jentzsch
17.05.2005, 10:19
here is a short :shock: text from DOC how the RDP works:
thats how it works now but what i heard they will change it or better they plan to change it.
Ok, enough of the qualifications. How does RDP really work ? Many claim it does not work, but at the same time they attribute to RDP things that are quite incorrect, so let's look at what really happens for your High Commands and what they have to use to win the RDP war.
RDP is based on a couple of simple principles, and a lot of variations within those principles.
Each country has a budget that is fixed. Each countries budget is the same. When all starter set equipment is added up, despite the fact that each unit has a unique cost based on it's CVC (combat vehicle cost) ... the total for all starter set equipment is almost exactly the same for each country. The variation between them is 1.4% so that works out very well for balance and parity, despite the CVC's being based on the unique attributes of each piece of equipment alone and not relative to each other. CVC is based on the true economy of this PvP game, ie: the combat attributes of the equipment, speed, firepower, armour, durability, manoevrebility and defense.
As the starter set consumes all available equipment budget for each country ... and as new equipment generally has a higher CVC cost than the starter set equipment it replacers, getting new gear and staying within a fixed budget presnts some challenges. This is the first challenge your CinC and his command face. There are others we'll cover later on.
For example, since a Bf109F costs more than a Bf109E (faster, climbs better, carries more 20mm ammo) if it were to replace the Bf109E on a 1 for 1 basis, this would not be possible without losing something else that eats up the available budget. Since this also happens to tanks and other equipment, that is also rising in it's CVC cost, you can see that some heavy shuffling about of your available production list (what you can spawn and in what numbers) is required to be done by your High Command.
It's not just your CinC, your CinC involves the leaders below him of each branch in your forces in order to arrange RDP RESEARCH (what new stuff you will get) and PRODUCTION (existing equipment you already have) which is what will be increased or decreased to meet your sides needs in terms of upcoming strategic operations and plans as well as how the war itself is going.
There are minimum and maximum numbers of equipment in the rules of RDP, to prevent a total glut of one type of unit causing all lesser items to be dumped to create such a glut of new equipment, which would be bad for the games environment and immersion. New stuff should replace old stuff gradually and there should always be a variation and range of stuff available, not just all uber stuff everywhere. These rules cover such things as how many changes you can make to your equipment list and how quickly, so that we don't have 20 Spitfire.Vb's replacing all the Spitfire.Ia's in one fell stroke, for example.
There is a secondary cost associated with RDP, but to their cycle times not their costs which are taken out of the avialable budget. This determines the length of your base cycle (although it in turn is affected by the health of your RDP facilities, but the baseline is 100% health) ... while it is possible (at 100% RDP factory health) to complete a "short cycle" in as little as 3.1 days, it could take you much much longer (even more than a week) at 100% RDP factory health if what you choose to build and research is high enough in cycle cost (manufacturing and research time) ...
Prototypes cause much longer cycle times than new varients do if looked at by themselves, but increases and decreases of existing production cause cycle time increments also. Once a newer varient is introduced it has no further leash to previous varients, and can be increased independantly.
Once your command staff have selected their choices for introductions or increase/decrease of existing production ... and balanced it so that those choices are within their budgets ... a cycle time is calcualted on those choices, to represent how long it will take to research new production or change existing production. This "time cost" is based on one of 4 things.
1. Increasing an existing units production numbers (how many in the spawn list) has a small cost.
2. Decreasing an existing units production numbers (how many in spawn list) has a smaller cost.
3. Researching (introducing) a prototype has the highest cost in time close to double that of a varient)
4. Researching (introducing) an improved varient of an existing unit is about half the cost in time of introducing a prototype.
TOTAL CYCLE TIME = the sum of all these changes.
However, while varients are quick and cheap by comparison to prototypes as far as introducing them goes, they are tied to existing production of their preceeding varient. Thus, if for a hypothetical case you had a side with all varients there is not the ability for that side to run through cycles twice as fast as another hypothetical side with all prototypes to research. Therefore, while it takes as little as half the time to produce new varients (general average) you might be able, in the much longer cycle time a prototype takes, be able to introduce more of them even though they take longer, on a unit by unit basis.
So, let's say you are the CinC, and with the advice of your officers leading your various branches, as to their plans and the needs the current situation has revealed over the last weeks fighting, you are going to do your RDP requests.
You decide to research (introduce) your next tier tank and it's a prototype. You look up the rules regarding numbers introduction (the same for all countries) and you whack the maximum you can have of those into your spreadsheet.
Oops, now you're over budget.
So you drop some older tanks. Ok, that's a little closer. Take out a couple of bombers. Now we have a little surplus. Cool, let's put in some next tier fighters too.
Oops, now we're a lot over budget. Drop some older fighters. Ok, drop some more. Cool, we're there now, the <insert enemy here> will be pwned now !
Yikes ! Our base cycle time is 6 days ! Without being bombed !
Ok, we'll cut back on the new fighters. Hmmm ... cycle time now 4.8 days, that's better, but still a long time. We have more budget now too, but spending it will blow out the cycle time some more.
B(
Let's increase AA guns and trucks to tow them and give us more MSP's, see what happens.
Oh cool, cycle time went up only .3 of a day. AA guns and trucks are cheap !
What happens if we drop the tanks and make do with what we have, and just go with fighters.
Oh wow, base cycle just went down to 3.1 days. What happens if we add the new tier ATG to that ?
Cool ! Base cycle is only 3.6 days, and we didn't go over budget. We got new fighters, newer better ATG's to help defend while we wait for the cycle to go through, then we'll go for new tanks.
We got more trucks (MSP's and ATG towers) and increases to AA gun numbers. Let's run with that.
That's one example.
