Battalions and Brigades

[Lea]

The dreaming about container puzzles is an easiest thing. The interface creation is much more difficult. The hardest part about teaching AI how to use it.

Any adept shutout AI in fair game, any sucker will be bored in puzzles. There is impossible to please either, so AI should assist suckers like nanny. Had a request to create the most powerful army, AI must do something of the sort if possible. (In a perfect world, teach suckers as well)

[geminif4ucorsair]

No one has mentioned that BG has yet to adapt 'integrated' battalions - battalions that contain differing types of equipment, as was common in many types of mid- to late-war battalions (i.e., having x number of M4 Sherman and x number of M10 (or M6) tank destroyers, or numerous other examples from German, British and other armies).

The Production system is based on the idea of a single type of equipment being in a battalion.

If BG has yet to 'go real' with regard to what battalions looked like, there would seem to be great difficulties in developing and adapting some of the concepts others have proposed here with regard to 'containers' comprising brigades or divisional sized units.

The idea that one-sixth of some brigade or division command would be applied if a unit is attacked on a single side hex front has the complications of Electronic Warfare proposed [which BG has rejected implementing on game engine & programming issues] by several posters. If BG cannot implement EW - where a aircraft has to check each hex in some sequence to detect 'hidden' ground units, then what are the chances of some of the more complex X and/or XX system (as some above posters have proposed) being achieved?

Don't get me wrong, I fully support implementing a X AND XX-level container system for the game, due as most have posted, the number of battalions is tremendous....and probably too much for the existing programming to handle - best example is the massive reductions taken from historical units that were in service in 1949 and not included at Start of that game. With the exception of the USAF overseas presence in Asia and some B-29s in Washington State, the whole USAF is missing - as are dozens and dozens of units from the USSR that were all part of the initial 'set-up' of the immediate days after the Berlin Blockade.

Not trying to dampen down the enthusiasm, but BG has to develop a game engine & programming system that can handle such complexity, which they have no done thus far.

[Prescot]

It's damn easy to make divisions, just make unit named "Infantry Division" or "Tank Division", put strenght, crew like 20-30 normal units other values also XX much higher.

[SoB]

That a very bad way to do it. Since no divssion is the same. Even in the same.





I like the box method. Would be great for air and naval units to. You good make a force that had let say 10 bomber squdrons and 5 fighters. When you sent it on a bombing run the fighters would fly escort to them bombers.

It would allow you to creat esccorts for your tranport and capital ships.

[Hullu Hevonen]

I still think the "container" system would be too much like the hoi system. Remember that system
was designed for HoI, with a completly different type of map, containing "provinces" and spanning areas comparable 5-30+ sr hexes. To keep any realism in the combat system you would have to remake the combat system to accomondate a divisional system. If not remake the map as well.

[Zuikaku]

If container system is not good, which system is good?!
I want to keep production of individual equipment and battalions, but current system will be uncontrollable in WW2 scope...
And container system is the only way to force AI to use combined arms, to escort the capital ships and not to do stupid things like sending one battalion after another into the certain death...

[Hullu Hevonen]

A container is not the only way, teach the AI to use units in groups instead and further develop the battlegroup sys or new similar sys (some suggestions mentioned previously). Like, always escort a carrier, se to it a carrier has aircraft assigned to it and that the carrier has the ability to use it's aircraft. The AI keeps count of it's forces and uses them in groups.

Example:
Say you(or the AI) have 6 battleships, 6 carriers, 12 escort carriers, 60 destroyers and alot of smaller ships. The AI could for example organize these into six battlegroups, depending on the water area to defend/number of ports and marintime hotspots. There is many options how to do this, one way could be to have all the ships to escort the 'capital ship' in the battlegroup with highest tonnage with the second highest tonnage inheriting the escorts when the flagship is destroyed. The AI would not jam more than 7 ships in one hex so the reminder of the ships would be grouped on the flankes, then their flankes etc. The ships in one hex would have a commander ship that would work in a similar way to the flagship. This group would work towards achieving a hotspot or series of hotspots, say if this would be Japan, then bombardment of Pear Harbour, carriers would launch their air crafts, battleships and destroyers would do shore bombardment. Also all small ships wouldn't be organized into these six groups but organized into smaller fleets to defend the coastline and would only call for intervention of a larger battlegroup if a carrier in involved in the attack etc.

As mentioned previously, these groups would have colour schemes to differ on the map from other units, you would also need a user interface to manage these battlegroups(say a list of army groups etc), say the units them self light up in their group colour when chosen. Land and air battle groups could work the same. For the player, he would only need to have a good interface to fast manage and reinforce these groups and assign them group specific hotspots/missions. Any map filter concerning these units and groups would also be of use.

One of the main reasons why I stopped playing HoI and other pdox games was because of this, they lack the realism of the SR combat system and certain strategies and tactics aren't available in 'container' warfare.

[SGTscuba]

-snip-

This is what I would prefer to see.

[Zuikaku]

A container is not the only way, teach the AI to use units in groups instead and further develop the battlegroup sys or new similar sys (some suggestions mentioned previously). Like, always escort a carrier, se to it a carrier has aircraft assigned to it and that the carrier has the ability to use it's aircraft. The AI keeps count of it's forces and uses them in groups.

