Proposed Map: Flames and Steel

KurtGodel7

Objective

The objective is to create an advanced, strategically deep WWII map. Minimize complexity while maximizing strategic depth.

Overview

There are significant aspects of the actual war not captured by existing WWII maps. Some examples:

Germany had a prewar population of 69 million, compared to 169 million for the Soviet Union. This meant Germany could field a much smaller infantry force than could the U.S.S.R.
Industrial production increased rapidly. A good proxy for WWII military production was military aircraft production. Between 1942 and '44, American air production doubled, and Soviet air production increased by more than 50%. Germany and Japan each tripled their military aircraft production during that span.
Air superiority. Control of the sky was a critical component to WWII.
Unit specialization. To give an example, a torpedo bomber was intended to achieve a very different task than a fighter.
Technology advanced quickly. A perfectly good aircraft by the standards of 1941 would be obsolescent by 1943, and obsolete by 1944.

The goal is to create a WWII map which does a good job at addressing the above things, without adding any more complexity than absolutely necessary.

Proposed Rules

Address manpower limitations by introducing a new resource type: Manpower Points, or MPs. MPs are used to buy infantry. Each nation collects a different amount of MPs, based on the manpower it had during WWII.
Allow nations to increase their military output by building manufacturing centers. Limit the total number of manufacturing centers each nation can build.
Allow for air superiority by having a dogfight phase before combat or strategic bombing raids.
Allow for unit specialization by discarding the idea of attack/defense values. Replace with a combat system having anti-land, anti-naval, anti-sub, anti-air, and (in some cases) strategic bombing combat values. A dive bomber would have great anti-land combat, a torpedo bomber great anti-naval, a fighter a great anti-air, and a strategic bomber would have good strategic bombing value.
Take technology into account by allowing technological advances to greatly increase units' abilities.

What is Needed

@Black_Elk is creating a map which will be highly suitable for this. I will provide the rules set. What is needed is someone to code the XML.

If you wish to discuss the map itself, please do so here. This thread is for discussing the rules set and XML file.

KurtGodel7

@luhhlz said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

@kurtgodel7

I think unit targeting (automatic or player-selected) is interesting but problematic. I'd love to see a good solution, can you share more details so we can see if it would work? The sub/destroyer exchange is the big one. But it could also apply to artillery (suppress infantry or counter-battery?) and tanks (pursue tank vs tank battle or just support inf?)

One gameplay aspect that would be very enticing to implement is the 'focus down enemy carriers first' which of course was incredibly important historically but not currently a part of tripleA. One way to get there would be restricting the combat rounds (see WAW Variant - v3), so the first time you attack an opponent, you might want to target his carriers, even if they have low defense value, so that when you do your next big naval battle, he has no naval air and greatly reduced land-based air. There may need to be an additional change to make this work, some sort of zone of control to make full disengagement/retreat difficult.

I've shared why I never do strategic bombing (boring, low return) but I think the WAW Variant - v3 ruleset actually makes it interesting:

-It has air battles preceding combined-arms battles and SBR.
-It has construction unit (reqd to build factory), factories are VERY expensive (30IPC), and SBR can destroy units (factories, AA guns, airfields)

so there is some rock-paper-scissors when assaulting isolated factories - does the attacker have enough bombers to threaten wiping the factory out (3x territory PU to destroy)? Did the attacker kill the construction unit (6 damage to destroy)? Does the defender have a vehicle factory to replace it? Does the defender keep a big air defense force (which is terrible at defending against amphibious land assault). Can player A SBR destroy the AA gun (6 damage to destroy), allowing a massive SBR from allied player B, before the defender places a new AA gun?

There are three options for unit targeting.

The person inflicting the hits gets to choose.
The person receiving the hits gets to choose.
The choice is made at random.

Before getting into which of those options I favor, below are some factors to consider.

