Elite replacements during campaigns

[Gallo Rojo]

I think that this have been discussed before ... but ...

Do you remember the immortal leaders? It was a "bug" in v5.* ... to put it in a few words: during campaigns leaders never died. If one unit leader was killed in a battle, it resuscitated in the next one with the same name and experience level (although he had lost his kills).

Well, playing MCNA and Russian Steel Campaigns I have found a similar problem: if I lost a leader during one battle the replacement unit has almost the same experience level than the killed one. The new leader a different name is different and zero kills, but he has very high experience and moral.

In my last battle in Russian Steel campaign I lost two tanks with its crews and a hole rifle plt. In the next battle the tank replacements I have received have an experience of 102 and 92! Although moral level of one of them has fall to 65 -the other one has a very high moral: 90 or plus . And the new rifle guys have again very high experience level (all up 80, all veterans)! And we are in Russia in 1941, USSR experience level for new troops is 60!

Do any one have the same problem?
Do you know if there is a "rational" explanation for receiving those elite units as replacements?
NOTE: There is was not any leader promotion explaining this. I give more details: One of the units I lost was E0 (last platoon of my tank Co.). E0 was replaced by the guy that have been E1 Leader, and E1 by E2 ... but E3 (the new green guy) is the one that has no kills and 101 experience!

Do you know any "home made" system to decrease the experience ratings of killed units? -I decided to edit the campaign and add some rebuild points in order to change the unit to another in order to reduce his experience: one of my lost was a T-34, so I change the T-34 by another T-34 four times ... his experience will be reduced from 101 to 61 ... I guess. It is a little fastidious but it works.

But I don't know how to decrease his moral. Any ideas?

[Goblin]

Perhaps the morale should stay where it is. Morale by definition is the spirit of the troops. Just because a soldier is new to a unit, it does not mean he has poor morale! Thats what experience reflects, how new a soldier is. Morale would be high if the soldiers are treated properly, trained properly, and assigned to an elite unit such as yours.

If you think of a unit such as the US Rangers today, even brand new Rangers with no combat experience have a high morale. As for the experienced crews, I have no clue. Perhaps your higher-ups (The Generals) want your unit composed of crack troops, and transfer experienced cadre from other units. Stretching a little, I know.

Goblin

[El_Peco]

Same thing happens to me, with Russian Steel and A Long, long road campaign.
When my units die and I replace them, change the name of the leaders, morale decreases, BUT the experience never falls back:( .
I think that this drawback is a pity, because when someone play a campaign has incentive to keep his units alive, but if the experience remains the same, this incentive is "less strong", for example you can say "I attack with my elite unit, if it dies, it will stay an elite unit!" .
I really hopes that there will be a fix for this drawback!

Regards.

[RussianSteelDar]

I, too, would like to see some kind of workaround...

(And I hope CL/CA directly addresses the issue of campaign forces becoming TOO Elite)

This makes it very hard for the designer to create a reasonable long campaign - by Battle 8 or so of any campaign the core force is dominated by supersoldiers..while I enjoy having a unit that hits what I shoot at and doesn't get suppressed by a strong breeze, it wears thin...

In Russian Steel we're trying hard to keep adjusting the difficulty of future battles to reflect the elite core force but over time, eachbattle will have to include 10 Stukas, a company of MK4Fs/2s, and a company of engineers just to be mildly provoking...

I also imagine this is a very sticky problem to fix or else one of the earlier verisons of SPWAW would have nailed it...

But if one of the supersoldiers gets killed and is replaced with someone from the pool (and for the Russians thru 1943, this is going to be someone with low exp and morale) we designers can probably make up the difference by adding challnge to our battles...

SO, I add my support to seeing if the super leader/super soldier reincarnation thingy can get fixed.

For CA/CL I could go on about things to put in (like as units reach supersolider status they are "promoted" out of the player's core to go be a company or battalion commander elsewhere - the player would get credit for grooming a future leader and a brand new "green" replacement crew to have to deal with)

[Belisarius]

Guys.... what is it that says that a replacement unit necessarily is a recruit? For late war GE, this is certainly the case, but earlier on the replacements for a crack unit was often something in at same level, if possible.

