National Proficiency Ratings?

[smudge56]

Submarines I would say they are high the UK has the perisher course which is hard to pass, this course has been run since WW1. I know the dutch joined in running it and when we decommisioned the last diesel sub yhey took over the running of diesel sub training. We continued with the nuclear side. I dont know how that compares to the rest e.g. USA etc. Perhaps someone may know.

[ExMachina]

First of all it would be good if ships had Proficiency Ratings too.

I think surface ships cannot have proficiency ratings without completely changing the nature of CMANO. It makes sense for planes to have proficiency ratings since dogfight resolution can be abstracted to a "technology level" based upon pilot training.

That training bonus becomes more subjective when you try to apply crew quality to ship operations. Sure, some things could conceivably change--aircraft ready times and damage control for examples. Also, if weapons' mount reload times are ever implemented, that could certainly vary with crew quality. But get too far above that level and you find yourself asking questions like: should weapons' allocation also become less under player control as crew gets worse? What about helm orders or EMCON settings--should they be randomly disobeyed? Goign too far in that direction would make the game completely unappealing to me.

[Agathosdaimon]

reading woodwards account of the sheffield sinking, i wonder if the Argentinian side was set to a lowever proficiency overall would their aircraft succeed in getting hits on the british navy? I would be interested in playing using high prof settings, but i dont know if ever setting a side with a lower prof would interest me.

[jdkbph]

Yeah I kinda agree with this last.

The problem as I see it is that in some cases (A2A missile pk for instance) the game already has the value set lower than I would like. I think this might be due the use of historical data (eg, AIM7 in Vietnam). But in many cases, the historical performance is affected by more than just technology. In my example here it was also affected by ROE and tactics.

So we can either ask (and argue) that the values in the database all be changed (good luck figuring all that out, making a case, AND getting consensus!), or we can ask for a slider type thing with database defaults in the middle and the ability to add or subtract equally from that. For example...




Personally, I think this should be applied by the scenario designer on a Country and/or Side basis, with individual settings for Force level (Army, Navy, Air Force) and individual settings for Unit/formation level (ship, squadron, battalion/brigade (or whatever the lowest level of organization might be in the game)), each inheriting values from the level above. That would make it easier for the scenario designer who doesn't want to get that granular, while remaining editable down to the lowest levels if so desired.

This should also be exposed to the scenario player - at least at the Country or Side level - which would then act as a sort of "difficulty" setting, perhaps making the game more accessible to the novice player.

The setting itself should affect things like weapons pk, damage control, evasion, detection, ready times, and perhaps even the OODA loop built into the game.

Just MHO...

JD

[incredibletwo]

This is already getting messy. Everyone wants something different, so it seems, but, like I keep saying, as long as it can be disabled if the player__so__chooses, and I don't mean having to go into the scen editor to effect changes, then that should keep everyone happy.

+1 to ExMachina.

By the way, the Chinese entry into the Korean War caused the longest retreat in U.S. military history. I wouldn't rate that effort as "Cadet", considering the Eighth Army was led and manned by a large number of officers and soldiers with combat experience. Just sayin..

[ExMachina]

The problem as I see it is that in some cases (A2A missile pk for instance) the game already has the value set lower than I would like. I think this might be due the use of historical data (eg, AIM7 in Vietnam). But in many cases, the historical performance is affected by more than just technology. In my example here it was also affected by ROE and tactics.

And this is precisely the rabbit hole we're likely to fall into if we're not careful. Probably most everything in CMANO, from hit percentages to sensor sensitivity/discrimination already has the human element (proficiency, doctrine, etc) factored into it at some level.

