KDG

We have two problems with jets, as I see it. 1) Jets are too powerful, especially when you get to tech 4 or 5. Personally I think getting to tech 4 or 5 should be much more difficult for all techs. I'd like to see tech slowed down even more as you advance in tech. Either reduce the max amount of chits per research(maybe 2-3 chits max), or reduce the pct. chance to advance would be fine with me. 2) We have too many jets. Slowing research might mean less jets, but the best possible way to reduce total jets is to increase their cost. 25% more for a jet means at least 25 less jets. I believe this hurts Germany more. I wish we had an editor so we could change unit costs or attack values and see what the effects were. That would be sweet. Test all these theories that we have.

Shaka Jets being increased 50% would put their cost at 600, thus making it next to impossible to take France as the Germans would be hard pressed to purchase xtra air at the cost of 600. I really think a 10-25% is more than enough to reduce air power in the game. Remember that increasing the cost also increases the reinforcment costs, as well as the plane cost due to tech increases, thus each change is magnified 3 fold. Here is the breakdown with current costs, and increasing the cost by 25% to 500, along with reinforcement costs, and tech levels: Tech Current 125% - 0 - 400(20) - 500(25) - 1 - 440(22) - 550(28) - 2 - 480(24) - 600(30) - 3 - 520(26) - 650(33) - 4 - 560(28) - 700(35) - 5 - 600(30) - 750(38) Under the old system, a level 2 jet was 80 MPP's more than the original 400 MPP, with the 25% increase, it would cost 200 MPP's more than that original 400 MPP. I'd guess that a 25% increase in jet cost would see the total # of jets drop by about 35%. Right now I'd take any type of cost increase, even to 450 in order to reduce jet use. [ April 24, 2003, 07:44 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

Interesting ideas that could be incorporated into SC2. Many other ideas have also been mentioned. With a patch coming we need an easy solution that is for SC, and can be done quickly. We can't really make the effectiveness of jets change for this patch, and we can't put a restrictive number on jets. The easy solution is to just bump up the cost of jets. I agree this might not be the best solution, but it will have some affect on gameplay if jets are raised from either 400 to 450 or from 400 to 500.

How do you keep your rockets alive since those high powered jets will just take out your rockets when you get them anywhere near the front lines? [ April 24, 2003, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

Hubert Thanks for the patch, as well as the soon to be released graphics patch. Great work. What exactly was done to the AI, if you could elaborate? Also, any chance of seeing jets increased in cost from either 400 to 450, or from 400 to 500? Its pretty unanimous that they are overpowered and overused, thus the cost increase is an easy fix. Thanks again. Ken [ April 24, 2003, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

Another way to solve the jet proliferation problem is to increase the cost of them by one of two ways (or even both). 1) Increase the cost to 500 (25% increase) So before 10 jets cost 4000, now you could only have 8 jets for the same cost. Additionally repairs would cost 25 instead of 20 per point, so thats one or two less jets over the life of a game. 2) Have research increases bump up the cost of planes 20% instead of the standard 10%. Level 5 jets Old way - 400 cost up to 600 cost.(30 to repair) New way - 400 cost up to 800 cost.(40 to repair) New way* - 500 cost up to 1000 cost.(50 to repair) (*based on also using #1 above) This wouldn't require changing the existing game s battle equations, makes other units more worthwhile, and is easily changeable. [ April 24, 2003, 07:12 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

I'm beginning to think I'd like to see multiple techs for every unit. Ground units: Tech 1: Increase soft attack Tech 2: Increase soft defense Tech 3: Increase air defense Tech 4: Increase tank defense Tech 5: Increase overall strength Tank units: Tech 6: Increase soft attacks Tech 7: Increase tank attacks Tech 8: Increase air defense Tech 9: Increase soft defense Tech 10: Increase overall strength Jets: Tech 11: Increase soft attacks Tech 12: Increase tank attacks Tech 13: Increase air attacks Tech 14: Increase air defense Tech 15: Increase overall strength Same for the other units also.(I might include two increases for ships and subs to make investment in them worthwhile, maybe an attack and defense improvement). Then I might make investment cost 100 MPP's, but only have a 5% chance for improvement each turn. The increase could be 1/2 point to 1 point for each increase(maybe even make this random). Total techs available to invest in might be 20-25. I assume some of you war buffs could come up with nice little names that would describe each of the above techs. I believe this would increase overall strategy, as well as bring in a bit more randomness. Ex. One side is investing in air defense when they find out that tanks are doing all the attacking. You quickly get some research into tank defense, but was it in time. Or your jets aren't doing any damage, so you change strategy and bump up you infantry attack, just in time to take key locations. I'd like to see the occasional game(10% of the time maybe) where even when you played it perfectly, some random factors(like tech) kept you from winning.

