EXPERIENCE

[siln]

I am having difficulty wrapping my head around how experience works in this game. I've had units that have invaded Poland, taken out the low countries, crossed the channel (and back again), invaded Russia and have only a little experience added to their ranks (i.e. only 1 maybe 2 flags). I understand that healing a unit with fresh recruits lowers experience, but how can any army go through the above and not gain a thing? Does organization rating also affect this? Perhaps it should?

At the risk of sounding nuts I'd like to suggest the following - and you guys tell me if this is too far fetched.
1) As far as accruing experience, is this something that could be fixed with a patch?
2) Could you have a memory icon that records which battles / where a unit has been in and how much damage it has given / inflicted? Cities conquered/ Defended?
3) Could there be a promotion system - where you get victory points (for lack of something more witty) after good attacks - that you can use to promote a units exp?

In the end, how important is experience really in the game mechanics?

[pk867]

Hi,
Manpower, Experience, and Efficiency is explained in the GS manual v3.00 page 171 section 6.6

[siln]

pk867 - I know where its located - you have totally missed my point
My concerns were that I think that the experience that is awarded is not correct.
Furthermore, from game play I do not get a good sense if this gained experience actually has much of an impact
I wanted another's perspective

[richardsd]

it counts, like all things how much depends on the situation

hiher experience higher efficiency FTR's will make life tough for lesser FTR's

[siln]

It seems that weapons development and technology has more of an impact on battle outcome in this game. I've had very experienced Corp who earned three flags come back from the eastern front to face incoming green American troops and deal mediocre results despite good supply. If you look at the historical record, (Kasserine, Market Garden Etc. ) troops with good and excellent experience can more than compensate for an enemy who is well supplied with the latest equipment. Again, it just seems that experience doesn't count that much in this game - which is kind of unfortunate. I enjoy building up a corp / mech / armor from infancy to elite and watching its prowess on the battlefield. Rather than just purchasing a new unit and upgrading it.

Anyone from the game developers side who is monitoring this forum - any thoughts to having a battle record for each unit? or incorporating unit promotions?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Experience is actually quite important. Each XP level gives you +1 quality. Each other XP level gives you +1 survivability. If you have a level 4 XP unit then you have +4 quality and +2 survivability. The quality means you regain efficiency faster and can get a higher max efficiency. +4 equal +8 max efficiency.

I see a big difference in battles with inexperienced and experienced units. Remember that the unit efficiency is the main factor regarding the combat results. If you have an experienced unit in e. g. Casserine with low supply level you might not fight so well. Often you burn efficiency getting to the hex. If you let the unit dig-in and get entrenchment levels and rest up to max efficiency then you will see a big difference.

There are a lot of factors that will determine the outcome of a battle. Tech is one of them, experience and efficiency are others.

[Kragdob]

Quality is of minor importance to me, you rarely see unit with more than 2 levels, so +4 effectiveness is not really important if your unit can have ~80-90. +1 survivability is a nice bonus, still it is only 20% more from standard unit so not a boomer.

This is my opinion - yes I agree that experience is not adequately represented.

To be honest I think each level should give +1 survivability and maybe some bonus to attack defense (for 2nd level), This way elite units (like German ones) would really be tough nut to crack like they were in reality.

[GogTheMild]

I quite agree with Siln and Kragdob. Probably like most players I completely ignore experience - my own and my opponents. Something which no real life general would have done. Kragdob's suggestion sounds very sensible.

[siln]

I played a few games against the computer and kept my ground forces at 8 step or higher. Again got through Case White and Case Yellow - making a point to attack whenever possible to gain as much experience as possible. France falls and yet I have units that have gained NO experience!! This is really unrealistic. A combat force going through this much should be seasoned at the very least. I still feel the experience that is awarded is not enough. Is there a way we could fix this?

[BuddyGrant]

I played a few games against the computer and kept my ground forces at 8 step or higher. Again got through Case White and Case Yellow - making a point to attack whenever possible to gain as much experience as possible. France falls and yet I have units that have gained NO experience!! This is really unrealistic. A combat force going through this much should be seasoned at the very least. I still feel the experience that is awarded is not enough. Is there a way we could fix this?

If this is for solo play then it's pretty easy to tweak the settings to ones you would prefer.

Back up the "general.txt" file in the games "Data" folder and edit the "XP rules" section of the file using any text editor. You can edit everything from how much quality and survivability experience gives a unit, to how much experience a unit gets from attacks, to how much experience a unit loses with replacements.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I played a few games against the computer and kept my ground forces at 8 step or higher. Again got through Case White and Case Yellow - making a point to attack whenever possible to gain as much experience as possible. France falls and yet I have units that have gained NO experience!! This is really unrealistic. A combat force going through this much should be seasoned at the very least. I still feel the experience that is awarded is not enough. Is there a way we could fix this?

That is weird. You gain the following XP in ground battles:
GROUND_VS_GROUND_ATTACK_XP 4
GROUND_VS_GROUND_DEFENSE_XP 6

If you repair units you replace the lost steps with 0 XP replacements so the XP could drop if you repair a heavily damaged unit.

You even get 1 XP per turn by just being adjacent to an enemy unit even if you don't attack.

How do you check your XP? If you click on a unit you can hover the mouse over the strength in the unit info window. The tooltip will show the current XP.

Are you sure you're not confusing the actual XP with the XP level? Remember that you need 25 XP to get to level 1, 50 XP to get to level 2, 75 XP to get to level 3 and 100 XP to get to level 4.

So you could have a unit at e. g. 20 XP not having an extra XP level dot.

