loki100
Posts: 10920
Joined: 10/20/2012 From: Utlima Thule Status: offline
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NM is badly misnamed but the concept is so spread over the code its not feasible to rename. In the end, its a measure of training that new recruits are getting, which is why units tend towards it. Even in non-combat situations there is manpower churn, including the sort of in and out that is not directly modelled in the game. Its worth noting the German player gets a whole load of mid/late game bonuses. So you get the Stalingrad manpower bonus even if you were never anywhere near Stalingrad and certainly never lost the equivalent of an army. You get the Rumanian units that were historically released to replace the losses at Odessa even if you manage to keep the at start Rumanian army fairly intact. There are others, post-Tunisia, post-Finland surrender, post-Falaise all trigger dumps of new units that you can do with as you like - at least in those cases you have to have had the bad bit first. Its technically relatively easy to code events that are conditional and/or keyed to probabilities. The release of the Finnish units for Leningrad is an eg. Its very hard to test these for balance, the main testing tool remains AI-AI games as it probably takes a couple of years to finish a HtH game (& that is before too many axis players bail out early), I'd say about 6 months for a vs AI game. As maybe clear, getting the game balanced (& all the arguments that raises) is a challenge as of now. Add in branching event chains and it gets harder. I did a lot of work for Pride of Nations which has a lot of these and/or/if chains. Some were easy enough but where it engaged with a very significant event balancing both strands was near impossible - as sometimes was finding a suitable trigger that took account of player agency as well as modelled the actual event. Now speaking purely for myself, I take the view that the game was deliberately designed around the VP system. Its not an after thought. One huge advantage is you then don't need to pour in a lot of resources to the production system if the game goes seriously off into new territory - as long as the variance is recognisably around what happened, then a production model that essentially gives you the historical resources works pretty well.
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