Therefore, applying a generalized penalty/advantage to a side can never work well when the input data has confounding factors already present in it (source: I'm a practicing scientist who handles stratified data all the time)

[Jakob Wedman]

I think that Flight Leader (1986, Avalon Hill) has a balanced rating for the average quality of the nations' airmen from "A" to "F":
Soviet Union: "E" to early 1980s, "D" in mid 80s
United States: "A" through mid 50s, "B" to "C" through mid 70s, "C" since mid 70s except for F-4, F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18 which are "B"
Belgium: "B" through the 70s, "C" in 80s
Canada: "C"
Denmark: "B" through the 70s, "C" in 80s
France: "B"
West Germany: "B" through the 70s, "C" in the 80s
Great Britain: "C"
Greece: "C"
Italy: "C"
Netherlands: "C"
Norway: "B" through the 70s, "C" in the 80s
Portugal: "C"
Spain: "C"
Turkey: "C"
Albania: "E"
Bulgaria: "D"
Czechoslovakia: "D"
East Germany: "D"
Hungary: "D"
Poland: "D"
Romania: "D"
Algeria: "E"
Egypt: "E" through 1970, "D" since 1970
Iran: "D" through 1979, "E" since 1979
Iraq: "E"
Jordan: "D"
Kuwait: "E"
Lebanon: "E" ghrough 1975, "F" and virtually non-existent since constant civil war has raged 1975 on
Libya: "E"
Morocco: "D"
Oman: "D"
Qatar: "D"
Saudi Arabia: "D" through 1980, "C" since 1980
Sudan: "E"
Syria: "E"
Tunisia: "E"
United Arab Emirates: "E"
North Yemen: "E"
South Yemen: "E"

[---]

Austria: "C"
Finland: "B"
Israel: "A"
Sweden: "B" [:)]
Switzerland: "C"
Yugoslavia: "D"

[jdkbph]

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

By the way, the Chinese entry into the Korean War caused the longest retreat in U.S. military history. I wouldn't rate that effort as "Cadet", considering the Eighth Army was led and manned by a large number of officers and soldiers with combat experience. Just sayin..

Well, I'm not the one who said cadet, but I don't think it's that far off. You're referring to Chosin Reservoir. The ChiComs out-numbered the US forces 2 to 1 (or upwards of 6 to 1 if you're counting committed forces), had the US forces completely encircled, cut off their supply lines, and the best they could do was force a withdrawl in good order? I think a competent force would have routed and annihilated the opponent... which BTW was the ChiCom goal.

They failed.

Retreat or not, it was not a slam dunk Chinese victory by any interpretation... in fact depending on who's doing the analysis, it's not clear that it was a Chinese victory at all. The casualty lists certainly leave that question open to debate.

JD

[Lerxt]

This whole idea is ridiculous. How on earth can anyone judge "nation competency" without empirical data? Are we going to judge it on how many wars the country has won as a percentage of how many fought? Or how about national debt or economic ratings? Are we going to judge it on the size of defense forces or the length of training? We will see Americans thinking they are the best because that's what their propaganda has told their public for the last 70 years, much like the Chinese. Are the Swiss going to be judged poorly for not participating in wars for 150 years?

Let's just drop it and concentrate on things that matter like an update, accurate database, aircraft flying reasonable profiles and formations meaning something.

[SSN754planker]

The idea is NOT ridiculous. Think about this, the North Koreans have MiG-29's. It has been said that the pilots assigned to those planes fly maybe 4 times a year, if they're lucky. Do you think that the North Korean MiG is of the same quality as say a Russian MiG-29 whose pilot has a much better training regimen? Why cant we at least have the option to have this reflected in the sim, and available to the scenario designer?

I agree that there are other things to work on, but i am glad this is implemented.

[incredibletwo]

ORIGINAL: jdkbph

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

By the way, the Chinese entry into the Korean War caused the longest retreat in U.S. military history. I wouldn't rate that effort as "Cadet", considering the Eighth Army was led and manned by a large number of officers and soldiers with combat experience. Just sayin..

Well, I'm not the one who said cadet, but I don't think it's that far off. You're referring to Chosin Reservoir. The ChiComs out-numbered the US forces 2 to 1 (or upwards of 6 to 1 if you're counting committed forces), had the US forces completely encircled, cut off their supply lines, and the best they could do was force a withdrawl in good order? I think a competent force would have routed and annihilated the opponent... which BTW was the ChiCom goal.

