The Shop Discussion Thread

[Deleted]

@heiko

Indeed! As for maintaining the state of weaponry, I can see a few possibilities. We can use it as is, until the item breaks (no repairs possible due to no parts available) or runs out of ammo. This option would require ammo counting. A variation woukd be to allow captured weapons to be supplied indefinitely, but with less ammunition than they would normally have. For instance a Soviet 76mm AT gun usually hauling 25-30 shells only having 12-15 when captured. Or whatever agreed-upon portion. This would cut out unnecessary ammo coubting, while still simulating the shortage of foreign calibers.

Anoher thing that was done was rechambering, such as Germans converting captured PPSh SMGs to 9mm. Or the Mosin-Nagant from 7.62x54r to 7.92x57. The option may be there. As you said, it was exceedingly common in the East.

As for vehicles, repairs could either be restricted or cost more when captured. They can be only slightly more expensive for less-expensive vehicles, up to very costly for larger and more complicated machines.

In the Warsaw Uprising the Poles managed to capture a few Panthers, and even liberated a concentration camp with them. They eventually ran out of fuel or broke down, and were abandoned. If it were a truck or motorcycle, it would have been far easier to keep maintained. The sheer complexity of the tanks made it too difficult. At some point though, it might be worth it. Such as Americans repairing a captured Sturmtiger and ravaging German positiins while they cry for mummy and wet themselves.

@mac

If it was to be kept in th shop, they would have to be kept as simple as possible. There coul be a few levels, with each job at one level. Tank commanders need a certain armor level, but basic crew only need the basic level. We want to add to NPC value without creating unnecessary shop clutter or complicating the blank NPC system. Spread the value out a little more between man and machine. That would make replacing partial losses feasible, but also felt in the pocketbook. Instead of a 95cp tank and a 5cp crew, it would be more of a 60CP vehicle and a 40cp crew. Most of the 40cp would lean towards the commander. They would need to be affordable on their own yet in proportion to their value.

If a 60cp tank sustains 20cp of damage, that makes them it as valuable as the crew. At that point saving the crew might contemplated. Any more and serious thought would be given to abandoning it and saving the crew, cutting losses. Repairing a thrown track is very cheap. Replacing a commander is not.

Minor damage costs minor cp. Replenishing crew can be irritating (for lesser roles) to problematic (major roles). Repairing major damage can be a major setback. Repairing and replenishing can at some point cost as much or more (labor, time) than just replacing it. Bam! Historical truth in action.

I keep thinking about what Falk said. In this system, destroying or even just severely damaging enemy equipment, even if you lose, can have a big impact. Tactical loss, strategic victory. If you do less damage and lose, it can be a tactical and strategic loss. The same in reverse if you win.

I particularly like the effect of this on roleplayers. I love getting real reactions from ficticious circumstances. The battle may be done eith text and mS paint, but the choices and feelings and thought processes are absolutely real. It encourages pouncing on opportunities to inflict hurt on the enemy. Intently. Stick the blade in as far as you can an twist. Not just killing the enemy, but ripping his slimy guts out and strangling him to death with it. Eat his still-beating heart and then beat his buddy to death with his corpse. Utmost effort with every post. Half-hearted combatants will be torn to pieces unless they find i in themselves to bring as much death and destruction on the enemy as they can.

@whoever

I'm also working on tips for creating battle maps and scenarios. Another post for another day.

[T/5. Joseph Shelton]

Will units be coming back? I know in the past you could purchase squads and platoons. Can we get those again, or more specifically break them down into types? So you can buy a rifle squad, weapons squad, etc, to form an ideal unit of sorts.

A rifle squad could be 12 riflemen, a weapons squad could be two 3-man mortar teams, two 2-man machine gun crews, and two riflemen.

[Heiko Alkema]

Dec 4, 2013 2:21:51 GMT T/5. Joseph Shelton said:

Will units be coming back? I know in the past you could purchase squads and platoons. Can we get those again, or more specifically break them down into types? So you can buy a rifle squad, weapons squad, etc, to form an ideal unit of sorts.

A rifle squad could be 12 riflemen, a weapons squad could be two 3-man mortar teams, two 2-man machine gun crews, and two riflemen.

With Hautt's input, what we've decided to do is have manpower and equipment for sale and you combine them however you see fit. As a supplement to this, a database of sorts will be compiled that contains the equipment loadouts of various types and sizes of units from the various the nations at various times with accompanying prices for those. The ultimate goal being the reduction in size of the shop while also maximizing the amount of customization and control a player has over the units in his command.

So yes and no. Will specific types of units be purchasable straight from the shop? No. Will the information on how to quickly construct the type of unit your looking for be available? Yes.