Technology. As I mentioned in the OP, technology was a critical component of WWII. If one wishes to have that reflected in a rules set, it is not enough to increase units' combat values. It is also necessary to increase their hitpoints. If the person receiving hits gets to choose which units are hit, he will always choose to injure multi-hit units before killing any of his units. That can lead to some very one-sided combat outcomes.
Low footprint. I remember participating in a Global tournament. It was PBEM (play by email). I'd do my combat move. Then an email would be sent off, asking my opponent whether he wanted to scramble any of his planes. That really slowed things down. The impact is less bad if playing online. But people will occasionally go AFK to grab some food or use the restroom or whatever. The less input required from someone when it isn't his turn, the better.
Realism. In the Battle of Midway, both sides' carriers were at risk. America did a rather better job of sinking Japan's carriers than the reverse, but both sides' carriers could have been destroyed that day. You don't want a situation in which the attacker says, "I wish to single out the defender's carriers, but I don't want the defender doing the same to my carriers. So I'll attack with everything except my own carriers."
My proposed combat system/unit specialization. A destroyer might be best at anti-sub combat, second-best at anti-air; weakest at anti-surface. Whereas a battleship might be best at anti-surface combat, second-best at anti-air, weakest at anti-sub. They are different tools for different jobs. If you constantly ask players, "at what category of enemy do you want your destroyers or torpedo bombers to fire at first?" that would bog down combat. If, however, a player's destroyers fired at enemy subs, enemy air, and enemy surface ships, that would be three times as much firing as the destroyer should be doing. Destroyers shouldn't get to "go crazy" just because the enemy has a mix of different unit types. Players should be encouraged to use different unit types, not arbitrarily punished.

How to handle the above four points? I think the best way is for the following to be true:

Different units prefer killing different types of enemies. For example, destroyers will attack enemy subs first. If there are no more subs to kill, they will next target enemy air. Only after all enemy subs and air have been killed will they go after enemy surface ships. Whereas, battleships have different preferences: they will target enemy surface ships first.
Targets are selected at random. Once a target has received a single hit, it will keep getting hit until it is killed, or until combat is ended. A player might end a battle with one wounded surface ship, a wounded sub, and a wounded plane. But he will never have more than one wounded unit of each type.

The above combat system has the following advantages:

Allows units to be specialized.
Streamlines combat
Allows units to have multiple hitpoints (technological advancements), without those units becoming OP.

RogerCooper

@kurtgodel7 said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

Proposed Rules

Address manpower limitations by introducing a new resource type: Manpower Points, or MPs. MPs are used to buy infantry. Each nation collects a different amount of MPs, based on the manpower it had during WWII.

Rather than create another resource, make infantry cheaper for Russia. Or limit the number of infantry units that can be built.

Allow nations to increase their military output by building manufacturing centers. Limit the total number of manufacturing centers each nation can build.

Everyone was mobilizing. Why create a new unit? The AI will not know to build the new unit.

Allow for air superiority by having a dogfight phase before combat or strategic bombing raids.

This can be done easily

Allow for unit specialization by discarding the idea of attack/defense values. Replace with a combat system having anti-land, anti-naval, anti-sub, anti-air, and (in some cases) strategic bombing combat values. A dive bomber would have great anti-land combat, a torpedo bomber great anti-naval, a fighter a great anti-air, and a strategic bomber would have good strategic bombing value.

Unfortunately, TripleA does not support this kind of combat system. The only things you can change are

Attack Strength
Defense Strength
What units can be targeted
If it can conduct strategic bombing
You can turn anti-air fire until a one round anti-anything attack
Separate combat strengths in air to air combat

So you can do some of things you want but not all of them. TripleA always has owner choice of what units are hit.

Take technology into account by allowing technological advances to greatly increase units' abilities.

TripleA has tech rules, but they can be rather random.

I would suggest working out the xml on an existing map, and then use it with a new map. Try to avoid creating new resources, as that can confuse the AI and the desired effects can be achieve by other means. Also, be careful about multi-HP units. They can unbalance the game.

Writing XML is not that hard. Download the Pact of Steel 2 mod, which has extensive comments on the options in XML code.

Black_Elk

One possibility for trying to stretch the TripleA A&A combat system in new directions is to use a D10 or D12 system rather than the standard D6.

That was Frostion's approach in Ironwar where he used a D10 scheme. It was one of the novel approaches I found interesting in that game. Basically the change from D6 to D10 is significant enough that it really primes the player to think about the unit roster and interactions differently than they might in a more standard A&A game. You kinda have to leave your more familiar A&A headmath at the door almost immediately, cause it's just rather different in that way. He also changed the cost structure at the floor, by making Infantry cost 10 PUs rather than 3 and transports costing 20 PUs rather than 7. Might not be exactly what you're after, but it had some cool ideas.

