Editing faction experience

[Stefan Kreis]

Hi,

Is it possible to edit a faction's combat skills or unit's combat experience with editor or otherwise?

 

Stefan

[companyteam]

You can adjust the training level of Infantry from untrained up to elite - that has a series of effects.  Right click the unit an look through the options.

[Ssnake]

Details of what changes are in the User's Manual, which is a searchable PDF in your Windows Start Menu / eSim Games - Steel Beasts Pro directory.

[Stefan Kreis]

Ok, thanks.

[Mirzayev]

21 hours ago, Stefan Kreis said:

Hi,

Is it possible to edit a faction's combat skills or unit's combat experience with editor or otherwise?

 

Stefan

 

As mentioned, level of training for infantry is described in great detail in the manual.

 

For your armored crews, you can approximate poor training/less experience by "damaging" crew members. As an example, damaging the commander of a tank will make their scanning less effective, while damaging a loader (for mainly western MBTs) will slow down their rate of fire as the commander (or gunner if you also damaged the commander) are forced to come "off the gun" to reload the next round.

 

Play around with this until it gives you the intended experience. This is, of course, for making AFV crews seem like they have less experience. 

[Stefan Kreis]

Thank You

[Stefan Kreis]

... but it's a pity that there is no such general option for factions, but I understand that it could be difficult to implement.

[Ssnake]

There is "a general option", it just doesn't apply to vehicle crews. That in turn has (code-)historical reasons, as we made a foolish decision some 28 years ago that tank crew members would be a component of the vehicle rather than be treated as individual soldiers. Then again, a perfect code would never have been completed and the project would have died in obscurity, so taking such shortcuts was a necessary evil to get a viable product out within an acceptable development time.

[Stefan Kreis]

Yes, I understand that and I also see now how badly vehicles behaved in other games/simulators after their efficiency was reduced.

[Ssnake]

My position has always been that it makes little sense to make AI crews artificially incompetent as long as we can't make them as good as humans are. Idealky, AI crews would have to show the same weaknesses and strengths as the human behavioral spectrum, and I think there are ways to approximate that - but not in SB Pro V4.

[Stefan Kreis]

Very interesting discussion, nice to read and you really did a great job.

[thewood]

20 hours ago, Mirzayev said:

 

As mentioned, level of training for infantry is described in great detail in the manual.

 

For your armored crews, you can approximate poor training/less experience by "damaging" crew members. As an example, damaging the commander of a tank will make their scanning less effective, while damaging a loader (for mainly western MBTs) will slow down their rate of fire as the commander (or gunner if you also damaged the commander) are forced to come "off the gun" to reload the next round.

 

Play around with this until it gives you the intended experience. This is, of course, for making AFV crews seem like they have less experience. 

As they say, you learn something new everyday.  I have always been put off a little that you couldn't adjust the proficiency of non-player vehicle units.  This is a great workaround.  Thanks.

[Ssnake]

Generally, you have the option to assign "random light" and "random heavy" damages on a per-unit basis (you can even split a unit, assign individual damages, then merge them again; just don't assign platoon-wide damages after that as it will overwrite the individual settings) to make them less effective. You could also give them older ammo (a very good way to adjust the balance against one party), or make some units impotent. As the player wouldn't know which of them are harmless, he'd still need to treat them as equally dangerous.

[thewood]

Yes.  I am pretty familiar with how damage works in SB.  Even to the point of applying in the hierarchy of the units.  I was just mentioning never considering it to change vehicle crew behavior.

[Stefan Kreis]

Valuable tips, although I doubt that they would throw in an untrained crew below the basic level into the initial phase of modern war, but the choice of old ammunition sounds impressive.

[Ssnake]

5 hours ago, thewood said:

I was just mentioning never considering it to change vehicle crew behavior.

Even proficiency levels don't change behavior (if we want to go all technical on the phrasing), only performance. In that sense, anything that influences performance is fair game.

[Captain_Colossus]

my impression of the ukraine war is that generally the front line units on either side are either the poorest trained or are the least experienced.  if one sifts through the anecdotal reports 

of human meat wave attacks and demoralized units surrendering or wiped out, it tends to be those, giving the impression that this is what it all is

 

why might it occur like that- we can conceive that it is far easier to quickly mobilize and train civilians to occupy and defend entrenched positions than to train and gain experience in offensive operations.

so you will tend to find that is what that is

 

if you are the defender, you will tend to report the enemy coming in endless waves and so on, which is the basic experience of any defender, since naturally the attack requires more effort than the defense applying at least a 3:1 rule (but eliciting the idea that there are somehow WWI or WW2 human wave assaults going on- which creates that illusion). to an outnumbered defender, all attacks will tend to look like a 'human wave assault'

 

when either party is sorting out gaps in the defenses, these are actually small unit raids testing the strength of the defenses and the opponent's response, not human wave assaults. then

once it is determined where to best commit, that is where the so called 'human wave assaults' occur. these units tend to be much more experienced and probably know what they are doing more

than those used to occupy trenches

 

in sum- the initial learning curve follows the common sense rule that many of the casualties are likely to be more distributed among the least experienced troops tasked with the grim mission

of holding trenches and/or testing defenses at the front line. the veteran or 'elite' units are more likely used to exploit or maneuver into the gaps

 

i suppose it would be fair to design a scenario around those kinds of considerations, or else it is not so far-fetched