dgaad

This post is almost completely wrong. 1. Basic Economics : it is far more economical to feed replacements into existing units than to build new units wholesale. This is as true in business as it is in the economy of war. Many studies of both economics and military costs bear this out. Check reputable historical sources for reference. 2. History : The tendency of the GERMAN army was to burn out their units and then pull the small cadre back to Germany for reconstruction or assimilation. This constitutes the strategic system of favoring new unit construction than field replacements. The Germans did have a replacement system, but it was inadequate to the task and focussed on constructing new units from small cadres, rather than an extensive field replacement system. The Germans were in a quandary in that their line was so thin they could not afford to take units out of the line while they still had cohesion, their replacements were inadequate to keep units staffed, so that by 1944 they were in a situation where units were by routine left in the line until it was almost completely destroyed. The exception to this was the SS and a number of panzer formations, who were pulled back while still cohesive for refitting and sometimes broken up into cadres for new divisions. The Soviets oriented their replacement system more towards field replacements as the war progressed. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, in the early part of the war, the Red Army had to be rebuilt from scratch. The replacement system which was established and developed in 1941 was therefore focussed on the creation of new units, and close to 1000 divisional-sized units were formed in air, armor, marines, paratroops, artillery, anti-aircraft, infantry etc. With increasing Soviet successes in the field, the replacement system was oriented to field replacements. This had a number of benefits. Units were regularly rotated from front line duty, enabling front commanders to maintain strong reserves, and cost and time savings resulted in not having to transport the unit back to a replacement center, fully outfit a new unit with a full compliment of heavy equipment and heavy weapons. Also, a field replacement system tends to preseve the morale of the unit -- provided that it is permitted to rest and recuperate and is NOT in constant front line duty, as most German divisions were. The MOST cost effective system is to pull a unit back to a replacement center while it has most of its strength. The LEAST cost effective system is a field replacement system that is inadequate to keep units adequately staffed, such that a point is inevitably reached where the unit has zero effectiveness and must be rebuilt from a very small cadre. The Germans had the worst system of replacement of all the major combattants in economic terms. Another reason that a field replacement system can be more cost effective is transport time and cost. There is much less load on the transport system if you have a steady stream of field replacements than if you are transporting whole units back and forth from the field to the replacement center. Transport takes time and requires infrastructure, each of which requires expenditure of wealth.

Why would you want to post an incomplete and likely to remain incomplete AAR?

As I said, this is a known issue with COS which was fixed in the patch.

You guys may or may not be aware of a game called "Clash of Steel". COS was VERY similar to SC in many ways, so much so that I wonder if Battlefront did not purchase the code and use it to develop SC. The game scale was similar in both geography and unit size. The unit types were also very similar, but SC bifurcates the air fleets into tactical and bomber types, and also includes things like rocket detachments. The research scheme is also very similar; you had to buy research "bulbs" that had a continuous improving effect over time, and in areas very similar, again, to SC. The effect of improvements in technology was to increase the combat power of the unit, so that a tank unit that started out with the numeral 4 as representation of its combat strength in 1940, could easily wind up with a representation of 12 or 14 by 1944. Economic symbology and design was also very similar in COS to SC. Options were also similar. There were also HQs with named commanders that functioned as sources of supply as well as having a tactical effect (increasing the combat strength rating of units), almost exactly like SC again. I played this game very much and enjoyed it very much. I believe it came out around 1993, and was developed in Germany. I believe SSI released it. I've played it as recently as a couple of years ago. In the original release, however, the file save routine had a flaw that wound up corrupting hard drives. Very bad. The 1.01 patch fixed it, but people by then, some of whom had lost entire hard drives, were very much turned off. I managed to notice and catch that error before any damage was serious on my machine, and resumed playing once the patch came out.

High Command suffered from extremely poor AI, although the game was the best operational design for the subject. It also suffered from flawed implementation, so it does not bear out comparison in Human-Human mode either. I actually sat down and played a face to face game with a good friend of mine. I think one of us watched a war movie while the other took their turn. We happened to be rooming at the time, so we had plenty of ftf time. He played the Germans. As might be expected, France fell, as I recall it was relatively normal and about the normal time (summer of 1940). With the following major exception : - At the time France fell, indeed on the very turn, I had substantial British forces in France which I was in the process of evacuating. To perform the evacuation, I had about 1/3 of the Home Fleet in a coastal hex in France, part of which was also performing a shore bombardment in an adjacent hex. So, France surrenders. For some reason, the game treated the British naval units in the coastal hex of France as French naval units, and they were apportioned off in the usual Vichy way. Meaning, I lost about 1/3 of my fleet. Gone. Disappeared. No combat. My friend and I discussed the situation, and agreed to play on. The first thing I needed to do was consolidate all remaining fleet elements, which I did. My friend launched an invasion where I happened to be doing this (near Rosyth), which got through the entire British fleet. His troops landed and took out the Marines unit I had there, and captured Rosyth. I don't have a quarrel with this as some kind of implementation problem. It was ballsy play on the part of my friend, combined with some good luck on his part. Again, however, I decided to play on. Within a few turns, however, some really stupid things began happening, which included the mystical re-deployment of some of my units to somewhere near Armenia where they could not be retrieved. I never played the game again. The fleet surrender and mystical redeployment were indicative of very sloppy coding and quality control, bad testing, etc. The fact that 360 filed bankruptcy later only reinforced that opinion. As a game design, High Command could and should be re-examined and cleaned up a bit for re-release. It beats all other games on the topic hands down, including this one. If only it could have had better AI and clean coding, I'd probably still be playing it.