New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

In my opinion, it is too cheap to upgrade equipment, and new or rare equipment is too easily available. It always pays to take the best, and there is no "rarity penalty" for using uncommon equipment. This leads to very rare stuff like Sturer Emil being uncommonly common. Also there is no problem getting your hand on the newest equipment as soon as it is available, even when in reality new equipment would only gradually reach front line units.

Historically some new and untried equipment suffered crippling reliability problems when new, for example the Panther or the SU76. This is not reflected in the game at all, your spanking new Panthers will run like clockwork from the first day they come from the factory.

So I would like to see:

* Raise the points price for new or rare equipment.

* Make only a limited number of the newest or rarest equipment available in scenarios and campaigns.

* Make breakdowns more probable for notoriously unreliable equipment like early Panthers. There could even be a chance for them to start a scenario immobilized.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

Its a game designed to let you cover all aspects, points price is a reflection on unit capability, rarity is not taken into account.
Its up to you to select a force which can be realistic or otherwise. Either decide for yourself or use a system you like.
Example roll a couple of dice if you want to upgrade to a Sturer Emil can if roll a 2 thats about a 3% chance you get it.

Equipment choice is upto you can upgrade straightaway in a campaign or delay it till a time you feel is right.
Playing Germany there is a desire at least for me to play with all the toys but you dont have to upgrade to Panthers for example. Could just stick with the Mklll's & say upgrade one to a Tiger.

You can simulate unreliable stuff easily enough as well apart from the fact they will still retreat, played not long ago as Germans at the end of the war criticaly short on fuel.
Just rolled 2 dice each time they moved. If rolled lower than the number of hexes they moved or doubles fuel is ctitical. Then roled 1 dice for in each hex entered 1 out of fuel 2 now runs out on a 1or 2.
Could just roll say 11+ for breakdowns each hex entered.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

If I may, another way to reflect a limited fuel situation without dice rolls is to allow the affected side to move vehicles only every other turn. Infantry becomes your primary offensive weapon and reflects the loss of initiative when forced to ration fuel.
If you are designing a scenario unit move speed could be halved to simulate an overall effect without a player imposed rule.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

Sollutions up there make sense... only there is a problem that it is extremely time consuming and would be a disaster when played in bigger battles.

As far as I am informed, designers note they will not deeply interfere with the code. But I would also see in-game calculations for vehicle breakdowns and random failures. There could be just one "generic" failure and in-game vehicle stats would just determine the general % chance of vehicle failing. That means no careful calculations are needed to be put for every single vehicle. Also, terrain or dates (I think of winder and desert, but the latter got soft sand already) could increase or decrease the chance.

But these are just quick notes.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

If players pay the points for 5 tigers, they want all 5 tigers to turn up. They will be deeply unimpressed with any message saying that 2 of them broke down on the march and thus only 3 will appear.

If players want to upgrade their core troops, they will complain if the tiger is not offered on the fix/repair screen because of rarity rules. Same for any battle - if Joe Player wants to buy tigers then he wants them right now, not having to restart his game several times till the dice roll allows them to happen. "rarity rules" are not popular with end users.

And the same would happen for random mechanical breakdowns during play.

If such a system was in place - unless there was some way to turn it off in preferences then there would be howls of protest. 99.9999% of players would never, ever switch that preference button on in the first place.

The vanishingly small percentage of players who would use such a system would then complain that it does not fit their ideas of what should happen.

So it would merely be a wasted bit of complicated code to achieve nothing but annoyance.

Those of you who do so wish to self-impose some sort of "role playing" can roll dice or whatever solution suits them, as suggested by some posters above.

But rarity rules and breakdowns wont ever be happening.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

Not to mention that often in games with rarity rules, the effect is that you can buy fewer of that equipment in battle. Most rare equipment was rare in the sense that only a few units had them, but these units were generally equipped with a lot of them (some exceptions like the Sturer Emil of course).
Overall the Jagdtiger might have been rare, but in some battles, like parts of Operation Nordwind or the Ruhr Pocket, they were quite common. Rarity rules destroy that kind of thing.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

Vehicles like the Dicker Max or the Sturer Emil ( for example ) are set up in the game as x3 radio code which means the AI will never buy them ( and X1 units are set up to be AI "rare" and x2 is AI 'common" with x0 "AI normal" )therefore this is a "human only" pick issue and like all "human only" issues the big variable is the indiviudual humans involved.........now...... anyone who really cares about "rarity" won't buy more than one or two of these and the player who doesn't care will buy all he wants either out of ignorance of their historical use and numbers OR simply to have fun playing "what if" and lot's of people LIKE to "what if......" that's why they play...... most players woudn't be allowed to be in the vicinity of a real battle let alone command a brigade in combat so we are well into the "unreality" zone from the get go.

