Ok, so time for another idea. This one is in some ways an extension of my earlier Unified Leader/Minister System though it kind of grew into being much more than that (drawing from several of my other posted ideas as well), so the title is slightly misleading. I suppose I have to actually start with the expansions of the idea before I can get to the idea itself.
Thus firstly and most simple, I think some new tech component types are in order. My idea for these are: battlefield level tactics, operational level tactics, grand strategy, carpet bombing tactics, precision bombing tactics (yes, splitting “bombing tactics” into these two), armored focus (after all, there is infantry focus and combined arms focus, imho an armored focus is also needed as many armored theoreticians first and sometimes primarily worked in terms of simply the armor rather than actual combined arms), fortifications focus (for certain defense-oriented doctrines), air gunnery (as an offshoot of artillery for air units), and possibly engineering (which can be different from fortifications focus in that it is the actual laying of the bunkers and mine fields rather than the conceptualizing of how to most effectively use them, though this is admittedly only rather tenuous and not necessary, perhaps not even recommended).
Essentially my hope with these new/split components is to make tech teams—specifically doctrine teams—more specialized, you'll find out a bit later why exactly. One other thing I'd like to point out would be that some of the components would relate to each other—take infantry/armored/combined arms focuses—since combined arms is naturally made of of the previous two, it gets a slight bonus to researching those sorts of doctrine components as well. Similarly, perhaps those two would also get a slight bonus to researching combined arms focus for the same reason (though imho the bonii would be different, with the CA focus bonus on the other two being greater than the other two's focii on it). Perhaps also the possibility of traits having complete opposites, such as a carpet bomber being completely incompetent (rather than merely being unskilled) at precision bombing, which would imho be fairly historical.
Now, this next part of my idea used my idea for (land) doctrines found here. I think that doctrines should be more of a process than a destination. It would not be the magical *doctrine finish* *+20% org across the board*, Rather, there are several key differences. Firstly, the stats would increase in increments corresponding to the doctrine components. Secondly, the stats would increase division by division, preferably sorted by one of two (or both) categories: experience, and leader skill (which, if possible, would also take relevant traits into consideration). Thirdly, the length of time required to complete a doctrine is directly proportional to several factors; these are (1) the number of (relevant) divisions you have [ie, if for the sake of argument there is a specifically marine doctrine, it will only take the number of marine divisions into consideration), (2) the influence of the researching team (more on that later, as it is part of my main idea) and (possibly) (3) how resistant the general staff is to change (which would require a minister set up along the lines of this here). This last is also a (tangential) part of my main idea (though possibly less tangential than the previous ideas).
The following will dip into my main idea a little before removing itself from such waters to mention another rather tangential idea before finally returning to my main idea (finally!
).
Now to speak a bit on the idea of the general staff. The general gist is already laid out in the link above, but to reiterate: the general staff would be a more complex entity than simply a Chief of Staff and three Chiefs of service branches—each would have their own underlings, perhaps two tiers underneath them, one of two and the next of four, though it would depend on the size of the country, the availability of relevant ministers and the requirements of their armed forces (hence Britain might have a more significant Navy staff than France, as it is the beginning dominant sea power, but a lesser Army staff). The only the stats of the service chief matter in the most direct sense—the navy will get no bonus from Cunningham if he is only in the lower tiers. However, if there is any significant clash of personalities or interests amongst the staff, then the chief's own stats are impaired as he must deal with a partially rather disagreeable staff. This then explains the third factor in the length of time required to research doctrines—if you are trying to research carrier techs as a battleship favoring country, research will be slower, though if you have a carrier proponent in the lower tiers, you might be able to gain more favor for carriers if he is promoted up to chief of staff (at the risk of some fair dissent amongst the naval officer class, of course!). This idea was primarily conceptualized because many doctrines of different branches have the same components, except for one or two. However, if the components are made more specialized then perhaps this sort of thing might not be entirely necessary.
Now to duck away again to discuss a tangential idea based off of this idea of the general staff. Namely, procedurally generated doctrine trees. Rather than having set doctrines, what if the doctrines for any one country are in a (very) large degree influenced by the ideas of its general staff? Thus, the French would be pretty damn unlikely to be able to research any blitzkrieg type doctrines unless (in combination with my Unified Leader/Minister System), their whole general staff is replaced by panzer leaders (with a great deal of dissent, naturally)! Thus, if a staff is equally split between favoring infantry and favoring armor, then a happy middle ground appears but if it leans too much to one side, it then naturally fails to keep up in the other. And yes, I realize that this idea is in several ways directly conflicting with the one directly above it—I think I might personally like this one better, as it'd make even games with the same country all the more different depending on chief of/and staff choices.
