Thoughts on HeadQuarters

[Bill101]

I've been thinking for a while about two things relating to HQs. I don't know if they're relevant unless SC2 will be similar to SC1, but here goes anyway:

1) There have been calls in the past for minor powers to have HQs as part of their initial set up, such as Franco for Spain and Smigly-Ridz for Poland.

I disagree. The greatest benefit from having HQs is their effect in improving supply and readiness, and the smaller countries just didn't have the resources for a large and highly efficient supply system.

Currently minor powers' troops do benefit from being in the vicinity of a friendly HQ in terms of supply, so the only thing that could be gained would be a bonus to their combat factors.

The way to do this is not to give the minor powers HQs, but to allow their stronger allies the ability to purchase them on their behalf.

What this means in practice is that Franco is a reasonably good military leader, but it takes the gift of resources from, say, Germany, to activate a Spanish logistical service and command structure capable of making a difference on the battlefield.

Once activated, just as German HQs only give combat bonuses to German troops, so the Spanish HQ in our example would just do the same for Spanish troops.

2) Given that the USA was a major military and industrial power, shouldn't they have more than 4 HQs available for purchase? I've been in games where the US have lost or sold HQs (the latter when they couldn't evacuate them from Spain in time), but surely the USA could have easily replaced the loss of logistical support?

To have the USA running out of HQs seems unrealistic to me.

Bill

[JerseyJohn]

Good idea.

My interpretation is a major power; UK, Germany, USA, USSR, France or Italy, can buy an HQ unit for the larger minor allies. Such as Finland, Canada, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece or Romania.

I don't think the smaller minor nations, such as Hungary, Norway, LC or others not mentioned, should be included in this.

[ October 19, 2003, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Panzer39]

Maybe they should just add an HQ tech that would allow your regular HQ's to give bonuses to allied forces. I don't see many people willing to spend MPPS to buy an HQ for say Romania in order to supply the 3 units they have.

A good idea would be to add some HQ's when a minor comes in.

Or if we went with the minor HQ idea, they should be at a very discount price.

Since we are talking about HQ's I think it would be good to bring up one of Jersey John's old ideas of allowing one unit to stack with an HQ. If we don't want to go the in game stacking route it could be handled at the purchase screen.

Maybe give the player the option at the purchase screen to create an HQ with a Corps/Army/Airfleet attached. A nice feature would be the ability to add an Admiral to a BB or Carrier in this fashion.

[Shaka of Carthage]

Now this is an interesting concept, something I'm not sure that was brought up before.

I like the idea of Germany being able to purchase a Minor ally HQ, as oppossed to the Minor nations starting with thier own HQ's. It makes alot of sense.

Along those lines though, who would the Allied equivalent be? The US has the economic might to form the logistical structure needed for our Minor Allied HQ's. UK is strained as it is trying to build Commonwealth units, so I don't think they should be allowed to build Minor HQ's. France won't be around long enough to make that choice, and after its "liberated", needed US support to form its own national armies. Russians make it simple, since they basically absorbed anybody into the Russian military machine, so they wouldn't have "indepedent" commands (ie Minor HQs).

Lastly, I assume we are only thinking about the "major" minors, so to be clear about it, let me list them...

Sweden

Finland

Turkey

Spain

Does anyone believe others should be on that list?

[JerseyJohn]

Panzer

Great ideas, I agree 100%.

The Italian troops in North Africa improved dramatically under Rommel's command, so possibly HQs should influence all nearby troops on their side equally.

I like your expansion on the HQ stacking idea.

Shaka

I'd also add Romania & Greece. Looking forward to your next entry on this; agreed so far that the three majors you've mentioned wouldn't have financed a minor ally HQ. Which leaves Germany, USA & Italy.

[ October 20, 2003, 01:43 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Edwin P.]

Panzer39 - A nice feature would be the ability to add an Admiral to a BB or Carrier in this fashion.

I like that idea, especially if each admiral affected the unit it commanded in a particular way and you did not know the particular strengths or weaknesses of an admiral until its first combat.