[Deleted]

As Heiko said, yes and no. Historical squad structure is fairly straightforward. The way they were organized as platoons really depended on the company type, and that on the battalion type. Was it a motorized infantry battalion? Armored? Were they engineers? A motorized battalion might have only one company with armored galf-tracks, the rest being given trucks of any number of various makes and models.

The easiest way to simplify the shop is to reduce the number of entries to its absolute minimum, and provide the extra information elsewhere. That should move some of the strain from the shop itself, and spread it over easier-to-locate and organize threads.

Want to buy a historical platoon rather than build it from scratch? Look at the threads. They will say what squad types such and such platoon type used and how they were organized. Info on the individual squads can be found elsewhere in greater detail, or can even be linked. The reason I prefer this is the ease with which a roleplayer can scale his involvement. Squad leaders are focused on running a squad. That means small details matter. On the other hand, larger units such as platoons an companies are focused on larger-scale organization. Who has how many grenades matters less than how many and what types of weapons teams they can muster. Very high-level organization, at the battalion level and above, are very detached from the minute details, their focus on running larger units.

In essence it's like LEGOs. You have these options of different one-man bricks, but also of squad bricks, platoon bricks, and company bricks. Scaleable. Hope that explains it.

~Hautt (in das haus)

[Heiko Alkema]

Alright, now that the shop is up and functioning, minus some detail work, I think it's time to finalize how we're going to do NPCs.

So far we've decided that the canvas soldier is best, with laying down a base cost for the individual and purchasing equipment separately. This is in contrast to the old way where the shop provided a set configuration for a soldier with no room for changing his equipment.

I don't think there has been any disagreement that this new way will be superior.

A few wrinkles still need to be worked out.

1. Experience tiers and expertise.

The old setup had, essentially, the tiers of experience represented with the private, corporal, and sergeant/specialist units. Going from basic to experienced to veteran. I see no reason to abandon this scheme, except to remove the rank attachment, as that rank structure is not uniform across all nations or even across different branches in the same nation. So the specific rank of the NPC would be up to the purchasing player.

A soldier with basic, competent training is a base cost of 1CP. This soldier is competent in all the basics of soldiering, though his lack of experience may make him slower to react to unusual or changing situations and lend him to be more easily panicked when things start going pear-shaped. He also generally has very little leadership skill and should not be left in command or by himself. It is also probably not wise to give him specialized weapons.

A more experienced soldier is a base cost of 4CP(or the same as 4 basics). This soldier has seen combat and grasped some of the more nuanced parts of warfare, like the wiser times to keep your head down. This soldier can recognize a bad situation and react to it effectively, potentially saving himself and others close by. He has some basic leadership skills and can be trusted to effectively lead a small element such as a fireteam, gun crew, or small squad, he can also be left alone to complete tasks. This soldier is also familiar with most of his nation's infantry weapons and can effectively use specialized weapons.

The final tier is the veteran, base cost 10CP. This soldier has seen more than his fair share of combat and knows his way around a battlefield. Not only can he spot bad situations, but he can sense an opportunity as well and act on it. Where the experienced soldier can react defensively, the veteran can also react offensively. The veteran is also a proficient leader, personally commanding a squad to platoon-sized force. The veteran is essential to any player fielding a large force as delegation of command will be essential to victory.

I'm pondering, a forth tier that is beneath the basic level, a sort of conscript/militia/partisan/reserve tier that is completely free, but have only rudimentary (if any) training. This would allow new, less established characters/players to enter battle without having to wait to build up a lot of CP. With the limitation of only being allowed to match or slightly out-number their opponent and only if they don't already own enough units. If any survive one or two actions, they'll be promoted to basic tier.


There were some other points I want to address, but I'd like thoughts on this first.

[Sgt. John Walters]

I really like the last tier, it gives new players a chance to jump into a battle faster.

Also, how would we give ranks to an NPC? Would we buy a Sgt rank and then add it, or what?

[Heiko Alkema]

NPC ranks would be mostly for roleplay purposes. You would simply pick a rank yourself for the NPC when you reported back to your unit with your purchase.

Obviously you wouldn't assign a basic tier soldier the rank of sergeant or anything, so it ends up balancing out. Want that one private to be a badass? Fine, give a vet tier NPC the rank of private. They'll all behave according to tier and rank only where reasonable.

This will avoid weird situations like Rocherath we a wanted an elite team so we had a bunch of sergeants for no reason because experience was tired to rank.

[Mac Bargett]

As I said in the cbox, I support the under tier idea.

As for ranks, they could be handed out in relation to the number of npcs you have. And they would have to be higher than the basic tier.
So if you have a platoon, you can make one experienced npc into a Sgt, you got a squad, get a cpl. A whole company? Then 2 sgts and 10 cpls, or however a company is broken up for your nationality, assuming you have the exp/vet NPCs.

[Deleted]

First off, LOVE IT. I'd have a question, it would be answered in a way I would address the issue. You guys are on top of it!