Now, to finally tackle the main, original idea. Unifying ministers and (doctrine) tech teams. Before I begin (don't groan, this is the very last aside, I promise) I'd just like to state that I hope that this would go well with the already twice before mentioned Unified Leader/Minister System (just in case you didn't get the hint and click the link, one last time bashing you over the head with it before I give up). Now, on to the main dish.
One of the essentials is that, rather than having set doctrine teams with set years (notwithstanding historical death years [of natural causes] and possibly also historical retirement years), the chiefs of the staffs would be the main doctrine teams. Their specialties would be dynamically generated from their minister traits (which is why imho it'd work best with the unified leaders/ministers—a greater wealth of more varied traits across the board). Thus a Rommel chief of staff would be different from a Guderian chief of staff, who'd likely still be different from a Manstein chief of staff. This, of course, opens up pretty much every single leader to be a potential chief, with his own unique specialties.
Of course, as not all leaders are made equal and not all leaders-turned-chiefs are made equal, thus not all chiefs-turned-researches are made equal either. I dislike using the numerical skill system now as it is not only a representation of skill but also funding and influence. However, I have not yet been able to conceive of a way to be rid of the loathsome numbers without also breaking the research system—there needs to be some difference to research speed between a Guderian and a Halder beyond their specialties. I think, however, that this might be solved in two ways that satisfactorily minimize the arbitrariness of the numbers. This would be to use a character's personal traits to affect this number (ie, hard working versus lazy, innovative versus old guard, his own personal traits), as well as the agreeability of his staff (the resistance his ideas would have in his own staff) and his own personal influence (for example, if Guderian was both chief of staff and army staff, then he'd be more influential than being just one or the other, but he also has potentially more resistance).
Of course, this doesn't explain prima donnas like Guderian who successfully expounded armored warfare even though he wouldn't become the chief of staff until mid-1944 iirc. These sort of people require either a different measure of influence, an additional one, or they are (soft) coded to be damned influential researchers regardless of their position in the hierarchy of the armed forces due to the personal interests of the commander in chief, head of state, whatever. I have yet to decide on what I think is the best solution to this problem.
So yeah, that's my idea, I think. I may or may not have missed something, this was originally contained in seven emails I sent to myself when my personal laptop had died and was forced to use a different machine over the period of a month, which were comprised of various bullet points to help me remember the main threads. I think for the most part, I was able to catch these threads again, though perhaps not as well as I may have been able to at the time I originally had these ideas. and yeah, its kind of long. oh well, I hope its good stuff. thoughts?
Thus firstly and most simple, I think some new tech component types are in order. My idea for these are: battlefield level tactics, operational level tactics, grand strategy, carpet bombing tactics, precision bombing tactics (yes, splitting “bombing tactics” into these two), armored focus (after all, there is infantry focus and combined arms focus, imho an armored focus is also needed as many armored theoreticians first and sometimes primarily worked in terms of simply the armor rather than actual combined arms), fortifications focus (for certain defense-oriented doctrines), air gunnery (as an offshoot of artillery for air units), and possibly engineering (which can be different from fortifications focus in that it is the actual laying of the bunkers and mine fields rather than the conceptualizing of how to most effectively use them, though this is admittedly only rather tenuous and not necessary, perhaps not even recommended).
Essentially my hope with these new/split components is to make tech teams—specifically doctrine teams—more specialized, you'll find out a bit later why exactly. One other thing I'd like to point out would be that some of the components would relate to each other—take infantry/armored/combined arms focuses—since combined arms is naturally made of of the previous two, it gets a slight bonus to researching those sorts of doctrine components as well. Similarly, perhaps those two would also get a slight bonus to researching combined arms focus for the same reason (though imho the bonii would be different, with the CA focus bonus on the other two being greater than the other two's focii on it). Perhaps also the possibility of traits having complete opposites, such as a carpet bomber being completely incompetent (rather than merely being unskilled) at precision bombing, which would imho be fairly historical.
Now, this next part of my idea used my idea for (land) doctrines found here. I think that doctrines should be more of a process than a destination. It would not be the magical *doctrine finish* *+20% org across the board*, Rather, there are several key differences. Firstly, the stats would increase in increments corresponding to the doctrine components. Secondly, the stats would increase division by division, preferably sorted by one of two (or both) categories: experience, and leader skill (which, if possible, would also take relevant traits into consideration). Thirdly, the length of time required to complete a doctrine is directly proportional to several factors; these are (1) the number of (relevant) divisions you have [ie, if for the sake of argument there is a specifically marine doctrine, it will only take the number of marine divisions into consideration), (2) the influence of the researching team (more on that later, as it is part of my main idea) and (possibly) (3) how resistant the general staff is to change (which would require a minister set up along the lines of this here). This last is also a (tangential) part of my main idea (though possibly less tangential than the previous ideas).
