placement of damaged units.

[graf spee]

Hi,
If damaged units are placed on the production spiral how does the program decides in which country there are going to be produced ? and is there anyway you can manipulate this?
Thanks
Bob

[Timmeh]

nearest factory or port, the game does try and send it to the originating country. I don't know the numbers but there are limits where it will send to the next closest factory or port if too many units have already been damaged. Good luck testing to figure that one out !

[graf spee]

Campaign 1
Germany attacks W.France-after taking the Netherlands with no losses.
2 damaged armors are placed in Tsech.and Austria.
These are the first units damaged -so why not in W.Germany?
Regards
Bob

[JanSorensen]

When a non-naval unit is damaged is goes to the area under your control with the greater value calculated as:

+ Max Production in Area
- Current Production in area
-3 if the area has a port (to reserve ports for naval repair in a sense)
-25 if the area is not of the same nationality as the unit.
If the values are tied the area with the lower area number will be chosen.

So, initially we have:
W. Germany is 10-8-3-0 = -1
E. Germany is 4-1-3-0 = 0
Czech is 4-0-0-0 = 4
Austria is 2-0-0-0 = 2
North Italy is 6-0-3-25 = -22
etc

Thus the first two damaged units will go to Czech and the third to Austria.

I hope this helps.

[MrQuiet]

Thanx Jan!

I learn a lot from your posts like this and the active partisin one.

-MrQuiet

[Lebatron]

I was always wondering why US subs for instance damaged in the Pacific always went to the East Coast to get repaired. I hate that because it takes 2 turns just to get them back into the Pacific. With the system you mention above what would you suggest we do to increase the chances US naval units damaged in the Pacific go to Pacific ports for repair?

[JanSorensen]

I think adding a distance modifier to the value might help - making units more likely to go to a nearby factory/port. I guess its mostly/only needed for naval units though.

I can try playing around with that - but I am open to suggestions about the specifics.

[JanSorensen]

Something like this:

Currently a damaged naval unit will be repaired in the area with the most free production capacity (non-frozen and of the same nationality).

Thats fine - but there is no modifier regarding distance from the area of combat to the area of repair.

I would like to suggest that this be changed to make the repair area the one with the greater value determined by (max production - current production - range from area of combat).

This will make US naval assets more likely to seek repair on the west coast if damaged in the Pacific. Still, some will go to the east coast for repair if the west coast is overburdened.

Example: First turn of the 43 campaign, a US sub is damaged in Pacific 11 (NW from Hawaii).

Currently:
North West: 4(max) - 0(current) = 4
South West: 16(max) - 3(current) 13
South Central: 4(max) -2(current)= 2
North East: 24(max) - 5(current) = 19
South East: 8(max) -1(current) = 7
Thus the damaged sub will head to New York for repairs. Infact, 6 damaged naval units will go there before San Diego is considered.

Suggested change:
North West: 4(max) - 0(current) -6(range) = -2
South West: 16(max) - 3(current) -6(range) = 7
South Central: 4(max) -2(current) -16(range) = -14
North East: 24(max) - 5(current) -18(range) = 1
South East: 8(max) -1(current) -18(range) = -11
Suddently the roles are reversed. Now the first 7 damaged naval units from the Pacific will go to San Diego before New York is considerd. This seems much more reasonable to me.

[Lebatron]

That would be a positive thing to add to the game system. But there would be consequences. It would give the US a new advantage in the Pacific and tip the balance even more in their favor. Of coarse that would be more realistic, since in real life, almost all of America's damaged shipping went to either Hawaii or the West Coast for repair. There may have been instances where some capital ships went to the East Coast but I don't know WW2 history in that kind of detail. So in the end, having US capital ships returning to the fight 2+ turns earlier will probably require some balance tweeks. I doubt that 2by3 is willing to continue this kind of testing indefinately, as they have other projects needing attention. I think we are nearing the last patch, so if this kind of change is going to be done it needs to be addressed soon.

When you answered my question above you said adding a distance modifier could increase the odds a ship would stay in the Pacific for repair. That's not really what I was asking but I'm glad you took it that way. What I was really asking was what would you suggest players do now, under the current system, to increase the odds of shipping staying in the Pacific. If I'm understanding it right, if I filled the East coast factories up with things I really don't need at the moment I could force shipping to stay in the Pacific? Is this correct? Sounds like there would be big tradeoffs involved. To fill the East Coast factories in this way could hurt the UN war effort. To place things in the cue then put them on hold prevents the UN from using those factories for research and supply. So it looks to me like I would be slowing down my research effort just to garantee ships stay in the Pacific. Am I basically on track here? Or is there another method/trick you could suggest.

[Lebatron]

You wrote that above reply while I was writing mine. I agree with you that would be a very positive thing to add and hope it gets added. But like I said I think it will change balance somewhat and therefore Japan may need a new OOB to compensate.

[JanSorensen]

Lebatron,

I believe you are correct in your analysis on how to get more ships to be repaired on the west coast with the current engine. You simply need more free production capacity in the SW than you have in the NE. Since there is no random part to the procedure you can relatively easily experiment with it too.

[MrQuiet]

I would like to suggest that this be changed to make the repair area the one with the greater value determined by (max production - current production - range from area of combat).

That would help with damaged Rus naval units traveling cross country also.

-MrQuiet

[toddtreadway]

When I read Jan's post about how this was computed, I was really surprised to see that there was no distance modifier. I'm not sure whether there is some function that you could use to determine the distance a unit must travel to get to a certain factory, Jan, but it seems like a -1 per space traveled would be reasonable.

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: toddtreadway

...it seems like a -1 per space traveled would be reasonable.

I believe what Jan's example was using was the game engines actual distances. Each sea zone can be worth 1 or 2 distance points depending on the borders. Plus I believe using 2(in most cases) per space traveled rather than 1 would give us better results. Since the US north east factories can produce so much more than most other US zones, deducting only 9(from one of Jan's examples) rather than 18 may not be enough, and you would still get ships returning to the east coast for repair. We what to try and minimize that as much as possible, so -2 per sea zone is more ideal. Also I suspect that it would be easier to add this new exception into the formula, because you are just using raw distance rather than making the game engine come up with a new way to count the number of sea zones traveled.