I especially like the implications of such a system. Someone skimps on on getting an experienced ordnance guy, and he blows his whole squad up. An the badass private? Imagining all the possibilities has me laughing my ass off.

I approve of the actual costs. Just right to make buying a lot of experienced guys tough, but also getting specialists feasible. They will gain experience, right? Could be a simple formula. So many from tier 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. Makes going from basic to veteran an investment.

I was about to suggest the fourth tier, but Heiko beat me to it. Conscripts. Partisans. The bottom of the barrel. I like.

As Heiko said, NPC ranks are mostly for roleplaying purposes. They don't actually act on their own, regardless of rank. You can't buy a lieutenant npc and expect him to give you real orders...

I do have a non-related suggestion I was about to put in the to-do thread.

How we organize weapons now is by nation first, then by type, correct? Why not sort them by type first, then by nation using an order? Nation 1 always before nation 2.

Instead of:

Nation1
Rifles
Smgs
Mgs
Etc

Nation2
Rifles
Smg
Mgs
Etc

Why not have:

Rifles
Rifle1(nation1)
Rifle2(nation1, nation2, nation3)
Rifle3(nation2, nation4, nation5)

Etc.

What do you think? It makes weapons available to multiple nations. They can still be captured in the ordinary way, but they can be "captured" by purchasing them as well. Only commonly captured weapons would be available, but this also takes partisans into account. They would'nt be able to get their hands on the good stuff like StG 44s without really capturing them, but stuff like 98ks and MP 40s would be available. This can be a way to both keep people from getting these free NPCs and arming them with all this hardcore ear, and to make underdog partisan units start small and work to get better stuff.

[Heiko Alkema]

Dec 12, 2013 17:09:52 GMT @friedrich700 said:

How we organize weapons now is by nation first, then by type, correct? Why not sort them by type first, then by nation using an order? Nation 1 always before nation 2.

Instead of:

Nation1
Rifles
Smgs
Mgs
Etc

Nation2
Rifles
Smg
Mgs
Etc

Why not have:

Rifles
Rifle1(nation1)
Rifle2(nation1, nation2, nation3)
Rifle3(nation2, nation4, nation5)

Etc.

What do you think? It makes weapons available to multiple nations. They can still be captured in the ordinary way, but they can be "captured" by purchasing them as well. Only commonly captured weapons would be available, but this also takes partisans into account. They would'nt be able to get their hands on the good stuff like StG 44s without really capturing them, but stuff like 98ks and MP 40s would be available. This can be a way to both keep people from getting these free NPCs and arming them with all this hardcore ear, and to make underdog partisan units start small and work to get better stuff.

I'm not sold on this. At all really. There are a couple of issues at work against it.

1. Clarity. As it stands, it's very clear in the shop what weapons belong to which nation. A Soviet player, even if he has no prior knowledge of the subject, knows exactly what all equipment is available to him and where to find it as it is helpfully marked "Soviet [Whatever]" in the shop and doesn't even have to bother with any other part of the shop. The other way muddles this up and forces a player to open every category and read every description to figure out what he can and can't use.

2. Scarcity of weapons/capture. I rather like the idea of having to hunt down a specific enemy weapon you want on the battlefield, rather than simply purchasing the weapon in the shop (and at the same price as the enemy because I'm certainly not going to list every weapon in the shop twice). Takes the wind out of the sails for the whole capture concept if you can just purchase anything. And writing on the partisan aspect, the basic rifles are free so arming resistance/partisans at first is no problem and as you fight (and win) battles, you would accrue better weapons. Which fits my idea of what playing a partisan should entail. Being outside the normal military supply system should make acquiring good weapons an objective unto itself for a partisan player.

3. Equivalency/Progression. This is a lesser problem that could be avoided easily, but i want to bring it up and talk about it anyway. Contrary to what the heading may imply, I actually want to move away from trying to place weapons and equipment on a progression scale with one weapon being superior to another in the same category. Of course there are some weapons that are obviously better than others; the M1 is obviously a more useful weapon than the Springfield. However, the differences between the BAR and the Johnson are more nuanced and I hesitate to try to class one as better than the other. I would find it much more appealing to price them the same, list their strengths and weaknesses, and then let the player decide which one suits his needs better.

I've written this over a period of a few hours, and I had some other issues come to mind but forgot them and of the ones I did remember I may not have expressed clearly due to the piecemeal writing.

TL;DR: Nah.

Of course this is just my opinion, and I would like to hear the thoughts of others, or expanded thoughts of your own, Hautt.

[Deleted]

I found your post clear and reasonable.

Captured weapons probably would be better off staying captured. In retrospect, I agree.

What about allies sharing equipment? Lend lease M1s and such. Unnecessary?

I denounce my former post.

One question: does the partisans nationality determine their type of rifles? Russians using Mosin-Nagant rifles, French using British or German, etc.