I agree about the stuff like scrambling in PBEM Global, or other delays of game like that where you have to wait for defender feedback to progress the turn pretty often. Beamdog's approach to Axis and Allies online 1942.2 was to remove the "defender chooses casualties" dynamic entirely. A pretty major departure from FtF there, but I think they concluded that it was necessary to build the sort of game they had in mind.

I think it was an interesting approach, and I spent a lot of time kicking around on those boards. Although not entirely satisfying for me as a tripleA player, it was still interesting to see what they did with it. Ultimately I found the UI and the single scenario concept too limiting for what I like. I think it probably works very well, for people who are pretty new to playing the game in a digital format. Like the way you choose units and issue commands, it sort of makes sense from that perspective. But for someone who is used to the way tripleA handles it, it feels really click intensive. Like in might take me 30 seconds and as many clicks to run the Soviet opener in A&A online, whereas in tripleA I can do the same in like 3 seconds with 3 clicks. That's because in tripleA you can issue commands by clicking the territory tiles, whereas in A&A Online, you have to do it by unit type/unit stack, rather than "select all." I don't know other stuff like that had me coming back to tripleA, but it was pretty popular I think, for something pursuing the asynchronous gameplay idea. Basically the whole game is PBEM, except without the gamesaves or the emails hehe.

ps. So Kurt, if you want to use the 1941 map it's in a functional state here https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3326/1941-global-command-decision-official-thread?page=1 What you'd need to do is substitute the unit roster you want and add in the tech from NML to a new game XML. If you need to modify the actual map, like to add extra sea zones or whatnot that's straight forward. I can show you how. More important would be building out the main game XML though, where you assign the rules and unit properties you want, and the tech options you can get going. Or whatever can be done given the limitations of the current game engine. Probably the simplest would be to do a copy paste from the one game NML into the other for as far as you're able and v3 for the rules working how you want. Then adjust the map stuff in the baseline once you got the skeleton of the game in place. I have a lot of additional unit Graphics that I will include in the global update. So basically you'd just be doing a lot of substitutions for units or xml, to mod until you got the basic thing in place.

luhhlz

@KurtGodel7

Did you make a conscious decision to break the AI? I think you want to decide if you want to make changes that will make AI unplayable.

I'm not sure manpower will get us closer to realism. For instance, the complement of few capital ships would be about a division. And the dockworkers necessary would be, I don't know, but a lot. The US spent more on bombers than it did on the manhattan project. So if you have a small nation, with a small manpower, are they going to spam expensive units like boats and planes, is that more realistic for Romania to have a world-class bomber force?

Also, how do you account for the effectiveness of the infantry? German, russian, italian infantry all have the same values?

Targets are selected at random. Once a target has received a single hit, it will keep getting hit until it is killed, or until combat is ended. A player might end a battle with one wounded surface ship, a wounded sub, and a wounded plane. But he will never have more than one wounded unit of each type.

To me, this makes the 2hp feature irrelevant. There's no strategic choices to make here. If it was full-random instead of focusing down damaged units, then 2hp units would at least 'feel' different than a normal unit. They would have a potential upside (all 2hp units get damaged, none get killed) and potential downside (you end the fight with no damaged ships). You only buy big capital ships if there is going to be a big, decisive naval battle. With #2, why would I buy battleships instead of massing subs/destroyers/fighters/cruisers? I wouldn't.

Edit-I think @RogerCooper pointed out #2 is impossible so I wasted some words there.

@black_elk

I remember some comment somewhere that d6 is hardcoded in a couple things. You may run into trouble.

But yeah, sometimes you want something to be less likely than 1/6 and sometimes you want more steps between low chances and high chances.

luhhlz

Edit - this would be an engine update I think. So never mind.
The already-implemented pre-battle (airbattle) could be adapted for destroyer/sub and tanks and artillery and capital ships. The only problem is I don't think the AI plays nicely with it.

See WAW Variants - v3, but it's implemented in some other maps.

