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National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 6:42:53 AM   
Mgellis


Posts: 2054
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Status: offline 		Okay, cool, Command lets you set the proficiency rating of individual sides.

So, how do you decide where each country should be set? Who is an Ace? Who is Regular? Who is just a Novice? Obviously, these ratings can be tweaked endlessly for subtle variations within a scenario, but are there sources, "established wisdom," etc. that talk about which navies and air forces are the best in the world (not just in equipment but the quality of the men and women who sail the ships and fly the planes), which ones are average, which ones just are not very good, and so on?

Obviously, this is a topic about which some people may have some very strong feelings. Please, everyone, let us try to treat each other, and our allies, and even our adversaries, with respect.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 6:56:09 AM   
SSN754planker


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Status: offline 		the main argument i have for this feature is a libyan mig 23 in 1986 is not the same thing as a soviet mig 23 in 1986

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 7:05:56 AM   
Dobey455

 

Posts: 445
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Status: offline 		I don't think you will ever find a "definitive source" for the quality of nations armies, its too subjective and too broad.
Even within armies the quality varies significantly, and more to the point often varies over time.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 7:16:35 AM   
Anathema


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From: Australia
Status: offline 		I think the best and least controversial approach might not neccasarily be trying to rate every single country or service overall in comparison to each other, but rather just compare the sides in each specific scenario and unless there is some major difference in training or proficency, make regular the default setting. That does at least allow you to narrow it down to a specific time frame and circumstance, since these things change over time and might even vary between units from the same country or service, as well as actice duty and reserve forces.

So for example say in one partocular scenario you have a western country with a modern, professional military vs a developing country with a poorly trained conscript forces. Assuming you start off with everyone being regular, you could then either raise the western country to Ace, or lower the developing country to novice to reflect the difference in training or proficency, probably depending on whether you want the deveoping contry to perform poorly, or instead perform somewhat more adequately, but still not well enough to match the western country.

EDIT: Plus of course for the sake of challenging a player, a scenario designer might want to send you up against an enemy of evil geniuses who are ace pilots and masters of naval warefare.

< Message edited by Anathema -- 11/16/2013 8:24:14 AM >

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 10:29:56 AM   
CaptCarnage

 

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Status: offline 		From Woodwards book, it seems he deems Arg navy as not so well trained as the Brits. He doesn't say much about their airforce so that may be decent.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 1:22:56 PM   
ART11

 

Posts: 22
Joined: 7/27/2009
From: Poland
Status: offline 		Look at winspmbt game. There you have such factors per country. Of course it rates whole country military forces (land/air/navy) but tells sth.
Regards
ART

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 1:29:45 PM   
JCR

 

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Status: offline 		Should depend on the timeframe of the scenario, instead of national cliches :D

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 1:30:31 PM   
thewood1

 

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Status: offline 		A lot of groud warfare games have side and unit settings for experience, training, motivation, etc. Naval games have always seemed be about comparing tech.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 1:42:05 PM   
JCR

 

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Status: offline 		Naval warfare is tech centered, and often it is simply the question of wether a country is able to operate blue-water missile armed warships or modern submarines or it is not.
If it is, it can be safely assumed its crews know what they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't be where they are in the first place.
Any idiot can put a bunch of people in uniforms and AKs and call them an army, while the same doesn't work with a navy (at least one more sophisticated than a few machine gun armed boats)

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 1:43:45 PM   
jdkbph


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quote:

ORIGINAL: JCR

Should depend on the timeframe of the scenario, instead of national cliches :D



Agreed.

We just need to think about this in terms of one more factor for research when building a scenario.