I wanted to ask you about the formula for strength point loses that is given in the manual. It does not seem to have any randomizer ("dice roll") in it. Since there is obviously some element of chance in the loses that units take during combat there is either something missing in the published formula, or else I am just not understanding the formula correctly (probably the later). If you are able to clarify this for me, I would be most grateful. Jeff No mention is made of the randomness in the book, but it obviously happens. For example from the formulas you can figure out that you will cause 1.5 damage and receive .6 damage in return. When applied in the game, you will often see 1 damage given while receiveing 1 damage, or you will give 2 damage, while receiving 0 damage. This is the randomness that you speak of. Knowing what the full range and chances of this randomness occuring is not known at this time. Some requests have even been made to remove all randomness from the game. Just figure that over the long haul, the average is going to come in at what the formulas show. Hope that helps. [ April 10, 2003, 08:32 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

I'm beginning to think I'd like to see multiple techs for every unit. Ground units: Tech 1: Increase soft attack Tech 2: Increase soft defense Tech 3: Increase air defense Tech 4: Increase tank defense Tech 5: Increase overall strength Tank units: Tech 6: Increase soft attacks Tech 7: Increase tank attacks Tech 8: Increase air defense Tech 9: Increase soft defense Tech 10: Increase overall strength Jets: Tech 11: Increase soft attacks Tech 12: Increase tank attacks Tech 13: Increase air attacks Tech 14: Increase air defense Tech 15: Increase overall strength Same for the other units also.(I might include two increases for ships and subs to make investment in them worthwhile, maybe an attack and defense improvement). Then I might make investment cost 100 MPP's, but only have a 5% chance for improvement each turn. The increase could be 1/2 point to 1 point for each increase(maybe even make this random). Total techs available to invest in might be 20-25. I assume some of you war buffs could come up with nice little names that would describe each of the above techs. I believe this would increase overall strategy, as well as bring in a bit more randomness. Ex. One side is investing in air defense when they find out that tanks are doing all the attacking. You quickly get some research into tank defense, but was it in time. Or your jets aren't doing any damage, so you change strategy and bump up you infantry attack, just in time to take key locations. I'd like to see the occasional game(10% of the time maybe) where even when you played it perfectly, some random factors(like tech) kept you from winning.

First, ground combat is never any bloodier, and becomes less effective as the war goes on: basic attack and defense values don't change, but infantry units become much harder to destroy because they have more strength points. Because of the limited number of ground units which can attack another in a single turn, air becomes even more important. Arby, I agree. Thats what I was trying to say when I made the statement about the importance of air as units move up in strength. All ground units attack w/ pretty much fixed amounts throughout the game, really only gaining with experience. The higher the strength of a unit, the more jets required to kill it, since ground attacks are constant. And, since air units don't increase their ground attack values, either, having even more of them is necessary, because it takes more to get the job done. They do in a round about way, that is in the gaining of experience through frequent kills. With jets knocking off one or two corps(or should I say corpse) every turn, gaining the kill experience without losing strength, it is not uncomman to see germany with exp. 3 jets. They then can womp on even more corps, gaining even more experience, until victory. So what we need is some combination of the following: Ability for ground units and or tanks to cause additional damage through research, even if its a small amount with each tech gain(+1 defense 1st level, then +1 attack next level, etc). Reduce jet experience gain by not allowing them to kill off a unit(say reduce only to 1). Have a tech that increases air defense affect more than just cities and resources, possibly the surrounding hexes as well(may not be needed if above changes take place).

When units get up to 13 or 14 strength, the importance of air is even greater, thus leading even more so to the imbalance of air and air dominated game. For me, at least, it would be nice to see tanks buffed up a bit, and be put to greater use in destroying ground units, then you would use jets to fly in and attack these tanks. I'd like to see jets great vs tanks, tanks great vs ground units, and ground units defend well vs. jets. Of course researching would be required to get your unit to where you want, but this would bring about the classic rock/scissors/paper part of strategy games. By the end of most games no we have dynamite destroying everything with jets.

I like Zapp's list except for the following: 4. Higher initial entrenchment in Finland Capital. 6. Changing the Sea-Lion definition to be ANY England/Scotland hexes occupied instead of just the adjacent to cities ones. (leave definItion as is, but also add a total units on England/Scotland into the definition) 8) halve the anti-tank bonus i.e L1 anti-tank means 0.5 extra soft defence, L2 means 1.0 points extra soft defence. (Problems not with this, but with the tank bonus itself) 9) halve the anti-aircraft bonus the same way. (problems not with this, but with bombers)

