Crew's Experience

[dale1066]

To simplifythe experience/better training for pilots or naval units why not just say spend an extra build point on the unit leave it in production to arrive a turn later. After all IMO thats more or less what mar and para units are. More highly trained (expensive in terms of cost/time to build) with special abilities.
IMO Given spare development time its one for the beta testers and it might make it as an optional rule.

[Arron69]

I for one like these rules, and the computer counting the battles of each unit makes this easier to imply.

But some ideas:
The names IMO should be unique for the top level, ie: Green, Normal, Crack for the low lvls of all units, and
Airforce: Ace
Navy: Commodore
Army: Elite
for the high lvls...

And the MTN is just as elite as PARA and MAR, so sould be included. The end exercise of a MTN recruit in germany, was to climb the alps and pick a flower that grows up high above the tree limit and put it in his hat, only then would he be accepted by the older troops.

Another thing is that the smaller a unit is, the more important the training and experience is, so divs should be included, take the commandos, they only took troop with combat experience, and trained them to perfection, and so did the american and english paratroopers.

Besides from that the rest sounds awesome[:D], but should ofcourse be an option, and oil should be auto on if you choose it.

Andi.

[composer99]

Sounds like an interesting discussion, although I agree with whomever said that it is quite unlikely that any feature of this kind is to appear in MWiF product 1.
 
I also disagree that this rule has no place in a strategic-scale wargame. However, I do think that it will need a good deal of playtesting, and will probably end up a good deal different than as initially posited.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Question is: How much work is it to program unit experience? Will Steve do it? Is there enough room for graphical representation, like experience stars, on the unit counters?

I bet Steve would prefer not to add this to MWiF product1, even if it is demonstrated that it is not hard to integrate to the game, it reprensents more unwelcomed work.

Yes.

Very experimental.

Is the experience level of air crews associated with the air unit or the pilots?

In my over the board play every unit on both sides in France 1940 and Russia 1941 is flipped by the end of the turn. That often indicates the turn is over too since no one is capable of doing anything more. Which means almost all of them have gained experience. My general philosophy when playing cardboard war games is that every unit on the map has to "earn his keep" by doing something useful each turn. So, I would expect experience levels to follow very closely with the how long the unit has been on the map. Units that arrive later in the game or belong to neutral major powers (e.g., all the US units) would all be green.

However, this new rule would have the good effect of making units placed on garrison duty less combat ready. Reading the land unit writeups gives a lot of support for that being historically accurate - rather than just a game gimmick.

Some WIFFE mountain units are non-elite (even German ones).

[Mziln]

40% chance for FAIR weather

The Sea box shore bombardment modifier: NONE, 2, 1, 0, 0

FAIR - 9 combat points + 9 shore bombardment factors + 6 ground support points = 24 combat points vs.

3-point notional unit (within a corps or armies ZoC) odds are 7 to 1 (Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 5-4 Siberian corps odds are 3 to 1 (50% chance Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 6-4 Siberian corps odds are 3 to 1 (50% chance Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 6-4 Siberian corps + 5-4 Siberian corps odds are 3 to 2 (30% chance Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 6-4 Siberian corps + 6-4 Siberian corps odds are 3 to 2 (30% chance Invasion succeeds)

Using this example the Siberians would be Green -1 and Invading Japanese MAR units have their normal combat factors.

3-point notional unit (within a corps or armies ZoC) odds are 7 to 1 (Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 5-4 Siberian corps -1 odds are 4 to 1 (80% chance Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 6-4 Siberian corps -1 odds are 4 to 1 (80% chance Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 6-4 Siberian corps + 5-4 Siberian corps -2 odds are 2 to 1 (50% chance Invasion succeeds)
2-point notional unit + 6-4 Siberian corps + 6-4 Siberian corps -2 odds are 2 to 1 (50% chance Invasion succeeds)

[brian brian]

GDW's "A House Divided" is great fun to play, in small part because of the non-stop banter to be had using the 'crack' units.

But given WiF's abstract land units and sizes I wouldn't use such a rule for land units. The USSR already has such a system - the Guards Banner Armies - and I thought it was under consideration to expand that idea to a few other countries. Combat is highly attritional and this is not really represented in WiF. When a land unit is removed from the map, it is in most cases in reality still on the map and the casualties were probably distributed amongst all units in the battle. But some way to represent those casualties has to appear so a unit is removed from the map. Even when such a unit was withdrawn in real-life, it would still have a core of combat veterans, though the Germans were dumb enough to create brand new land units with no combat experience (Manstein's comments on the Luftwaffe Field Divisions, frex), but that is simulated by low combat factors of some of the new German units. SPI used to have unit experience rules in some of their games, and these made sense for completely 'green' regimental level units, but it just doesn't feel right at the corps/army level.

For air units I probably wouldn't use it either. Any air unit would always have a mix of veterans and new pilots. Some combat veterans get pulled from units to help become instructors or to become the nucleus of new units, to avoid the 100% rookie unit problem. Again given attrition and the unit scales this doesn't feel right to me for WiF. I've never wanted to see WiF get overly 'tacticalized' and a lot of proposed options do just that.

One exception to my thoughts there is I would like to see a limited number of "Pre-War Pilot" markers as I think the combat pilots trained in the 30s with hundreds of hours of flying time probably had an advantage over pilots trained more hastily during war conditions. Japan's carrier pilots are frequently mentioned in this regard of course but I suspect that might hold true for other countries too?

