Weapon Merging

Can the developers please comment on the idea of merging offensive and defensive weapons? I have posted about it several times but never receive any comment from them. I believe the distinction between defensive weapons and offensive weapons needs to be eliminated. In the real world, most weapon systems have dual use, in that they can be used to defend a country or attack another. Having them as separate weapons in the game complicates everything needlessly. It makes production and logistics ridiculous for no reason. The only argument that I see for keeping them separate is to make defence cheaper than offence. Well there is a much more elegant way to achieve that. You can just make weapons have a "defenders advantage". It can be a blanket percentage advantage attached to the defending unit so that they are more powerful than the attacking unit. This would require the attacker to have larger numbers, and thus make the attack more expensive than the defence. We don't need to have the insane number of weapon systems in the game to achieve that.

How can this change be implemented? Just merge everything in the game into their unified unit. No corporations would need to close, and no one would lose any weapons. Convert all the defensive AA and offensive AA weapons and ammo into one type, and just merge all the factories into one type. The same can be done for light tanks and heavy tanks. Interceptors and fighter planes. Etc... No one would lose anything. Also it would really help consolidate the number of corporations needed to produce weapons and might make those industries more viable.

If this is not your vision for the game I understand, but please comment on the idea at least. I have fought in many PVP wars in this game and I am speaking from a position of some experience with the war engine. The way war is fought right now is absurd, most weapon systems are ignored, especially defensive ones because they are not useful enough to justify spending manpower and maintenance on them (I'm looking at you light tanks/arty).

Light tank painters are protesting outside at this speech.


All jokes aside this is an idea long past due IMO.

I can't promise anything other than that we'll discuss it when everyone's back at the office.
It would be a pretty serious change to implement. Making wars easier to fight is a good thing to consider though.

Thank you for your response Jonni.

If i might be so bold as to make a suggestion as to how to make defensive troops viable (because lets be honest they aren't really viable right now) Keep all the corps and units as they are now but assign everything a general offensive value.


Example:

If I want to bombard a city right now i can use mid range missles. But I cannot use missle intercepter units to bombard that city.
Just give missle intercepters a value so that they can also attack units and cities. Just make it a LOT lower. That way missle interceptors are still a defenisve unit but if I want to i can use them to damage my enemy as well.
This way you can still promote the idea of 'cheap defensive troops' but it will make them a lot more usefull in actual wars. It would be a LOT less work then rewriting the entire war engine.

Sorry for the double posting but I just thought of some more things to add.


Right now there really is not a lot of choice for an army. You buy whatever offensive weapon you want and go to pound town with it. If defensive weapons can be used to attack it would open up a lot of strategies. Sure if i want to go balls to the walls i would only buy offensive weapons. But what if somebody bought tons of cheaper defenses, grinded my numbers down and then started counter attacking with those defensive weapons.
It would not be a lighting strike counter but it would still be a decent counter attack.

Anyway these were my 2cents.

I would say that all ground forces are pretty much useless. You can lose an entire tank division and still not able to clear defenses of even c3 city while batteries do that almost without any loss..

Letsie, that is an interesting idea, but it still has the problem of too many weapon systems. The biggest problem I find with having so many different weapon systems that essentially could do the same thing is having to maintain so many different types of ammunition for all of them. With training using up so much ammo every month, it becomes a logistical nightmare to replenish so many different ammunition types. There are so many weapons that I would like to use, but choose not to because it is just not worth the effort to maintain stockpiles of so many different ammunition/weapon types. Like fighter planes for example. They just aren't worth it to me, but I maintain a large stock of interceptors incase my opponent goes air. Well if fighters and interceptors were just merged, I would be more inclined to use air for offence because I already deploy interceptors and have a use for them. Helicopters are another example. Who here actually uses offensive helicopters? I am guessing almost no one, but I am sure all of you have helicopters on defense. If they merged however, it would open up another air attack avenue for players who otherwise would never go that route since they are already stocking and deploying helicopters.

Another example is with navies. I would love to field a navy but again it is not worth it for me. I don't want to have separate navy interceptors, separate navy missile batteries and navy fighter planes. I don't have any interest in stocking all of those. They should just be the standard weapons deployed as part of a naval unit. Interceptors, Navy Interceptors, Fighter Planes, and Navy Fighter Planes should just be one thing and call it a day.

One nice perk about merging all these duplicate weapons would be merging of all the corporations that produce them all. There are so many offensive industries that are simply not viable and production is extremely low. If they could piggy back off the defensive industries that are being kept alive by C3s and player's peace time defensive deployments, those industries could survive.

Thank you so much Jonni for at least having a discussion about it. I will support whatever you guys decide since it is your game and your vision.

Here are some examples of areas I would merge:

Merge Defence Military Airport & Offence Military Airport
Merge Defence Military Base & Offence Military Base
Merge Defence Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries & Offence Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries
Merge Missile Interceptor Batteries & Navy Missile Interceptor Batteries
Merge Defensive Missile Batteries & Mid Range Missile Batteries & Navy Missile Batteries & Land to Sea Missile Batteries
Merge Jeeps, Light Artillery, Light Tanks, and Armored Vehicles & Heavy Jeeps, Heavy Artillery, Heavy Tanks, and Heavy Armored Vehicles into a weapon called Combined Ground Forces.
Merge Interceptors & Navy Interceptors & Fighter Planes & Navy Fighter Planes
Merge Radar Planes & Long Range Radar Planes
Merge Destroyers & Attack Destroyers
Merge Helicopters & Attack Helicopters
Merge Conventional Missile Batteries & Land Based Cruise Missile Batteries
Merge Cruise Missile Ships & Guided Missile Frigates
Merge Special Forces & Seals & Rapid Deployment Units

Keep everything else not listed as separate, and keep strategic units separate.

