Hkelukka

Not sure, could be much, couple be little, probably depends on the variable. and also: 17, naval units in a province adjacent to a port must be able to reinforce as well, as ports are they do not sufficiently represent the massive naval infrastructure that a port really is. It takes 10-20 turns to reinforce a large navy based in the atlantic if pulled back into the french ports and that is a years worth of work, historically a fair bit "too much". Im hard pressed to imagine the scapa flow being able to repair 2 BB's but nothing more? Maybe a single province scapa flow that would allow repair of all "UK" provinces around it (thus something like 7-8 ships at the same time max) Seems more reasonable than having to rotate ships 2 at a time. Repairing already takes 3 turns until done (1 moving into the province, one repairing in province and one moving out of province?) Edit: i mean that all ports would ofcourse be able to repair all naval units in adjacent provinces, could ofcourse cost more to repair "docked outside" than in the "drydock"?

I apologize if this is posted in the wrong area. I bought the game some days ago and have now completed several campaigns and have some suggestions. Before i go to that however i would like to say that the game is well designed, almost entirely bug free (have run into some, such as graphic acceleration = show bomber ranges option tends to cause visual glitches on my ati card) and so on. But all in all small considering the scale of the game. Ambitious project for such a small firm, gratz on the courage. List is in no specific order: 1, Option to have different max strength for units to reflect the difficulty of destroying large formations, even when surrounded. The defense variables do a fair bit of simulating the differences between, for example, corps and army units. They do not, i feel, sufficiently reflect the difficulty of destroying an entire army. To counter this i would make it so that units such as paras, specials and art have 5 max strength (when surrounded/attacked fairly easy to destroy) and corps + most other units remain at 10 and army go to 15 or even 20. Reinforcing a 1st army to 20 would take as much effort as reinforcing a level 10 and level 11 armies to 20 and would cause a proportionally larger drop in moral and readiness and such. I could go more into the details of why i think that some units should on the base have a lower max str and some higher but i'll leave that for another time. 2, mass/push for all units. When a unit loses a certain amount of str points relative to their maximum they will attempt to flee the province, depending on the push of the most previous attacker and the amount of units already attacked and the mass of the unit in province + moral, entrench and prepardness of defenders. Warfare rarely involves destroying whole armies but pushing them back is another deal entirely. Mass would be a good way of simulating the shifting battle lines present in warfare, while avoiding the "you need to entirely destroy and army to advance 1 point" situation. A retreating unit can either "jump" over defender and appear at the back of the line or if the retreating unit has sufficiently large mass remaining entirely push back the 2nd line of defense. For example: 1st line is entirely army and 2nd line is entirely special forces, one 1st line army unit drops to 20% of max str and demoralizes, army unit retreats back by 1 tile and pushes the special force unit back a further 1 tile. In reverse if the special force unit would be pushed back they would appear behind the 2nd line unit (which would, in the reverse, be an army unit). This would simulate things such as the retreat in 1944 for the axis. Where the battle line is being pushed back without any serious single unit destructions. 3. Shattered units, a unit that is not surrounded but is a part of a line when destroyed will "shatter" but not completely vanish, the unit will re-appear on the next friendly turn (to avoid air-bombing it) as a 1 str unit that also loses some or all upgrades and for the first turn can only be op moved. This would simulate the trickle back of troops that did not die but were injured, equipment that is salvaged after the fight, stragglers, demoralized units returning to their unit and so on. Right now if you lose 1 army you have to rebuild an entirely new army which will take a long time, even tho you can realistically say that if the army was not surrounded and entirely annihilated there would still be officers, paperwork, trained NCO's some working units and so on. 4. Zones-of-defense. A land unit with sufficient size (wont apply to tanks-specials and maybe some others) will if at high STR and Prep attempt to attack any enemy unit that passes from one of its 8 surrounding squares to another provided that the square it passes to is controlled by the same country/alliance as the unit in defense. So surrounded units will not attempt to fire, units in a 2nd row will not attempt to fire but if you punch a hole in the maginot and move a corps behind the defenders the 2 units on either line will take a potshot at you before you can encircle them. This would make encircling units a bit more difficult and add some sense of battle-lines instead of just separate units. 