While We Wait: Part 2
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
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North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
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- 18,165
Never! You're all doomed! Dooooooooooooooomed!
If it is primarily political, how would a player win? In any game players need to know what they are trying to achieve and how getting there is measured. Once you establish how to win, then the rules and important stats will flow from that.
Divisions (although for some unit types brigades will be used), and the economy's still being hashed out but will probably be a lot like that of a das NES. It's most definitely not a fresh start and is set right now for late September, after I finish a map and stats and preview thread.
I personally think that using exact military numbers for a NES on the level of grand strategy - that is, interactions between countries - is a load of bollocks, especially in the twentieth century when everyone uses divisions. The President of the United States doesn't sit there and bean count every single soldier that goes into Iraq, for example. Attempts to do that, for example the "battalion commander in the sky" of Vietnam, haven't turned out particularly well.
Symphony D.
Deity
He is going to sit there and take flak for every single one that buys the farm, though.
Divisions also have the problem of a whole unit "dying" when it's reduced to under half strength or whatever. You can say that the unit is just reduced to below effective combat strength but that's equally a load of crap because all the members of it that didn't die are effectively evaporated, and even if you suppose they are reconstituted in newly formed units, you don't get any savings on price or benefits in training for rebuilding such units, nor is there any way of determining what survived, what didn't, and how much of each there was. It's no heavenly paradigm either.
Symphony D.
Deity
Then that would be ********.
"Oh ya, I see you've got 0.6237821 of a Division left! Want to be recyclin' that then?"
One word: no.
"Oh ya, I see you've got 0.6237821 of a Division left! Want to be recyclin' that then?"
One word: no.
jeps
Arcadefire
You could use divisions, but if there was an important reason for half a division, call it two brigades (with 3-4 brigades of (UK 5000 to a brigade, Canadian 4000, or US 1500-2500))
But brigades plus divisions really, really sucks. Then why not make everything brigades, so as to eliminate that problem?...well, what if you have less than a brigade of troops left? Why not use regiments (or, battalions, depending on the military involved)? What if there's less than a regiment?...and so on.
And I thought that there were a lot more men in an American brigade. EDIT: Well, not that many more.
And I thought that there were a lot more men in an American brigade. EDIT: Well, not that many more.
Symphony D.
Deity
... Use discrete numbers? They are simply easier to scale for costs, and they are infinitely more flexible: players can compose their forces of whatever they want in whatever ratios they want, and can organize their forces into whatever sorts of strategic formations they want as well. The President may order Divisions around but the Army doesn't place orders for Brigades of Bradleys nor the Air Force for a Wing of F-22s or the Navy for a Squadron of Virginia class subs.
Strategic organization is a post-production organizational tool, not a method of acquiring the forces themselves in precise quantities. The "Block Unit" method is eternally destined to be terminally vague and that is the one thing any post-industrial setting can never be.
Strategic organization is a post-production organizational tool, not a method of acquiring the forces themselves in precise quantities. The "Block Unit" method is eternally destined to be terminally vague and that is the one thing any post-industrial setting can never be.
jalapeno_dude
AKA Panda Judo Eel
Symphony, can you respond to my post in the Wiki thread?
Symphony D.
Deity
Logistics forces are implied to be acquired when obtaining active forces. Buying supply trucks and fuel carriers and training mess cooks on a global strategic scale is stupid. Their presence can be inferred by Logistics and Organization statistics if absolutely necessary.
Symphony D.
Deity
Duh. As I just said, you make players organize them into units. Holy cow, then you get the advantages of both systems and save yourself the work of having to screw around with such idiocy. When a unit gets blown up, the forces left alive go back into a deployment pool. Who'da'thunkit.
Other than my unwillingness to make the players do more work than they do already...I just think that divisions are easier to use. Besides, if you're fighting World War II, you don't really care about sub-divisional casualties anyway.
Symphony D.
Deity
Then apparently that's where we differ. Like they do any work at all...
All that's going to happen is X Divisions will be rounded up and thrown at a target instead of 100000X Soldiers, which will be called X Division anyway. It's just a question of how many zeros there are in the number you're given, because in either instance they are extremely unlikely to create larger strategic groups unless you stipulate it as a requirement.
You do if you're losing, particularly if your name is Deutschland and you have limited manpower reserves. Of course, again, most NESes totally ignore such things, so I suppose you're right, nobody will care.
Why not use two scales. Stats would show rolled up division level numbers and that is what would be placed on a map if that was used. Then in orders, players would use a battalion (or other) level of detail (if required) for their orders.
But to be honest, in a global NES, this level of detail will bury any mod after a couple of updates. If you want to create a brigade or smaller level of combat, choose a smaller topic.
A way around the problem is to create a game within the game. Strategic moves are made and when two armies collide, then a new turn interupts the update and new orders issued by the players involved in the battle. Those orders could be at a smaller scale. Once that battle is resolved, then the mod goes back to the strategic update until another battle interrupts. etc. A one month turn might take several months to update completely.
Symphony D.
Deity
Or you could just set a minimum limit on organizational size to prevent such a problem from ever arising. You're giving them a range of choices, not the freedom to do whatever the hell they want. Independence is a secondary function to stable operation. To quote Henry Ford, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."
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