Manpower in SC2

[Shaka of Carthage]

I've written topics about this before, but its been awhile, so I'll try again to have some influence on Mr H .

One of the things alot of WWII games fail to reflect, is the manpower losses on the Eastern Front, that year after year eventually caused major problems for Germany (and to some extent, Russia). So here is a workable idea that I think can be easily implemented in SC2.

Strength Points = Manpower

For ground units, the concept works fine, since most of the replacments are infantry or tank crews. If there was a Manpower Cost in each unit, then this cost could be subtracted from the Manpower Pool (more about that later).

Example:

Corp value of X.

Army value of 2X + N.

Armor value of Y.

Build a Corp (X=10), Manpower Pool reduced by 10.

As each Strength Point is replaced, that Strength Point value can be removed from the Manpower Pool. Applies to all of the various ground units.

Example:

3 Point Corp feed replacements and now 8 Points, Manpower Pool reduced by 5.

For Naval and Air units, while the concept of a initial Manpower Cost works, the Strength Point replacements are not relative manpower costs like they are with the ground units. So excluding Strength Point reductions from the Manpower Pool for Naval and Air units works fine.

Manpower Pool

Each nation would need a field that would initially have a numerical value, to represent the total military manpower that nation has available to it. Of course, along with the unit Manpower Cost, it would be editable. The actual value, isn't that important by itself, as long as the relative relationship between national values is correct.

In the future, if additional fields were added per year, quarter, monthly, that were added to the Manpower Pool at the appropriate time frame, we now have the ability to accuratly reflect trained manpower, prime manpower, all manpower, etc becoming available to the military.

Now, when Germany invades Russia, the Russians can viably bleed the Germans of thier manpower, since Russia does have a larger Manpower Pool and can afford losses. Germany wouldn't want to throw units away, as they are expensive in resources and manpower to build. Russia, on the other hand, could build cheap Corps that are easily replaceable, since they really don't have anything else to stop the Germans with. The longer it occurs, the worse it becomes for Germany, since there is a limit to the replacements it can build.

All it would take is a new field in the Units, a new field for Nations and some minor logic additions. And we know have a historically accurate manpower model.

[ December 14, 2004, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]