Re:
Cat Lord wrote:IIRC my historical research on the conflict, the ratio of "soldiers fit and equiped to fight" vs total soldiers (and I am talking about soldiers here, not second line and service troops), was between 1/4 and 1/10. I.e. very low.
Cat
& Clovis
I can appreciate that units often operated significantly understrength but when raising fresh troops they should initially be at paper strength. The engine will easily diminish these units to historic levels unless they are properly handled and perhaps encourage the player to fight with more manageable ad hoc forces, like in real life, less they never achieve anything for being too precious about their toy soldiers.
Also, i thought the engine already simulated
the ratio of "soldiers fit and equiped to fight" vs total soldiers as cohesion. I though cohesion loss represents the easily recoverable drop in combat efficiency due to sickness and minor injury. In game, a large force with a lot of sick, injured and stragglers still has a high ration strength but not much combat power, hence the difficulty and enjoyment of the operational level of the game. If you represent a Division as 4-5,000 men then you are doubling factoring this factor, if that makes sense, and not encouraging proper husbandry.
Why not represent a Division as 12+ Bn or 3+ Regts (super 3000 man inf elements) and increase the cohesion loss effects of movement and combat so that massive formations lacking command point become totally inefficient if asked to do anything too taxing? This would make defensive battles easy to win, as was the tactical paradigm, and emphasize the usefulness of high cohesion units and cohesion boosting generals and service assets for offensive action.
It would also reward the player who skirmishes with light forces and sends advance guards ahead to secure military control of area so that the
delicate main force can move in for the kill without loosing too much cohesion. This would also emphasize the historical rail-bounded-ness of modern supply hungry armies.
Additionally, If you wanted to simulate the situation where men are called to the colours but don't recieve the proper equipment and training then perhaps you could have a two phase "building" system where the unit first gains "hits" (i.e. men) during the notmal build period, then become unlocked, but only then gains cohesion and therefore combat power.
For example: If a unit were raised in a remote level 1 city without a depot then it might take yonks to build up enough cohesion whereas if you built the same unit in a level 3 city, with depot, it would very quickly become truly operational.
This initial cohesion gain might work on a
law of diminishing returns principle to represent formations being armed with any old rifles or shot guns but not recieving light and heavy machine guns, mortars and other equipment until later.
Just an idea.