'39-'45 GC DLC Soft Cap Question.

[David Hansen]

I am thinking about purchasing the GC DLC...'39-'45.

I think I've read some place you can turn off the soft cap penalties/restrictions at the very start of the campaign.

If true, how is this done?

[goose_2]

Yes you can open up options and should be self explanatary

[David Hansen]

Goose 2 -TXS.

Since I only have the plain vanilla PzC...I assume you mean the option's screen where you can adjust weather, supply, FOW, difficulty level?

If I purchase this GC...the options screen will also include the ability to turn the softcap on/off...either on the basic screen or the advanced options screen?

[goose_2]

advanced options screen

[David Hansen]

Goose 2-Thanks.

[captainjack]

Soft Cap CAN'T be turned off at the options screen, and has to be disabled by editing the Gamesrules.pzdat file (back up highly recommended before doing this).

This is unfortunate as it's not possible to see if Soft Cap is working until it starts affecting your game, and at this point you either restart the campaign or put up with it spoiling your experience (you might guess I've just found that the poisonous nasty soft cap has cut in part way through a campaign, so I now have to restart, having wasted several hours of playing).

Editing Gamesrules file should be straightforward but can be tiresome if the wonderful Microsoft decides you can't edit your files, even after you've reset the permissions.

Seriously dev team, soft cap is a very divisive feature and really annoys a lot of your players - you missed a big opportunity to add a switch for Soft cap on or off when you made version 1.26.

[charge62]

Softcap remains broken. Current value of 800 doesn't work as intended. Someone on these forums did their own research and found that changing the 800 value to 1250 achieved what the PC programmers wanted, of capping exp when the average unit value reaches 800. Setting to 1250 is a fair challenge and better than turning it off completely.

[captainjack]

I've calmed down now.

It seems you need to disable (or change) Soft cap in the gamesrules files in each of the US Corps DLCs, rather than in the main gamesrules files, which seemed to work for all of the 39 to 45 East and West ones. You could probably do it more efficiently by making an amended copy of the gamesrules file in the mod folder and activating it using GME. That should work more consistently.

Personally I think that soft cap does something that is addressed by the other changes introduced in version 1.2 if you also adjust the prestige slider to provide the extra challenge you need, so it seems unnecessary. What I don't like about it is that way that you can't see when it's working, can't see how it's affecting you when it is working and that the limits are too low.

A switch for Soft Cap On/Off, default lower and upper limits that were a bit more reasonable and that increased slightly over time, with a slider to adjust the upper and lower limits would help both those that don't like it and those that do.

[goose_2]

Sorry I didn't realize that it was so difficult
I have never tried to turn it off
I thought there was a button in the option menu, that is kind of silly that there isn't.

[simcc]

Ask BNC, Stephen for advice, they are the veterans in the game also moderators can give better answers.

For me the GC for german is the best so far really love it until today and still doing it over and over again until today.
Playing soft cap rules adds a lot of challenge to it and I highly recommend to do so as it feels unrealistic to have all tigers and panthers hahaha.

We can advice on army build if you like hahaha I can share it on more effective army build for long campaign so as other vets

[KnobiWahn]

Choosing 1.14 rules disables softcap too.

[TSPC37730]

Choosing 1.14 rules disables softcap too.

True, but it also changes things a lot by not using the 1.20 version rules. The updates can be found through the link here:

viewtopic.php?f=121&t=43127

Click on the link & in the first post scroll down to the "Game Rules" section. Trifler posted a nice summary. Not gaining prestige for enemy surrenders is certainly a noteworthy difference since we're on the topic of prestige.

A button for soft cap on or off is definitely on the wish list.

[robman]

A button for soft cap on or off is definitely on the wish list.

A slider for soft cap would be an excellent addition as well. I was able to field a fairly unrealistic core even in '45 with the soft cap at its fixed setting of 400. 300, now--THAT would be a real headache!

[edahl1980]

Choosing 1.14 rules disables softcap too.

True, but it also changes things a lot by not using the 1.20 version rules. The updates can be found through the link here:

viewtopic.php?f=121&t=43127

Click on the link & in the first post scroll down to the "Game Rules" section. Trifler posted a nice summary. Not gaining prestige for enemy surrenders is certainly a noteworthy difference since we're on the topic of prestige.