For unit leaders, this was really the case, however doctrines differ from nation to nation. E.g. the U.S. army was more keen on filling gaps in the chain-of-command by promoting a unit member, while the Germans would not replace a lost officer if someone as qualified was not available... to a certain extent :rolleyes:

[El_Peco]

I would agree with Belisarius if some time or often replacement are crack unit; but the problems is that it seems that always replacements have experience of the replaced unit and it is a problem for a balanced campaign game.

Regards.

[A_B]

Another issue is that if forced to stay in combat over an extensive period, moral will actually go down. I don't know how this effected the germans, but the Brits had a tough time with it. Their veteran units actually started to deteriorate in combat effectiveness in late '44. I woulddn't be surprised if other countries did to.

Perhaps growth in experience and morale should ramp up in a curve. Very fast up until the 70's are reached, and then growing much more slowly thereafter. Once the 100's are reached, there should be a possiblity of going down if losses happen in their unit or in a battle.

I'm talking CA/CL of course...

[RussianSteelDar]

From Belisarius:

"Guys.... what is it that says that a replacement unit necessarily is a recruit? For late war GE, this is certainly the case, but earlier on the replacements for a crack unit was often something in at same level, if possible.

For unit leaders, this was really the case, however doctrines differ from nation to nation. E.g. the U.S. army was more keen on filling gaps in the chain-of-command by promoting a unit member, while the Germans would not replace a lost officer if someone as qualified was not available... to a certain extent "


I agree...to a certain extent...


But there are two considerations:

History: the Germans may have had the best training and command replacement process of all the combatants...using them as the benchmark does not accurately reflect the bulk of the other nation's armed forces...especially not the Soviets in 1941-42...think newly created Soviet tank officer in September 1941 and I think you'll agree he was most likely run-of-the-mill ordinary...certainly not a crack or veteran soldier...once the Russians had the strategic initiative, it might be a different story..say late 1943 at the earliest...

Playability of Long Campaigns:

One reason to play a long campaign is to see how well one can groom a select set of units that perform better and better assuming the player hasn't arranged for them to be destroyed...it introduces an "I did it myself" aspect that personalizes the campaign and battles and adds to the enjoyment of solitaire campaign gaming.

I'd wager that most players interested in long campaigns aren't into the idea of a company of Supersoldiers who can never be killed...the idea that this elite unit that you have developed is always at risk of destruction is what counts. Lose it through sloppy play or a lucky shot by the AI and you will have to start ALL over again. This makes playing with a veteran/elite core more interesting.

My interpretation of what Gallo Rojo is after is for the total loss of an elite unit or commander to lead to a replacement that has just the regular pool settings (which for the Germans through most of the war will be quite high) - no extra freebies.

If the crew escapes or there is one man left in the squad we can all pretend the best soldier survived and acts as cadre for the new replacements. But for a total wipe out - all crew or men gone....then it should be back to pool and start from scratch.


I'd like to see this for Russian Steel because as designers, we try and arrange for at least part of the core to get mangled in each battle...in the hope that the player doesn't end up with 3 companies of KV tanks with elite crews...with that kind of force who needs artillery and infantry and combined arms? Just drive into anything and start blasting...

..sorta ruins it....for all but a very few players who are probably happier playing first-person shooters anyways...

My two cents..

[Gallo Rojo]

I'm at work now so I can't write to long ... I will post longer later... and I'm not ussing any spelling corrector, so as I'm not a native English speaker I'm sorry if I made some gramar mistake ... any way ...

Belisarius:
I'm talking about a unit (Tank+crew, Infantry Sqd, etc) that is COMPLETELY killed by the enemy.
As Russian Steel Dar said ... we are talking about Russian troops in 1941 ... The remplacenment could not be a veteran soldier.
From where does Zhukov get a veteran or elite platoon to replace my losses?
And this is the same for moral: I can agree that a US Marine replacenment can have an experience level of 100 and a moral of 95 in 1945 ... but a Soviet soldier in early 1941?

