Manpower Concept

[Shaka of Carthage]

As I mentioned in the National Characteristics and Manpower topic, current SC cannot handle manpower limitations on units. I'll overview some of the issues, provide the info that I have, then if anyone is interested, they can pursue it further.

Summary

Manpower cost for initial build

German Army.......206,400

German Corp.......103,200

German Pz Group...114,000

Manpower cost for rebuild

German Army.......137,600

German Corp........68,800

German Pz Group....57,000

Manpower replacment cost

German Army.........9,000

German Corp.........4,500

German Pz Group.....2,000

Drawn from the Military Manpower Pool

Trained manpower every 6 months

German Army........15,000

German Corp.........7,500

German Pz Group.....4,000

Civilians being transformed into the Military Manpower Pool

The numbers are different for each nation, reflecting national differences in how they are organized and handled there replacment pool.

Air and Naval initial manpower cost

Air unit .........150,000 (1,000 aircraft)

Battleship ........20,000 (1 BB)

Carrier ...........20,000 (1 CV)

Cruiser ............4,000 (2 CA)

Submarine ..........2,000 (10 boats)

The Air and Naval replacment issue is a concept one. Please refer to the notes below on Specialists. I'll leave it to someone else to work these details out.

Detail

The Manpower costs for rebuild accounts for the combat divisions and the non-divisional combat units assigned to the Corp and Army formations. While those non-div units are really a 5 to 20% increase in the above number (depending on the nation), since SC does not model attrition, I left it out as compensation.

Then you have to account for all the service and overhead units that support the combat units. Medical, station compliments, maintenance, replacement depots, training schools, etc. And there is a big difference in the number required to support a non-motorized army versus a motorized army. I have come up with these ratios.

Motorized 1 : 1 ratio

Nonmotorized 1 : .5 ratio

The modern day ratios are much higher.

Replacements

Replacements for Army/Corp units are Infantry, with a very small percentage of Armor crews that you are replacing.

Replacements for Armor units are Infantry, with a larger percentage of Armor crews included.

Combat divisions and higher level formations have four (4) basic categories of personnel.

</font>

• Infantry</font>
• Armor</font>
• Artillery (includes AT, AA)</font>
• Combat Support</font>

German Corps and Armies had very little Armor, other than the Assault Gun units. German Panzers had more Armor, but still a significant number of Infantry.

Guess where the casualties are? Yep, the Infantry. After a certain level of losses, you now have Combat Support people acting as Infantry, as well as the Armor crews who have no functioning vehicles. Once those are gone, you now have nothing left to stop the Artillery from being overrun, which in effect causes the unit to cease to exist.

Replacements have to be trained, one of the primary functions of the service and overhead manpower.

Combat support units increase the efficiency of the unit(s) they support, one of the ways being to allow losses in men and equipment to be replaced faster. In other words, based on the level of combat support you have (the Russians having much less than everyone else), a certain percentage of the losses you suffer after some time should become available again. This would represent lightly wounded men and repaired equipment coming back to duty. This needs to be represented, even if its just abstracted into different replacement costs for each nation.

Specialists
There is one other limitation that I would like to touch upon. Within a combat division you have three (3) distinct groups.

</font>

• Cadre</font>
• Specialists</font>
• Everyone else</font>

Cadre are your officers and NCO's. The quality of these people determine the quality of the division. This was the strength of the German divisions and a serious weakness in the US ones.

Specialists are the people who have jobs that require training and experience. Artillery, Engineers, Communications, Logistics, Medical, Maintenance, etc. Especially important when you have a motorized army. Once you run out of these people, you options are limited. This is one of the limiting factors why certain nations, even though they have hundreds of thousands of troops, can only field a small number of Corps. This is a major limit on Air Forces and Navies, as they need alot more of these people than Armies.

Everyone else is the combat troops (that are not cadre) and those who have jobs that can be learned in a few months.

So, even with manpower in place, there has to be a different limit on the number of Air and Naval units, since there is not an endless supply of Specialists.

Air and Naval replacements depend on what you consider the results of the Air and Naval combat to be. In other words, are you replacing damaged equipment or people.