The following will dip into my main idea a little before removing itself from such waters to mention another rather tangential idea before finally returning to my main idea (finally!
).Now to speak a bit on the idea of the general staff. The general gist is already laid out in the link above, but to reiterate: the general staff would be a more complex entity than simply a Chief of Staff and three Chiefs of service branches—each would have their own underlings, perhaps two tiers underneath them, one of two and the next of four, though it would depend on the size of the country, the availability of relevant ministers and the requirements of their armed forces (hence Britain might have a more significant Navy staff than France, as it is the beginning dominant sea power, but a lesser Army staff). The only the stats of the service chief matter in the most direct sense—the navy will get no bonus from Cunningham if he is only in the lower tiers. However, if there is any significant clash of personalities or interests amongst the staff, then the chief's own stats are impaired as he must deal with a partially rather disagreeable staff. This then explains the third factor in the length of time required to research doctrines—if you are trying to research carrier techs as a battleship favoring country, research will be slower, though if you have a carrier proponent in the lower tiers, you might be able to gain more favor for carriers if he is promoted up to chief of staff (at the risk of some fair dissent amongst the naval officer class, of course!). This idea was primarily conceptualized because many doctrines of different branches have the same components, except for one or two. However, if the components are made more specialized then perhaps this sort of thing might not be entirely necessary.
Now to duck away again to discuss a tangential idea based off of this idea of the general staff. Namely, procedurally generated doctrine trees. Rather than having set doctrines, what if the doctrines for any one country are in a (very) large degree influenced by the ideas of its general staff? Thus, the French would be pretty damn unlikely to be able to research any blitzkrieg type doctrines unless (in combination with my Unified Leader/Minister System), their whole general staff is replaced by panzer leaders (with a great deal of dissent, naturally)! Thus, if a staff is equally split between favoring infantry and favoring armor, then a happy middle ground appears but if it leans too much to one side, it then naturally fails to keep up in the other. And yes, I realize that this idea is in several ways directly conflicting with the one directly above it—I think I might personally like this one better, as it'd make even games with the same country all the more different depending on chief of/and staff choices.
Now, to finally tackle the main, original idea. Unifying ministers and (doctrine) tech teams. Before I begin (don't groan, this is the very last aside, I promise) I'd just like to state that I hope that this would go well with the already twice before mentioned Unified Leader/Minister System (just in case you didn't get the hint and click the link, one last time bashing you over the head with it before I give up). Now, on to the main dish.
One of the essentials is that, rather than having set doctrine teams with set years (notwithstanding historical death years [of natural causes] and possibly also historical retirement years), the chiefs of the staffs would be the main doctrine teams. Their specialties would be dynamically generated from their minister traits (which is why imho it'd work best with the unified leaders/ministers—a greater wealth of more varied traits across the board). Thus a Rommel chief of staff would be different from a Guderian chief of staff, who'd likely still be different from a Manstein chief of staff. This, of course, opens up pretty much every single leader to be a potential chief, with his own unique specialties.
Of course, as not all leaders are made equal and not all leaders-turned-chiefs are made equal, thus not all chiefs-turned-researches are made equal either. I dislike using the numerical skill system now as it is not only a representation of skill but also funding and influence. However, I have not yet been able to conceive of a way to be rid of the loathsome numbers without also breaking the research system—there needs to be some difference to research speed between a Guderian and a Halder beyond their specialties. I think, however, that this might be solved in two ways that satisfactorily minimize the arbitrariness of the numbers. This would be to use a character's personal traits to affect this number (ie, hard working versus lazy, innovative versus old guard, his own personal traits), as well as the agreeability of his staff (the resistance his ideas would have in his own staff) and his own personal influence (for example, if Guderian was both chief of staff and army staff, then he'd be more influential than being just one or the other, but he also has potentially more resistance).
Of course, this doesn't explain prima donnas like Guderian who successfully expounded armored warfare even though he wouldn't become the chief of staff until mid-1944 iirc. These sort of people require either a different measure of influence, an additional one, or they are (soft) coded to be damned influential researchers regardless of their position in the hierarchy of the armed forces due to the personal interests of the commander in chief, head of state, whatever. I have yet to decide on what I think is the best solution to this problem.
So yeah, that's my idea, I think. I may or may not have missed something, this was originally contained in seven emails I sent to myself when my personal laptop had died and was forced to use a different machine over the period of a month, which were comprised of various bullet points to help me remember the main threads. I think for the most part, I was able to catch these threads again, though perhaps not as well as I may have been able to at the time I originally had these ideas. and yeah, its kind of long. oh well, I hope its good stuff. thoughts?
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