Proposed Map: Flames and Steel

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.