If air units attack or SBR a territory:

Attacker chooses for air to support attack or SBR (a territory can be attacked and SBR in the same round but not by the same units)
Air battle (separate selectable battle from combat menu. Must be selected prior to the ground battle)
2a) Defender chooses which air units to scramble to defend.
2b) 1 round of combat: Attacker rolls, defender chooses casualties, defender rolls, attacker chooses casualties.
Now the land battle takes place like normal - AA gun fires first. BUT if defender chose not to scramble any air units for the air battle, they are NOT part of the land battle.
If at the end of the round, attacker wins, and defender had unscrambled air units, they are now lost.

If implemented for sub/destroyers, it would provide the destroyer balance I'm looking for - no longer would 1 destroyer counter unlimited subs. Say you have a large fleet but only 2 destroyers, and I attack with a large fleet including 6 subs, I have a good chance of wiping out both destroyers in the sub/destroyer pre-battle, so your fleet loses the anti-submarine ability.

If implemented for artillery and tanks and air it would make a huge infantry stack for defending a lot less desirable. Because if you sprinkle a few fighters, infantry and tanks along with say 50 inf, facing off against a more balanced attacker, all of your art, tanks, and planes will be wiped out before the main battle begins. And if you move your non-infantry units a territory behind your infantry stack, your infantry stack is a lot weaker and will get pushed back a lot sooner.

luhhlz

Also Kurt I don't share your issue with destroyers filling all roles simultaneously - 'destroyer crazy', many units had many roles, and destroyers happened to be very effective at anti-sub, anti-air, and anti-surface. Submarines' primary role was to detect enemy fleets and then leave the area, report the fleet position/heading and only then would they return and take pot shots. I've never heard of them being used in conjunction with a surface fleet.

Cruisers would attempt to be part of the main battle line (e.g. cross the T) but also would be used for screening torpedo attacks, and amphibious bombardment, and would even attempt to ram other ships, and would also be providing anti-air cover for carriers.

Despite Japan's wish for Kentai Kessen, and the US's one attempt with Bull Halsey, there never really was a full simultaneous combined fleet battle with subs+destroyers+capital ships+air. Closest is maybe battle off Samar, but even that featured no US cruisers/battleships/fleet carriers, and no Japanese air/subs/fleet carriers. And destroyers in this case were surprisingly effective against capital ships.

In practice, in most maps, IMO, all boats are usually useful*, it's not like hordes of destroyers are optimal.

*In WAW T-boats should never be purchased. Terrible at defense and even worse at offense.

RogerCooper

@luhhlz The Hard AI actually simulates battles, so it can handle a wide variety of rules in combat effectively. Combat rules too different from the V2/V3/Global norm will throw off purchasing decisions.

Overpurchasing of given unit type by the AI or human players can be prevented by build caps. Underpurchasing by the AI can be dealt with by events which give units (and remove PU's).

KurtGodel7

@rogercooper said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

Rather than create another resource, make infantry cheaper for Russia. Or limit the number of infantry units that can be built.

Hmm. The impetus behind my original suggestion was that during WWII, some nations had much larger manpower pools than others. A nation like the Soviet Union, for example, could and did field a much larger infantry force than either Germany or Japan. But sometimes on a Larry Harris map, you'll see Japan build many more infantry per turn than the Soviet Union. I find that revolting, even though I've done exactly that myself when playing Japan. I mean, you want to be a little closer to historical reality than a situation like that would entail.

Cheaper infantry for the USSR wouldn't solve the problem, because some other nation like Japan could, with sufficient resources, nevertheless build more infantry per turn than the Soviets. Your other suggestion, of limiting the number of infantry units which can be built, would provide for a greater degree of historical accuracy. Walk me through the specifics of what you have in mind. Is it a hard cap for each nation?

Me:

Allow nations to increase their military output by building manufacturing centers. Limit the total number of manufacturing centers each nation can build.

rogercooper:

Everyone was mobilizing. Why create a new unit? The AI will not know to build the new unit.

One time I was bored, and couldn't find anyone to play against. So I played the hardest AI on NWO Lebowski. The AI didn't give me much of a challenge. I mean, it was better than nothing I suppose, but not really all that fun. Just because I personally almost never play against the AI, doesn't mean everyone else has my preferences. But I don't want to lose an otherwise good game feature, just because of the limitations of the AI.

As for why I want this new unit: it's true everyone was mobilizing, but it was not the case that everyone was mobilizing equally. During WWII, military aircraft production served as a reasonable proxy for overall military production. This link demonstrates WWII aircraft production. Below are the production numbers for 1942 and 1944.

