play balance and realism idea

[urgrue]

just a little idea i had for helping play balance and realism. share techs between allied countries. especially between brits and US, if brits have L5 jets/tanks then i would assume it logical and historical that these improvements should help the US as well.

but not have them totally shared of course. maybe for example, if a certain tech level is 2 or more higher than the other's, the other gets a 25% chance of gaining a level in that field each turn.

or something like that.

obviously tech sharing between US and brits should be higher than between both of them and russia, though i do know that the russian's at least shared their tank chassis knowledge with the americans.

i dont think the germans need to share with the italians, both for reasons of play balance and realism (afaik there wasnt any sharing going on).

[JayJay_H]

Originally posted by urgrue:

just a little idea i had for helping play balance and realism. share techs between allied countries. especially between brits and US, if brits have L5 jets/tanks then i would assume it logical and historical that these improvements should help the US as well.

I vote for YES on tech sharing between allies (especially western combatants)

[ev]

Perhaps you could limit tech sharing to one level below current tech. Say Brits have Jet 5, they may share Jet 4 with U.S., but not their latest discovery. And perhaps, they could share Jet 3 with the Russians.

If we are going to allow tech sharing, I don't see why we cannot allow some limited tech sharing between Axis. It did not happen historically. Does that mean it could not have happened? The Axis never attacked Sweeden, or Spain. The Allies never attacked Portugal. And there were very important political reasons for that. Same with tech sharing. But the purpose of games is to play with the "what ifs".

I would be all for sharing tech below your most advance tech levels, sort off like giving (or selling) your old tanks and planes to an ally, but keeping the best ones for your own men.

[dougmangin]

Originally posted by ev:

Perhaps you could limit tech sharing to one level below current tech. Say Brits have Jet 5, they may share Jet 4 with U.S., but not their latest discovery. And perhaps, they could share Jet 3 with the Russians.

If we are going to allow tech sharing, I don't see why we cannot allow some limited tech sharing between Axis. It did not happen historically. Does that mean it could not have happened? The Axis never attacked Sweeden, or Spain. The Allies never attacked Portugal. And there were very important political reasons for that. Same with tech sharing. But the purpose of games is to play with the "what ifs".

I would be all for sharing tech below your most advance tech levels, sort off like giving (or selling) your old tanks and planes to an ally, but keeping the best ones for your own men.

I would be all for allowing some sharing of tech advances - but there seems to be a healthy degree of tech advances already. I dont know if I would want it to be sped up in the current system. Given the randomness of tech and no increase in cost as you invest more you can easily have startling advances made in a very short time. Say britain gets incredibly luck and gets industrial tech 4 or jets 4 - when the us or ussr enters with that the game may as well be over. One nation getting incredibly lucky is bad enough - sharing the luck that one might, or might not have with all the other children is a bit unbalancing in my view.

How about this - a nation can only share tech with an ally if that ally is invested in that catagory of tech. I dont see a reason the us should get level 4 tanks with no research on their part just because britain got lucky. Perhaps if two nations are both researching an area and one gets an advance, then the other gets a research "bonus".

Say if the US has tech level 3 and has 3 factors of research in that area - if britain is investing in industrial tech then every level of research up to 3 (matching but not exceeding the us) would get a bonus - so instead of a 15% chance of making an advancement you have say a 30%.

I think that might more accurately reflect an ally "helping" another along with their research. I dont think an ally should just automatically get research advances without having any research going on themselves - that would be free tech. In that case britain could sit back and let the us do all the research and use its mpps to buy units. Not fair.

I also agree with the other ideas that an ally cannot "assist" another in bringing tech advances all the way up to their level. Say between the US and UK a 1 point difference, between the US/UK and USSR/FRANCE or between GERMANY/ITALY a 2 or 3 point difference. Again that way one country does not put in token effort and entirely reaps the benefits of allies.