I think the tech advance should be different then what it is. The current advance only helps in tank to tank battles, and the way its set up now, these battles don't happen. What might be nice is for tech one to add a soft attack, tech two add an additional movement, tech three add additional soft defense, etc. Or make it even more interesting, and have the tech advance be random for improving tanks. Let it be equal chances for increasing either movement, soft attack, defense, etc., while always increasing the overall value of the tanks(10 > 11 > 12 etc.). Even have the cost be able to go down for a tank as one of the options (technology results in decreased costs all the time). I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of variabilitiy on all tech advances. Think about how in history one thing is being research, and that research results in a breakthrough in something completely different. So we get a jet tech increase, and randomly gain either improved ground attack or improved air to air attack, etc, decrease in costs, and so on. I know many of the games of this genre have you invest in general research, and then it is applied to a random tech. To me this is too extreme, but some randomness in the improvements would be sweet. That way getting tech 5 in jets won't always mean the same thing (i.e. checkmate).

It has been mentioned, but the random idea is a great one. From random amount of units to random starting positions, each game would have additional variation. We wouldn't want to go to an extreme though, as level 2 jets or tanks at the start of a game might be a game breaker. Repeat after me, random is good, random is fun, random........

Shaka, per the manual, tanks have two types of attack: Tank attack (vs other tanks), and soft attack(vs ground units). Infantry have two types of defense, tank defense(vs tanks), and soft defense(vs ground units). Thus our problem in the tank(increases tank attack) tech vs anti-tank(increases tank defense) tech. Hope that clears things up.

Yes we did. That begs the question, do we make the tank tech a little better, or do we reduce the anti-tank tech down a bit. I had suggested increasing soft attack in advancement of tech research, but maybe we increase the defense of the tank from soft attacks instead. This would keep them from being uberpowerful vs cities and such, but make them a more effective shield, providing strong support in areas, and actually make it worthwhile to invest in tank tech. [ April 04, 2003, 05:32 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

Shaka, it seems that tech only increases tank attack, not soft attack. Thus no matter how much you invest in tank, it won't help you in attacks vs. infantry, since they are soft attacks. Thus there is no way to keep up in the Tank/Anti Tank research battle. Gain two levels in anti tank, and tanks are useless in battles, making them only good for surrounding and pushing through the line. Thus, why invest at all?

Very interesting. You have people that say tanks are a waste, don't buy tech or tanks. Rambo, Liam. You have people say AT is too effective vs tanks making tanks a waste. Zappsweden You then have a group that says tanks are perfect as they are. Immer Etwas, Bill Macon SeaWolf_48 counters that level 3 and level 4 tanks should cut through infantry. The question is, why buy tank research as Axis if all it does is improve tank to tank combat vs. the Russians when Russia is going to buy anti-tank and corps you to death. Instead you buy Jet research, and this can't be countered. Looking at the war right now, our tanks dominate the ground with help from the skys elimanating our opponents tanks, which is what Sea Wolf says. While I want realism, I also want to see a variety of units on the playing field, as well as each research worth as much as another. I just don't see any purpose to investing in tank research. Encirclement, and shooting through holes in lines sounds like the best idea for tank use, and tank research doesn't improve this. Why invest in tanks? This is what the initial discussions were covering. To me you invest in something to keep it from becoming obsolete, and to gain an advantage on the battlefield. This doesn't really happen with tank research.

Thanks Zapp, I had always taken it to mean that tank attack was increased for all type of attacks. After rereading the tech description, I see it as only increasing tank attack, not soft attack. This simplifies the solution for tank research. Have tech advances also increase the soft attack value for tanks. It also means I'll never research tank again until this is modified. I'm on tank research strike. I wonder why this wasn't programmed in originally, maybe an oversite?

Great idea. Any idea that is another strategic choice with some type of consequence, either small or big, is always a great addition to the game.

I believe the hope is that all techs could be used, thus allowing 15-20 different strategies and counterstrategies. If a tech has a problem, how do we fix (a full fledged editor that could change tech would be nice, as well as a unit editor - This would allow a WWI game to be modded, as well as a WWIII game) Bombers are underutilized, thus you either change the basic unit(either unit cost or attack values) or you change the bomber research results to bump it up more when advancements are made. The problem with tank research vs. anti-tank research is this: Germany spends 500, buys two ticks, ends up with level two tanks, gets attack from 4 to 6, a 50% increase in attack value. This effects 4-8 units. If no tanks, then completely wasted tech. Russia spends 500, buys two ticks, ends up with level two anti-tank, gets defense vs. tanks from 1 to 3, a 300% increase in defense value. This effects 20-30 units. If no tanks, then units still have a value of 12, which is very helpful. Solutions: 1) Make tank research decrease the cost of tanks as well, or at least keep the same cost. or 2) Increase the movement of tanks as extra bonus(faster and more powerful) during tech increases.