Example:
Say you(or the AI) have 6 battleships, 6 carriers, 12 escort carriers, 60 destroyers and alot of smaller ships. The AI could for example organize these into six battlegroups, depending on the water area to defend/number of ports and marintime hotspots. There is many options how to do this, one way could be to have all the ships to escort the 'capital ship' in the battlegroup with highest tonnage with the second highest tonnage inheriting the escorts when the flagship is destroyed. The AI would not jam more than 7 ships in one hex so the reminder of the ships would be grouped on the flankes, then their flankes etc. The ships in one hex would have a commander ship that would work in a similar way to the flagship. This group would work towards achieving a hotspot or series of hotspots, say if this would be Japan, then bombardment of Pear Harbour, carriers would launch their air crafts, battleships and destroyers would do shore bombardment. Also all small ships wouldn't be organized into these six groups but organized into smaller fleets to defend the coastline and would only call for intervention of a larger battlegroup if a carrier in involved in the attack etc.

As mentioned previously, these groups would have colour schemes to differ on the map from other units, you would also need a user interface to manage these battlegroups(say a list of army groups etc), say the units them self light up in their group colour when chosen. Land and air battle groups could work the same. For the player, he would only need to have a good interface to fast manage and reinforce these groups and assign them group specific hotspots/missions. Any map filter concerning these units and groups would also be of use.

One of the main reasons why I stopped playing HoI and other pdox games was because of this, they lack the realism of the SR combat system and certain strategies and tactics aren't available in 'container' warfare.

Well, that woul'd be awesome but:

1. They failed to teach AI any effective battlegroup tactics. I wonder if this is possible at all?

2. They failed to teach AI to use aircraft carriers in the way that they load, launch and retrieve planes after the attack. Now I wonder if that is possible after all with this engine.

3. AI just dont know how to coordinate air, naval and land units.

4. AI just fails to coordinate infantry, artillery and tanks.

5. AI just don't know to use any special units ( special forces, paratroopers, transport helicopters, ballistic missiles)

6. AI just knows to attack and defend cities. It doesn't know to defend territory. Neither it knows to defend supply lines.

[Hullu Hevonen]

Adding containers would not make things better either, if we've now to take a pessimistic look on things , this would merge units, but would work more like the current AI, send one container after another to it's death. What BG failed to do in the past doesn't mean they can't do in the future, what it comes down to in the end in the amount of workload that has to be put into this.

One thing is for sure, to keep up with competitors and avoid the negative score trend of the SR titles, I think they need to somehow radically change/develop the combat AI/system.

[Aragos]

+1 to HH. Combat system needs some work.

[oaia]

I still think the "container" system would be too much like the hoi system. Remember that system
was designed for HoI, with a completly different type of map, containing "provinces" and spanning areas comparable 5-30+ sr hexes. To keep any realism in the combat system you would have to remake the combat system to accomondate a divisional system. If not remake the map as well.

Honestly, even HOI3 system is somewhat tedious, and even HOI3 AI, which from my expirience is miles ahead of SR AI, still is pretty bad. In SR, you would have way more units, also way more economy to handle, and for what gain?

BG can downsize the hexes by a factor of 2 and the game will be fine with using division/batallion containers.

[mikeownage]

I think division containers would help a lot for navy transport as well as it stands the AI never uses it landing transports.

[George Geczy]

The AI does use landing/amphibious transports during naval invasions ... It doesn't use them for regular troop movements though (uses the merch marine for that).

Also, regarding the comment earlier about sub-battalion unit equipment, this is something that is already simulated in the SR equipment list, though it isn't always obvious. For example, in SR2020 an infantry or tank battalion may have an anti-air capability because they were usually equipped with some form of anti-air weapons. In the same way, some infantry units would have an anti-tank capability to reflecte anti-armour squads in the unit, and in WWII many battleships and even some units such as Japanese subs used float planes to help with spotting... We reflect this in SR by increasing the spotting range of the main unit.

Regarding the general battalion/division topics in this thread, SR1936 will not give up on battalion units, since that is the heart of the tactical warfare system of Supreme Ruler. However, we do understand that WWII army sizes give a number of issues, as identified above. There's a few things on the list already:

- More tweaking of our "Garrisons" system, to simulate units that were defensive and not mobile.
- Consideration of the fact that operationally, many units were not "combat ready"... In SR, all units are generally "ready" for combat, and so we need to adjust the historical "on paper " numbers to instead reflect units that were operationally ready.
- improvements of the Battlegroups system

The possibility of using some mechanism to simulate divisions is not off the list, but there are significant issues regarding playability and user interface elements that are quite difficult. If SR was a nice slow turn based game it would be different than the need to make a system that is responsive and easy to use in real time. We're still talking about this.

[mikeownage]

Well, maybe if the AI used the naval landing ships once in any of my games i'd have known they were suppose to use them. I've watched France fail to land in North Vietnam for years in game without it figuring out it needs to use troop landing transports.

France also seems to want to send it's airforce over but it ends up flying back and forth between Italy and between it's airforce being silly and the zones I notice were the major powers like to locate their forces the game starts slowing down more and more.

In the game I am playing now I managed to give North Vietnam just enough assistance to where after France freed South Vietnam and the other countries in the region North Vietnam defeated them but didn't have enough forces to stop the french when they landed at an undefended port using the merchant marines.

http://www.mikeownage.com/mike/coldwar/ ... ssues1.png
http://www.mikeownage.com/mike/coldwar/ ... ssues2.png
http://www.mikeownage.com/mike/coldwar/ ... ssues3.png

The good news is they stopped building forces up on small islands so that issue has been fixed.

I think the biggest factor slowing my game down is that France has a bunch of deployed units all around that it isn't using for the war. The large airforce doing nothing but moving back and forth and the large amount of defense units that do not need to be deployed just sitting in France.