[urgrue]

i agree the game is not meant to be strictly historical, but provide also the possibility to play "what if" scenarios.

but i don't like the idea that tech is blindly shared. this would remove a lot of strategic fun, the challenge of tech spending, and historical realism. having them shared blindly, you might as well remove the different flags from research altogether, and just have "axis" and "allies". i dont really like this idea. maybe this could be an option?

but i think a compromise can be found, see my suggestion below.

i also agree this should only be done if tech development speed is slowed down. its a bit fast as is, this would make that worse. so definitely slow it down to compensate. someone once suggested decreasing the % chance of development success with each tech level. i think that's a good idea.

how about this for sharing:

-US can share with UK their own tech -1. and vice versa.

-US/UK can share with USSR their own tech -2. and vice versa.

-BUT only if the receiver country has invested at least the giver's level's worth into research of that tech.

-AND this doesn't just "happen", but has a certain chance of happening.

-Germany can share with Italy their own tech -3 (or -2, i was thinking -3 because of italy's historical lack of technical capability)

for example:

let's say UK has L5 jets, and US has L2 jets. US has invested 2 research points into jets. no special "sharing" happens. usual rules apply.

another:

UK has L5 jets, US has L2. if US has 3 points invested in jet research, they get a 30% chance each turn of raising their own jets to L3. this is a separate roll of the die, ie this 30% is not added on top of the normal research success probability.

US will not raise to L4 unless they invest one more point (4 total) into jet research (via sharing. they can still get to L4 by normal means).

they will not raise to L5 except by normal means.

nevertheless i think something along these lines should be done. it's not believable that (especially) US and UK wouldn't share with each other. especially since both have such limited resources that investing in spending is pretty costly.

and particularly because everyone agrees the game is a bit unbalanced in the favor of the axis, i think this would be a good way to help solve that problem too.

[urgrue]

oh dear. i must've missed or unread (read in a spaced-out manner) dougmangin's post, cause he suggests almost the exact same thing as me....

[ev]

I agree with both of you, dougmangin and urgrue. Sharing cannot be made too easy, nor too certain. Your suggestions seem to me like a very good way of handling this problem.

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

Intersting about tech sharing.

One point would be the Soviet Union would likely never share anything with the western powers.

The U.S. and British would not lend-lease anything to the Soviet Union that the germans hadn't already encountered in battle. Recent case in point was the B-29 which had a very good special on the history channel.

While they were all allies, they mistrusted each other.

-dave

[Brian Rock]

I'd argue tech sharing between the US and England makes sense, and that's it. I also like the ev's idea of only allowing sharing one level down, which would represent lag effects.

[Rouge]

Provided that it can be detailed to be realistic its a great idea and im all for it!!!

[Compassion]

Originally posted by Brian Rock:

I'd argue tech sharing between the US and England makes sense, and that's it. I also like the ev's idea of only allowing sharing one level down, which would represent lag effects.

Incedibly difficult to do. This could easily lead to a hughe western adantage and simply tilt the game back to the Allied side as heavily as it is to the Axis now.

I can make a deal with my Allies to have the US investigate tanks and AT while the Russians develop bombers and industial tech and then the Brits develop... I dunno, fighters and AAA.. AS these advances start to be made the Germans get buried under basically 3 armies with the power of a nation right out of 1955.

It's also ahistorical not only in what the powers were willing to share with each other, but how easily it is to adapt new designs that one country with it's industrial and R&D traditions, customs and tolerances to another. WHile a concept like Russian sloped armor may be easily quantified mathimatically adn shared, other advances, such as aircraft design aren't with each country having a different view of requirements and ROI... I could see flat out buying things from other countries faster than incorporating them into their native manufacturing base as happened often with the Brits buying Shermans, Grants and P51B's... and even then when the buyer designs advances, there's as much a chance that they will be declined or ignored (such as with the Firefly variant of the M4) as they will be incorporated into the next dexign (as with the P51 getting the RR Merlin engine and bubble canopy... that still took over a year to incorporate).

[JerseyJohn]

The Soviets reverse engineered the B-29s that landed on their territory and were told all the A-Bomb secrets by spies at Los Alamos -- talk about tech-sharing!

[ November 16, 2002, 06:09 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]