Political point cost per device

[Oldguard1970]

I share the wish that one could create "tidy" command structures with minimal or zero PP cost for non-restricted units of the same nationality. It would permit a better sense of structure for our forces. Given that command structure doesn't matter in game terms we ignore the tangled structures and play on.

Trying to permit players to clean up tangled command structures by using the editor to add PPs risks breaking the good tension and the good effect of having only a limited number of PPs for other purposes. As an AFB, I can testify about the pleasant agony one faces trying to sort out what to "buy" with the limited PPs in the early days. As much as I would enjoy being able to create rational command structures, I would not want to give up the good effect of the PP system.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

However what Yaab underlines in his first post is very true:

Artillery units have a PPs value that is pretty strange compared to infantry or tank units.
Also consider that, normally, smaller pieces of artillery cost much more than heavier pieces. An artillery battalion with 75mm guns cost much more than an artillery BN containing 30cm howitzers... go figure

I blame drunkenness at Dev HQ. [8D]

[Trugrit]

How much impact do political points have on the war?

It does help but you still have to win on the battlefield and there are numerous
variables that affect that. A lot more skill is involved than just pp’s.
You could use them to pick good leaders but there is a limited supply of good leaders.
You could line up your command structure but once again there is a limited number of ground units.
How many restricted ground units set out the war?

Would a slightly bigger amount of pp’s really change the battlefield that much? How much?

The way political points are set by default:
In the main campaign game the allies have 100 pp to start and 1634 day/turns
at 50 political points per day. That’s 81,700 + 100 = 81,800 political points for the whole game.

The Japanese have 500 pp to start and 1634 day/turns at 50 political points per day
that’s 81,700 + 500 = 82,200 political points for the whole game.
So you want to be careful with the daily amount because small changes can multiply fast to out of balance.

Maybe the allies should get a bunch of starting points and then have the daily points set very low.
That way the allies would have to be careful and ration their points over the whole war.
In the beginning of the war the allies can’t use a bunch of points anyway because their forces
are not all on the map.

That makes sense historically. After Pearl Harbor if the theater commander asked for the moon
what president would deny him if the points were available?

Could an influx of pp’s skew the victory conditions radically. I Don’t know.
What happens if you run dry of pp’s before the war ends? Does that break the game?

Maybe The Japanese should get low starting points but a higher daily total.
In the beginning of the war the Japanese have used up most of their starting pp’s getting into position to attack.

Will that break the game? I don’t know.

[Yaab]

Imagine, if arty PP cost was per barrel, and Japs sported Nebelwerfers.

[Trugrit]

OldGuard1970,

Well, once again you can go to the editor and change the command structure.

For New Players:
Open the editor and load the scenario.
Go to the locations tab and by HQ you have the assigned HQ for all the units.
Align them as you want.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Trugrit

How much impact do political points have on the war?

It does help but you still have to win on the battlefield and there are numerous
variables that affect that. A lot more skill is involved than just pp’s.
You could use them to pick good leaders but there is a limited supply of good leaders.
You could line up your command structure but once again there is a limited number of ground units.
How many restricted ground units set out the war?

Would a slightly bigger amount of pp’s really change the battlefield that much? How much?

The way political points are set by default:
In the main campaign game the allies have 100 pp to start and 1634 day/turns
at 50 political points per day. That’s 81,700 + 100 = 81,800 political points for the whole game.

The Japanese have 500 pp to start and 1634 day/turns at 50 political points per day
that’s 81,700 + 500 = 82,200 political points for the whole game.
So you want to be careful with the daily amount because small changes can multiply fast to out of balance.

Maybe the allies should get a bunch of starting points and then have the daily points set very low.
That way the allies would have to be careful and ration their points over the whole war.
In the beginning of the war the allies can’t use a bunch of points anyway because their forces
are not all on the map.

That makes sense historically. After Pearl Harbor if the theater commander asked for the moon
what president would deny him if the points were available?

Could an influx of pp’s skew the victory conditions radically. I Don’t know.
What happens if you run dry of pp’s before the war ends? Does that break the game?

Maybe The Japanese should get low starting points but a higher daily total.
In the beginning of the war the Japanese have used up most of their starting pp’s getting into position to attack.

Will that break the game? I don’t know.

Your figures are correct for Scen 1 stock, but not for Scen 2 stock. Japan gets 60/day there.

I can answer your other main question, having finished three AI GCs and in two PBEMs, one in Sept 1942 and the other almost in March 1943. At least for the Allies. PPs matter greatly from the first move, and not for HQ alignment purposes. By 1944 they matter almost not at all. The first year is orders of magnitude harder for the Allies on a PP basis than the others put together. And yet, as you note, there is no post-Pearl surge. The engine doesn't allow for variable amounts per day, but you can to an extent influence matters with the size of the beginning pool.