U.S. 48,000__________ 96,000
U.S.S.R. 25,000_______ 40,000
UK 24,000 ________ 26,000
Germany 16,000 _______ 40,000
Japan 9,000 _________ 28,000

As you can see, different nations achieved different production increases, both proportionately and in absolute terms. This was an essential aspect of the war, and is not addressed in any TripleA WWII map.

Me:

Allow for air superiority by having a dogfight phase before combat or strategic bombing raids.

Rogercooper:

This can be done easily

Nice!

KurtGodel7

@luhhlz said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

To me, this makes the 2hp feature irrelevant. There's no strategic choices to make here. If it was full-random instead of focusing down damaged units, then 2hp units would at least 'feel' different than a normal unit. They would have a potential upside (all 2hp units get damaged, none get killed) and potential downside (you end the fight with no damaged ships). You only buy big capital ships if there is going to be a big, decisive naval battle. With #2, why would I buy battleships instead of massing subs/destroyers/fighters/cruisers? I wouldn't.

I realize the engine doesn't currently do what I want it to do. If you use 2 hit in a Larry Harris sense, then all your 2 hit units will get injured before any of them get killed. That creates a massive difference between units with 1 hitpoint and those with 2.

In my proposed suggestion, I wanted it so that once a unit takes damage, it keeps taking hits until it is killed or until the battle ends. That way you'll end the battle with, at most, one injured land unit, for example. That makes 2 hit units less powerful, as you've observed.

If you're making them less powerful, that means that you can give a lot more hitpoints to your units. Maybe most available units have 2 or more hitpoints.

In a Larry Harris rules set, if you want the most hitpoints for your money, buy the cheapest units you can. With this proposed modification, that would no longer necessarily be the case. An expensive unit, such as a heavy tank or a battleship, might actually give you roughly the same hitpoints for the money as a cheap unit. (Depending of course on how the unit cost structure was set up.)

KurtGodel7

@luhhlz said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

Also Kurt I don't share your issue with destroyers filling all roles simultaneously - 'destroyer crazy', many units had many roles, and destroyers happened to be very effective at anti-sub, anti-air, and anti-surface.

My concern with a destroyer "going crazy," as I put it, is that it artificially incentivizes an opponent to attack with one type of thing alone.

Suppose there's a large enemy fleet of, well, destroyers. If I attack with just subs, the destroyers fire back with their anti-sub values alone. If I attack with just air, the destroyers fight back only with their anti-air values. And if I attack with surface ships, the destroyers fight back with just their anti-surface values. But if I attack with all three categories, the enemy destroyers "go crazy." I've essentially tripled the combat value of the enemy force, versus what it would have been had I attacked with just one category of thing alone.

So if I know that I don't want the enemy destroyers to "go crazy," as it were, then I have to pick one type of unit with which to attack. Maybe I'm planning on attacking with just air, in which case I buy lots of air and maybe a few carriers. Or just surface, in which case I'm buying battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Or just undersea, in which case I'm buying lots of subs. But I have to pick just one category to focus my builds on, because I don't want to artificially augment the firepower of my opponent.

I personally would want players to be able to have a mix of air, surface, and undersea, as opposed to being forced to pick just one of the three.

RogerCooper

@kurtgodel7 If you multiple HP units, where the damaged units take hits first, you basically have the effect of multiple 1 HP units with a weaker combat strength.

In addition, damaged units taking hits last is realistic. Damaged ships are withdrawn from combat, units that have taken heavy losses are rotated out of the line.

In block games, hits are usually applied against the strongest unit, but combat rounds are limited, giving you the ability to rotate units or replace losses.

RogerCooper

@kurtgodel7 If you want hardcaps for each nation, you would need to create a separate unit type for each nation. Then you set the option for the unit.

<option name="maxBuiltPerPlayer"  value="25"/>

Schulz

Maybe you would want to use this map. It was pixelated but now it's fixed. https://i.ibb.co/SJmXDfb/National-Borders-1914.png

The WW1 borders can easily be turned into WW2 borders.

KurtGodel7

@rogercooper said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

In addition, damaged units taking hits last is realistic. Damaged ships are withdrawn from combat, units that have taken heavy losses are rotated out of the line.