Good stuff from you guys. The harassing idea to help the Russians is sometimes lost on many of us. Costs don't have to be 1 for 1 to make it worthwhile. Here are the actual numbers from manual, and some examples: Air defense values: Mine and Oil – 0 air defense; Ports - 1 air defense; Cities - 2 air defense. Air defense bonus value: Mine - 0 air defense bonus, Oil and city - 1 air defense bonus, Port - 2 air defense bonus for corps. Examples: (assumes HQ for attackers, none for defenders, one attack vs. hex, each later attack would reduce damage taken by about 10% while increasing damage by about 5%) Bomber hitting port deals 2.5, takes .67. Bomber hitting oil, deals 2.5 and takes 0. Bomber hits units on oil & cities at .17, takes .67. Jets hit ports at 1.67, take .67. Hit oil at 1.67, take 0. Jets hit units on oil & cities at 1, takes .67. Jet w/ 1 exp. hit units on oil and cities at 1.42, take .25. Level 1 jets w/ 1exp. hit units on oil and cities at 2.25, take .25. Adding AA bonus of 1 give us: Bomber hitting port deals 2.5, takes 1.33. Bomber hitting oil, deals 2.5 and takes 67. Bomber hits units on oil & cities at .17, takes 1.33. Jets hit ports at 1.67, take 1.33. Hit oil at 1.67, take 67. Jets hit units on oil & cities at 1, takes 1.33. Jet w/ 1 exp. hits units on oil and cities at 1.42, take .92. Level 1 jets w/ 1exp. hit units on oil and cities at 2.25, take .92. Results: Bombers are good only for hitting unoccupied hexes, reducing entrenchment, or attacking ships only, they don’t gain experience like jets(usually no kills), bomber research yields lower pct. increase of help, and cost more to rebuild. Attacking a unit on a city or on a resource kill them. AA hurts them as they lose there main advantage, hitting unoccupied hexes. Research gains additional damage, but not enough to counter AA. Jets are decent for hitting unoccupied hexes, gain experience much quicker, and are good vs. units as well. Less to rebuild, and gain in experience and research provides nice counter to AA. Suggestion - Bump up Bomber research to make it more worthwhile to research and use bombers(or as suggested by myself in other discussions - Change the whole bomber fighter attack and defend numbers).

Anti-Aircraft is the only research available to counter the overpowered air. This gives Russia a chance to survive Germany's air attack. Every research needs a counter research. I actually think anti-aircraft isn't powerful enough. I think it should also affect the hexes around cities and resources. I've had level two anti-aircraft and still see my cities and resources getting bombed. If any change were to be made, make anti-aircraft increase the damage given back with the first level, then decrease damage taken with the second level, and so on, instead of just causing more damage back in return. This would be more realistic, in my opinion. I agree somewhat that anti-tank can be very effective. It affects 20-30 units while tank research usually only helps 5-6 units, which is a slight inbalance. I've yet to use my tanks effectively. You might want to modify the same way as above, increase the damage given back with the first level, then decrease damage taken with the second level, and so on. [ April 03, 2003, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

Iron Ranger I just realized that increasing the air defense of HQ's, rockets, armies, etc., won't keep them from being destroyed. All it does is inflict more damage back to the attacking plane. The units will still be destroyed. What does need to be increased is the unit defense bonus instead. What this does is decrease the amount of damage done to it. This will help the unit survive multiple air attacks. Shaka In the battle for France, lines can be set up to only allow Germany two attacks at a French or Russian unit. The only way to destroy the French unit is to combine the attack with Air, usually a min. of 3 air attacks, sometimes 4. This is a given, even with supply and experience. Any changes we make must take this into account. Replacements for ground troops are cheaper than air units, so the following sequence occurs. Current attack mode: Ground, Ground, Air, Air, Air, move third ground unit into destroyed units hex. Results: Unit destroyed, replace some ground troops, minor replace air units, most experience to Air unit. If third air doesn't destroy unit, use 4th. New attack mode:(with proposed plane mod) Ground, Air, Air, Air, Ground, move third ground unit into destroyed units hex. Results: Unit destroyed, minor replace some ground troops, replace some air units, most experience to ground unit. If second ground unit didn't destroy unit, your out of luck. Unit lives. As you can see, big difference by just changing air unit capabilities from destroying ground units to knocking them down to 1. In so many games, I see two attacks by tanks or army's, then 2 air, 3 air if unit still there, 4th air if unit still there, etc. Advantages of new system: With the mod, a player would have to decide ahead of time how many air units to use in the attack to maximize damage, but not waste all the air power. Misjudge, and the unit isn't destroyed. Additionally air experience is also reduced, and replacement costs are higher. Does this make sense? Questions? Comments always welcome. [ April 02, 2003, 07:33 PM: Message edited by: KDG ]

KDG - Both