[siln]

Just played through and I appreciate the comment about hovering over "strength" to determine the amount of experience a unit has. However there is a discrepancy - healing a land unit regardless of its strength takes away experience! Again I think the developers need to create a patch to fix this to make it compliant with the rule book. Furthermore, I think the amount of experience gained again is still not adequate - it should not take 5 major battles minimum to get a unit to level 1.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I just checked the settings in general.txt and noticed that you only get an XP loss discount if you are in a core friendly hex. E. g. the Germans won't get a discount if they repair units in e. g. France or Russia.

I decided to try some other values for GS v3.01. These are the ones we now try out:
/* XP points lost from repair*/
NAVAL_XP_LOSS_PER_STEP 5
NAVAL_XP_LOSS_TO_STRENGTH_LEVEL 7 /* 0..10. Repairing strengths above this number won't lose XP */
AIR_XP_LOSS_PER_STEP 5
AIR_XP_LOSS_TO_STRENGTH_LEVEL 7 /* 0..10. Repairing strengths above this number won't lose XP */
GROUND_XP_LOSS_PER_STEP 5
GROUND_XP_LOSS_TO_STRENGTH_LEVEL 7 /* 0..10. Repairing strengths above this number won't lose XP */
DISCOUNT_ONLY_IN_CORE_FRIENDLY_HEX 0 /* 0..1. 1 = you get discount only if core hex owner is from same side. 0 = always */
/* Max XP loss per repair */
MAX_XP_LOSS_FROM_REPAIRS 15

Now you get the discount in all hexes, not only core friendly ones. I widened the free XP repair from 8 to 7. That means you can repair the 8th, 9th and 10th step on the unit without losing XP. That should help units from gaining XP more over time.

I think the main reason you didn't see more XP on units overtime is that so much XP was lost in repairs. If you now repair units at 7 steps or higher you won't lose XP at all when repairing. So it can be very useful to keep your units at higher strength to slowly build up the XP. You gain different ability bonuses with increasing XP levels so it's definitely worth doing.

I don't think the units should gain XP faster or you can see them hit the wall at 100 XP too early. If you want units to gain XP faster then we need to remove or reduce the discount quite a bit. XP can be seen in two ways. Either as being battle hardened (even through high casualties) or being successful in battles. I prefer the former method. That is better simulated with not losing XP for the last 3 steps repaired to full strength. The XP level you will see is how long the unit has been in battle more than how often it has been in battle.

A unit should be expected to gain one XP level per major campaign. In e. g. Case Yellow the Axis player should expect to get 1 XP level on most of his units when Paris falls. When Barbarossa ends by the end of 1941 the Axis player could expect to gain 1 XP level on many of his units. That is the amount of time it should take to get several XP levels.

A XP level 4 unit should be a unit having participated in multiple campaigns.

[siln]

Thank you - I think this makes more sense. I played with units from Case White to Barbarossa and noted that after the fall of Russia (i.e Moscow AND Perm taken) I had a German Army that had about 10% making it to level 1 and maybe 5% making it to level 2. Thus, German soldiers who had goose stepped through Warsaw, Brussels, Paris, London, and Moscow were considered only "seasoned." Historically, any soldier who saw this level of action would be uBer vets. I agree that only units that have seen multiple campaigns / fronts should ever make it to level 4. Now I'm pretty dumb with patches - how do I download 3.01?

Any thoughts of adding a Historical Index to a unit which keeps track of a unit's battles, victories, city captures etc?

[GPT55]

Now you get the discount in all hexes, not only core friendly ones. I widened the free XP repair from 8 to 7. That means you can repair the 8th, 9th and 10th step on the unit without losing XP. That should help units from gaining XP more over time.

I think this is the key change. I think the main problem indeed has been that units lose too much experience with repairs. Having experienced troops should make getting new recruits up to speed much faster, mitigating the experience loss. I'm not sure it's necessary to increase the experience per battle.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The experience per battle is kept as is. The changes mean that you if you repair units with 7 steps or more in strength anywhere (not only core friendly hexes) then you don't lose XP when repairing. You can see this as the veteran cadre of the unit is big enough to teach the new recruits how to fight. That means the recruits are brought up to level with the veterans. If the unit strength is to low it means you need so many new recruits to reform the unit that the average XP will suffer.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Now I'm pretty dumb with patches - how do I download 3.01?

Any thoughts of adding a Historical Index to a unit which keeps track of a unit's battles, victories, city captures etc?

GS v3.01 can be acquired by sending me a PM with your email address.

We haven't thought about adding a historical index. It's much work and we gave priority to functional changes on the game or chrome changes that most players will be affected by. Unit history can be interesting, but probably not used by most players.

[siln]

Just played through a few Case White's, Yellow's, and SeaLions with the new 3.01 rules. I find the modifications very satisfying. Germany has a core groups of units that gain level 1 and level 2 experience which only a unit or two gaining level 3 by the time France fell. England provided a great battle field to gain further experience. The build up for Barbarossa went well - and managed to field a majority of units that were recently built without experience, but reinforced with my seasoned forceds. My air armada had a tremendous amount of expeirience and those poor Russians in the Red airforce felt the force. A true "infanticide" as I believe the German's initially called it - which was only balanced as the Russians built more planes - and better planes as time went by - again Historically accurate.

Note that Barbarossa started in Spring 42 as I spent 41 securing England.

By 1943 and 1944 my ost troops were a well oiled machine.
When I recalled some of them to the Western front, their expeirence in battle showed.
They were a hot knife through the butter of green troops

Good work thus far with the modifications!!

Now i'm going to be a little lazy and post this also in your 3.01 forum tread as well. . . please excuse.