Restricted units

[Dobey455]

ORIGINAL: topeverest

The delicate balancing act here is...well...impossible to perfect. IRL, a battle or enemy move could cause forces to be released. The only mechanism in the game is PP. Short of activating emergency reinforcements, there is no mechanism to mimic RL.

That said, further restricing or delaying entry of certain major allied land forces may be the right thing to do, as there are many instances of accelerated allied victory. I hesitate to us incremental restriction. Rather, I prefer delayed entry of follow-on units.

This is a good point. The other problem is that while you can mod in ways to simulate the ACTUAL political concerns of the real war the military situation (and therefore the political concerns) can, and generally will, be completely different to RL.
Ultimately this could lead to putting a great deal of effort to mod in certain restrictions that end up bearing no resemblance to the situation in game.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: erstad

Here's a degree of freedom that could be considered in scenario design w.r.t. restricted LCUs. Specifically, the feature that allows restricted units to be transferred "laterally" to an adjacent unrestricted command at 1/4 the PPs. So you really have four classes of units that could be handed the player:
- Unrestricted
- Loosely restricted - can be freed at 1/4 the pps
- strongly restricted - can be freed at regular pps
- Hard restricted - can't be freed

So, for example, if the Aussie divisions were changed to magically appear in Oz as restricted units as a representation of the political realities, one has several options to choose from as to the ease with which they can be freed up.

Just a thought. Note the scenario notes would have to explicitly state this as an intent, given all the discussion/debate as to what is/is not gamey in stock.

Actually there is a fifth kind that I use in my mod for the Kwantung Army.

Selfish bastards that they are have "hard" restricted divisions broken down into components. The components cannot change command until a separate component unit arrives that allows the division's components to combine into a "strongly" restricted division that can be freed.

[inqistor]

ORIGINAL: Dobey
Yes but you're missing the bigger point that has been made above. Basically what this does is force restraints on the allies while the japanese are not burdened by any of their complication (such as naval and army in-fighting, or the grotesque over-abundance of aerial torpedoes in game.)

Nope. It only forces keeping specified number of troops in Australia. Same situation, as in Manchuria, and China for Japan, and Burma/India/DEI for Allies. That would eventually restrict mobility, in case of invasion of Australia, but forces ARE in place.

Also its worth noting that defending Australia, historically, was not that huge a draw of resources after about Apr 1942.

Well, Australian units have 30% of troops disabled. During 4 months all should be repaired, so their AV will rise, and allows releasing more troops. All fits.

Historically the AIF formed the majority of combat troops in the SW pacific theater until 1944, with almost all militia units also doing at least one rotation overseas during the war.

Rotation is another missing feature. If you have to keep specified number of troops in Australia, you have to move beaten units back in, to send fresh troops to front. Again, all fits.

No matter what happens, in game,you will very rarely see the Japanese stopped in their tracks by April 42 and starting to roll back by jun -jul 1942......now THAT is realty - if you want it.

That is because it is far too easy to throw supplies to front. And it works for both sides.

[Dobey455]

There is only one way I could see to simulate the "politcal concerns" (ie force players to bargain, deal and argue over the deployment of forces and the command of operations etc)in a fluid way that would change with the situation in game.
That would be to have a mult-player game with the forces divided not by geographic lines, but by nationality. I have actually thought about how this could work a couple of times and think that it would be do-able, but I can't see it working with any less than 5 players (2 Japanese and 3 allied.) Not to mention a good deal of thought about how to organise things.

[LargeSlowTarget]

To add my two cents:

I try to "put the brakes on early Allied offensives" in my mod as well.

I am not opposed to restrict units. Since it is unlikely that places like Malaya, the Pillipines and Java could have been evacuated (politics, prestige etc.), I actually have restricted the units already in place in those areas, so a "Sir Robin" would be limited and very costly in PPs.

I do also restrict the Australian and NZ "home defence" units which were only intended as anti-invasion forces but not for offensive operations (although the Aussie OOB is causing major headaches in this regard...).

But I do not like the idea to restrict and teleport "reinforcements" like the Aussie Imperial Force divisions or the 32nd and 41st US divisions (the UK 18th Div would also fall into that category).

This takes away too much freedom of choice and the few available "reaction forces" to counter ahistorical moves of the Japanese player.

Furthermore, teleporting several division-sized units would release a significant ammount of shipping, which could then be used for other transport demands - which in turn would actually speed-up operations instead of braking them.

I think the important historical brakes were shipping bottlenecks, lack of base infrastructure and (initially) lack of supplies.

Therefore my approach is downgrading of bases and potential base sizes and hampering supply production by partly "damaging" Allied factories.

I was also thinking about lowering transport capacities of ship classes, but the recent "KillerBabes" version seems to have taken care of this.

Another "assist" for braking could be the lowering of base construction speed by changing the TO&E of Eng units.

There are other interesting ideas here - garrison requirements and/or high VP values in Australia in order to "force" the transfer of the Aussie Imperial Force to Australia instead of using them in Burma, for example.

IMO this is a better way to brake the early Allied offensive than restricting and teleporting of units.