Slitherine

While you don't get any prestige back from disbanding a unit in the game, I would think that the remaining 'steps' of a unit could be assigned to other similar units 'in theater.'

For example, if you have 3 infantry units of health (steps) 8, 7, 3, then you could disband the 3 step unit and each other infantry unit would gain 1 step.

The logic/rule would be:
1. The disbanded units total health (steps) is divided by the number of other similar units.
2. One step is always lost
3. Some steps can be reassigned (at random) to simlar units on a 2 for one basis. (i.e. 2 infantry steps would equate to one engineer step.)
4. The 'new' steps show up on the NEXT turn.

Interesting idea.

But besides just the health of a unit, you have the experience. Which some might argue is an even more important of a number.

What would you propose to do to handle the experience in your suggestion?

When you get elite replacements, you simply gain steps without 'losing' XP.

However, I don't see why you wouldn't divide the XP by 10 and then let the individual step carry it with it into the new unit, even though this might bring DOWN the average XP of the unit getting these reinforcements form a disbanded unit. It is still better than raw recruits that add NO XP whatsoever. .

............. And it does seem like that formula is already incorporated in to the entire replacement system. If you have a unit with say 150 experience and only need to replace 1 strength, you don’t loss nearly as much XP as you do with replacing 2 strength.

What you are suggesting is sort of what you can do in the “Total War” games.

Obviously it would make things a bit more complicated – but an idea to think about.

Xerkis wrote:What you are suggesting is sort of what you can do in the “Total War” games.

Hmm, merging units. From a game play perspective it makes sense but I wonder if the time frame of normally 1 turn = 1 day would make this unlikely? Just thinking aloud because I know German kampfgruppen were often cobbled together with available elements on short notice and they worked very well as a concept.

El_Condoro wrote:

Xerkis wrote:What you are suggesting is sort of what you can do in the “Total War” games.

Hmm, merging units. From a game play perspective it makes sense but I wonder if the time frame of normally 1 turn = 1 day would make this unlikely? Just thinking aloud because I know German kampfgruppen were often cobbled together with available elements on short notice and they worked very well as a concept.

Yes, there are lots of things to think about with this idea of asrn's.
It is an interesting idea, but so far I'm not sure if I would use it or not.


I would think all units involved - the giver and the takers - would have to lose that turn (at least). Or maybe this would be something that would only be able to be done on deployment time.

The Total War model is to do it during deployment phase - that makes more sense to me. The experience formula could be simple: (strength1 x experience1) + (strength2 x experience2) / (strength1 + strength2) rounded down. To do it click on first unit, then Shift-click the second unit, a merge button appears - confirm choice.

Sounds good to me.

............. Now - go convince the devs.

It's actually a lot more work from their point of view:

What to do with the (new) unit's name? Reset it would be simple.
What about heroes if the combined count is greater than 3? Not allow merging? Keep 3 at player's choice?
What about unit stats? An average is not really appropriate, neither is a sum. Just reset?
Need to check both selected units have the same equipment number from the pzeqpp file, too.

Anyway, I am more than happy with the current way things are done, but it's worth throwing the idea around a bit.

Sounds overly complex for little tangible gains.

For starters, what's the range for strength dispersion? Adjacent would be very constricting, unlimited would be akin to teleportation, and anything in between would be arbitrary at best.
If done during the deployment phase, why would you ever disband a high experience unit to merge with other high experience units when you can instead give all of them free replacements to bring them all up to full strength at a net cost of less experience lost and more prestige saved?

Kerensky wrote:Sounds overly complex for little tangible gains.

For starters, what's the range for strength dispersion? Adjacent would be very constricting, unlimited would be akin to teleportation, and anything in between would be arbitrary at best.
If done during the deployment phase, why would you ever disband a high experience unit to merge with other high experience units when you can instead give all of them free replacements to bring them all up to full strength at a net cost of less experience lost and more prestige saved?

I can’t tell you how many times I was made to program over complex facets of a system that had very little tangible gains. But if that’s what the users want – and what my boss says to do – then that’s what we do. We get paid by the job, not by the lines of code a user ends up running. But I certainly know what you mean – and agree with it – but at the same time, it’s not usually the point that wins the argument.... Know what I mean?

