Slitherine

I've come across a rather peculiar problem. You might say it's a trifle, but I think it is important.

With recent patches several units have become switchable dual-use, such as AA getting AT capability. For the most part (such as the German 88 FlaK) this is all good and well. However, I have found that in some cases, nations that otherwise have no capability have been given uncharacteristically strong capabilities.

Take the Italian 90/53 M41c as an example. Its new-found capability to switch into AT mode have single-handledly given the Italians an anti tank weapon far more formidable than anything they had before! (it's basically as powerful as the 88!)

This unit alone turns the early-war Italian army from a relatively helpless target in the face of enemy armor, into a fully capable tank buster nation! No longer can you design a scenario using Italians as the "feeble partner", unless you take away the player's ability to purchase new units and upgrade existing ones.

That's right, you can't even give an Italian sidekick the Breda 20/65 m35 anti-air unit: since it is the same class as the 90/53 M41c, the canny player drives into the nearest town, upgrades it and then switches it into the killer 90/53 M41c AT!

For instance, any desert scenario where British early tanks supposedly outclass their Italian opponents is in for a nasty surprise. And the standard MP scenario Bear and Bersaglio will probably play out completely differently now that the Italians possess a weapon that can one-shot even the relatively sturdy Soviet tanks! In fact, I have found that even in 1942 scenarios there's little reason to buy any Italian unit than this one: not only do you get a tank buster far more deadly than anything else the Italians got, you get their best AA unit too... It completely outclasses all the existing Italian armor, anti-tank or even fighter units in how it actually gets the job done... It feels like something the Germans could have built, it's that good!

Therefore I propose variant non-switchable units for starters. In simple words, units with identical capabilities but with no switching. Then you could at least hand out AA units to nations such as Italy without them turning into monsters eating tanks!

Longer term something more substantial probably needs to be done, since you still need to limit core slots, prestige or even access to towns (for upgrades), but it's a start. (The true solution would be to offer at least one "second rate" version of each major nation, somewhat like how the "red" and "blue" tutorial nations can be useful to model parts of the German army with no access to the good stuff. To be clear: I don't want to turn back the clock and remove the switching units from countries like Italy or Russia, but I do think it would be very useful if there existed a "2nd Italy" or "Poor Russia" with the same flag and all, but with limited access to "fancy stuff": no switchables in the equipment list, perhaps later access to the units that are best in the game etc).

Thoughts?

M

PS. I know I'm talking a lot about Italians here. Not saying this problem doesn't exist for other nations too... but in most cases, those other nations already offer units with similar capabilities which makes it a much lesser problem. For instance, while the German 88 is deservedly famous, any German player would not be helpless in the face of enemy armor without it: the PzIII tanks are at least average and they always have Stukas. A better example, I guess, would be the British 25 Pdr, giving a British early-war army AT capabilities far exceeding what they otherwise would have. However, this unit is less of a problem for me because 1) it's allied and thus often "the enemy" (I haven't yet lost a unit to an AI attack with the 25 Pdr in AT mode), 2) it sucks in its other state (artillery) 3) it's fairly expensive.

Good point!

This matter, and other topics also are what made me think a possible solution for this...
My idea was to propose the game developers to add two more fields in the eqp file:

One new field would be called, for example "label"... and it would contain a word that can identify groups of units.

Example: Suppose you like to play using the late war German advanced projected aircraft. Well you can include some units of this sort in the eqp file and you label them all as "luft46" (for example). When you start a new game, the software gives you the option to include (or not) the different labelled groups of units. So, you will be presented with a checkbox named "luft46", where if you check it, that unit group will be available, if if not, that unit will not be available. It would be nice that the program can handle several of this "labels" and so, a player can add optative "modules" of units to the eqp file.

Another (italian) example: You model regular versions of the AA guns (non switchable) and you label them "NonSwitch", then you model the same units with switching capability and label them "Fancy"... Voilá! You have the option to exclude the super-strong AA-At units if you feel like!

Scenario designers should be able to control this feature also, so when designing a scenario it could be established what groups are available and what other groups not.

Another measure: Also, it would be good to add yet another field to the equipment file, called "Quantity" or "Qty"... That would be a number indicating the max number of a specific unit that can be present in the core army by the player. So, if you mod the 90 mm Italian AA gun with a value for "Qty" = 1 the player would not be able to purchase or upgrade to more tan one of this unit.

I think this modifications would not take a lot of work from the developers point of view, and they surely would add flexibilty to the eqp file.

Just my thinking...

Do note, however, that neither of my proposed solutions would require any programming changes whatsoever.

The only change needed is in the pzeqp file.

(And yes, I know I can make my own modified file. However, any true solution needs to be a standard solution available to all players. Which is why I hope Slitherine find my arguments convincing)

guille1434 wrote:Scenario designers should be able to control this feature also, so when designing a scenario it could be established what groups are available and what other groups not.

Exactly.

Most easily this is done by offering second sets of major nations, so that a scenario designer can pitch a battle between, say, 1st rate Germany and 2nd rate Italy versus 1st rate Russia.

Or, any scenario set in Burma or sub-saharan Africa featuring the British. Having a "2nd Rate UK" would be very convenient to model a lack of the latest tanks and fighters...

For a campaign such as Afrika Korps this would not be appropriate. In this case, it's entirely reasonable that I as the commanding officer could elect to requisition elite Italian formations should I want to. (Also, since every Italian unit you buy means giving up one German, there are absolutely no balancing issues... It is from the viewpoint of a given single scenario that the problems could be much bigger, say if the right flank is supposed to consist of weak Italian formations while the left flank is to be the strong armored fist, or whatever)

While time-consuming it would be a straight-forward implementation. Just copy each major nation, disable switching and move availability dates forward six months or a year or so

Since the scenario designer chooses which nations to include, this solution would automatically give the desired results. It wouldn't cause any needless clutter either, since the newbie would never see these "new" nations: the complete list of nations is only visible to scenario designers.

Two solutions:
1., You make an extreme high prize for the given (switchable) unit.
2., You set int pzeqp the starting date of the given unit for a later time when it is no more such powerful. So the player cannot buy it but you can still place such units on the map as aux units (if you want).