5. Even units without a port available on hostile soil will have some supply if there is a friendly port nearby. Lets assume there is a level 10 port in caen and the axis launch sealion. Units land in the south of UK and begin to move north, without having a port they would come to a near complete stop on the 2nd turn which is unrealistic considering the UK spawned endless amounts of transports to GET them there on the 1st turn. The amount of supply would be dependant on Infra and Amfb warfare tech but would never exceed a set amount (say 2-3 for example). This would simulate things like mulberries, small boats, villages not shown on the map and so on. And this level of supply would decrease as fast or quicker as supply normally does, so level 3 on the beachead (max) and level 2 one province in and so on. Possibly less. level 3 would ofcourse require the friendly port to be very close and with high level of amfb and infra tech. 6. Ability to intercept attacks for all naval units near the target. So lets assume you have a fleet with 1 BB 1 CV and 3 DD's and a sub runs into the fleet and attacks the 1BB, right now the BB would take serious damage and potentially die. There is no simulation of the convoy effect where 1 group of DD's would not just be "in a province next to the BB" but would be trying to protect it as best it could by circling it and using sonar and so on. This DD intercept range would be something small to keep it realistic, say 2-3 squares? Would also apply so that a BB attacking a convoy ship sitting next to a carrier will be intercepted by the carrier and the carrier will duke it out with the BB and then the BB will attack the convoy. This would add significant complexity to the present naval combat system which is mostly "pick 1 target, attack it with everything, pick next target" As attacking the high value targets first will simply open your ships to an intercept by the ships best suited to attack your units. So instead of heading straight for the CV's you would have to first send in some destroyers to tie up theirs, then some air units to remove the CV's interceptor capability and then use a BB to sink the CV. Instead of the way it is now with the SUB pack of doom's destroying 3-5 units while the destroyers sit quiet. 7. Neutral countries not in any alliance will use their generated MP to upgrade their units, the research level will be taken from "what is the highest level of tech available" 8. Neutral countries joining an alliance will give a set bonus amount to the alliance they join depending on their production, this will simulate things such as using reserve resources for common good and so on. 7-8 together will give some purpose to attempting late-game entry for small countries. Right now to spend MP to get a country like sweden into the axis is mostly useless since that country, when it joins, will have a small amount of 0 level units whose upgrading to max level is a serious pain in the butt. compared to the benefit of rapidly taking out sweden in 1939-40 and gaining 2 years worth of MP. Getting allies needs to be a PRIORITY not a hinder. This could be abstracted like so: When a country joins your alliance you gain 5-10 times their annual MP production (this would simulate the shared resources, patents, knowhow, trade, intelligence, and so on) and the computer counts what their total MP is times 5-10 at random and spends that MP upgrading their units. Also every minor in your alliance as an ally NOT as an annexed partner needs to reduce the cost of influencing by 10% and add 1 influence tick. This way as alliances grow they appear "nice" and more likely to attract others. 9. Some countries need to have historic friends (this can however be done by events as well) but so that a DW on a historic friend country will cause the friend country to move away from you as well. For example. A DW against Denmark and Norway will cause Sweden to move towards the allies some 20-30 points. A DW on Finland by SU will cause Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Baltics to move towards the axis and so on. So at the start of the game Sweden and Norway are 20 to Germany, then SU DW's Finland and they are 40-50 Germany, then Germany DW's Norway and Denmark and Sweden is back to only 20 Germany. Also a list of "historic enemies", so that a German DW against SU will result in a significant boost from Finland and a Sweden. This could be simulated fairly simply as such: Add 2 lists for each country that simply reads: Historic friends Historic enemies Then at the start of every turn the neutral AI will check the list and see if "historic friend at war with = ?" = if no then no action if yes then add 20 points to influence = opposing alliance same with historic enemies but in reverse. This