Therefore there is NO need to an in game nanny " rarity rule" for solo play......the realists will police themselves and the what iffers will go on having fun their own way

Rarity rules are needed in PBEM ONLY when a "realist" and a "what iffer" are paired up and a couple of quick emails between the two should sort out what type they are and whether they are compatible or willing to try a realist approach or a what if approach in their game

Don

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

How about a variable cost for every unit? On a related note, is the cost different for different years?

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

Units cost will vary due to crew experience rating. Unit values change by year, if there is a new model and/or ammo layout )e.g. one adding some HVAP).

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

I think the "Players would never..." argument is somewhat disingenuous and does not give credit to players. I think a number of players would like to make a decision like: Ok, here I have this new and untried equipment that is likely to break down. Do I take that because I need this capability, accepting that there is a high risk of them breaking down, or do I make do with older but reliable stuff? All games to some extent contain some role playing, and that is missing here.

Not representing well known reliability issues in a game that prides itself on realism is a somewhat odd design decision IMHO. I think it also to some extent makes the game misleading, when considering the game as history.

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

The reason we say things like "Players would never..." is because we've been doing this for 18 years and have a pretty good idea of the average player.

It's fine to present new ideas, we are open to them but in this case you are not offering any thoughts on how to implement them and we have years of experience putting things in and finding the pitfalls

so........

* Raise the points price for new or rare equipment.

*********The ONLY way to do this would be to add new units a month or two at a time and that works for every OOB but the German one......it's full and it's NOT going to be enlarged as the only way to enlarge it is to re-write the code from the ground up and if we do that the existing game dies

* Make only a limited number of the newest or rarest equipment available in scenarios and campaigns.

********* What is put into scenarios is up to scenario designers..........HOW exactly do you think we could limit that ?? As for campaigns.......the AI already is limited.......the players can police themselves

* Make breakdowns more probable for notoriously unreliable equipment like early Panthers. There could even be a chance for them to start a scenario immobilized.

************ So.........to do that would require a "breakdown" number added to the OOB's........the problem there is THERE ARE NO SPACES LEFT TO ADD....AFAIK there are no code left that is reserved for " new entires"...and on top of that game data for save games and sceanrios has a set read order they are read and tossing in a new one makes for a very high probablity that all old save games and scenarios would be unreadable becasue suddenly there is a new number added to the order that scrambles the old order which the game reads when loading

As well...........any new feature at this stange of development has to pass the " Will Don and Andy Use it" test as we are the ones that would need to spend the countless man hours to add it.......then fix all the problems that pop up after it's added that we didn't anticipate ( as years of experience have taught us to expect...).........if it doesn't pass that test is doesn't go in and this one doens't pass the test BUT.......to add this would ,as I said, require a "breakdown chance number" entry added to EVERY unit in the both games and even assuming that wouldn't cause any knockoff effects to save games , secure PBEM games and scenarios that's 48,918 entires that would need to be individually set......now..... many of those would be leg units that would not require a break down value but still we are into multiple thousands of entries that would each need to be checked and cross checked that we don't make the a tank a 4 in one OOB anda 5 in another......( then the debates start that army A had much better repair facilities and higher skilled mechanics so they should get a lower breakdown chance than army B who didn't ) then we get into the subjective aspect of this........if 0 = no chance of breakdown and 6 high chance of breakdown..........what number do we add for a Sherman?..........what number do we add for a T-34?..........what number do we add for a Comet? .......?..........what number do we add for a Tiger?..............what number do we add for a Type 2 Ho-I ???? that won't generate endless rivet counting debate for a feature that we didn't agree with in the first place??

What I see... and what I think Andy sees is a HUGE amount of work for something that we belive most players ( and us...... ) would simply turn off . I THINK something liike that has been presented MAYBE once or twice in the past and there is little support for it

Don

Re: New, rare or unreliable equipment
 

Yes, I realize that there are costs that have to be weighed against the benefits of any feature. Thanks for the exhaustive answer.