Also, I'm guessing this system is just the first pass. Hopefully at some point in the future it will be expanded to allow application on a force by force (Navy vs Army vs Air Force) for any given country, and perhaps even on a unit by unit basis (with all units initially inheriting a base value from Force or Country level, then flavored to taste). This way you could account for elite units (or relatively so) such as the Republican Guard, and/or differences between front line and reserve units (eg, Soviet Category A, B and V formations)

JD

< Message edited by jdkbph -- 11/16/2013 2:44:43 PM >

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 3:02:26 PM   
JRyan


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Status: offline 		This is a great addition and gives great flexibility to the scenario designer....kudos to the development team.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/16/2013 7:41:36 PM   
Mgellis


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quote:

ORIGINAL: SSN754planker

the main argument i have for this feature is a libyan mig 23 in 1986 is not the same thing as a soviet mig 23 in 1986


I think in a case like that you could have the Libyans and Soviets as different sides, although you could simply average proficiencies if you wanted to use them as part of the same side (e.g., Ace + Novice/2 = Regular).

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/19/2013 12:12:46 PM   
incredibletwo

 

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Status: offline 		Hopefully in a future interation it can also be disabled if the player so chooses. Other than that, I'm happy :)

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/19/2013 12:34:07 PM   
Apocal

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

Hopefully in a future interation it can also be disabled if the player so chooses. Other than that, I'm happy :)


Don't need to disable it: if the scenario designer leaves them both at default, you get what we have now.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/20/2013 12:20:34 AM   
mrfeizhu


Posts: 131
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Status: offline 		Experience is what makes a military as with most other things in life, the game should also have experience for ships crews. People will talk about how you can't model experience, but you can't really model weapons either, who knows how they will work and what the hit rate will be, but you need to go on some thing so its an estimation. When you play any game on the computer you are living in the programmers' reality , if your reading a novel you are in the writes reality. Its a game, and the more settings you have on it you can do what you want to with it.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/20/2013 5:16:10 PM   
incredibletwo

 

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< Message edited by incredibletwo -- 11/20/2013 6:17:45 PM >

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/20/2013 5:18:13 PM   
incredibletwo

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Apocal

quote:

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

Hopefully in a future interation it can also be disabled if the player so chooses. Other than that, I'm happy :)


Don't need to disable it: if the scenario designer leaves them both at default, you get what we have now.


That was my point. Say the scenario designer doesn't leave them at default, but has one side at Novice and the other at Ace, and a player wants both sides equal, then they should have the option of disabling the proficiency ratings. They shouldn't be forced to accept somebody else's subjective view/opinion of a nation's ability to wage war. I, for one, am more interested in how the platforms/systems/weapons, etc operate, not whether some AI sailor has been trained properly or is PO'd because he didn't get his ration of grog the day before.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/20/2013 5:47:44 PM   
thewood1

 

Posts: 6529
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Status: offline 		The scenario editor is so simple that it isn't that much more effort to change and save it. Granted it is probably 5 clicks vs 2/3, but I would hope the devs prioritize some fixes above that.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 12:56:37 AM   
mikmykWS

 

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Status: offline 		Yes it very easy to change but perhaps we can look at it as a scenario option.

I'm actually curious to see how players start scoring certain countries etc.

Mike

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 5:09:23 AM   
mrfeizhu


Posts: 131
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Status: offline 		First of all it would be good if ships had Proficiency Ratings too. I do not know how difficult that would be to implement. I would rate Russia, NATO , Japan, South Korea and Australia as regular. The U.S. as veteran They have more operational experience. Israel as Aces, The Israel air force may have the same or even less operational experience than the U.S. but they cant afforded to lose. China I would rate as Cadet, I have been living in China for the past 10 years, The way to succeed in China for party members ( all PLA officers are party members) is not to take risks. ( other than ways to make money) Party loyalty is the most important thing, if you are loyal to the party than you are loyal to your superior. Training is along party lines, no friendly fire accidents no damaged equipment. The closest thing China had to a war was deploying the PLA in after the Szechuan earth quake. The army despite the severity of the disaster did not fly at night ( but western and Russian pilots did) . I live near an Army helicopter base at night they don't fly, in bad weather they don't fly. India I would rate the same as China. The other countries in the developing world would be novice.
This is a game players should rate things the way they feel like and Proficiency Ratings are a very good feature the games has now.