If a unit has multiple hitpoints, that can represent one of three things.

A unit which was difficult to hit, such as a jet.
A unit which was heavily armored, and could therefore shrug off blows which would have destroyed a unit with weaker armor. For example, heavy tanks had thick armor, and if a shell could not penetrate that armor the tank would generally be unharmed.
A unit which could take multiple damaging blows before being destroyed. For example, it often took more than one hit from a torpedo or dive bomber to sink an aircraft carrier or battleship.

Now let's think about each of those categories. To make up an arbitrary number, let's say that out of every four attacks which would have felled a normal piston aircraft, a jet could dodge three. So you give a jet four hitpoints, on the theory that it's four times harder to kill. But if a nation brings a bunch of jets to the battle, does that mean that no jets would be killed at all, until they've all dodged their three attacks? That doesn't seem realistic to me. If a jet is 1/4th as likely to be hit by an attack, then it seems to me that jets should be getting killed at 1/4th the rate of piston aircraft.

Now think about heavily armored tanks, such as Tigers or Panthers. If American Sherman tanks encountered a heavy tank like that, they were supposed to have at least four tanks go in front, as a distraction. They could not penetrate that tank's armor from the front. A fifth tank would go around to the rear, where the armor was thinner, in hopes of getting a killing blow. Giving a Panther or Tiger multiple hitpoints would represent its resistance to attacks from the front, or even from the side. Now imagine Germany brings multiple Panthers to the battle. Which scenario do you find more likely? 1) All the Panthers would be attacked from the front, multiple times, before even a single Panther could be attacked from the rear. 2) For every, say, 3 attacks from the front against a Panther, there is 1 attack from the rear. One out of every four attacks kills a Panther; the other three are deflected by armor.

Finally, consider large ships, which could often survive multiple damaging blows before being destroyed. I'd break that down into two subcategories. 1) The ship is being pursued by enemy aircraft. 2) The ship is being pursued by enemy ships. If a damaged ship is being pursued by aircraft, it's unlikely to get away. Aircraft are much faster than ships. If however it's merely being pursued by enemy ships, there is indeed a decent chance it will get away.

To explore that latter point a bit more deeply, consider the following. Imagine what would have happened historically, had 10 American battleships fought 10 Japanese battleships. No aircraft, subs, destroyers or cruisers in this battle. Just battleships. Do you think that partway through this battle, you'd see 10 severely damaged American battleships, and 10 severely damaged Japanese battleships, with no battleships actually sunk? Obviously, there wouldn't have been a battleships fleet vs. battleship fleet battle in the actual war. But if there had been, some battleships would have been sunk, before others had been damaged.

I'd argue that my proposed hitpoint system represents a very realistic depiction of elusive units such as jets, heavily armored land units, and capital ships being pursued by enemy aircraft. It represents a decent depiction of capital ship vs. capital ship combat.

KurtGodel7

@rogercooper said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

@kurtgodel7 If you multiple HP units, where the damaged units take hits first, you basically have the effect of multiple 1 HP units with a weaker combat strength.

Correct.

Imagine a WWII nation doing a poor job of arming its soldiers. They lack heavy weapons, and can't do much against tanks. Many of them are not given any weapons at all, and are told to grab what they can from dead soldiers. They don't have much in the way of ammunition. In a real war, this would be a bad idea, unless this level of armament really was the best you could possibly do. But in a typical TripleA map, soldiers like this would be considered "conscripts." The ability to build them would be an absolute godsend for whichever nation was lucky enough to have them. They are the best of all possible best things: a cheap source of cannon fodder.

In the rules set I envision, the ability to build infantry would be limited by a nation's population size. So yeah, you're getting cannon fodder through your infantry build. But any cannon fodder you want over and above that would have to come from some other way.

Think about the difference between a tank and a piece of artillery. Both are heavy hitters, intended to do a lot of damage. But of the two, only the tank is intended to actually soak up damage. So, it's realistic to imagine a tank not just as a good source of firepower, but also as a good source of hitpoints.

There are at least two ways of handling units with multiple hitpoints. There's the way which currently exists: all units with multiple hitpoints get injured before any of them actually get killed. Then there's the way I've proposed, in which one unit with multiple hitpoints must die before the next can be injured. This latter approach is a sort of nerf to multiple hitpoint units. In particular, it prevents battles from being too one-sided in favor of the victor.

