Preventing Research Concentration

[jchastain]

There has been some discussion on this board regarding the in-game effectiveness of concentrating research and building only the resulting superunits. Here is just one option I thought of for addressing the situation.

Averaging Performance:
Armor divisions aren't really comprised of just tanks. The typically WWII armor division had lots of infantry. And the majority of infantry formations had at least some armored vehicles. So, there is some logic in using combined stats for units. For example, perhaps the ground comabt ability of an armor unit = (ground of armor + average ground of all land units) / 2. In that way, focusing research on one unit type only has limited benefits. And at some point, upgrading the land combat of infantry might be the best bang for the buck in improving the killing power of armor.

While the rationale for doing so becomes more abstract, the same might be done for fleets or aircraft under the assumption that research is shared and applied across platforms so that the land attack of a heavy bomber might = (the land attack of heavy bombers + the average land attack of all aircraft types) / 2. (While I use land attack for the example, it really applies to any stat). While this approach prevents superunits from evolving it still does recognize investments in a given realm, so that when nations invest in naval technology it helps all naval units and when they invest in ground units, it helps all ground combat. This approach makes it far more difficult for a nation to cherry pick individual units from each realm and improve land, sea and air - instead it becomes much more necessary to concentrate on a range of units within a given sphere or to just try and raise everything and accept only marginal progress.

[hakon]

While I agree with you in principle, I dont think the added complexity (especially on the conceptial level, the actual coding would probably be easy) of this would suit this kind of game.

I still think that over-specialization is removed, by the rock-paper-scissors effect of always having available counter units to any specialized unit, meaning that the first player to choose to specialize will be at a disadvantage.

[aletoledo]

a tank unit in WaW is not solely a tank, but is considered a whole armored division/corp. thus it is composed of more than just tanks, but the usual infantry, AAA and artillery that accompanies such large formations.

this is how you can explain why most units have the capability to do multiple different types of combats. anti-air combat for example, its not like tanks or rifle toting infantry were particularly good at shooting down planes, but rather that the on map icon represents more than its name implies and travels with AA batteries.

[5cats]

I think some sort of "linking" is probably the best way to avoid super-units.
It's hard to imagine, for example, a real life army having 10/10 tanks but only 6/6 Infantry and 6/6 artillery! As you say, the units are actually more combined arms than "pure" units. So how do the tanks get 10 attack guns, but artillery lags behind at 6??
Linking units, say tanks, arty and Inf, and not letting them get too far apart would limit research in a realistic way. Say 2 levels diff max, or 5 combined on evasion/attack. Therefor to get 10/10 tanks you'd need 8/8 infantry AND 8/8 artillery, or 8/7 Inf and 8/7 arty (or some other combination). This would reflect the inherent combined arms represented in the game.
Same for air and sea units, to some degree. No 9 ground attack Heavy Bombers with 5 ground attack Tactical bombers. An exception could be made for the Atomic Bomb.

[hakon]

I dont disagree about the realism of linking, but try to formulate how this linking should work in _exact_ terms. Also, describe how players not reading these boards should be made aware of this change when they download the next patch.

My gut feeling is that the realism gain is not worth the added complexity, but if done very elegantly, I could be wrong.