WAD: Infrastructure and strength loss - fixed in 1.07?

[Long Lance]

Infrastructure and strength loss - fixed in 1.07?

I still had not enough time to test 1.06 detailed - I'll start a game after I post this thread btw. After all I read, 1.06 seems to be a great improvement to this already fantastic game.

But there is one thing that still defnately needs rework:
It's the fact that you lose strength (I don't mind about the supplies, but the valuable manpower!) when being in provinces with a maximum infra < 33 unless you have a direct line to your capital. German troops in northern finland for example simply lose strength without being attacked!?

Whywhywhy?

I'd stop complaining about this if someone could explain this logically to me...

 

[Stripe999]

But there is one thing that still defnately needs rework:
It's the fact that you lose strength (I don't mind about the supplies, but the valuable manpower!) when being in provinces with a maximum infra < 33 unless you have a direct line to your capital. German troops in northern finland for example simply lose strength without being attacked!?

Whywhywhy?

I'd stop complaining about this if someone could explain this logically to me... [/QUOTE]

Well, you are Leutnant Schmidt. You're sitting in Nothern Finland. It's -35 degree centigrade. You haven't heard from your family or had a decent meal for weeks, because there is no supply line open.

Perhaps you give yourself a moderate injury to be sent home. Perhaps you quietly slip away in a blizaard and hope to find a nice Finnish girl. Perhaps you simply lose heart and fight ineffectively.

As a cumulative effect of such decisions, the effective manpower declines...

Nick

 

[Long Lance]

Well, that's a very nice explanation, and it is somehow 'logical', too.

But not that logical I asked for

 

[unmerged(20887)]

But there is one thing that still defnately needs rework:
It's the fact that you lose strength (I don't mind about the supplies, but the valuable manpower!) when being in provinces with a maximum infra < 33 unless you have a direct line to your capital. German troops in northern finland for example simply lose strength without being attacked!?

Whywhywhy?

I'd stop complaining about this if someone could explain this logically to me...

Well, you are Leutnant Schmidt. You're sitting in Nothern Finland. It's -35 degree centigrade. You haven't heard from your family or had a decent meal for weeks, because there is no supply line open.

Perhaps you give yourself a moderate injury to be sent home. Perhaps you quietly slip away in a blizaard and hope to find a nice Finnish girl. Perhaps you simply lose heart and fight ineffectively.

As a cumulative effect of such decisions, the effective manpower declines...

Nick[/QUOTE]


Yeah, but according to the tooltip which indicates a unit's supply and dug-in situation, Leutnant Schmidtt is well supplied. Tough to starve to death if you have enough to eat...

 

[Olaf the Unsure]

It's the fact that you lose strength (I don't mind about the supplies, but the valuable manpower!) when being in provinces with a maximum infra < 33 unless you have a direct line to your capital. German troops in northern finland for example simply lose strength without being attacked!?

Whywhywhy?

Non-battle casualties actually were quite common in WWII. Accidents and disease accounted for a surprisingly large percentage of overall casualties. One source I found -
here - indicates that the US had 83,000 non-battle deaths in WWI (as compared to 235,000 battle deaths).

In terms of HOI gameplay, it makes sense to me that any unit that is not regularly reinforced should lose strength over time. Especially so for units that are more isolated from the main supply lines. What you describe seems reasonable.

 

[Truchses]

No, it's not reasonable. German soldiers are soldiers and not mercenaries. They just don't simply leave the army if the situation don't please them. And especially germans have nothing to fear than the Gestapo.

Being a division, a division has it's own field medical section and field replacement section, so the president/chancellor/dictator/pharao don't has to care for each single soldier. Or you would have to check each single unit on each day and to restrengthen it, else you would sometimes be notified that a unit has just been wiped out by nothing.

Long Lance, could you provide us with more details? How fast is the strength decreasing? Is the org increasing? If the strength decreases with 1% per day, that would mean that you loose one company per day and in 100 days the division has starved. That would obviously be too much. Also the org has to increase, and more than the strength is decreasing, for reinforcing already decreases org, so would always be at 0 org.

It's also unlogical that you loose strength and org where native troops wouldn't.

 

[Panzer Guderian]

I do not have any problems with the strenght losses. I think they are resonably historical, especially the jungle provinces. Just read up on Japan's losses non-combat causes in WWII.

