Matrix Games Forums

I was thinking, the previous Strategic Command games put very little emphasis on the different qualities of the respective armies involved. For example, all there was to reflect Germany's generally superior general staff and operational capability to the others was that their HQs could support an extra unit. What about if we introduce something a little more substantial, either an inherent value to the battle calculations, such as 'Military Doctrine' or something, (e.g. Germany could have a value of 5, UK and USA 4, USSR 3, France and Italy maybe 2?) or have it as a separate research category, where it simply improves the combat readiness for each unit, and let Germany start with a higher Military Doctrine rating, to reflect the distinctive superiority of the Wehrmacht in terms of martial excellence?

To counter balance this, you could add a sort of intangible factor, like 'Resilience' where perhaps The Russians might have the highest rating and that this would help their units morale calculations. Likewise in a global campaign, you could give Japan a very high rating for this. Either way, I think the German, Russian, British and US sides should have an inherent superiority to Italy and France, beyond a simple case of numbers, MPPS and technologies.

So just as a rough proposal to give an idea of what I mean (the values could be debated):

Military Doctrine Values

Germany - 5
UK - 4
USA - 4
USSR - 3
France - 2
Italy - 1

Resilience:

USSR - 5
Germany - 4
UK - 4
USA - 4
France - 4
Italy - 2

Each level of Military Doctrine could improve a units readiness calculations by a certain amount, and each level of resilience could improve the morale calculations by a certain amount.

P.S. I hope I haven't offended any Italians! The values are obviously debatable.

What do you guys think? Would this be a good addition to the game?

Only if those values are tied to actual dates, because while Germany was something else in 39, by 42 they basically had jumped the shark.

The US wasn't always a 4.

So any scenario will need a lot of specific consideration.