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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 10:16:56 AM   
smudge56

 

Posts: 667
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From: UK
Status: offline 		Submarines I would say they are high the UK has the perisher course which is hard to pass, this course has been run since WW1. I know the dutch joined in running it and when we decommisioned the last diesel sub yhey took over the running of diesel sub training. We continued with the nuclear side. I dont know how that compares to the rest e.g. USA etc. Perhaps someone may know.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 11:39:40 AM   
ExMachina


Posts: 462
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quote:

First of all it would be good if ships had Proficiency Ratings too.


I think surface ships cannot have proficiency ratings without completely changing the nature of CMANO. It makes sense for planes to have proficiency ratings since dogfight resolution can be abstracted to a "technology level" based upon pilot training.

That training bonus becomes more subjective when you try to apply crew quality to ship operations. Sure, some things could conceivably change--aircraft ready times and damage control for examples. Also, if weapons' mount reload times are ever implemented, that could certainly vary with crew quality. But get too far above that level and you find yourself asking questions like: should weapons' allocation also become less under player control as crew gets worse? What about helm orders or EMCON settings--should they be randomly disobeyed? Goign too far in that direction would make the game completely unappealing to me.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 11:46:21 AM   
Agathosdaimon


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Status: offline 		reading woodwards account of the sheffield sinking, i wonder if the Argentinian side was set to a lowever proficiency overall would their aircraft succeed in getting hits on the british navy? I would be interested in playing using high prof settings, but i dont know if ever setting a side with a lower prof would interest me.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 5:49:01 PM   
jdkbph


Posts: 339
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From: CT, USA
Status: offline 		Yeah I kinda agree with this last.

The problem as I see it is that in some cases (A2A missile pk for instance) the game already has the value set lower than I would like. I think this might be due the use of historical data (eg, AIM7 in Vietnam). But in many cases, the historical performance is affected by more than just technology. In my example here it was also affected by ROE and tactics.

So we can either ask (and argue) that the values in the database all be changed (good luck figuring all that out, making a case, AND getting consensus!), or we can ask for a slider type thing with database defaults in the middle and the ability to add or subtract equally from that. For example...





Personally, I think this should be applied by the scenario designer on a Country and/or Side basis, with individual settings for Force level (Army, Navy, Air Force) and individual settings for Unit/formation level (ship, squadron, battalion/brigade (or whatever the lowest level of organization might be in the game)), each inheriting values from the level above. That would make it easier for the scenario designer who doesn't want to get that granular, while remaining editable down to the lowest levels if so desired.

This should also be exposed to the scenario player - at least at the Country or Side level - which would then act as a sort of "difficulty" setting, perhaps making the game more accessible to the novice player.

The setting itself should affect things like weapons pk, damage control, evasion, detection, ready times, and perhaps even the OODA loop built into the game.

Just MHO...

JD

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by jdkbph -- 11/21/2013 7:03:53 PM >

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 6:51:05 PM   
incredibletwo

 

Posts: 102
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Status: offline 		This is already getting messy. Everyone wants something different, so it seems, but, like I keep saying, as long as it can be disabled if the player__so__chooses, and I don't mean having to go into the scen editor to effect changes, then that should keep everyone happy.

+1 to ExMachina.

By the way, the Chinese entry into the Korean War caused the longest retreat in U.S. military history. I wouldn't rate that effort as "Cadet", considering the Eighth Army was led and manned by a large number of officers and soldiers with combat experience. Just sayin.. :)

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 7:09:04 PM   
ExMachina


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quote:

The problem as I see it is that in some cases (A2A missile pk for instance) the game already has the value set lower than I would like. I think this might be due the use of historical data (eg, AIM7 in Vietnam). But in many cases, the historical performance is affected by more than just technology. In my example here it was also affected by ROE and tactics.


And this is precisely the rabbit hole we're likely to fall into if we're not careful. Probably most everything in CMANO, from hit percentages to sensor sensitivity/discrimination already has the human element (proficiency, doctrine, etc) factored into it at some level.

