Cost of Units Philosophy

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Cost of Units Philosophy

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Cost of Units Philosophy - 12/9/2011 10:45:49 PM

lparkh

Posts: 263
Joined: 7/25/2004
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I'm enjoying the current design but would like to hear's the designer's view about costs of units. One thing I liked in the subsequent development of PG2 by various authors in recent years on the web was the advent of equipment files that made costs of units such that you didn't always buy the best and the brightest. Instead you found your core really had to have some Panzer IV's in them instead of all tiger/panthers. Not only did this seem more realistic but it made for more interesting decisions about what to have in the core. Also it made having a Tiger really special as opposed to standard issue
Right now playing at the next to hardest level I am finding I can pretty much afford the best and the brightest. So my question to the designer is, are you deliberately not introducing rarity pricing or limited equipment availability (like PG3) and if so why?
It is clear from your prior answers to questions that everything has a reason. I just would like to know your reasoning on this front :-)

p.s. my experience of PC is from playing primarily 39 and 40 campaigns so far (both fully). I played into france in the full campaign.

Post #: 1

RE: Cost of Units Philosophy - 12/13/2011 11:33:48 AM

Rudankort

Posts: 214
Joined: 12/4/2010
Status: offline

We do use rarity pricing, after all, Tiger II is 10 times more expensive than PzI. But in the end, it all depends on your prestige. If you have enough prestige to buy all Tiger IIs, it does not matter any more if Tiger is 10 or 100 times more expensive than other tanks.You will still buy it. So, if you find that you have too much prestige, you just need to bump up the difficulty level, and then all the difficult choices about equipment will be yours. :) For veteran PG players I recommend to use bonus difficulty levels - Rommel, Guderian and Manstein. Levels up to Field Marshal are more "mainstream", even though for some people they will provide more than enough challenge.

(in reply to lparkh)

Post #: 2

RE: Cost of Units Philosophy - 12/14/2011 9:02:06 PM

James Ward

Posts: 990
Joined: 5/9/2000
From: Baltimore, Maryland, USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Rudankort

We do use rarity pricing, after all, Tiger II is 10 times more expensive than PzI. But in the end, it all depends on your prestige. If you have enough prestige to buy all Tiger IIs, it does not matter any more if Tiger is 10 or 100 times more expensive than other tanks.You will still buy it. So, if you find that you have too much prestige, you just need to bump up the difficulty level, and then all the difficult choices about equipment will be yours. :) For veteran PG players I recommend to use bonus difficulty levels - Rommel, Guderian and Manstein. Levels up to Field Marshal are more "mainstream", even though for some people they will provide more than enough challenge.

What would be neat would be that after so many units are in your core the price for the next one increased for each new unit you bought. So maybe after you have 3 King Tigers the 4th costs 1000 and then the 5th costs 1250 and so on. You could build an army of scarce unit types but you'd probably have a small core.

(in reply to Rudankort)

Post #: 3

RE: Cost of Units Philosophy - 12/14/2011 9:09:00 PM

Rudankort

Posts: 214
Joined: 12/4/2010
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quote:

ORIGINAL: James Ward

What would be neat would be that after so many units are in your core the price for the next one increased for each new unit you bought. So maybe after you have 3 King Tigers the 4th costs 1000 and then the 5th costs 1250 and so on. You could build an army of scarce unit types but you'd probably have a small core.

This would do the trick, technically, but would make it much harder to plan purchases ahead. Now you know that X prestige will buy you Y tanks, period. It is much more difficult to calculate how many they will cost if the price changes depending on how many units you already have. We tried to keep it simple. :)

(in reply to James Ward)

Post #: 4

RE: Cost of Units Philosophy - 12/14/2011 9:31:29 PM

oldguy

Posts: 6
Joined: 12/12/2011
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Question... was there ever any thought given to tying the cost of vehicles and upgrades to, how much of Europe the player had. Since it had to be cheaper to produce items as you had more resources... and more forced labor... more factories.... and like its always cheaper to produce 1000 tigers to just 10 tigers.... production costs go down as you make more..... I believe. So like the first tigers cost 1000 prestige and then 2 years later they would cost like 600 or 700?

(in reply to Rudankort)

Post #: 5

RE: Cost of Units Philosophy - 12/14/2011 11:46:14 PM

Rudankort

Posts: 214
Joined: 12/4/2010
Status: offline

Guys, sorry, I had to delete some posts. Let's try to keep it a bit more friendly even if we do not agree on most points. And let us not insult people who are not present here either. Personally I have a great respect for the OpenGen team, especially Luis who was the driving force behind the project for many years.

To answer oldguy's question, yes, we considered that, but did not go this way for the same reasons mentioned above. It is already hard enough to keep in mind the prices of the units (after all we have something like 700), so if they change in the course of the game, would be quite hard to keep them in mind and plan. People would complain like "I bought 10 Tigers for 1000, and in the next scen they are already much cheaper, if I only knew, etc." In the main campaign the scenarios are pretty sparce in time, so it would very much likely happen. In DLCs, where we have ~10 scens per year, it would be less of a problem though.

Also, this would not be perfectly historical. I remember some epic threads on JP's Panzers where it was shown that Germany's production actually increased a lot by the time the war entered hard phase for them. They finally converted their economy into war mode, and Speer proved to be a great manager too.

Post #: 6