A button for soft cap on or off is definitely on the wish list.

I am sure they will release the ability to turn off soft cap as a DLC. Low cost, only 4.99$

[ptje63]

Have changed the gamerules file from 800 to 1250, as mentioned. The immediate change, playing GC East, around Kursk 43, is its raining heroes... I received about 10 in 3 turns, much to my surprise as well as pleasure, but feel a bit overwhelmed by it as well... is it correct?

[captainjack]

Soft cap shouldn't affect getting heroes in itself. I suspect it's just that a lot of units were lucky and possibly a few others passed the threshold for a guaranteed hero.

However, if you aren't using standard soft cap, you can afford better units and a slightly more aggressive play style so maybe you just accumulated more kills.

And,
Now that we have the soft cap tool tip, I started to try out different options with my Soft Cap Off mod (which simply applies the adjusted gamesrules file). I found that adjusting the upper and lower prestige limits could result in getting more than 100% prestige - I noticed 107% at one point, though I can't remember if that was the 5,000 upper limit or the 200 lower limit did that.
Switching Soft Cap off entirely seemed to deactivate the tool tip. Since I like to know if soft cap is on or off this wasn't quite so good. Setting the minimum percentage to 85, 95 100 worked fine (at least through Soviet Corps).

So my current experience of changing soft cap settings:
Create a soft cap mod and use GME to apply it - quick, easy and very unlikely to break anything ;
use the softcap tool tip at least once a turn to monitor the effects;
adjusting the minimum percentage is very reliable;
adjusting the upper and lower limits can have strange effects.

[RVallant]

Seems daft. They should patch an options file for it tbh.

[IainMcNeil]

We think the cap is working as intended - see here

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 14#p590814

However there isn't a way to turn it off and its not simple to change so not something we are planning unfortunately.

[RVallant]

"You are not authorised to read this forum". >_>

[ThvN]

Oops, I didn't check your last post until now... you might not be able to access that part of the forum, I posted the contents of that post on the public forum here: http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 55#p605760

Here's the full quote by Rudankort:

Hi guys!

Wanted to give some explanation about how the soft cap works. I've checked the code and it looks like it works the way it is supposed to work, but most likely it was not properly communicated back in the days when this feature was introduced. So, I will try to explain again.

There are several values governing the work of soft cap. First, we have Normal Prestige and Max Prestige, per unit slot in the core. As these names imply:
- To have Normal Prestige amount of prestige is, well, perfectly normal, so no adjustment of income is necessary. The player gets full income from whatever action he performs.
- Max Prestige is, well, the maximum amount the player is allowed to have. So, once the player reaches this amount, he must be getting zero.

This means that between Normal Prestige and Max Prestige player's income must gradually change from 100% to 0%. How exactly? Well, various approaches are possible, but the game uses parabolic function. In other words, between normal and max values of prestige, the following coefficient is applied to income:

(MaxPrestige - ActualPrestige)^2 / (MaxPrestige - NormalPrestige)^2

Thomas has demonstrated this well by experiment. On his diagram, it is clear that blue line is not straight. In fact, it is part of a parabola going to the point (800,0). It can be argued that parabolic drop is too severe, but in the end it all depends on exact values of normal and max. By adjusting these values, the rate of earning prestige can be matched to what campaign designer needs.

This is the basic mechanic. But if player's income ever dropping to zero sounds too severe, there is an additional parameter in place, called MinKoff. If it is not zero, income coefficient is never allowed to drop below this value. This is what breaks the parabola on Thomas' graph.

It is clear enough that it is easy to get the red line on Thomas' graph, if needed, just by moving max value to the right.

The bottom line is, there is no bug in soft cap implementation, but there has been a misunderstanding how exactly this feature works.

If current values set in gamerules are too severe and break balance in some scenarios, this might be a balance issue which needs fixing, but a fix would be related to adjusting values in gamerules, not in the algorithm itself. My approach to this has been as follows. 800 is a lot of prestige per unit (somewhere between Tiger I and Tiger II cost), so getting to this value should take a lot of time. On the other hand, half of this value (400), which is about average unit cost, should be easy to have.