would help avoid massive event chains for alliances and make coding for alliance trees significantly easier, i hope =D 10. Ability to use an allies level of tech to upgrade units if a bonus is paid. So if i as Italy want to upgrade my corps to German level of tech I would pay the 125% cost for upgrading to an allies level and a Germany would pay 25% for "having to send some exclusive items and assistance and so on. I fail to see how Bulgaria can use German tech but not Italy? It is for gameplay i know. I would still add the possibility to upgrade to an allies tech. 11. Ability to split a full STR army into 2 full STR corps of equal tech/upgrade level and ability to merge 2 full STR corps of equal tech to 1 army. This would make it possible to merge corps into armies for offensive then split into corps for encirclement as well as using armies for advance but splitting off corps to garrison cities as you go. Would give a use to the corps which right now are probably the least favorite unit to work with. 12. Ability to change who occupies land. Ability to shift ownership of occupied(not neccesary to be surrendered) to an ally. Germany can destroy Yugoslavia and occupy it but then turn ownership over to Italy. Historically this has happened many times, not least of which is the splitting of Germany after WW2, Berlin and so on. Changing ownership would reduce all cities in the area to 0 temporarily (new ownership, new procedures and so on) (would also prevent gamey quick changes as benefits from change would take some months to trickle in) 13. Partisans need to reduce garrison STR and spawn as individual units far less often. I have 2 full Italian armies (historically that would be about 500.000 men) stationed in Yugoslavia and its a game of "whack the partisan" that contributes very little and is quite odd from a historical perspective. Besides that only countries where partisans managed to form in groups that could say they "own" a square of land the size of a the Yugoslavian mountains was in 1944 Warsaw, Yugo and France. They didn't really form "partisan armies" that needed 500.000 men, air superiority and 2 weeks to kill. Partisans should instead be abstracted to a large degree where units stationed in occupied provinces take STR losses randomly and when a province of a country occupied is "liberated" by an army then the partisans appear but not before. No realistic partisans would appear in Yugoslavia as individual units when i control everything west of Odessa. Would be a massive waste of men. And to tone it back a bit i would also make it so that allied control of a single province of an occupied country is neccesary for any partisan UNITS to form. And the chance for units to form increases a few % every turn until at 100% so when a single province is taken partisans spawn. And when a partisan spawns the % drops something like 5 turns worth and more than 1 partisan can spawn per turn up to a maximum of the amount of cities and industries in the country occupied (tho they need not spawn AT the cities). This way partisans represent a constant strain on the players STR but not a realistic threat of occupying a city permanently. To prevent players from not garrisoning a province to avoid the partisans in a gamey fashion no garrison in a province would trigger partisans events that reduce the entire MP production some what (no garrison in yugoslavia would allow yugoslav "freedom fighters" to sneak into germany and blow up industries far outside the area initially occupied). 14. Major friendly cities need to have an instrinct "defense" value. So that a single paratrooper unit cant just occupy a city such as Berlin or Rome on a single drop. Could be simulated so that if a friendly (once again, allied not occupied) city is attacked and no garrison is present a partisan unit will spawn in the city but the player's MP will be reduced (even to the negative if applicable) as the people in the city flee and those who can, stay behind and fight and in the proccess block roads, rails, ferries and so on to the determination of the industry in general. 15. Upkeep, all units require 1-5% of their initial cost (counted as the present build cost of such a unit with upgrades and str) per turn. Would simulate things like fuel, food, replacements, vacations, pay and so on. Far as i can tell there is no supply = costs MP system present. 16. A large block of small countries with historic friendship (mentioned above) can form a unified country if all are allied to the same power. Think NZ and Aus forming a unified military command. Benelux forming a unified command (in game), Commonwealth and so on. This would ofcourse apply to my favorite block. Scandinavia. If all 3 countries willingly join a single alliance they should form a single block (to avoid being able to take out a single city and collapse an entire country). Tho possibly better done with events. I have some more but these are the major once for now. Discussion is very much invited. Sorry for the long post. Great game.