In my experience there are two huge PP needs in 1942. NB I DO NOT play with PPs required to cross national borders. That HR further cripples the Allies IMO.

1) Replacing abysmal air group COs. Do a survey of them and compare to what Japan begins with. Look at the quality of even arriving units after the war begins. Many are in the 20s on Air skill. As I said above, with limited plane pools you have to replace a lot of these idiots fast else you burn through your pools for little return. An air unit CO IMO is way too expensive relative to many other PP prices. They're mid-grade officers, not fleet commanders. But failing to address this area right away is critical.

2) Buying out US Army infantry. Many/most Japanese players now go for objectives far outside the historical perimeters. With most of the Oz forces restricted, as well as being composed of militia-type infantry, the only hope of holding even some of the huge VP wells such as Suva, Noumea, and Luganville is the US Army. A division is more than a month's worth of VPs if not one is spent on something else. Even the independent regiments are extremely difficult to get in time to avoid a walk-on of these islands during the amphib bonus. Japan can take them with tiny units knowing they are undefended and with no prep period. By the time an AFB can buy out enough US infantry a place like Suva is a 3ID+ operation with a three month prep period. Essentially 1942 is shot and in an auto-vic scenario that's bad.

Beyond those anyone trying to do anything in China will spend many hundreds trying to get some sort of leadership into Chinese corps. Sub COs are pussycats with many pre-war COs. A patch change added PP costs to change aircraft models in many cases, a charge that didn't exist when PP amounts were inserted into the stock scenarios. And so forth.

Yes, it can be done in the editor. No, it is almost never an item for discussion. My point is it should be.

[Trugrit]

What you have said indicates that the devs got it about right historically.
The Japanese were ready and the allies were not.

As far as Japanese auto-victory conditions are concerned I would not know.
I'm too inexperienced to have an opinion on that.

Auto-victory is a game factor not a historical factor.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Trugrit

Auto-victory is a game factor not a historical factor.

Midway is an historic factor and all of the Allied stats are predicated on it happening. In five years I've never seen that in an AAR. History only gets you so far in this area.

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
I blame drunkenness at Dev HQ. [8D]

And you would be right [:D] Don Bowen likes single malt and so do I. I sent him the best bottle of Scotlands finest I could find when we were working with that development nonsense.
Oh, yeah; we are serious drunks. And we miss some things, out of the thousand and one things we had to contend with. I've seen that one. It's a minor blivet on a big plate. If you really want it fixed, we can do. But be very careful about how we do it.

Ciao. JWE

[Bullwinkle58]

The new avatar is an improvement. [:)]

[jmalter]

It's always bothered my 'inner warrior-accountant' that the game pays such little attention to "proper" chain-of-command structure. As a grognard, I would expect that command-structure would influence combat, logistic & rebuild performance. In WitP:AE I've only run accross 2 places were command-structure has influence:
1) Spend PP to change a base-hex's Command. (For example, change bases in North Oz to ABDA, to allow Dutch planes to transfer to them.)
2) Some vague memory that an airgroup's plane availability will improve if its command is sub-ordinate to the base-hex's command. (I've not really seen this make any practical difference in-game.)

Historically, the US Army designed its force-structure as a kit-of-parts - In theory, any Div, Indp. Bgd or Indp. Btn could be assigned to any Corps, any Corps to any Army, any Army to any Theatre. In historical practice, though, this flexibility was not used - if a Corps-asset TD Btn was attached to a Div, it would most usually stay w/ that Div for the duration. The exception was at higher levels, say when USArmy Corps were placed under British tactical command for various operations (Market-Garden, the Bulge, Monty's Rhine-crossing.)

It gets up my nose a bit that cmd-structure in this game ain't aligned w/ my expectations, oh well. Every game has its idiosyncracies. In WitP:AE it's v. important to have your LCUs trained for their Target, & it don't matter at all if the chain-of-command diagram makes a pretty picture.

[Barb]

ORIGINAL: jmalter
Historically, the US Army designed its force-structure as a kit-of-parts - In theory, any Div, Indp. Bgd or Indp. Btn could be assigned to any Corps, any Corps to any Army, any Army to any Theatre. In historical practice, though, this flexibility was not used - if a Corps-asset TD Btn was attached to a Div, it would most usually stay w/ that Div for the duration. The exception was at higher levels, say when USArmy Corps were placed under British tactical command for various operations (Market-Garden, the Bulge, Monty's Rhine-crossing.

I think you are not quite right in this - In historical practices regiments were attached to another divisions, Artillery battalions were attached and detached up and down - even to cavalry groups. Armored Division Combat Commands (A,B,R) were operating either quite independently, or attached to some Infantry division, or had attached infantry regiment, Ranger Battalion or whatever. Not to mention custom pairings of platoons companies and battalions of armor/infantry - like A Tank Company working with Armored Infantry Bn (- B Co) and Tank Battalion (-A Co) working with B Inf Company.

