Campaign Experience

[Imp]

Would it be possible to have a box similar to repair points for experience gain in campaigns?
As in say normal 2/3rds 1/2 1/3 1/4 or similar.

This may be to complicated as looking at things I think the base adjustment for turning up is not to bad its the rewards for being involved in battle such as a kill that boost to fast.
Though could just do on the whole thing for ease nice way would be to really slow progression once reach 80exp or so.
German Long Campaign 45 battles 5 battles in.
Start experience 75
Think my HQ has gained about 3 exp unsure what he started with FOO has gained 2 started high with 79.
Combat units few high 70s but most are 89-93.
Say average 90exp so troops getting kills are averaging 3exp points per battle.
While it is nice that my artillery now all has 1.2 call times & my tanks are pulling off great shots they are to good for my idea of reality.
Just my view but units with experience in the mid 90s are to good especially at spotting the enemy.

This is not high priority I can just sell off & replace 2/3rds of my force every 4 battles or so.

[Imp]

Sorry for double post just realised should have posted in WWll but applies to both

[Suhiir]

As I recall "veteran" is 80 Exp so maybe something like:

X = ((Current Exp - 80)/10)
If (X less then 0) then X = 0
New Exp Total = (Exp Gain - X)

This way units would continue to gain exp pretty fast till veteran level then slower exp gains after that, and the better they are the less they gain.

[IronDuke99]

Trouble is, in a big war, against an enemy with more or less the same technology as you, and the same high standard of training, with the heavy casualties that come with that, 'experience' and 'moral' don't both generally go up.

Experience goes up, to a certain point, then plateaus for a bit then should actually go down in terms of taking risks.

Moral, (and that is intimately related to experience) can often start fairly high, stay high, especially with success, especially relatively cheap in terms of friendly casualties success, but then, over time starts to fall and continues to do so as the individual soldier works out how much depends on more or less pure luck and chance and how every single risk he takes, raises his chances of copping it.

Case in point British 8th Army formations, some of whom had been away from UK for years, fighting in North Africa and then Italy, from in a few cases 1940 and in every single case from at least early in 1942, that where brought back to UK for D-Day in 1944. By then a great many officers and men in those units thought (and I certainly will not fault them for it) that they had done their bit already and expecting them to attack German defensive positions yet again, was asking a bit too bloody much. Those men, brave as they certainly were had expended their courage on battlefield after battlefield. Of course, being British, they did not mutiny, and they certainly did not even think of running away, but they made their advances slowly and very cautiously, using all the support they could get, taking as few chances as one can on a modern battlefield, and hoping to get home to wives, children and girls after it ended. They were asked to much of. By 1945 the US Army veterans in Europe were much the same, which is why 'Band of Brothers' rang true and 'Fury' (in the end) just did not (A whole Tank crew, when the war is obviously almost over, decides to become dead heroes in order to defend a non running tank? Sure that is going to happen in some idiots brain perhaps. I leave aside a whole enemy infantry battalion taking a ridiculously long time to knock out a single non running tank, when they already showed how 'easy' it was for a kid with a panzerfurst to kill one)...

So experience should not just make you better and better, it does not always, or even mostly, after a certain point, do that.

[Wdll]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

Trouble is, in a big war, against an enemy with more or less the same technology as you, and the same high standard of training, with the heavy casualties that come with that, 'experience' and 'moral' don't both generally go up.

Experience goes up, to a certain point, then plateaus for a bit then should actually go down in terms of taking risks.

Moral, (and that is intimately related to experience) can often start fairly high, stay high, especially with success, especially relatively cheap in terms of friendly casualties success, but then, over time starts to fall and continues to do so as the individual soldier works out how much depends on more or less pure luck and chance and how every single risk he takes, raises his chances of copping it.

Case in point British 8th Army formations, some of whom had been away from UK for years, fighting in North Africa and then Italy, from in a few cases 1940 and in every single case from at least early in 1942, that where brought back to UK for D-Day in 1944. By then a great many officers and men in those units thought (and I certainly will not fault them for it) that they had done their bit already and expecting them to attack German defensive positions yet again, was asking a bit too bloody much. Those men, brave as they certainly were had expended their courage on battlefield after battlefield. Of course, being British, they did not mutiny, and they certainly did not even think of running away, but they made their advances slowly and very cautiously, using all the support they could get, taking as few chances as one can on a modern battlefield, and hoping to get home to wives, children and girls after it ended. They were asked to much of. By 1945 the US Army veterans in Europe were much the same, which is why 'Band of Brothers' rang true and 'Fury' (in the end) just did not (A whole Tank crew, when the war is obviously almost over, decides to become dead heroes in order to defend a non running tank? Sure that is going to happen in some idiots brain perhaps. I leave aside a whole enemy infantry battalion taking a ridiculously long time to knock out a single non running tank, when they already showed how 'easy' it was for a kid with a panzerfurst to kill one)...

So experience should not just make you better and better, it does not always, or even mostly, after a certain point, do that.

I watched Fury only once, but I am pretty sure they didn't stay put to defend their tank. They stayed there to stop a massacre against a supply unit or something.

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by Wdll

I watched Fury only once, but I am pretty sure they didn't stay put to defend their tank. They stayed there to stop a massacre against a supply unit or something.

Yes I have only watched it once.

Frankly it makes very little difference. Right at the end of WWII all 99% of Western allied soldiers wanted to do was get the war over and get home in one piece. The ending was, to my mind ridiculous, even leaving aside how relatively easy it actually would be for an infantry battalion to knock out one, non-running, tank.

[jivemi]

Yes. Recall reading about the Huertgen Forest, where GI veterans of D-Day and Normandy suffered high rates of combat fatigue, even panic, in those accursed woods.

[Suhiir]

Much like WW I the Huertgen was a day-in-day-out thing. Even in the hedgerows in France people could see some progress.
While I certainly don't claim a stalemate situation is the sole cause for battle fatigue I think it contributes significantly.

[Suhiir]

It's Hollywood ... you expect realism?

And yes, they were there to stop an attack on rear area units not fighting to defend their immobile tank.

That said, just because many people were more concerned with CYA then accomplishing their mission hardly means everyone was. You can also look at US desertion rates in the last months of the war, they skyrocketed.

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

It's Hollywood ... you expect realism?

And yes, they were there to stop an attack on rear area units not fighting to defend their immobile tank.

That said, just because many people were more concerned with CYA then accomplishing their mission hardly means everyone was. You can also look at US desertion rates in the last months of the war, they skyrocketed.

I would always prefer at least some loose approach to realism, its just the way I am.

Have never really looked at desertion rates in WWII, but I would suspect they would be highest in the best places to desert amongst the lowest moral and least well trained troops. My family was full of stories about black markets and German women of relatively easy virtue that are vastly too common to be untrue (and after all the Soviet Army was totally vile to German women and girls).

Soldiers, and servicemen generally do some amazing, and surprising, things, but not many of them really want to die. The really fearless come in two main flavours: the very lacking in imagination and the mentally disturbed (and both of those types have their place in war, providing they are never commanding me) Others sometimes act fearlessly, but there is generally something driving that, like anger or saving ones men or a brain fart...