This idea is certainly very complex when you start to dig in to it – but then again, aren’t all of the suggestions in this forum that way? There will always be the “what ifs” and the “what abouts” in all of these suggestions on the forum. In my experience it’s hearing what the user (or player) is asking for and then trying to figure out what about it they haven’t thought of and finally coming up with what they truly wanted. And that end result might be totally different from what they asked for, but in the end it’s what they wanted all along.

Like I said earlier; I don’t know if I would use this idea myself (for some of the reasons you’ve said) – but I think it is still a good idea to kick around (like El_Condoro said).

Kerensky wrote:Sounds overly complex for little tangible gains.

The Tangible Gains:
Instead of reinforcing an experienced unit that has been mostly crushed (1-2 steps remaining) you can DISBAND it to both
A) open up a slot for a new unit of a different type
B) move the steps an their XP to bolster other units on the map.

Kerensky wrote:For starters, what's the range for strength dispersion? Adjacent would be very constricting, unlimited would be akin to teleportation, and anything in between would be arbitrary at best.

Simple solutions.
At present, using the 'reinforcement' button 'Teleports' troops to the unit anyway.
Solution A) Reinforcements to other units show up on the 'next' turn
Solution B) Create an area 'map' so that theoretical units could travel twice as far each turn as the disbanded unit would be able to travel. (It is theoretically easier to send a small group on the large battle field than a small group - they can avoid detection/contact more easily.) As this map expands, the first units that can accept replacements will accept their 'portion' of the disbanded unit. However, such a complex solution isn't necessary since a single act of 'intentional' in-game reinforcing actually teleports units to whereever you want.

Wouldn't an even simpler solution be to just reimburse prestige when disbanding a unit, and more prestige when disbanding an experienced one?
To prevent abuse, disbanding could only be allowed when neither attack nor move have been made and the unit is not adjacent to an enemy unit.

Having a fancy subsystem for distributing the strength of disbanded units sounds far too complicated for a beautifully simple and abstract game such as PC.
_____
rezaf

asrn wrote: The Tangible Gains:
Instead of reinforcing an experienced unit that has been mostly crushed (1-2 steps remaining) you can DISBAND it to both
A) open up a slot for a new unit of a different type
B) move the steps an their XP to bolster other units on the map.

A. is how the system already works, that's hardly a gain from this system.

You're now down to a single point 'B' which is exactly what I mean by 'little' tangible gains.

And speaking of B:

B. moving 1-2 hit points, from your own example, is such a trivial amount of strength to teleport, is it really going to ever make a series difference in the outcome of a battle? And medals and heroes, how do they transfer? Can all infantry transfer to other infantry, can a PZ IA transfer strength to a King Tiger? If not, why not, where is the line drawn? PZ IA has to feed another PZ IA? How about a PZ IB?

Having a fancy subsystem for distributing the strength of disbanded units sounds far too complicated for a beautifully simple and abstract game such as PC.

Very true Kerensky.

But, I think all the other issues mentioned can be worked out to some sort of satisfaction – but the medals and heroes; that is the real stickler (IMO)

If they become lost; then no one in their right mind would do this. If they all go over; then you would be able to make some mega units very early on in a campaign. If you try to compromise between those two extremes; then I think you just make everyone mad that you can’t do one or the other extremes.

Plus, I don’t think you should be able to do anything like this except during deployment phase. It would make things much easier to manage from a player’s standpoint.

Ah, what to do with the heroes.

There are multiple (and different) approaches philosophically. Either:
1) Heros don't go away
2) Heros lost is a cost of disbanding. (i.e. They get promoted to higher levels of command, and therefore don't have the impact on the units like they once did.)
3) Heros are reassigned at random but always take a 1 poing strength loss. (i.e. a +3 becomes +2, and a +1 is simply lost).

There are ways of overcoming ALL the problems from my suggestion of an alternate system of disbanding so it doesn't seem like a total waste. The problem is that disbanding a unit without regaining 'some' prestige (i.e. 'Resouces' from the disbanded unit) seems like an oversight, especially when you can 'teleport' mid turn, up to 9 steps of experienced units into a unit that has been reduced to 1 step. This is a weird trick that is so bizarre, that it literally 'begs' for some sort of 'reassignment' of disbanded units.

I can see not wanting to put the disbanded unit back into prestige that could be used to reinforce a tactical bomber unit, this is why things should be of 'like' type units. (Example: You went through the artillery course and were later assigned to one type of artillery and trained on it, but it shouldn't be to hard to be put into another artillery unit and be quickly brought up to speed.)