Currently, at least in most maps, all units have just one hitpoint, except for battleships and (in some cases) aircraft carriers. If however you nerf the multiple hitpoint thing, as I propose, then that opens the door to having a lot more units with multiple hitpoints. That in turn opens up a whole new area of strategic depth.

Think about the technologies you've seen in TripleA. In particular, think about those techs which improve units. Normally you'd be improving their offense, their defense, or (in some cases) their mobility. All that's well and good. But what if you could also improve their hitpoints? Imagine a conscript: a unit which attacks and defends on a 1. In the type of map we're used to, a heavy tank might attack and defend on a 5. But, it would have just 1 hitpoint. If it's 5 conscripts versus 1 heavy tank, both sides would have equal firepower, but the conscripts would be 5 times tougher to kill. But now imagine if that heavy tank could have multiple hitpoints, reflecting the fact that it has good armor. Imagine if technology could unlock additional hitpoints for it. Now, the hitpoint situation just became a lot less one-sided. Moreover, the tech system got richer, because unlocking those extra hitpoints is one more option for your research effort.

RogerCooper

@kurtgodel7 said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

@rogercooper said in Proposed Map: Flames and Steel:

@kurtgodel7 If you multiple HP units, where the damaged units take hits first, you basically have the effect of multiple 1 HP units with a weaker combat strength.

Correct.

Imagine a WWII nation doing a poor job of arming its soldiers. They lack heavy weapons, and can't do much against tanks. Many of them are not given any weapons at all, and are told to grab what they can from dead soldiers. They don't have much in the way of ammunition. In a real war, this would be a bad idea, unless this level of armament really was the best you could possibly do. But in a typical TripleA map, soldiers like this would be considered "conscripts." The ability to build them would be an absolute godsend for whichever nation was lucky enough to have them. They are the best of all possible best things: a cheap source of cannon fodder.

In the rules set I envision, the ability to build infantry would be limited by a nation's population size. So yeah, you're getting cannon fodder through your infantry build. But any cannon fodder you want over and above that would have to come from some other way.

Think about the difference between a tank and a piece of artillery. Both are heavy hitters, intended to do a lot of damage. But of the two, only the tank is intended to actually soak up damage. So, it's realistic to imagine a tank not just as a good source of firepower, but also as a good source of hitpoints.

There are at least two ways of handling units with multiple hitpoints. There's the way which currently exists: all units with multiple hitpoints get injured before any of them actually get killed. Then there's the way I've proposed, in which one unit with multiple hitpoints must die before the next can be injured. This latter approach is a sort of nerf to multiple hitpoint units. In particular, it prevents battles from being too one-sided in favor of the victor.

Currently, at least in most maps, all units have just one hitpoint, except for battleships and (in some cases) aircraft carriers. If however you nerf the multiple hitpoint thing, as I propose, then that opens the door to having a lot more units with multiple hitpoints. That in turn opens up a whole new area of strategic depth.

Think about the technologies you've seen in TripleA. In particular, think about those techs which improve units. Normally you'd be improving their offense, their defense, or (in some cases) their mobility. All that's well and good. But what if you could also improve their hitpoints? Imagine a conscript: a unit which attacks and defends on a 1. In the type of map we're used to, a heavy tank might attack and defend on a 5. But, it would have just 1 hitpoint. If it's 5 conscripts versus 1 heavy tank, both sides would have equal firepower, but the conscripts would be 5 times tougher to kill. But now imagine if that heavy tank could have multiple hitpoints, reflecting the fact that it has good armor. Imagine if technology could unlock additional hitpoints for it. Now, the hitpoint situation just became a lot less one-sided. Moreover, the tech system got richer, because unlocking those extra hitpoints is one more option for your research effort.

I would give the conscript unit an attack of 0. It would be useless attacking on its own. About right for the Chinese army and even some units of the Soviet army.

I would hesitate to give a heavy tank more hit points. Any tank, regardless of armor is vulnerable without supporting infantry. A heavy tank trades off mobility for protection. Just make it a 4-4-1 unit as compared to regular tank as 3-3-2.

There is a limit of how much tactical detail can be handled by TripleA.