A replacenmet MUST have the average army experience of the year ... that is 60 or 65 for Russians in 1941.
Now: one of my replacenmets has an expericen of 101!! --what is actually MORE that my lost unit (which had 98)
An I lost a full veteran platoon that have been replaced by another veteran platoon.

And this didn't hapen in any of the other Steel Panthers Serie (Steel Panther I, II, III and SPWW2)

Honeslty: I think that this is a bug that comes from early versions and was not fixed. (yes, the game is great, the Matrix team works very hard always ... I know all of this ... I'm not being ironic in any way ... but this is a little bug ... what I like to know is if it is impossible to solve ... or if there is a "home made trick" to solve it (I give on in my first post on this topic)

I have to go now ... (my boss is looking at me! )

Cheers!
Gallo

[A_B]

Originally posted by Gallo Rojo
... what I like to know is if it is impossible to solve ... or if there is a "home made trick" to solve it (I give on in my first post on this topic)
Cheers!
Gallo

Gallo, use the WAWEd.exe editor that comes with the game (i think Chandla made it). You can open a Save game or Scenario, and easily change unit statistics. Just make a point of changing any Replacements to 65, or whatever the average is for that year. You should be able to make the changes in a matter of minutes.

I hadn't noticed the bug before, i'll have to start keeping an eye on it.

On another note, is anyone else waiting for SP MBT to come out as well? Any campaign interest in a near future war? - the Kazak civil war, with US and Chinese intervention.

[Gallo Rojo]

This is excellent information and a good solution A_B, thanks.

Russian Steel Dar:
If this bug will not be fixed (I assume that it will not be, since Matrix team is working on Combat Leader now) it may be good idea that in very long campaigns (as Russian Steel) a note will be included in the read me file to explaining how to "manually" decrease the experience level of replacement units. Of course some players would prefer "cheating" by keeping elite replacements ... but this is each player's decision. Just like if he decides to buy a very large amount of cheap units to upgrade them during the campaign -what is recommended not to do in the "Read me" file.

A_B:
Regarding to your question about campaigns in SP MBT ... I think that this is a SPCAMO project, Am I right?

Any way ... concerning to what Modern Battles campaigns, although I'm not big fan of Modern Warfare, what I would like to see is:
- NATO vs Warsaw Pact (1970 or 1980, both sides)
- An Arab-Israel war
As I'm Latin American I would like to see a "what if" campaign between Chile vs Argentina or Chile vs Peru (Peruvians had soviet equipment) .

[KG Erwin]

The solution for replacement values needs to be expanded upon a little, so here it is. I've used Chlanda's SPWaWed before, but only for the renaming of units and/or commanders to suit my whims. Until I read the post about replacement values, I'd never realized the other tools' usefulness for the long campaigns. For the benefit of the newbies amd even some vets (like me), check under "tools" and select "load country data". When the box pops up, select the "WW2_Stat" file. Click "open" and the pop up disappears. Now go back to "tools" and click "select country data". Another pop up box appears listing all the nationalities in the game. Click on your country of choice, select the time period you wish to see stats for, and click "set". Close that box and the base values for that country and year are displayed. (Thanks to A_B for calling attention to this feature of SPWaWed. ) As a general comment, maybe a thread called "Using the utilities in SPWaW" in the "Training Center" forum should be started.

[Gallo Rojo]

Originally posted by KG Erwin
As a general comment, maybe a thread called "Using the utilities in SPWaW" in the "Training Center" forum should be started.

This could be a really good idea.
And thanks about the explanation

[jlaurila]

I've wondered that remaining experience thingy too,
but when i lost my most favorit german hq with exp of 122
('twas kinda indestructable) i got same exp replacemet, with
1lt ranked officer BUT his command abilities rally, inf, art and arm
were wayyy lower than my previus one.
and he did a wery poor job, didnt hit broad side of barn, and so on.
so i was thinking what actual things does exp value and command values affect to?
exp for spotting/tobespotted thing
and command points for shooting/hitting?