Therefore, applying a generalized penalty/advantage to a side can never work well when the input data has confounding factors already present in it (source: I'm a practicing scientist who handles stratified data all the time)

< Message edited by ExMachina -- 11/21/2013 8:12:30 PM >

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 7:33:19 PM   
Jakob Wedman

 

Posts: 202
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Status: offline 		I think that Flight Leader (1986, Avalon Hill) has a balanced rating for the average quality of the nations' airmen from "A" to "F":
Soviet Union: "E" to early 1980s, "D" in mid 80s
United States: "A" through mid 50s, "B" to "C" through mid 70s, "C" since mid 70s except for F-4, F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18 which are "B"
Belgium: "B" through the 70s, "C" in 80s
Canada: "C"
Denmark: "B" through the 70s, "C" in 80s
France: "B"
West Germany: "B" through the 70s, "C" in the 80s
Great Britain: "C"
Greece: "C"
Italy: "C"
Netherlands: "C"
Norway: "B" through the 70s, "C" in the 80s
Portugal: "C"
Spain: "C"
Turkey: "C"
Albania: "E"
Bulgaria: "D"
Czechoslovakia: "D"
East Germany: "D"
Hungary: "D"
Poland: "D"
Romania: "D"
Algeria: "E"
Egypt: "E" through 1970, "D" since 1970
Iran: "D" through 1979, "E" since 1979
Iraq: "E"
Jordan: "D"
Kuwait: "E"
Lebanon: "E" ghrough 1975, "F" and virtually non-existent since constant civil war has raged 1975 on
Libya: "E"
Morocco: "D"
Oman: "D"
Qatar: "D"
Saudi Arabia: "D" through 1980, "C" since 1980
Sudan: "E"
Syria: "E"
Tunisia: "E"
United Arab Emirates: "E"
North Yemen: "E"
South Yemen: "E"

[---]

Austria: "C"
Finland: "B"
Israel: "A"
Sweden: "B"
Switzerland: "C"
Yugoslavia: "D"


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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/21/2013 10:44:06 PM   
jdkbph


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quote:

ORIGINAL: incredibletwo

By the way, the Chinese entry into the Korean War caused the longest retreat in U.S. military history. I wouldn't rate that effort as "Cadet", considering the Eighth Army was led and manned by a large number of officers and soldiers with combat experience. Just sayin.. :)


Well, I'm not the one who said cadet, but I don't think it's that far off. You're referring to Chosin Reservoir. The ChiComs out-numbered the US forces 2 to 1 (or upwards of 6 to 1 if you're counting committed forces), had the US forces completely encircled, cut off their supply lines, and the best they could do was force a withdrawl in good order? I think a competent force would have routed and annihilated the opponent... which BTW was the ChiCom goal.

They failed.

Retreat or not, it was not a slam dunk Chinese victory by any interpretation... in fact depending on who's doing the analysis, it's not clear that it was a Chinese victory at all. The casualty lists certainly leave that question open to debate.

JD

< Message edited by jdkbph -- 11/21/2013 11:48:46 PM >

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/22/2013 1:43:18 AM   
Lerxt

 

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Status: offline 		This whole idea is ridiculous. How on earth can anyone judge "nation competency" without empirical data? Are we going to judge it on how many wars the country has won as a percentage of how many fought? Or how about national debt or economic ratings? Are we going to judge it on the size of defense forces or the length of training? We will see Americans thinking they are the best because that's what their propaganda has told their public for the last 70 years, much like the Chinese. Are the Swiss going to be judged poorly for not participating in wars for 150 years?

Let's just drop it and concentrate on things that matter like an update, accurate database, aircraft flying reasonable profiles and formations meaning something.

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RE: National Proficiency Ratings? - 11/22/2013 2:04:43 AM   
SSN754planker


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Status: offline 		The idea is NOT ridiculous. Think about this, the North Koreans have MiG-29's. It has been said that the pilots assigned to those planes fly maybe 4 times a year, if they're lucky. Do you think that the North Korean MiG is of the same quality as say a Russian MiG-29 whose pilot has a much better training regimen? Why cant we at least have the option to have this reflected in the sim, and available to the scenario designer?

I agree that there are other things to work on, but i am glad this is implemented.



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