Still, they are somewhat realistic, if they are a pain in the butt. For some conuntries, England, USA, and Japan, they are more of a problem since not having a land connection to their capital increases the effect. Other countries, Finland, USSR, and to a lessor extent, Germany, are less if not at all effected. Depending on if the province is a national province, annexed, or just controlled with a land like to their capital. I use generally use paratroppers to capture these remote provinces, and then get them the hell outta Dodge before they loose too much manpower.

 

[Long Lance]

____________________________
To Truchsess: The German Unit in Finland/Kajaani loses about 0.5 Strength point a day (Infra 19). Org raises. The unit in Joeunsuu (infra 29) loses about 0.1 strength point a day. Org raises too.
____________________________

To Olaf and Panzer:
I'm not discussing non combat losses, losses by partisan sharpshooters or deserteurs. It's the fact that these losses occur because there is no direct supply line to Berlin! If Germany would have annexed Finland, control Leningrad and whole Bjelorussia (sp?), than these troops wouldn't suffer 'non-combat-losses' in these provinces.
____________________________


To all HoI-Gamers
I can give you another example (from 1.05c, but that hasn't been changed anyway): After steaming down the Transsib Railroad and annexing Tanu Tuva,
(infra 10) my troops there felt rather comfortable. My stupid Japanese Allied gave me an exp force in Tanu Tuva, which died within days. Cause there is no land connection between Siberia and Tokyo. Does this rule really sound senible ?

 

[unmerged(13914)]

See Kajaani and die!

The low infra penalties are a problem, and in my opinion should be fixed. Sorry that I didn't press the team during beta testing to get this one, there was a lot going on.

The basic idea is OK, nonbattle casualties did matter and the Japanese in particular lost a lot of troops to malaria in the jungles. The Germans lost men to typhus, particularly in 1944 on the Eastern Front, because no amount of medical care could completely overcome the effect of living in a trench for 2-3 years and wearing the same filthy clothes and never bathing. Being supplied is not enough, you have to not spend your time living in disease-infested swamps. So a penalty should exist.

The problem arises because losses are computed like this:

(34 - infra) x (number of divisions) x (some constant) = daily loss rate

That means that if you're in a province with infra = 19, like Kajaani where the Germans are in Finland, your loss rate per day is about 7 times higher than if you're in a province with infra = 32. For provinces with infra = 9, or even infra = 0, it's much worse.

It also means that if you send 10 divisions into the swamp, they EACH lose 10x as much as if you had sent just one -- that is, your total loss is 100x as big.

In one case last fall, a player reported losing 90 % of his forces in ONE DAY. March a big enough army into an overseas province whose main road is a goat path, and you'll get the same. The AI used to do this a lot, but has since been taught to avoid low-infra provinces.

It's clearly a problem, and just as easy to fix. We just need to tweak the formula. I will ask about this.

 

[unmerged(23238)]

Reading Math Guy's post above, I feel that removing the design (the penalty) isn't really the nearest issue. The most obvious nearest issue would be to get a reasonable formula in the design.
I am not really a math guy, but the logic - (or rather illogic? in Math Guy's explanation of the problem seems clear enough:"It also means that if you send 10 divisions into the swamp, they EACH lose 10x as much as if you had sent just one -- that is, your total loss is 100x as big". Well, if that is true, there isn't much to discuss is it? At least if one think that having a penalty, even a crude one, is indeed reasonable (which I do).

If the forumala is reasonable, I think people just have to learn to live with the design.

But sure, having an optional pop-up advance warning on top of a fixed formula would be nice and probably make the issue a non-issue for a majority of gamers: there are lots of pops-ups anyway, so one more wouldn't hurt.

 

[Ghost_dk]

But sure, having an optional pop-up advance warning on top of a fixed formula would be nice and probably make the issue a non-issue for a majority of gamers: there are lots of pops-ups anyway, so one more wouldn't hurt.

I dont think many people would use the pop-up since they would get one every time they take a province whose infrastructure drops below 34 as well.
There is no way to check if there has recently been a battle in a province or what it "normal" infrastructure is.

Ghost_dk

 

[Mr.G 24]

the formula definetly needs a tweak. I mean you give historic example of typhus in 44' for Germany but that was Hitler's Germany. My Germany is a well supplied high morale fighting force that should'nt lose men when going to low infrastructure because I sent the latest coats and equipment. I mean 1 company a day??!!!

Alas one of the last big problems of a game that matured through our eyes.

 

[Long Lance]

The low infra penalties are a problem, and in my opinion should be fixed. Sorry that I didn't press the team during beta testing to get this one, there was a lot going on.
....
It's clearly a problem, and just as easy to fix. We just need to tweak the formula. I will ask about this.

