Westheim -> RE: Proposal for formation templates - reducing micro management (4/26/2011 11:07:08 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Barthheart quote:
ORIGINAL: Josh ... The Germans have a great word for this: "verschlimmbesserung" meaning one tries to make something better, only it gets worse and worse [:)] .... That's interesting... in engineering we say "Better is the enemy of good". Only the Germans would have come up for a single word for it! [:D] These Germans have indeed totally awesome words, like Gewerbesteuerzerlegungserklärung. There's one lying on my desk in the office, and I don't want to think about it. But on topic. People seem to ignore the inherent problems with auto reinforce systems. There ought to be two different types of these imaginable: A) When selecting a unit, the options panel shows a button "auto-reinforce" to bring it back to full template strength. B) Each round, HQs reinforce subordinate units automatically to full template strength. B can be discarded right away under Advanced Tactics, since reinforcing a unit ends that units turn automatically. This will hurt the player in about nine of ten cases. If something's under attack and suffered casualties it might be a better idea to do something about it rather than to send more sheep into the hail of gunfire. It would also kill XPs in a veteran unit and cause many more issues. A would give you the option to reinforce a unit which has suffered under the enemy's attack on the interturn back to full template strength. So, if it would have been a unit designed for defense against infantry, the template would call for 30 infantry and 5 machineguns in the unit, plus 5 horses for mobility. The evil enemy has attacked and there were some losses: now only 20 infantry, 2 machineguns and 3 horses are left. The player hits auto-reinforce now, the lowest HQ in the chain of command would be called for to send down 10 infantry, 3 machineguns, and 2 horses. But too bad, only 5 infantry and 2 horses are available. The enemy has attacked elsewhere and has taken one of the towns producing for the HQ. So, no more reinforcements for now. Let's say the next higher HQ has a reserve of 30 infantry and 20 horses. But the infantry is of the wrong type (rifle instead of SMG or whatever), and even worse: sending down reinforcements from here right into the wounded unit would cause disruption again, killing readiness and so on. So should be this second HQ in the chain of command be called at all? Well, maybe you could define this over an additional button or box to check in the formation template. But should be the "wrong" infantry type be sent down as reinforcements? Wait, let's define it over an additional button or box to check in the formation template. But of course there are different situations all the time, so better add an additional box to check for the HQ in question which overrides the template box. Or shouldn't it? Add another box to check here, too. Oh, waitwaitwait! The top level HQ has 215 of the "right" infantry type in reserve! Should those be sent down, causing disruption, consuming tons of landcap and so on? Add a few more buttons and another box there. Of course, there are other fronts as well that need reinforcements, so maybe we'd need another option to disable this and that ... Of course these template editors, 20 additional buttons and 60 boxes to check flowing all over the screen would be entirely optional and could easily be turned off with this button there in the far left bottom corner of the screen. Terrible system, thoroughly terrible. This will never end, as soon as you run out of reinforcements to possibly cover all things and casualties that can happen to you between turns. Don't tell me you're too lazy to look after your units after the AI's turn is finished. You would still have to even with this terrible system. The current system of manual reinforcements is working well enough (I don't say it's perfect, what then again life in itself sucks and is far from being even remotely enjoyable, let alone perfect), and I'd suggest to keep it this way, not as an option, but mandatorily.
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