Slitherine

Hi gents

Sorry if this has been asked before.

I would like to understand how upgrade works. Looks like there's some units that pay for the price difference, but others pay the full cost of the unit.

Examples: Grenadiers pay the difference for upgrading to Grenadiers 43, but the full price when upgrading to other infantry (paras, wehrmacht, pioneers, etc), as purchasing a new core unit. The same happens with other unit types, like pz III, which pay only the difference when upgrading to other Pz III units, but the whole price when upgrading to other tank types. And Pz IV upgrading inside its "family". This results in paying more than 500 prestige points if I upgrade my PzIII to Panther or Tigers... I don't see the point.

Do you have plans to change - or fully explain - the upgrade system?

It makes perfect sense when you think about it. After all, if you upgrade a PzIII to any model of PzIV, it is a completely new tank. You can't actually upgrade a PzIII to a PzIV, you simply give the crew a new tank. When upgrading within the same family, however, you use the same chassis, the same turret most of the time, perhaps the only thing you change is the barrel and smokescreen canisters. From a PzIII to the PzIV, however, it's the whole tank.

Although you might realistically expect to get something back for the old tank, I don't know.

Hi Kissaki

While some minor tank upgrades were possible ad hoc, made by the repair/tech guys of the Division/unit, most of the unit changes were brand new tanks (or even repaired and upgraded at hte manufacturer plant) that reached the front unit to fill losses/upgrade after being produced at the manufacturer plant.

It must be the same to upgrade a Pz IIIe (37mm cannon) to a Pz III L (50L60 mm cannon) that upgrading the same Pz IIIe to a Pz IV H (long 75) imho.

miki wrote:Hi Kissaki

While some minor tank upgrades were possible ad hoc, made by the repair/tech guys of the Division/unit, most of the unit changes were brand new tanks (or even repaired and upgraded at hte manufacturer plant) that reached the front unit to fill losses/upgrade after being produced at the manufacturer plant.

It must be the same to upgrade a Pz IIIe (37mm cannon) to a Pz III L (50L60 mm cannon) that upgrading the same Pz IIIe to a Pz IV H (long 75) imho.

Well, you do have a point there. Well, what I have offered so far in this thread represents the limit of my knowledge on this particular topic, so I'll gracefully bail out.

In my opinion the upgrade system should be based mostly on the difference in value of two units. To include limited availability of units (as in PGIII:SE) would also make sense.

I like the current upgrade system. Of course in some cases the upgrading "within the family" is more or less logical but you need a certain level of abstraction here. I think the current system is a good compromise between the maybe historical accurate but very time intensive comparison between the god knows how many different variants and the difference between them and the boring generic you always pay (price of new unit - price of old unit) approach. You need to keep in mind anyway that the prestige costs of certain units are set arbitrary anyway. They do not only reflect they monetary costs but to some extent as well availability.

Now that I'm fighting around Cassino, I can see how my lonely Tiger makes a great difference. Also, having only one or two state of the art big kitties (say Panther, Tiger, Elephant, etc) is historically accurate, etc

But it's still very hard, almost impossible, to switch from my venerable Pz III to Panthers and PzIV, as actually happened during 1943. Perhaps the cause is goinf from Stalingrad to Kursk, without a middle battle, which could give more prestige to upgrade units a bit more ...

You can't upgrade everything when you want, you must choose. Again, bloody real.

By the way, Prestige must be gained from killing enemies, please, please...

I'd have preferred it if upgrading would be at least something like new - (old/2) price. That and, as a compensation lowered experience (to simulate crews having to get used to new tanks etc) would have been perfect imho. But it's not so bad the way it is - at least now there is a reason to keep your outdated units, just like it was in reality for Germany! I remember that in Panzer General there was no reason to keep your old tanks, I hated that.

Is there an upgrade tree available anywhere? In my 1939 campaign I'd hate to since a lot of prestige into fighters that I'll never be able to improve. And sure some of the early tank designs are dead ends and some of them lead to the late war monsters -- which are which??

aschindler wrote:In my 1939 campaign I'd hate to since a lot of prestige into fighters that I'll never be able to improve. And sure some of the early tank designs are dead ends and some of them lead to the late war monsters -- which are which??

Fighters in 1939: you can only buy Me109E, that offers an incremental upgrade to Me109F, Me109G and Me109K. There is no incremental upgrade to Fw190 or jets.
Tanks; All PzIII models offers incremental upgrades in the PzIII family, same thing for PzIV. There is no incremental upgrade from PzIII and PzIV to Tiger or Panther.