Because of the length of time involved to build naval ships, unless there is a production time for new ships, we should not be allowed to build new ones. Ships already partially built should be included, but you pay the full manpower cost.

Air units are different, since once you get the initial infrastructure built, technically any losses are just the pilots. However, it takes anywhere from 12 to 24 months to train a pilot. So you either have to allow your infrastructure to train a certain number of pilots automatically or come up with some other method.

All in all, an extremly complex subject with alot of variables. Is it any wonder that Clash of Steel, High Command, etc simply went with a force pool mix or max number of unts?

[ March 25, 2003, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]

[Edwin P.]

Shaka,

What you have compiled is amazing and most detailed.

The only aspect I differ with is the ability to build new ships. During WWII the US produced new ships quite rapidly. Perhaps this was because of resources available to the US that was not available to Germany or the UK, which allocated their limited resources elsewhere?

How would you account for these limitations in a SC/SC2 environment while keeping the basic system simple?

It seems that your analysis points to three key aspects: Manpower Limitations, Production/Training Time and how production resources were allocated across(Air/Armor/Navy) production capabilities.

[ March 25, 2003, 08:36 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[JerseyJohn]

Shaka

Mind boggling material; you're obviously a man possessed! Glad you've done all this work to improve the game. Which is not to say I have even the slightest idea what any of it is really about beyond a vague concept, but what I can decipher rings true and makes sense. A lot of it is what we were talking about in a dozen past threads but you seem to have pinned it down to difinitive statistics, which is what we've needed all along. Verbal concepts don't seem to be absorbed well by computers.

Aside from the purely analytical work, I've enjoyed your breakdown of what military units consist of in game terms. Extremely interesting.

[ March 25, 2003, 09:50 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[JerseyJohn]

EdwinP.

Good points, excellent clarifications.

There are a few things that always come up in threads involving the United States game production. One is the drain being diverted to the Pacific, especially in warship and aircraft production. Another is the amount of resources and manpower that went into the Liberty ships for both oceans, and also the minusing of Lend Lease from the overall national results.

Yet another factor is the status of units that appear in the U. S. at the start of it's entry. None of the ground units are actually historically functional, so presumably Hubert built something in to reflect the fact that these units were yet to formed, trained and equipped; in the game they're ready for immediate combat. We assume this is to prevent an American Gambit situation.

[Edwin P.]

Perhaps one way to account for the production/Training time is to introduce delays for the appearance of purchased units;

Infantry - 1 Turn

Armor - 2 Turns

Air/Navy - 3 Turns

Although this is not historically accurate, it is more accurate than the current situation where Armor units appear exactly when you need them and you can produce naval units on the fly.

It would also introduce more strategy into the game without overly complicating it. I do worry however, that it would make the German opening moves alot harder since they would not have extra Air Power units available after taking Poland and Denmark.

Another concept would be to allow each nation to select an area of production emphasis (Infantry/Armor/Air/Navy). Units in this area would appear 1 turn faster than normal.

Thus Germany might select air and have air units appear in 2 turns instead of 3. Russia might select infantry and produce infantry units in 0 turns instead of 1 turn. To reflect the superior US economy the US might be able to select two areas of production emphasis.

Production Emphasis Points by Nation:

Germany: 1

Italy: 1

France: 0

UK: 1

Russia: 1

US: 2

The next question is should nations be allowed to change their selected area of emphasis? If so, how often (once every twelve months) or should they have to cash in their current Prod Emp point and buy a new one (costing them 100MPPs).

The key is to balance reality with a playable game.

If Hubert introduced this change as an optional feature in a patch players could playtest it against each other and against the AI to see if the idea is workable and "fun". Based on this test it could be included or excluded from SC2.

[ March 25, 2003, 11:30 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[Shaka of Carthage]

Edwin P

1940 US Navy had 160,300 people. Started a shipbuilding program.

1941 288,160 people.

1942 656,030 people.

1943 1,718,550 people and first of the new ships ready, and they keep coming.

1944 2,977,260 people. Last of the new ships are completed this year.

