Well, this is indeed some really interesting discussion about somewhat conflicting "philosophies" and our perception of what the general player community may or may not think or prefer. As far as I understand, your philosophy is to provide more choices to the player and leave it up to them to decide if they agree to play according to your recommendations, i.e. to use some house rules or just choose whatever unit they think is best to achieve their goals. BE is indeed more restrictive in this sense, partly because I believe that most players do not take the time to check if they make their decisions based on historical evidence. Or if they would even care about that. Hence the choices on unit upgrades are more limited, more based on the historical production numbers. Which results in an Axis army composition that is more in line with the historical one. The disadvantage of this approach is obviously less freedom, but the advantage is more historical accuracy. And also easier difficulty balancing since the choices of the player are more limited in terms of unit upgrades.
Locarnus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:48 pm
I fundamentally disagree that "everybody wants to win".
...
I do not want to win, winning is a very unimportant variable within my utility function, when playing strategy games.
Hm, OK, so I should have written "
almost everybody wants to win".
I mostly based my (seemingly wrong) assumption on my previous experience in games in which players always do their best to win in the end. Which in some cases may include exploiting some flawed game mechanics and even cheating, but ideally not. I think the fundamental desire to win may be somehow encoded in humans, inherited from our ancestors ranging back to the first life forms. After all, evolution is all about winners being able to survive and losers doomed to get extinct. And I think this mentality can be found in games as well, and not just strategy games, any kind of. My experience so far shows that the large majority of players simply hate to lose in a game (even if they do not admit it), but yes, I agree there can be exceptions. Fair enough.
For example it would be possible to remove "reconmove" from all units.
That would end the recon exploit, but would imho also diminish the game.
It can also be eliminated by unchecking the "undo" box before starting a game. But using the "undo" button can also be exploited by normal units, for example to move a destroyer around in all directions with undo until it finds that cunning hiding submarine. Which is basically another example of a recon cheat, another exploitation of a somewhat flawed game mechanic. I remember that during the early development of PzC2 the designers seriously considered removing the "undo" option completely from the game because of this. But again, similarly to the examples that you listed, they backed under the pressure of the gaming community.
From my perspecctive it is in principle the same dilemma regarding the available unit upgrades.
Yes, indeed, both of these would require some kind of self-restriction on behalf of the player. But it looks like most players do not really like to self-restrict themselves. If they have an asset that makes it easier for them to achieve their goal, which in most cases is winning, they will most likely use it. Even if there may be exceptions, for whom winning is unimportant in a game.
But whatever their goal is, I think the more options there are for exploiting the game, whether it be recon move or a greater range of unit upgrades, most players will be happy to use them. That's why I think it is better to minimise the number of such potential exploits.
The Bison II was a horrible failure in Africa, those 12 vehicles reportedly never made it far out of the repair shops before breaking down again. The earlier Bison I was probably worse, with the enormously overloaded suspension and the lack of space, resulting in ~4! ready rounds of ammo on the vehicle. Yet both are available in vanilla PzC.
They are probaly available in Panzer Corps because these were also available in Panzer General. And it looks like these have become quite popular with players. But only because they are depicted in the original games as being fairly effective early war self-propelled guns, something that in reality they were not.
Therefore in BE I decided to make them less attractive by reducing their firing range, closer to the historical, and making them more expensive. Seemingly it made the trick, as it looks like it is not a very popular unit with players (I do not really know anyone using it), although they have the option to upgrade an existing artillery unit to it. However, the latter option is not very tempting since they would need to pay the full price.
As I see in the addon their rate of fire had been reduced as well, albeit their price is cheaper again and of course they can be upgraded from the Pz.I for a relatively small price. This change has made them much more attractive and therefore I am not so surprised that Duedman decided to upgrade his Pz.I to these upfront. Moreso that the rate of fire feature remains largely unknown to many players and as such its reduction may not influence their decisions.
In the end, since the addon makes this unit more attractive and easier to obtain it presumably results in more players using it, which in turn results in a less historically accurate Axis army as early as in summer 1941.
And yes, it is indeed a dilemma whether to include a unit which was produced in small numbers or not. In most cases, there was a reason for them being produced in small numbers and this reason was usually that they were not very good. Therefore it may not be a problem if a less used unit is in the game regardless, problem comes when that certain unit is depicted as being better than it historically was and/or when it becomes too easy to obtain such a unit.
But let's just read what Duedman wrote:
Duedman wrote: ↑Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:43 pm
You were right with the Bison / sIG Stats. I did not notice, that they were weaker than in the old PG games. Still, they are borderline cheesy. But not as bad as Bunkerflak!
I also think they are still too good or at least "borderline cheesy" with firing range 2, even though in the vanilla game they have 3, which is just over the roof. In fact earlier I was contemplating to reduce the firing range of all units equipped with the 15 cm sIG 33 howitzer to just 1 hex. It looks like in reality the firing range of the sIG 33 howitzer was only about 4700 m. Which does not really justify a firing range of 2. It is exactly borderline cheesy. But especially because most players got used to its unhistorically long range in the original games such a reduction may be too shocking to them and thus I just did not had the courage to make such a bold move. But perhaps in the next version I will do so. Then their price could go down as well to the original levels.
Duedman wrote: ↑Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:43 pm
What I still wonder is - what happens, if I do not shoot down these scores of enemy planes? Will the AI upgrade them?
The AI does not upgrade units on its own. It is too dumb for that.
will at some point the whole sky be full of enemy air because they get new spawns in addition to the surviving ones?
Well, no, and yes.
If you do not destroy the enemy air units there will be new spawns coming to help the older models, however, the AI tends to let air units crash due to them running out of fuel. It does not happen always, in fact in most cases they do go back to a nearby airfield when running low in fuel, but unfortunately not always. Which results in a small but gradual reduction of the AI air units over time. Which is largely offset by the ever increasing number of new models being spawned. But this AI flaw has the advantage of older models slowly disappearing from the map and creating the false impression that older models are being replaced by newer ones, even if they are not being destroyed by the player. When in fact what really happens is, older models sooner or later crash due to running out of fuel and their place is taken by newer models.
For your limited skills in German you might try the autotranslate option youtube offers. Its like 2 clicks in the subtitle settings of the video. It works reasonably well even with my not always clear pronounciaton.
Thanks for the tip, I am trying it right now.
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