to leave some input too.

I've only read the first page about research. Most of my experience regarding research comes from HOI II.

I like the random element being proposed. In HOI and HOI II it is too easy after numerous (multiple) plays to figure out the best research path to take.

As far as country differences go: I agree with the developer that a Level II tank for Germany should be the same as a Level II tank for any country. What I would suggest is that depending on the country, certain techs are easier to develop than for other countries. This would give the game a historical flavor while maintaining the same statistics for a particular level for all countries.

It would be nice to break up UK and USA if possible to allow 4 players as well. But not having played the game, maybe this is not a good option to have because of too few units to control for USA and UK players.

[firepowerjohan]

@te_wooglebug

"specific leaders for the units"

CEAW has commanders as attachments, so here you can deploy your Rommel into a tank in Libya or put Manstein in a front line unit near France or perhaps choose that your Commander stay in a garrison unit somewhere behind the lines to be protected.

You see, Commanders in CEAW have both long range bonuses (leadership) and short range bonuses (ground attack and ground defence). Means if you attach Manstein to a unit on the front line and attack with that unit, he will add his "ground attack" bonus to the units attack value.

The long range bonus due to leadership increases the effectiveness of units within range (if several commanders in range then the best one is picked).

So, if your commander has leadership 8 and you have a corps at effectiveness 60 then it will be at 60+8=68% effectiveness as long as the Commander is in range. Not a large benefit but if having 10-15 units on the front line then the Commander is surely worth its price