Battleships ... no one completed any that were not already laid down.

Cruisers ... at least 18 months to complete.

Carriers ... at least 24 months to complete.

Subs ....... at least 10 months, but I think the Germans once they got the process down, started cranking them out alot faster.

US had the resources, materials and the manpower to build the new ships, create the infrastructure to support the expanded Navy, as well as the other services, and crank out supplies for everyone else. But all this Naval stuff went to the PTO. Not to mention the Liberty Ships.

In the ETO, UK had the shipbuilding industry, but sufferred cause of the lack of raw materials. Germany, which didn't have the shipbuilding resources, decided to concentrate on the Army. It could have used the captured French shipbuilding resources, but sea power wasn't that important to Germany.

Thats why I said for SC, that if UK/Germany had a partially completed ship, they should be given it as a understrength unit, then they can decide if they want to complete it. But as far as building new ones, I don't think it should be allowed.

But if we were to allow new ships to be built in SC, then it would have to be something that the MPPs were spent on, and then after the above length of time, the ship would be avaiable.

It seems that your analysis points to three key aspects: Manpower Limitations, Production/Training Time and how production resources were allocated across(Air/Armor/Navy) production capabilities.

Yes. With an expansion on the production resource concept. You actually have Shipbuilding production, Heavy Production and Light Production. Heavy production is what built the Artillery and Tanks. Light production built the Aircraft. Thats the problem with a single economic unit (MPP), all those various differences get rolled into one lump number.

[Shaka of Carthage]

As far as the Production/Training time, I've given some thought to that. This is what I would propose for a future SC.

Every three (3) months, the player can access his production schedule. This is when you would select new units to be built, allocate the various civilian manpower into the various services, etc. Production time would be historical, so new combat divisions would not be ready for a year. Would also prevent you from "tweaking" it each and every turn.

Each turn, as the new divisions became active, you could either build a new Corp or Army, or allocate that division to an existing Corp or Army. Or just let the division sit there in the Reserve Army.

This way, as you gain new tech, the newly raised divisions would benefit, but the older units would not. Would also allow the Corps and Armies to be unique, since the combat power could vary based on the various divisions assigned to the formation.

Bit more too it, not as complicated as it reads, and really only requires existing combat numbers to become tens instead of ones (ie 40 instead of 4). But I've already went on long enough as it is.

[Edwin P.]

Shaka

Your analysis makes everything alot clearer for me.

Based on it I can now understand why ship building should be limited. Your concept of limiting production to already started ships is good.

Another idea to consider is to follow the historical time delays that you mentioned.

This means that if the Axis wanted to build carriers (which they now do to aid in an invasion of the US) it would take 24 months.

It also means that the Axis player would have the opportunity to build a large sub fleet, but it would take them 8 to 10months to launch each new sub.

[Edwin P.]

Shaka

Regarding production/training I really like your concept of limiting tech benefits to new raised divisions.

You can no longer increase all of your Jets to L4 or your tanks to L5. Each unit is different. You now have units with older equipment and units with new equipment. (in fact, I wish that Hubert would add this feature in a patch/update ASAP)

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"This way, as you gain new tech, the newly raised divisions would benefit, but the older units would not. Would also allow the Corps and Armies to be unique, since the combat power could vary based on the various divisions assigned to the formation." - Shaka

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[Shaka of Carthage]

Edwin P

Production schedule (ie so many months before units were ready) would be somewhat easy to add to current SC.

Having a Corp/Army of different tech levels would be much harder, if not impossible to add to current SC.

Remember, I was talking about combat divisions, which would be the components of a Corp/Army. SC doesn't feature that, and trying to add something like that is a different concept than the generic Corp/Army units that SC uses.

I believe it would be much easier (if it was possible) to add different units to current SC. Right now, my big thing is to make a difference in the action points between horse drawn and motorized Corps/Armies.

[JerseyJohn]

A lot of this has been requested for months in the form of a Production Schedule. It was asked for long before both of the last two patches. The reasoning I always got from the inertia bunch is, it isn't something that needs fixing, so it isn't put into a patch.