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What file do I need to edit to alter a nation's starting military efficiency rating?

CVARS, then naturally the scenario file.

Sorry if this has been answered before, but where is the CVARS file? I only find cVars2, which doesn't seem to contain that rating.

Not all of them have been posted but those that have are listed in this thread

If the CVars for the scenario you're modding has not been posted request it in that thread and we'll make it available.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Ok, thanks.

I think the next part of my question actually belongs in the Modding section:

How would I alter the ratings in one of the Campaign games? (Which is a series of scenarios strung togther by the game, right?)

Also, when I try to save the files in the links, nothing seems to be there. I get errors clicking on them directly, and right click/save as gives me empty zip files.

I'll check the links incase we've moved the files since then.

As for modding campaigns, that is not supported. Only modding scenarios is supported.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Unfortunate. I prefer to play the campaign, but I don't happen to agree with the efficiency ratings you give the Germans and British. (For a lot of reasons, I think they ought to have higher ratings than then the US.)

Is it possible to recreate the campaign game with the Map editor? A series of linked scenarios?

Custom campaigns is not supported. And the efficiencies are only the day one values, the AI adjusts spending by the end of the first day which changes the efficiency levels. If you change it to a higher number that will also affect the GDP balance of those regions.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

So, is military efficiency totally dependent on military spending? (I mean, besides DefCon levels, and training.) That is, if two countries have the same pay levels they will have the same MilEff?

If that is so, I would be curious to know how I might change that, because I think spending is only indirectly related. Cultural and doctrinal issues mean much more.

I mean, the Germans, British and Israelis spend less per soldier, but the Germans and Israelis have their officer aspirant system and their Auftragstaktik doctine, and the British also tend to encourage more individual and unit inititiave than the US. And there is the emphasis on combat oriented fitness, rather than sports oriented fitness, or the way they encourage personnel (especially in the UK) to stay in a career field, and not shuffle around doing the ticket punching dance the US does.

Conversly, if the Russians or Syrians had enough money to equal US military spending, they wouldn't produce a US quality army, for long standing reasons of doctrine and military culture.

So, modifying the campaign is unsupported, and thus messing with game algorithms must be even more so. So that means there is no way to do it with the mapeditor, and if something goes wrong, I'm on my own. But can you tell me how I might do these things anyway? What program I could use to convert the appropriate files to an editable format?

I promise not to bug you with any questions about what all the code means or why my game crashed.

Yes, thought the cost of salaries and maintenance/training are related to GDP/c.


It is not something you can change, it is built that way. That is also why efficiency changes gradually over time since you can't change funding and see results next day.


Our take on it is that this is because a high efficiency T-72 is still a T-72. If Syria spent like the US and bought expensive equipment like the US does, the differences between the forces would be much less. While it is true that there are some nuance elements we've overlooked, they would be very difficult to model in a game so we left them out.


Not being a programmer I certainly couldn't tell you how to change the MilEff stuff, nor have we made our source code public. For the Campaign progression, there is a nextmap variable in the .GMC file and I believe a file with a "starting scenarios" list somewhere in the folders (been a while since I looked at any of that) but I don't know if George uses other coded elements to set the campaign, never needed to learn about that...

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

I found a spreadsheet labelled Campaign Startmap. Would that be the list in question?

As to the 'equipment is equipment' thing, I have to very strongly disagree. The history of warfare has shown pretty conclusively that human factors are vastly more important on the battlefield than technologiocal ones.

Consider the Falklands: the British and Argentinian ground forces had equivelent equipment in most ways. The Argentinians had a lot more brand new US night vision gear, while the British had old Vietnam type starlight scopes and such, and that in limited quantity. But the Argentinians didn't fight effectively at night and the British did. In combat in general, despite equivelent equipment, the Argentinians were totally outclassed.

Trevor N. Dupuy, who has studied the whole area of relative combat effectiveness extensively, asked a Syrian general, and two Israeli General sabuot whether equipment had anything to do with the dramatic disparity in fighting power displayed in the fighting in the Bekuaa Valley , Lebanon in 1982.

The Syrian general (name not given in source)said: "Soviet weapons are very good. They are not much different from American weapons, and they are probably better for our soldiers; they tend to be simpler, and easier to use and maintain. The Israeli success was not due to weapons."

General Rafael Eitan, (IDF Chief of Staff at the time): "If we had had their weapons, and they had had ours, the result would have been exactly the same."

General David Ivry (commanded the Israeli Air Force during the Bekuaa Valley campaign) stated that, while the margin of technological disparity between Israeli (US) and Syrian (Soviet) aircraft was greater, he still concluded : "I agree with the Chief of Staff. If we had had the Syrian Migs, and they had had our F-16s, the outcome would have been the same, although the loss ratio might have differed by a bit." He added that this was because Israeli personnel were able to exploit their weapons to the maximum of the weapons' potential, while they Syrians could not.

Dupuy's QJM methodoly suggest that combat effectivness difrence ther was on ethe order of 2.45-3.10 to 1. The casualty exchange rate per man, factoring out terrain and the Syrian defensive posture, was 5.98 to 1.

I understand your possible frustration with trying to model soft factors, butb it would really be worth the effort, as far as realism.

If you are interested, I have put together a formula for determining combat effectiveness which corresponds closely with the values found in Dupuy's research, based on a wide variety of factors. It looks at a lot of minute aspects of training, doctrine, and culture. It actually factors in equipment and support too, but gives them less weight. Perhaps it would give you some ideas for you next project. PM me if intereted and I will send it to you. (A short Open Office Writer document.)

btw, the links to scenario files just seem to lead back to home page now. If the files are up again, can you tell me where they are?

Thanks again for all of your help and your quick responses. I appreciate the level of support you are giving your product.

Still working on that, the links got messed up. With rolling out the new changes for the SR2020 elements it might take a few days.

As for the formula, feel free to post it or send it to me and we can consider it for SR2020, though it may not be something we wish to model. George would be a better one to evaluate that.

FYI, I think you found the right files for the campaign, but unsure if there are other files involved.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Ah the files! Thank you. Some questions: I did not find anything labelled MilEff, only MilEffMod.

However, these ratings diffee from one level of scenario to another, leading me to wonder: art these MilEffMods factored together? Here is why I ask: When I play, starting as England in the Campaign game, I start with an 81% MilEff. But, the MileffMod for England in the UK Scenario file is 1.0. However, the overall UK MilEffMod for the Europe file is .81. And the UK Mod in the World file is 1.0.

If these were multiplied, it would give me the .81 I start with. Otherwise, I am confused.

the MilEffMod is the only value you can set. The default spending for Salaries and for Maintenance and Training are the recommended values (middle of the slider, dbl click to set). These values will generally give you around 81% eff. If you set the MilEffMod to 0.9 then the region will begin spending 90% of the recommended values which will give a lower starting MilEff.

As mentioned, once the AI starts changing spending the MilEff will settle to whatever is normal for whatever spending it chooses.

_________________
Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com