US Regiments and battalions were attached to Australian brigades in Buna-Gona-Salamaua-Lae campaigns supported by Australian artillery, etc - and the changes were done quite frequently. Australian Battalions were moved from briagde to brigade and brigades were moved from division to division or some other independent Task Force HQ.

True the allies did not have the same "feeling" for the improvised Kampfgruppe concept like Germans. But Everything from platoon up could be detached/attached to whatever HQ available. Of course this is not possible within game terms, as the HQ system in Game usually represents Corps/Army/Theatre HQs.

I would also like the ability to assign units to particular Corps HQ within Command HQ for particular op... say II Corps for single operation. But even the 25% cost is prohibitive in big operations ... and to be changed every time a unit is being used in different operation...

[Banzan]

Tbh, if you increase the amount of PPs of the allied player at start of the game, you also increase the ammount of avaible troops quite a lot. I am not sure the japanese players are really cool with this - at least not after they noticed what that really means. [;)]

At the moment you have to value what you do and save points for quite some time to get another ID from the US into action. Increase the ammount of PPs and the allied player will get an awsome lot of arty, tanks, AA and infanrty units into play before you know whats happing.

[Yaab]

Thread resurrection.

PPs are scarce in the game. Isn't 10 political points per field arty/mortar simply a bug? If they cost 1 or 2 PPs per device, then the daily amount of 50 political points could actually be enough for a proper gameplay.

[Macclan5]

Question ~

(i.e. not suggestion of any sort of defense of design)

Does not the Allied "lower PP" level actually better reflect the historical delay in the build up of (particularly) US Forces?

Scarce points induce the Allied player to make hard choices amongst buying out certain units ; which to send to the pacific, which to send to aid the British in India, which must be left to defend the home front.

I think its possible that higher points and higher accumulation of points per turn would be a huge detriment to the game to provide the electronic CINCPAC the ability to buy out every "potential" unrestricted regiment, artillery battalion, armored regiment too early in the game ?

Disclaimer I have played the AI only.


In late 43 I too like the nice tidy historical ability to buy out ID to "Southwest Pacific command" or Fleets of old Battleships and xAP's XAKs to 7th USN.. but since the game effects are 'relatively nominal' - satisfying my OCD comes at the cost of buying out other units I would like in Burma for example...

[BBfanboy]

I'm pretty sure ships can be reallocated to different commands without any PP cost (unless this has been changed in the beta versions).

[btd64]

For PP'S, what does everyone think the at start and daily allowance for each side should be?....GP

[Yaab]

50 PPs per day is almost fine, but for the 10 PPs price for field arty/mortars. This makes any PPs savings into late war shaky as the OOB gets bigger and gun saturation gets greater.

[Macclan5]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

I'm pretty sure ships can be reallocated to different commands without any PP cost (unless this has been changed in the beta versions).

Proof positive that: (1) I am still a rookie and (2) haven't yet tried it. [8D]

Interestingly enough in game I did pay a hefty 1500 (as I recall) for an USArmy ID "to SWPac" Command "from Pac" and was contemplating weather I was comfortable paying out any more or sitting on my small reserve for upcoming deployments ; thanks for the correction BB as I now know my next turn.

Again its nice to have friendly vets on this board. [:D]

--

As to the accumulation rate ; I am in no position to add any value.

I had assumed the accumulation rate was game balanced to reflect historical deployment challenges.

But I have only played the AI and I have never been challenged with aggressive ahistorical encounters.

I would think that while the accumulation rate (increase) or artillery cost (decrease) could help balance PBEM games it would possibly be left to edits in PBEM games instead of code changes to games verses the AI ? It would have to be available to both sides
in some equal measure. Perhaps the edits in the data base as mentioned above should be separate scenerios marked i.e. Scenerio 43 Babes - scenario 40 with modified PP...something along that line.

Even here I am assuming a patch could even correct this and its not "hard coded" and therefore not possible (i.e. Art cost).

[Bullwinkle58]

Changing the PP rate is one, maybe two, clicks in the editor. Open the Scenario and go to town. Both PBEM players would have to agree.

I'd be good for the Allies with a 500 starting pool, and 60/turn. Assuming no PPs to cross borders.

I didn't use the Air HQ methods (until very late and my opponent didn't mind), and am in June 1944 still trying to buy out critical infantry units. And I'm not lavish on tweaking every ship CO or anything even close. The Air COs are so bad, and so expensive, they constantly take my balance down. Mid-1944 and most new air units arriving have COs in the 20s or 30s on Air skill.