You definately don't have to say sorry for not doing something concerning the low infra thing. I just played 1.06 for ~10 hrs. and so much has been changed (improved!), I'm sure this were tons of work.

I'm just glad that there something will be changed, because as it is handled now, it's not only illogical, it's also imbalancing esp. for UK and JAP.

 

[unmerged(21447)]

Yeah, but according to the tooltip which indicates a unit's supply and dug-in situation, Leutnant Schmidtt is well supplied. Tough to starve to death if you have enough to eat...

And there lies the problem : since lieutnant Schmidtt's supply now relies on horse and dog pulled sleighs, and since the German army has a lack of sleighing specialists, he should not be that well supplied in the first place. Besides, it is hard to put a replacement motor for a tank on a dog sleigh.

I like the fact that some provinces are just so hard to keep troops in. I can understand the fact that STR goes down in low infra provinces, since they are usually very unhospitable, and anyone sending an army in them is asking for trouble (a division, 10000 men, in the middle of the Sahara, of course they are going to lose people, same thing in Northern Siberia or in a deep jungle). Sending 10 divisions is asking for even more trouble ! What is illogical is that if it has a direct land connection with the capital, you don't lose men. As long as you have a direct land connection with a (well-stocked) supply center, what does it matter if you need a ship to travel to the capital ? The only reason I could see to lessen the losses is if the army is in a national province, since it could then draw on the local reindeer herders for help and supplies.

By the way, do the mythical marines, who seem to get special bonuses in about every other combat situation (swamps, jungles, shore attacks, urban, and to a lesser extent everything that is not a plain) get special bonuses in low infra provinces ? I thought that they were just well-trained amphi troops in WWII, but it seems someone has decided they were really a bunch of super heroes that just forgot their tanks and had to make do with small arms, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they ignore low infra penalties too

 

[unmerged(23238)]

I dont think many people would use the pop-up since they would get one every time they take a province whose infrastructure drops below 34 as well.

Well, I wrote "optional" and one could have default=off I guess. The pop-up would probably be used most by people having a big problem with this and really needing a warning.

There is no way to check if there has recently been a battle in a province or what it "normal" infrastructure is.

I don't understand.

Maybe I was unclear what I meant, either in my words or in my head .
I was thinking about the 'unit-event' where a unit loose strength by this rule. Each time this specific 'unit-event' happens, a check would be made to a lower limit on strength. When you are on or have passed that lower limit you get (if you want) a pop-warning saying the unit may be annihilated due to this rule. If the factors change, well, you just don't get new warnings on the unit.
Am I thinking wrong?

 

[Ilkhold]

And there lies the problem : since lieutnant Schmidtt's supply now relies on horse and dog pulled sleighs, and since the German army has a lack of sleighing specialists, he should not be that well supplied in the first place. Besides, it is hard to put a replacement motor for a tank on a dog sleigh.

That's not really it, because if the supplies are transported by horse and dog pulled sleighs all the thousands of miles from Berlin, then everything is fine, and our Leutnant wouldn't need to suffer, but it you take a big ship placce thousands of tons on it, and only use horses and dog pulled sleighs for the last mile, then you are in trouble.

 

[Maximilian I]

it´s WAD.

 

[unmerged(14249)]

The Germans lost men to typhus, particularly in 1944 on the Eastern Front, because no amount of medical care could completely overcome the effect of living in a trench for 2-3 years and wearing the same filthy clothes and never bathing. Being supplied is not enough, you have to not spend your time living in disease-infested swamps.

The Germans also had significant problems in the Western Desert due to inappropriate diet and poor sanitary discipline which was literally shitty. "In the two months before the second battle of El Alamein, more than one in five Germans had been stricken by disease...". The British generally did much better than the Axis in this respect because of their long colonial experience in tropical countries.

Andrew

 

[unmerged(23238)]

I wonder: what is the designers idea about this? (see initial two posts, I guess).
What was the designers intention and scope? Knowing that would clear up my mind at least. Its a complex game and I am sure I haven't thought about all + and -.
Maybe our current views is affected by lack of knowledge of the intentions and following up thoughts from the designers? If so, maybe the views would change with some more insight provided from the designers?

It doesn't seem to lead anywhere to nit-pick about details, that may or may not be relevant in the scope of the game design challenge.

I try to think about the current design as a typical high level HOI abstraction, that provides something with the cost of another thing. Would be nice to read something from the designers thou...! Anyone seen an interview, chat log or something like that?

 

[unmerged(2833)]

it´s WAD.

Thats not very consistent WAD, sadly-landlink to capital...