Rebuilding Bonus Units

[MJY]

Hey all,

While I am on the Forum, I thought I would raise one more issue. Why is it that you cannot rebuild "bonus" units that have been added to your force pool if they are destroyed?

For example, Russia (assuming you have NOT selected the soft build limit option) gets to build 3 anti-tank units. So, for the sake of this example, let's assume Russia builds all three of these units.

In the spring of 1942, Russia is also given the option of getting three more "bonus" AT units as the product of a Decision Event. Let's say that the Russian player says yes to this option.

So now there are 6 AT units in the Russian force pool.

But look what happens if any one of these units is destroyed. It cannot be rebuilt. No matter what you do, you can never get back to having 6 units in your force pool.

I do not understand the logic of this. Shouldn't the cap on the number of Russian AT units not be raised to 6 when the bonus units are accepted? Why are they treated differently than the other units in the force pool?

MJY

P.S. There are other cases of this phenomenon too (e.g., German AT units), but I just used the Russian one to illustrate.

[The Land]

I think the answer is "so that the force limits are meaningful"

The game wants you to have only X units of a specific type. It's possible to wriggle round that by rushing specific builds to take advantage of the extra units. But this wriggling is already rewarded well enough. You shouldn't get a lasting increase in your force limit because you've been clever enough to bend the rules to your advantage.

Of course the 'extra' unit could just result in a lasting increase to your force limit when the event triggers, regardless of whether you have built up to the existing limit, but there is no method in the current scripting to affect a force limit, and it's probably not worth building one just for this circumstance.

[MJY]

The Land,

OK, so sounds like it is a software issue more than anything.

One idea. Why not use one of the "empty" slots in the force pool. In much the same way that you have Heavy Tanks unavailable until such and such a date, your second batch of "bonus" AT units would function the same as the regular ones, but would become eligible and get replaced in a separate queue after a certain date.

Or another idea. Can you not simply set the force pool caps to rise at a certain point in the game (e.g., 3 AT units in 1941 and 6 in 1943 or whatever)? I know the force pool cap for the number of available HQs in the force pool can already be increased with tech advances in Logistics, so this doesn't seem like it would be too hard to do.

Just a couple of thoughts.

I guess it just strikes me as odd that you would have this hard cap on the force pool only to allow it to be exceeded for as long as you want as long as you don't kill off any of the units. I know that as a player, I will try and target those units when I can because I know that they won't be coming back. That seems to reward a gamey strategy.

MJY

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: MJY

The Land,

OK, so sounds like it is a software issue more than anything.

One idea. Why not use one of the "empty" slots in the force pool. In much the same way that you have Heavy Tanks unavailable until such and such a date, your second batch of "bonus" AT units would function the same as the regular ones, but would become eligible and get replaced in a separate queue after a certain date.

Or another idea. Can you not simply set the force pool caps to rise at a certain point in the game (e.g., 3 AT units in 1941 and 6 in 1943 or whatever)? I know the force pool cap for the number of available HQs in the force pool can already be increased with tech advances in Logistics, so this doesn't seem like it would be too hard to do.

Just a couple of thoughts.

I guess it just strikes me as odd that you would have this hard cap on the force pool only to allow it to be exceeded for as long as you want as long as you don't kill off any of the units. I know that as a player, I will try and target those units when I can because I know that they won't be coming back. That seems to reward a gamey strategy.

MJY

So yes, I think it's a case of development priorities rather than design priorities.

I think you're right, the best answer is for the force pool to increase on certain dates that match up with the events, regardless of whether the events fire or not. So an extra tank slot becomes available in early 1941 to accommodate the Afrika Corps. Would need some attention to exactly what the limits were before and after (does Germany go up from 6 to 7 tanks in 1941 or from 5 to 6? Does Russia go up from 6 to 8 tanks when the Siberians are due to arrive or from 4 to 6 or in that case is it just 6-6?)

Maybe the devs can consider this for a future patch - though it is creating a whole new system in order to iron out a wrinkle, so I suspect they will not prioritise it.