repair of French units in 1939

Gary Grigsby’s World at War is back with a whole new set of features. World at War: A World Divided still gives complete control over the production, research and military strategy for your side, but in this new updated version you’ll also be able to bring spies into the mix as well as neutral country diplomacy, variable political events and much more. Perhaps the largest item is the ability to play a special Soviet vs. Allies scenario that occurs after the end of World War II.

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WanderingHead
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repair of French units in 1939

Post by WanderingHead »

Looking for any quick feedback on repair of French units in 1939.

There was a subtle bug added in v1.020. Prior to v1.020, damaged units would try pretty hard to avoid being sent for repair to factories with zero production. Most notably, French units would go the England for repair in 1939 because the French factories all have zero production. From v1.020 onward, there was a effectively an override of the initial repair location decision that would pull the units back to their home nation, so French units damaged in 1939 would stay in France.

I will fix this. Which means that damaged French units in 1939 will start queueing in England again.

This is a heads up. Also just publicizing it in case people really feel it should behave differently. But bear in mind this is supposed to be just a simple rule - damaged units don't go to zero production factories unless there is no alternative - it is supposed to be a boon, it is only a little awkward with French units in the beginning.

BTW, currently when a unit is repaired in a nation other than its home nation, it retains its nationality. So a French unit repaired in England remains French (and hence disappears on French surrender, for example).

I've thought of making it change its nation to the that of the repairing nation. In general, it makes just as much sense (half of the population of that unit comes from the repairing nation, after all). The only problem is gamey tactics like damaging all your French units just so they queue in England. So I was thinking that an acceptable and reasonable compromise would be a 50% chance that the new nationality is adopted and a 50% chance that the old nationality would be maintained. It is proportional to contributing population, and would only take effect when the repair is complete (so for example French units have to be *rebuilt*, not just queued, for the chance of a nationality change). This also mitigates against the real problem that you can't tell which nation a repair unit is in the production queue.

So, my overall plan:

1) fix the repair bug, so units will avoid zero production factories even in favor of repair in other nations if necessary. (Hence French units to England in 1939).
2) units repaired in a nation not their own have a 50% chance of adopting the nationality of the repairing nation.
Marshall Art
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by Marshall Art »

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

The only problem is gamey tactics like damaging all your French units just so they queue in England.

Should a French BB possibly become American/British just because it dry docked in New York/Northampton? Mon Dieu....[:(]

Even at a 50% chance the benefit of getting a few French units to Britain by melting it with British recruits is too much of a gain for the Allies, France has 1 Fighter, a Tac Bomber, more than a dozen of Infantry plus Arty and AA. Imaging half or even a third of that force in Britain is a 100% show stopper to Sealion, or to any operation in Northern Africa IMO.

I have seen players simply disband French units to increase tech upgrade chances, so getting just a few units extra at maybe the cost of 1-2 damaged German units less will be too tempting.

IMO changes that have a remote chance of gamey tactics should not be implemented at all.
WanderingHead
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by WanderingHead »

The only place it is a remote problem IMO is France at the beginning. Everywhere else it is I think sensible. Part of the issue I'm looking at is the national capability modifier ... if units of a minor nation happen to queue in a major nation, it is again frustrating to be unable to differentiate but I think the chance of unit nationality modification mitigates it well enough.

Actually, going into more detail. The unit queues in England, but the French population stays in France. So really we are talking about a situation where half of the materials are British and 100% of the population in the unit is British. It is not so bad to give the repaired unit a 50% chance of being British.

Based on this, I think it is actually even more reasonable to just change the nationality outright, but I prefer the baby step of 50%.

IMO this solves more problems than it causes, if it even really causes any. Note that the player following the gamey tactic is taking a substantial risk that his production and population is going into a unit that is just going to disappear.

For the British, population is more valuable in the early game than production, so I can't imagine this really being a tactic.
Marshall Art
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by Marshall Art »

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

The only place it is a remote problem IMO is France at the beginning.

What would happen if India/Australia surrenders, would their units still on the map that get damaged move over to another Nation and become their Nationality after repair? Same for the Fall of England.
ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

The unit queues in England, but the French population stays in France. So really we are talking about a situation where half of the materials are British and 100% of the population in the unit is British.

IMO this solves more problems than it causes, if it even really causes any. Note that the player following the gamey tactic is taking a substantial risk that his production and population is going into a unit that is just going to disappear.

For the British, population is more valuable in the early game than production, so I can't imagine this really being a tactic.

I don't get it - so a French unit attacks, gets damaged. Their soldiers go home to their mummies, all weapons are sent to England, and suddenly we have a new British unit? [&:]
That IMO is even worse than allowing the French to flee and survive in Britain half French/half British a la DeGaulle. If a unit is damaged and gets transferred to a factory it should leave its (reduced) population there and not in its home country?

Still not convinced that it could not be exploited - at what point do the units chance nationality exactly? Could I get my French units damaged, wait until French surrender, and have the surviving ones repaired later?
WanderingHead
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by WanderingHead »

ORIGINAL: Marshall Art
What would happen if India/Australia surrenders, would their units still on the map that get damaged move over to another Nation and become their Nationality after repair? Same for the Fall of England.

The next patch, the Indian "surrender" (the nation India becomes Neutral) will remove all Indian nationality units from outside of Neutral India.

The Australian surrender is unchanged. The units will remain on the map. If they get damaged and repaired in England or Canada or USA then they will gradually (50% each time) change nationalities and no longer be Commonwealth. Which seems reasonable from the standpoint of attrition on units that are no longer being replaced from the homeland (Australia).


ORIGINAL: Marshall Art
ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

The unit queues in England, but the French population stays in France. So really we are talking about a situation where half of the materials are British and 100% of the population in the unit is British.

