Eliminate Elite Reinforcements post 1943?

[kverdon]

Here is an idea to increase difficulty and historical flavor, eliminate elite reinforcements in 1944/45 DLCs. This would reflect the shrinking pool of trained German troops late in the war. Like the Germans you would have to closely guard your trained, elite units and have to rebuild damaged units with untrained recruits. Another option would be to gradually increase the cost of elite reinforcements starting in 1944. By 1945 they should be almost prohibitably expensive. I'm actually liking the progressive increase, you'd have to start choosing which units to over strength . This could be made optional or just applied to the higher (general or higher) difficulty levels. What do you think?

Kevin

[ivanov]

I like this idea very much but as an optional setting on some higher difficulty levels.

[Lamont]

Not to sure it would work out all that well in a game like this really. You can as sugested leave it as an option, but then again you can choose not to use elite replacement button and achive the very same thing imo. So might sound good/fun but in reality might just end up that people dont use their elite troops and what fun is that ? As I mentioned the option is already there.....dont use elite replacments.

[brettz123]

I think it is a bad idea. Have you played the later scenarios? If you don't have elites from 1943 onwards all of your units would be raw going into the later scenarios. This would certainly make the game almost unplayable. I can only imagine playing D-Day with zero or one star units. Don't think it would work too well.

[Longasc]

While I have some reservations if this would work out well in practice I find the idea intriguing.

On the other hand I must say after playing wasteful and entering the 1942 DLC with elite crack troopers on Field Marshal level... in the end I left with rookies and little prestige.
I think the intention to make the game a little harder or interesting is not necessary; I am sure that in the 1943+ DLCs players will be struggling without that.

For the default campaign I would rather say no. It would just be one more obscure feature of Panzer Corps, and it has already inherited a lot of "hidden" and undocumented mechanics and features from Panzer General that make it a lot harder for many players to access than it should be the case. I think this should be a focus of future Panzer Corps games, the mechanics and so on could and should be better documented. Yeah, most people don't read them anyway but they can't even read them if they would want to. Usually people start looking for information when there is a problem and then they need well documented answers.... ooops going off-topic.

[Mark50]

The idea here apparently being that it would be "historical" if everyone else is forced to "choose" the same option as the OP. I`m so against "improvements" that mean taking away an option which anyone is able to ignore if he/she wishes to. If you need to be forced into not using the elite reinforcements, doesn`t that mean that you`d actually want to use them? What a paradox!

[bebro]

I agree with those against this suggestion. It's IMO not historical when suddenly all vet soldiers are gone in jan 1943 (or at whatever date). Sure casualties were mounting late war and more and more green troops came in but that doesn't mean there weren't any vets left that a high-rank and prominent commander like the one we play in PzC could request.

Wether those high losses late-war could be depicted better is of course debatable, but just cutting off all vet/elite at point X does not represent this very well, and also IMO it's doubtful that this change would make the game really better.

[brettz123]

I agree with those against this suggestion. It's IMO not historical when suddenly all vet soldiers are gone in jan 1943 (or at whatever date). Sure casualties were mounting late war and more and more green troops came in but that doesn't mean there weren't any vets left that a high-rank and prominent commander like the one we play in PzC could request.

Wether those high losses late-war could be depicted better is of course debatable, but just cutting off all vet/elite at point X does not represent this very well, and also IMO it's doubtful that this change would make the game really better.

The change that might make it more historical would be to make them more expensive. This is a much better way to simulate the scarcity of veterans. Though to be honest there still would have been millions of veterans at this time. The lack of veterans really was a problem with newly stood up units and militia units comprised of the very young and elderly.

[bebro]

Yeah. Just another idea: if making them more expensive would be the way, maybe make elite reinforcements more expensive to a certain percentage every year, so that in 1945 it becomes much more costly to get them than in 1940 or 41. Though would be nice if this remains moddable in case they add something like that indeed.

[brettz123]

Yeah. Just another idea: if making them more expensive would be the way, maybe make elite reinforcements more expensive to a certain percentage every year, so that in 1945 it becomes much more costly to get them than in 1940 or 41. Though would be nice if this remains moddable in case they add something like that indeed.

I think there should be a more robust number of options instead of just supply / weather / and fog of war. This way it is an option that you can use but if thats not your cup of tea you aren't forced to play that way.

[Anfield]

If they did this, then why stop there?? You want them to limit the number of Tigers and Panthers you can field post 43? Or guess they could cut our 40 odd core units in 42 down to 35 in 43, then in 44 force it lower, say 30. I think this best one of those ideas, that if you want to play your game doing it, thats cool. But dont think it should be for everyone if they dont want it.

Heck id like to see a mini/max on all forces, after seeing some of the almost all tanks forces some people play. But that wouldnt be fair to them.

[kverdon]

Now mind you, I've always thought of this as an *optional* rule. I know you can do this on your own but its just too tempting to spend the prestige if you have it so lacking that discipline would like to have a way to have it worked into the game. The more I've thought about it, the scaling of the cost makes much more sense. It's just an idea I thought I'd throw out there.

thanks,

Kevin

[Kerensky]

If it makes you feel any better, any newly recruited unit, even post 1943, starts with 0 experience.

[Akaoz]

I wouldn't mind seeing different levels of elite replacements, but to not be able to maintain a 5 star unit after '43 does not appeal to me at all.

I'd rather see a tired cost for both replacements for units and new units, where I can choose the number of stars the replacements/units have and the cost in prestige is adjusted accordingly.

[El_Condoro]

These are already available in gamerules.pzdat in the Data folder. They can be applied per campaign. If not officially, then create one and use GME to swap it in and out as desired.

# The following 4 parameters specify replacement costs in percent of a new unit cost. The first two parameters are used during a scenario (for normal and elite replacements respectively). Second two parameters are used between scenarios in a campaign.
ScnReplaceCost 25
ScnEReplaceCost 100
CamReplaceCost 0
CamEReplaceCost 50
# Overstrength cost, in percent of ordinary elite replacements cost
OverstrengthCost 200
# Upgrade cost, in percent of new unit cost
UpgradeCost 100

[Longasc]

Something else, thinking about future upcoming DLCs:

I would not be so sure that you will be able to afford anything but regular replacements after 1943.

[impar]

Now that I think about it...

In PzC its gets progressively harder to gain experience the higher the unit gets in the experience ladder. Its easier to get a unit from 0-star to 1-star than it is to get a unit from 1to 2, 2 to 3, etc.
But then it is irrelevant how many stars you reinforce or overstrength a unit. You pay the same per strength to overstrength to 11 (+1) or to 14 (+4), in this case it costs four times more but the same per strength.
Maybe the further we go on the overstrength the more we should pay per strength.

[Raven0215]

I don't think Reinforcements necessarily translate into just replacing dead and wounded. If you look at German Loss records for Kursk for example totenkopf "lost" all 10 of its tiger tanks in 1 day. The next day all 10 were back in action after being recovered that night and repaired. Most of the crews were relatively unharmed since the damage was items like tracks etc.

I would say prestige being spent for reinforcements is also a measure of your commander using his influence to procure parts for repair of tanks to get them back into combat. When the Germans were on the offensive the number of tanks they lost was far below when they were defending. This was due to the fact they were capturing ground and not retreating and follow on forces were able to recover damaged vehicles. A tiger for example can become "lost" or combat ineffective by throwing a track or having the barrel perforated by anti-aircraft rounds. It becomes just as useless as another tiger that took a hit and brewed up. The advantage of the tiger that lost its track though is the CREW is fine and the next day it is back in combat.