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: brian brian

GDW's "A House Divided" is great fun to play, in small part because of the non-stop banter to be had using the 'crack' units.

But given WiF's abstract land units and sizes I wouldn't use such a rule for land units. The USSR already has such a system - the Guards Banner Armies - and I thought it was under consideration to expand that idea to a few other countries. Combat is highly attritional and this is not really represented in WiF. When a land unit is removed from the map, it is in most cases in reality still on the map and the casualties were probably distributed amongst all units in the battle. But some way to represent those casualties has to appear so a unit is removed from the map. Even when such a unit was withdrawn in real-life, it would still have a core of combat veterans, though the Germans were dumb enough to create brand new land units with no combat experience (Manstein's comments on the Luftwaffe Field Divisions, frex), but that is simulated by low combat factors of some of the new German units. SPI used to have unit experience rules in some of their games, and these made sense for completely 'green' regimental level units, but it just doesn't feel right at the corps/army level.

For air units I probably wouldn't use it either. Any air unit would always have a mix of veterans and new pilots. Some combat veterans get pulled from units to help become instructors or to become the nucleus of new units, to avoid the 100% rookie unit problem. Again given attrition and the unit scales this doesn't feel right to me for WiF. I've never wanted to see WiF get overly 'tacticalized' and a lot of proposed options do just that.

One exception to my thoughts there is I would like to see a limited number of "Pre-War Pilot" markers as I think the combat pilots trained in the 30s with hundreds of hours of flying time probably had an advantage over pilots trained more hastily during war conditions. Japan's carrier pilots are frequently mentioned in this regard of course but I suspect that might hold true for other countries too?

I agree with much of this, especially the tendency for many people to not comprehend the scale of the units in WiF. I've thought about the pre-war pilot experience issue too but I'd add that it works both ways. Pre-war tactics such as the RAF "vic" formation were often shown to be impracticable in combat. The much more effective "finger four" used by the Luftwaffe had been developed by them from experience in Spain. So you could argue that training with the benefit of the lessons learned is more valuable than pre-war training in this respect. Those hundreds of lazy, pre-war hours of training per pilot would have been handy for developing airmanship though.

Cheers, Neilster

[brian brian]

great point on theoretical tactics vs. the realities of combat, thanks.

[christo]

Patrice

I haven't seen this posted on the wiflist discussion site. Do you think they may have anything to offer?

[Mziln]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Question is: How much work is it to program unit experience? Will Steve do it? Is there enough room for graphical representation, like experience stars, on the unit counters?

I bet Steve would prefer not to add this to MWiF product1, even if it is demonstrated that it is not hard to integrate to the game, it reprensents more unwelcomed work.

Yes.

Very experimental.

Is the experience level of air crews associated with the air unit or the pilots?

In my over the board play every unit on both sides in France 1940 and Russia 1941 is flipped by the end of the turn. That often indicates the turn is over too since no one is capable of doing anything more. Which means almost all of them have gained experience. My general philosophy when playing cardboard war games is that every unit on the map has to "earn his keep" by doing something useful each turn. So, I would expect experience levels to follow very closely with the how long the unit has been on the map. Units that arrive later in the game or belong to neutral major powers (e.g., all the US units) would all be green.

However, this new rule would have the good effect of making units placed on garrison duty less combat ready. Reading the land unit writeups gives a lot of support for that being historically accurate - rather than just a game gimmick.

Some WIFFE mountain units are non-elite (even German ones).

So this is going to be a RULE not an OPTION?

[Gendarme]

The Panzer General games had something like this.  Each unit you bought started out with no experience (0 stars), and with each campaign, after so many combats within a campaign, the unit's experience was raised to a max of 5 stars.  You could also upgrade units through the war, starting with panzer IIs with 0 stars in Poland and finishing in '45 with 5-star King Tiger units.  Air units and ships also gained in experience.
 
I am not sure about adding this experience facet to MWif, however, if only because I'm used to things as they are now.
 
Anthony DeChristopher

[Shannon V. OKeets]

From my perspective there are no 'options' only "optional rules". That's because to implement these 'things' requires coding rules. Whether the players choose to use them or not, the code needs to be written and tested. They become part of the rulebook.

[jcprom]

The idea is interesting.

However, it seems to me you guys already have a heavy workload with:

-the AI,

-play-testing with the new scale (Pacific map, Scandinavia...).

Once those 2 are dealt with, why not pursue other goals?

[composer99]

Fortunately, we have the beta testers to work on play-testing the universal map scale and tell us how it plays out; in addition to the experience several people (beta testers or not) who played with the old CWiF beta, leaving the rest of us loads of time (except for Steve, who spends enough time on this project) to come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful new ideas. [:'(]
 
Also, if you have scanned through the forum threads on the various major powers' AIs, you'll see that a lot of thinking and cogitation has gone into them already, and while many gaps remain there is already a lot of material for Steve to work with, and more to come on an almost daily basis.
 
That said, I agree to some extent - with the planned release of MWiF just about a year away, we want to focus in on the things that need finishing before MWiF product 1 comes out, and then more thought can go into the things we want to see in MWiF product 2, including things that may or may not be feasible for WiF:FE in its boardgame incarnation.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: christo

Patrice

I haven't seen this posted on the wiflist discussion site. Do you think they may have anything to offer?

Well, this is more a MWiF idea than a WiF FE idea, because there would be too much bookeping if such a rule existed in WiF FE.