I don't get it - so a French unit attacks, gets damaged. Their soldiers go home to their mummies, all weapons are sent to England, and suddenly we have a new British unit? [&:]
That IMO is even worse than allowing the French to flee and survive in Britain half French/half British a la DeGaulle. If a unit is damaged and gets transferred to a factory it should leave its (reduced) population there and not in its home country?

Still not convinced that it could not be exploited - at what point do the units chance nationality exactly? Could I get my French units damaged, wait until French surrender, and have the surviving ones repaired later?

Nationality changing would be upon completion of repair, so that wouldn't work. That is why I say the Player is taking a real gamble on completely wasting production and population on this approach. The unit will not change nationality until after the production and population is committed the unit is rebuilt. Again, bear in mind that the Player cannot even tell what nationality of unit is being rebuilt, and it might be a capability offset minor nation (e.g. a Rumanian unit being rebuilt in E Germany).

This whole thing is kind of a corner case. No matter what you do it is not precisely realistic. If French population goes to England, they become English (there is only one generic population pool in England, noone would want to track all the nationalities). If French population stays in France and French units go to England, then English population is used (wasted) to build French units which then disappear. The only decent options seem to be to leave the unit in France to repair, even if France has no production.

A part of the picture is that right now the bias against zero-production factories is larger than the bias against going to a different nation. Hence French units prefer to go to England instead of France if France has zero production. It is only in the beginning of the game when France and Netherlands have zero production that this seems a little odd. But it could be changed to reduce the no-zero-production-factory bias, so that even if a nation has no working factories the unit will prefer to go to its own national factories instead of to a different nation. This would make some sense, from the standpoint that it forces the Player to be friendly to that nation and repair its factories in order to repair the units. Sort of a diplomatic effect saying that you can't ignore repairing Rumania's factories, for example, just so that you can rebuild units in Germany.

Revised proposal:
1) fix the repair bug (a given, it is a bug leading to poorly defined behavior)
2) change the factory selection weightings, so that a unit will generally pick a factory of its own nation over a friendly foreign factory, even if there is no same nation factory with non-zero production. This means French units will stay in France for repair as long as there is a WA controlled French factory there. Indian units will queue in India even if the factories are busted by the Japanese.
3) units repaired in a nation not their own have a 50% chance of adopting the nationality of the repairing nation.

Hopefully #2 makes #3 more palatable. I really prefer to keep #3. I could even favor 100% chance to change to building nation, to make it deterministic so the player doesn't need to worry about which units he's rebuilding. I'm proposing 50% just to be conservative and compromise. I think that on the whole it makes various things less weird (it is changing the nationality of only 1 population point [on average] instead of 2), particularly given that you can't see the nationality in the production screen. Say Australia is captured by the Japanese ... I feel that a Commonwealth unit repaired 6 times in the USA using American population every time is more American than Australian.

Anyone else have an opinion? I'd like to finalize tonight.

Lucky1
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by Lucky1 »

Perhaps I am missing something, but I am not sure how 3 can occur if 2 were to be implemented. For example, if Indian units are damaged in Western France, say in 1944, and there is no transport link to India, would the units then queue in France and/or England (assuming transport link)? Or, by 'generally' do you really mostly - but not always (i.e., there is a given probability that it will queue elsewhere)?
 
WanderingHead
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by WanderingHead »

ORIGINAL: Lucky1
Perhaps I am missing something, but I am not sure how 3 can occur if 2 were to be implemented. For example, if Indian units are damaged in Western France, say in 1944, and there is no transport link to India, would the units then queue in France and/or England (assuming transport link)? Or, by 'generally' do you really mostly - but not always (i.e., there is a given probability that it will queue elsewhere)?

If #2 is implemented then #3 cannot occur with French units in 1939.

But these are general rules. For example, Commonwealth units can go to England if Australia is captured (or there is no transport link to anywhere near Australia). Or Rumanian units could go to Germany if Rumania were still in the game (not surrendered in the new Global Glory, or Total War which doesn't have a Rumanian surrender) and the units could not go to Rumania (isolated or captured). So #3 can still happen. But it would be a lot less likely to occur.

Lucky1
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by Lucky1 »

Works for me.
WanderingHead
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by WanderingHead »

I don't feel like I have a clear picture what people want, with only a few hours on the board and two responders. I'll avoid the change of nationality upon repair completion for now. Maybe for the next patch, but no need to rush it right now. I rejiggered repair factory selection priorities a bit so it should be OK without this change.
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GKar
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by GKar »

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

Revised proposal:
1) fix the repair bug (a given, it is a bug leading to poorly defined behavior)
2) change the factory selection weightings, so that a unit will generally pick a factory of its own nation over a friendly foreign factory, even if there is no same nation factory with non-zero production. This means French units will stay in France for repair as long as there is a WA controlled French factory there. Indian units will queue in India even if the factories are busted by the Japanese.
3) units repaired in a nation not their own have a 50% chance of adopting the nationality of the repairing nation.
Sounds good to me. I don't like the "French units being repaired in GB" kind of stuff.
Marshall Art
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by Marshall Art »

While most of my concerns were adressed I agree that last-minute-changes might not be a good thing as there ought to be more testing. Happy to see the new batch without "old" and "new" bugs [:)]
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Lebatron
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RE: repair of French units in 1939

Post by Lebatron »

Hmm I guess this is not even a problem in UV2.0 or later because the French can build from turn one. But I wonder if any changes may adversely affect my scenario. I didn't read the whole tread but it seems ok on first glance.
Jesse LeBreton, AKA Lebatron
Development team- GG's WAW A World Divided
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