Just my thoughts on the issue.

War against any C3 at lvl 14 to 15 has become completely unwinnable, pointless and expensive. The option to lower war levels in order to just fight a war should be in place. Say I want to just want to "practice" or just take a country without dumping trillions? The idea that more powerful countries ONLY go up against other super powered nations with Q600 armies is not realistic. When's the last time you saw a super power or a world power attack other? Been a while, right? Now how often do we see a world power annex, or invade a smaller country? Pretty often within the past 70 years, wouldn't you say?
It's safe to say that Russia (war level 10 maybe) annexing the Crimea (war level 1) is a good example.

So here's an idea, make the war levels of attacked C3s random? Somewhere between 3 and 12 or something like that. It would make the war game a little bit more fun. Iv'e completely lost interest.

It is not impossible Khome. I am war level 15. Im going to push to level 18 soon when I get some time. It is possible to do it, and to do it while still making a profit. You need to adjust your strategy if you are hitting a wall at WL 15.

I agree though about having the option to fight a lower war level if you choose. You could make it so that you don't increase war level and get GC rewards if you fight lower level

I STRONGLY disagree with the idea of merging weapons and ammo into a single category. In the Real world I have a PSCI(Political Science degree) with minors in Military Studies and Public Policy. So I'm speaking from real world experience and gaming relation/application. In the real world armies have offensive, defensive, support, and recon style mechanized units.

Look at the US Abrams the worlds elite fighting tank there is support style tanks, Tanks with Uranium enriched armor, those without uranium armor, those with high velocity barrels, all of this is done for the reason that a single style tank isnt able to fit all roles.

Uranium armor is twice as thick as lead and can withstand more damage thus its used in Assault(Offensive) style tanks. Support tanks do not have this and use a Chobham armour which is used to protect against Kinetic energy weapons and are used in Defensive roles or occupation forces.

With this in mind lets relate it to simcountry.

Referencing you comment on merging weapons. I fully understand where you are coming from and I agree something must be done to reduce the redundancy of weapons, but some weapons cannot be merged into a single category.

Lets take land units for example. Merging tanks, artillery, Jeeps, and so on... How do you balance that?
Removing the diversity of Offensive or Defensive weapons means that you limit the stats placed on those weapons meaning that all weapons either become much stronger or weaker as a result. Without the diversity you place extreme value on a single weapon(s) removing game balance. Honestly as it is now the war game in terms of weapons is very balanced.
Stealth, Navies, and Mobile could use some tweaking, but that's for another day.

However, I will agree that somethings could be merged
---Military bases should be merged into one category. The redundancy of them is unnecessary at this point and all three base types should be merged
---Seals and Special Forces could be merged into one unit type
---Radar Planes should become one unit

Supersoldier you should look at the stats for the ground units. There is no point in using any ground unit other than Heavy Tanks for offence and Armored Vehicles for defence. The range and cost of all the ground weapons are identical. With those two points in mind, all the ground weapons are already redundant and should be merged. Most countries do not have the diversity in weaponry that the US, Russia, and China have. Most countries make do with multipurpose weaponry. I dont think its fair to use the US army as the example to support status quo.

At the very least all weapons should be able to attack. It makes no sense to have light tanks sit around doing nothing when they could be useful on attack. Even if we cant agree on merging ground weapons I think we could agree on that. Also I think there is more leeway in merging some of the missile batteries. I mean realistically what is the deference between a defensive missile battery and a mid range missile battery? They both fire against enemy missile batteries in this game, except one can initiate attacks and one cant.

I think most of the weapons should remain but the attack ranges,strenght,movement speed, staff, cost and ammo could be reviewed to better diversify them. There are more important things to be done to improve war game.

John,

I'm not sure what strategy I would need to adjust, probably just be doing something wrong entirely. I've tried different ideas, but the overriding factor is that a C3 lvl 14 and up are way overpowered. Massive amounts of weapons at the highest quality. So I guess my main issue is that some don't want to maintain that many weapons at that quality. But like you also said, having the option to step down or attack at a lower level should be an option for those of us without the means to wage a massive campaign every time.
I reached higher war levels back in a time when Cruise Missile ships were undefeated, then the magic helicopters came along and were able to wipe them out, rendering CM ships practically useless, cash cows. That's one of the changes that have essentially changed the rules of war.

I think we need potato cannon and water balloons added to the weapon list

Just hit war level 16. Glory to the Pinktator. WL18 I am coming for you. Just need more time as each level is about a 1 hour click fest.

Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click Click click click click

lol

What is good in this life?

To crush your sim enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their sim women.

Hail the Pinktator.

Just hit level 17. One more till I max out. I will try for it very soon!

Way to go John Galt! :-D

Thank you

The reward was nice. 340 GC and 23T cash, plus around 8T worth of materials I sold.