Some ideas on manpower, resources and manufacturing for SC3 :)

[Guest Mike]

It kind of irks me that we have this awesome computing power on our tabletops that seems to be mostly unused for dealing with the complications of modern warfare.

I was thinking last night of an old board game many will have at least heard of - Drag Nach Osten (apol for the mis-spelling that is sure to be in there), and it's follow-up Unentscheiden (ditto), plus another mega-game I saw for a bit 10+ years ago that I don't recall the name of.

IIRC in these games you produced various comodities such as armour points, transport points, infantry points, etc.

You then built land units with these - a Panzer division might take 10 armour, 3 infantry and 3 transport points, and infantry division might take 9 infantry, 1 armour and 5 transport points, a "security" division might take 6 infantry and 2 transport points, etc, etc.

The amount of fuel you used was then dependant upon how many transport & armour points you had in play - armour points might use more fuel than transport, walking infantry would use little because they'd have little transport.

The amount of supply available might be dependant upon how much transport had been allocated to the area's "transport supply pool", ports & cities could have supply depots depending upon the amount of "incoming" transport.

Naval "points" could be "small forces", light forces, submarine, destroyer, cruiser, battleship, carrier - each representing some defined force - a "point" of larger ships obviously represents fewer vessels than a "point" of motorboats.

"Points" carry their own combat values, production delays (a battleship "point" is likely to take longer to build than an infantry one!) and costs/resource requirements.

Each "point" could be tracked for tech changes - so perhaps obsolete armour or submarine or naval or aircraft points could be allocated to a training pool, or passed to allies, or scrapped for raw materials.

Much of the "point" allocation will go to various pools that represent background functions and can be moved to and from there for "tactical" use.

[ May 25, 2006, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organist ]

[SeaMonkey]

Not bad SO, but I can envision something more akin to the unit building feature of TOAW.

Since SC is about corps size units, you take a basic building force, say battalion strength, with a predominant type of equipment and group it together into your SC unit.

The attributes of the individual building blocks meld together to give the corps/wing/fleet unit it's combat strengths.

Obviously not all building blocks are elligible to be grouped together, naval, air, and ground would have to be kept separate.

Now you have the real life ability to customize all your own combat forces for the tasks you deem necessary.

Naaahhhh , to much micromanagement.

[Guest Mike]

I don't think it would be too much micromanagement - you'd design force structures in advance so when you actually bought a unit you'd still jsut buy an Infantry division or corps or army - what was in it is alreay defined.

"All" you have to do is define organisations wheenver you feel like it - sort of like ship design in the MOO series. Or you can just accept the "default" ones at no extra effort at all.

And you can be given a penalty for having too many different types of organisation leading to confusion in the logistics train!

[Cheese Panzer]

Didn't Gary Grigsby's War in Russia do this? You built corps out of divisions and brigades, and your factories even produced various models of tanks! Talk about micro-management! I think it's pretty significant that no-one ever tried to something like that again in a computer game.

[Jim Mason]

I'd like to see a system where the cost for producing something is factored out over the length of time it takes to produce, or something close to that. In other words, the 100 cost for a corps unit would require a 40 outlay the first month, and then 30 would be deducted on the second month and third month. Then you could reasonably put things into production without saving up all the cost first.

If you over-allocate and lose "money" through bombing or convoy losses, you either have to wait longer, or just eat the sunk cost.

It seems more realistic to me, and would make buying decisions easier, as I am horrible as saving money. Of course, there would be turns where I would end up with 30 points because all the rest had been allocated already, but that's the way it goes.

Comments?

[Lars]

Heh, well, if you're terrible at saving money now, I don't think you'd stand a chance under that system.

[Cheese Panzer]

Cool idea, Lars, SC2 as a budget teaching tool. Think it will catch on?

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Cheese Panzer:

Didn't Gary Grigsby's War in Russia do this? You built corps out of divisions and brigades, and your factories even produced various models of tanks! Talk about micro-management! I think it's pretty significant that no-one ever tried to something like that again in a computer game.

I never played that game so I don't know.

However if it did then perhaps it is an example of taking it a bit too far!!