Example:

A specific admiral might increase a sub's diving chance by 5%.

An excellent surface warfare admiral might make a poor carrier group admiral thereby reducing a carrier group's effective experience by 1 and increasing a battleship's experience by 1.

[ October 19, 2003, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[Wolfpack]

Personally what I'd rather see is something more along the lines of supply depots or points that are purchasable by the major powers. Take the supply function away from the HQ units and make it a seperate unit. Then you could have minors purchase HQs to improve their fighting abilities, while not making it possible for the minors to become a-historically powerful. Hqs would have to drop in price since you'd be buying two units to do the function of the current one, but it would allow you a bit more flexability with deployments also.

[Panzer39]

Originally posted by Edwin P.:

I like that idea, especially if each admiral affected the unit it commanded in a particular way and you did not know the particular strengths or weaknesses of an admiral until its first combat.

Example:

A specific admiral might increase a sub's diving chance by 5%.

An excellent surface warfare admiral might make a poor carrier group admiral thereby reducing a carrier group's effective experience by 1 and increasing a battleship's experience by 1.

Great idea, It could be carried over to Field Marshals as well. Goering could give a better bonus to air fleets while Rommel could give a bonus to Tanks. Of course you could put Goering in command of your army group, but your unit's stats would suffer. This would allow more strategy options.

Another big improvement for HQ's would be the ability to manually assign what units are under their control. Of course the AI could still handle it like it does now for casual players.

Brain storm

Why not allow for the creation of lower level generals as well. These could be picked from a list in the purchase screen when building a unit for an added cost. For example, when you build an army you can assign a general to command it. The General would give that army a small stat bonus. Sometimes there would be a trade off, gaining one point in one attribute while losing another elsewhere.

Minor nations could have Generals already attached to their units, thus solving their HQ problem since Major HQ's could give the supply while their units who have Generals recieve the stat boost.

I know this would require a lot of extra coding, but it would add tremendous flavor to the game. The casual player could ignore the general option entirely.

[ October 19, 2003, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Panzer39 ]

[Edwin P.]

If generals are attached to a unit you might want to have a minimal cost (say 25MPP) to remove the general from his position. Once removed he would return to the general force pool for that nation (although the player could now see its statistics).

Of course the Soviets could remove (execute) a general permanently at no cost in MPPs. If they decided to execute the under performing general he would not return to the general force pool.

[ October 19, 2003, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[Panzer39]

Another great Idea.

[Shaka of Carthage]

Jersey John

Romania and Greece

From what I remember about the Romanian military, it was short of the artillery and other heavy equipment that make up Corps and Armies. I believe SC accuratley reflects the number of units that Romania could put into the field. And the lack of upgrades, works great in reflecting they were not state of the art. I don't remember much about the higher level HQ's (our SC HQ), so I can't say one way or the other if they should get a minor HQ. I'd almost have to state that I think a German HQ works fine, since it reflects the increased supply ability but not the combat bonus... which could be reflection of having the various minor Axis units (Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian) operating together, thought some of them didn't much care for the others.

Greece one, I know even less about. I believe UK sent two (2) Commonwealth divisions to support Greece, along with some higher level command units. So I would assume that would qualify as a UK HQ unit. Even so, I think the two Greek units in the mountains are out of luck, since they still will be stuck there.

Germany, USA and Italy

Italy, while it did incorporate colonial troops into its military, never really operated those units outside of Africa, something we don't reflect in SC. Italy should not be allowed to purchase Minor HQ's, but the Italian HQ's do seem quite suited to opearte as the higher level HQ's for the Balkan Axis minors. Especially since the Italians should never have more than eight (8) ground units.

So it seems that Germany should be able to build upto four (4) Axis minor HQ's (assuming those nations are Axis), while the US could build those same four (4), assuming they were Allied minors.

Minor HQ Cost

Since the assumption is that Germany/US is fleshing out what the Minor nation needs to be able to field the HQ, it shouldn't cost as much as a normal HQ. Somewhere around 50% to 75% should work fine.

