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Posted: May 01 2004
by Vesson
Hi,

Just wondering, are reserves working the way they're supposed to?

I have 650,000 reservists and 100,000 active members as victoria after a night of leaving the game running (almost 8 hours) with 18yr old conscription & coed combat.

I've had my target military size at 400,000 for another 5 or so hours now at normal time, and I have kept getting more reservists... Is this working like it should? How do I get those pesky buggers to get back to work/unemployment figures?

My economy is taking a hammering thanks to them all lazing about, doing nothing! Isn't the whole idea of reservists that they work and train at the same time? Shouldn't they be unemployed/working in a factory UNTIL they get drafted into my infantry battalions etc?

If the above is not the case, and they're unavailable to work, why is that the case? Or how does it work?

I've got 1.9% unemployment and a horrid 26% inflation at the moment, I have taxes at full and domestic spending almost full in an effort to try and get past this but it won't work when a whole 5 or 6 % of my pop is unavailable i don't think.

At the same time I think my GDP is so high now that none of the products I make are competitive on the world market... which sucks!

Enlighten me!! =)

Posted: May 03 2004
by jalapeno
haha, man, I hope I can get into beta sometime, this stuff looks like a blast. I can't believe it's THIS involved. I LUV IT!

Posted: May 03 2004
by Empier4552
Just a bump to remind BG to answer this one! :smile:

Posted: May 04 2004
by BattleGoat
Reservists are still part of the labor force, so your employment problems aren't caused by this! To fix it, look at what product you're least competitive on the market (ex, Consumer Goods), simply deactivate your Consumer Goods plants and rely on purchasing what you need. If its cheaper than producing yourself, you just saved yourself some money and addressed your labor shortage.

Posted: May 05 2004
by Vesson
Noted re the economic stuff, thanks... But I'm still not able to control the 'target military size'. It goes up no matter what I do. I tested on Mexico last night, leaving it at 400000, but its up at 1.3 mil now. I'll test soon to see if having the target size above the current size at least speeds the process. If its not then something is broken (I wildly assume =).

Also, how is conscription modelled? Conscription puts people into active service right? Yet it just seems to increase reserve numbers. I assume this is just a gameplay concession, which is fine, and works fairly well... But if conscription is lowering domestic approval then you wouldn't expect them to still be available in the workforce and hence not in combat... Just wanted to clarify.

Posted: May 10 2004
by George Geczy
Good questions - I'm going to be making a couple of adjustments to how conscription/etc works, but first here are the basics:

- Conscription brings people in as Reservists. This is like 'basic training', and these people become available for future training into a specific unit (at a base). So yes, Conscription gets Reserves, not active soldiers. Training (Building) a unit uses Reserves and makes them Active.

- Currently, Conscription turns off (or is supposed to) when the 'target army size' is hit, but volunteers are still accepted. This will mean that, given enough time, your reserves will grow quite large.

- Reservists are assumed to be out of your economy for only about two weeks in a year; so having 500,000 Reserve soldiers only reduces your workforce by the equivalent of 20,000 people.

I'll be making some changes to stop accepting volunteers when your target is hit; also, I'm going to slow down the flow of conscripts once the army starts to get larger (it should be harder to get them as you start using up all the best candidates).

BTW, Defcon level and military spending (especially salary spending!) will affect the number of conscripts and volunteers you are getting.

-- George.

PS - we don't actually have a way of reducing the number of reserves at present, that is outside of getting them killed, but we may change it so that if you reduce your 'target force size' then you'll start to reduce your Reserves count, down to the target.