Unit cap

[Korut Zelva]

I remember reading there will be some kind of unit cap in the game. How will this works?

Will it be a total unit cap or per unit type cap? Are the cap fixed by country or factors will affect unit caps? And if so, what would happen if you can't support your new cap limit?

[Edwin P.]

From my readings on this forum;

You can have a hard unit cap, a soft unit cap or no unit cap.

The cap is by unit type by country. Germany might be capped at 2 aircraft carrier fleets while the US is capped at 10.

A hard cap is an absolute limit on the number of units of that type for that country that can be built.

With a soft unit cap each unit built above the cap level costs more. This extra cost is a percentage that is set in the Soft Build Penalty box on the country screen.

Example: If an Infantry costs 250MPP to build, building another unit above its Soft Cap level costs 300MPP if that country has a 20% Soft Build Penalty.

[ May 08, 2005, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[Korut Zelva]

ok

will the caps be part of the default set-up?

[JerseyJohn]

And how do we determine what it should be?

How many corps would the Axis need to occupy the USSR and Yugoslavia, for example? I'd think Germany should realistically be able to support 25 armies plus forty or so corps. But, again, if we want to view this in terms of realism, that would be it's maximum and if the army is smaller it should free up resources for the navy and air force.

In 1941 Hitler's plan was to cut the army in half after defeating the USSR with 56 or so divisions to occupy the territory and a similar number for duty in other theaters. The plan also called for a vast expansion of the Navy taking advantage of unfinished French warships to create his Blue Ocean Navy.

Air Forces will be hard to determine since the allies in particular had tens of thousands of aircraft of all types in operation from 1943 to the end of the war.

[SeaMonkey]

This can be a really complicated situation. First of all, different nations had different size combat units in both personnel and equipment (TO&E).

2nd, would be that the number of fielded combat units is subject to the ideal population pool of a country. What I mean by "ideal" is that induction age category, say 18 to 24, of which the potential for the best soldiers reside.

3rd is that category is somewhat self replinishing as time moves on and more potential ideal inductees become of age.

4th, you have units being destroyed, yet all the personnel are not vanquished and they (a certain %) become elligible for new unit formations or to rejuvenate the old.

5th, you have a draft policy that will change dependent upon the war consequences that country is being subjected to. The scope of elligible draftees could broaden(age group escalation, lessening of requirements))and perhaps new inductees from conquered lands could extend the pool. All these things happened in WW2.

A system that takes into account these possibilities, and there are more, represents a decent simulation of the limits each belligerent will face in the course of the war. By the way, I think this is one of the strong points of GGWaW, as it models these possibilities very well.

[pzgndr]

Actually what we've got is a soft limits option. If off, you have no limits like we have now in SC1. If on, then there's an editable cost penalty for exceeding a unit type limit.

If you've played 3R/A3R, you know Germany can have up to 6 5-4 air units. This would also be a reasonable limit of Air Fleets for Germany in SC2. Say the cost penalty is 20%. If you choose to build a 7th AF then it will cost 20% more, plus all AF reinforcements would also cost more until you return to 6 or less AFs.

If this cost penalty is 100%, then you effectively have a "hard" limit. Maybe a milder cost penalty like 5-10% is preferable for some players. Whatever. It's a flexible system intended to represent a strain for exceeding what a nation's training and maintenance base could realistically support during the war years.