[Shaka of Carthage]

Wolfpack

I agree that splitting the two functions apart could give us a more realistic ability to represent the logistical limitations the Axis military operated under, but that is a design totally different than what we have now. As such, it needs to offer us alot more than the current system we have now, otherwise, its not worth the effort to make the change.

By using your suggestion though, we can now move into the realm of Supply units that are consumed using a variable rate based on the actions of the ground units. In other words, a unit that was defending would consume less supply, than a unit that was attacking.

By varing the purchase rate per nation, you now have a more accurate reflection of the true effect that the US had, as well as providing the real targets that the Air units (and Partisans) operated against.

[JerseyJohn]

Shaka

Sounds good to me. Romania did lack heavy artillery and had no anti-tank guns, which did the German Sixth Army in at Stalingrad as the Russians hit the German and Italian troops on the Germans flanks, their T34s flying through the lines at full speed with nothing able to stop them.

I think Italy, fully mobilized, should ideally have a corps in each mainland city, including Sicily, an army in Rome, a corps in Tobruck with the army there in the field, an army in Tripoli, a corps in Tirana and an Army in the field, two airfleets, it's navy, and the ability to build it's three HQs and three more ground units, either tank, corps or armies. That, to me, sounds like the limit of it's capabilities -- which is actually fairly considerable. Most of the Italian Colonial Troops were raised in East Africa from the native population. Contrary to what most people might believe, they fought well beside the Italian regulars and did not mutiny or rush to join the British.

Agreed that the Italian HQs would serve a good purpose with the Balkan Allies.

Greece is a hard case to figure, as are Yugoslavia and Poland. Probably those three shouldn't have their own HQs if minor Allies were being given them. Poland due it's quick demise; Yugoslavia due to internal turmoil within it's army and population; Greece due to lack of resources, it's army as shown is the full limit of it's capabilities.

[Shaka of Carthage]

Well... if you or anyone else is interested, I'd be happy to post the information I've accumulated over the years which has lead me to my conculsion that the Italian military in SC should be limited to eight (8) ground units.

[JerseyJohn]

I'm always interested in any historical information. My remarks were not intended as a challenge, I know you research everything you post, that isn't what I was getting at in terms of determining Italy's order of battle.

At the outset of war, Italy had large numbers of troops, but they were a paper lion. The Egyptian fiasco cost them a couple of hundred thousand men, mainly captured, given away with reckless abandon. East Africa probably cost an equal number, literally thrown away because they were completely cut off from resupply and reinforcement. They lost troops in Greece, they lost troops attacking France. So I find it hard to equate the Italian Army in SC as a numerical quantity.

They had a fair number of tanks, they were fast, though lightly armed and lightly armored. Italian generals tried using them as Medium tanks instead of the light tanks they really were, so they were of little use. Often abandoned in the Balkans, Yugoslavians found them more useful than the Italians who'd left them.

Getting back to the 8 ground unit figure: the issue is the size range. Eight armies should be a different factor than eight corps, the same overall number, but by game terms, 8 of one would be the equivalent of 16 of the other!

I'd go for a mix, with each Italian mainland city defended upon Italy's entry into the war. Naturally, I feel there should also be an Italian Air Force, except it's planes were obsolescent by 1940.

But this is the kind of problem I have with Mussolini's Italy. An Italian BB puts out to sea and has to go running back to port because one of it's screws just drops off at sea. -- Italy was the first to use aircraft in a combat capacity when they took Libya from the Ottomans in 1911. Yet, in 1940 their aircraft in Libya weren't equiped with a sand screen for the engines. -- And the list of ineptitudes goes on.

-- But mixed in with this are outstanding battlefield actions after Rommel's arrival in North Africa, when the remnants of Grazianni's troops fought like a different army. Add also the excellent results scored by Italian frogmen and midget subs, and the incredible job the Italian Navy and Merchant Marine did in supplying the North African troops, even with many of their departures and routes known to the Royal Navy!

So, for me, Italy is a hard factor to evaluate.

[ October 21, 2003, 02:20 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]