They failed.

Retreat or not, it was not a slam dunk Chinese victory by any interpretation... in fact depending on who's doing the analysis, it's not clear that it was a Chinese victory at all. The casualty lists certainly leave that question open to debate.

JD

No JD, I was referring to the collapse of the Eighth Army down the western-side of the Korean Peninsula.

Anyway, back on topic. Both Lerxt and Planker have good points. I do believe the most balanced approach to this would be to have a sliding scale (or call it what you will) for those designers that want to implement ratings for nations, but also let the player have the option to switch those ratings off if they so choose.

[JCR]

People start posting stuff about "the Chicoms" is exactly the reason national proficiency ratings are problematic.
As soon as you enter asiatic horde territory you're screwed.

[Lerxt]

ORIGINAL: SSN754planker

The idea is NOT ridiculous. Think about this, the North Koreans have MiG-29's. It has been said that the pilots assigned to those planes fly maybe 4 times a year, if they're lucky. Do you think that the North Korean MiG is of the same quality as say a Russian MiG-29 whose pilot has a much better training regimen? Why cant we at least have the option to have this reflected in the sim, and available to the scenario designer?

I agree that there are other things to work on, but i am glad this is implemented.

Yes it is ridiculous. You are making assumptions about about the North Koreans, for example, where you use the justification "It has been said". How is quantitatively or empirically testable and comparable? Who said? How do you, or anyone here, have any measurable ideas about the quality of anyone's aircraft and training? You have no idea.

The only reason to do this is to "massage" your own prejudices and assumptions based on nothing.

[thewood1]

And the couple of posts above is why companies are reluctant to enter this fray.

[CaptCarnage]

It's nice it can be done but to be honest I don't like it much.

We all know some soldiers are trained better than others but I'd rather face the best enemy possible. More gratifying and more useful for training.

[thewood1]

Interestingly, from a website shown in another thread, North Korean pilots were admitted to have flown combat in Vietnam. So at least up to the 80's you probably had a core of experienced combat pilots in NK. Those are the little things that you have a hard time accounting for in setting any ratings...

http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_345.shtml

It noted more the half-way down the page in the caption for the Mig-21 picture. btw, that is an awesome site for historical and current information on some Asian air forces

[jdkbph]

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

This is already getting messy. Everyone wants something different, so it seems, but, like I keep saying, as long as it can be disabled if the player__so__chooses, and I don't mean having to go into the scen editor to effect changes, then that should keep everyone happy.

Oh and I forgot to reply to this part...

I don't think what I'm suggesting is any different that what we've been given so far... unless you chose to make it so. And by you I mean individual scenario designers and/or players. Everything I'm suggesting is based on the same country or side "rating" we've been given in the latest builds and defaulted all the way down through the OOB.

The big difference between that and what I would like to see is that the default values can then be tweaked on the force level (and thereby pushed to the unit level), or applied directly at the unit level.

All optional.

And yeah, if that's not good enough for those who might not like the concept of force quality, I'd be all for a check box on the game options menu that shuts the whole thing off and resets everything back to the DB defaults for that game session (eg, setting preserved in the player's save game file, not in the scenario file).

JD

JD

[jdkbph]

ORIGINAL: Lerxt

This whole idea is ridiculous.

It's been done before in other very successful games. I'm not sure what exactly your objection is (other than you can't see a way to do it).

Try looking at it this way....

We're sitting in a restaurant. I like steak, you like fish. We have a problem.

Then the server brings... a menu!

Problem solved.

JD

[jdkbph]

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

I do believe the most balanced approach to this would be to have a sliding scale (or call it what you will) for those designers that want to implement ratings for nations, but also let the player have the option to switch those ratings off if they so choose.

Agreed.

JD

[incredibletwo]

It's all about options [8D]