It is in reality much more complex arange of choices and consequences. What if you have morte than one unit poer tier you need to choose between, or perhaps choose both ? You can, but it gets hard to make all the trade-offs. PzKwIVg's and StuGIIIg's can be brought in together, two same tier fighters could be also. It's how you manage everything to make it possible that is hard, and not go over budget or stretch out the length of your cycle too long, which can cost you the war no matter how clever a plan it was.
Maybe it's worth holding out on a longer cycle and getting new planes and tanks together ? If they are both varients that is a good choice because varients are faster in cycle time to introduce. If your side is bombing well then this is an excellent gamble because your opponents face longer cycles than their base cycles, if they picked a long cycle and are bombed they are in serious trouble.
A further complication your HC's have to deal with is that they can increase the ability of their budget to cover the increasingly expensive (in cost not time) equipment each new item becomes, by not introducing something new and instead doing an "effeciency cycle" where they make the most expensive or most produced item (usually you try to get one item in number and cost that makes the biggest savings for you) cheaper to keep in production, and have some surplus to fit more new equipment into their budget.
It's hard to stay inside your budget though, the starter set doesn't leave much if any real surplus, and that's why in the first few cycles, until HC's do effeciency cycles later in a campaign, when their budgets are creaking under the weight of newer more expensive gear to reduce production costs of equipment ... numbers of tanks and fighters actually falls below starter set levels in most campaigns.
Let's recap some things in closing.
1. All units cost in budget terms according to their CVC value. This is the only real economy in a PvP game, that of the units combat effectiveness and superiority based on it's ability to fight and do damage to the enemy. The more uber the equipment the more expensive it is.
2. Budget is fixed but costs can be made cheaper at the surrender of an introduction unit that cycle, this buys you more of the gear you already have introduced or might introduce next cycle but cannot afford right now. Sometimes sheer numbers beats ability. A large bunch of cheaper less uber tanks at close range may well be a better deal in winning the war than 1 expensive Tiger is, we shall have to see. I suspect this will probably be the case. It doesn't just apply to M10's and Tigers either, the prociple applies to everything.
3. Time cost (how long your base rate is) of each cycle depends on how many increases, decreases and introductions of new equipment you request, within your budget.
4. New varients of older equipment cost less time to introduce than new prototypes do. This can be up to half the time required for a new varient versus a new prototype, but it varies according to all the other additional choices you make in that cycle, how many you introduce and the state of health of your RDP factories. Base Rate is measured at a constant for comparitive purposes, ie: RDP factories at 100% health.
5. To offset how much faster varients are to introduce, they are tied to existing older varients in terms of setting maximum INTRODUCTION numbers. Once introduced, this leash is non existant.
6. All new equipment, including prototypes, cannot exceed a preset maximum to prevent too many being introduced. Thus, just because it is a prototype and not tied to an existing varient, you are still restricted in how many you can introduce.
7. All rules of RDP are global, they apply to all countries in equal application.
One last item for RDP. Currently, while it does affect PRODUCTION in addition to RESEARCH, it appears to hurt research more because you can only introduce a maximum of two classes of equipment per cycle.
This is going to change.
We plan to revert to a more production orientated design. When we make this change, ALL tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 (etc. ad infinitum) unit types, whether they be fighter aircraft, tanks, bombers, ATG's, AA guns, whatever they be ... all of them will be in research from the start of a campaign.
They will undergo research at a base rate, so your HC will not choose what to introduce (it will all be in research all the time) instead they will choose numbers to increase or decrease and also be able to accellerate (to some degree) one type over another, at a cost to other production.
Additionally, we will allow the ability of HC's to allocate which factory produces what equipment, so that bombing affects a branch (air, armour or whatever else we expand on through tier structures) by it's actual physical location on the map being bombed. Production allocations will be able to be moved (much like deployments are) at a cost to production, in time ... as well as eventually separating PRODUCTION from RESEARCH by having dedicated RESEARCH FACILTIES and PRODUCTION FACILITIES instead of both being tied to a single general location.
thats how it works now but what i heard they will change it or better they plan to change it.
Ok, enough of the qualifications. How does RDP really work ? Many claim it does not work, but at the same time they attribute to RDP things that are quite incorrect, so let's look at what really happens for your High Commands and what they have to use to win the RDP war.
RDP is based on a couple of simple principles, and a lot of variations within those principles.
Each country has a budget that is fixed. Each countries budget is the same. When all starter set equipment is added up, despite the fact that each unit has a unique cost based on it's CVC (combat vehicle cost) ... the total for all starter set equipment is almost exactly the same for each country. The variation between them is 1.4% so that works out very well for balance and parity, despite the CVC's being based on the unique attributes of each piece of equipment alone and not relative to each other. CVC is based on the true economy of this PvP game, ie: the combat attributes of the equipment, speed, firepower, armour, durability, manoevrebility and defense.
As the starter set consumes all available equipment budget for each country ... and as new equipment generally has a higher CVC cost than the starter set equipment it replacers, getting new gear and staying within a fixed budget presnts some challenges. This is the first challenge your CinC and his command face. There are others we'll cover later on.
For example, since a Bf109F costs more than a Bf109E (faster, climbs better, carries more 20mm ammo) if it were to replace the Bf109E on a 1 for 1 basis, this would not be possible without losing something else that eats up the available budget. Since this also happens to tanks and other equipment, that is also rising in it's CVC cost, you can see that some heavy shuffling about of your available production list (what you can spawn and in what numbers) is required to be done by your High Command.
It's not just your CinC, your CinC involves the leaders below him of each branch in your forces in order to arrange RDP RESEARCH (what new stuff you will get) and PRODUCTION (existing equipment you already have) which is what will be increased or decreased to meet your sides needs in terms of upcoming strategic operations and plans as well as how the war itself is going.
There are minimum and maximum numbers of equipment in the rules of RDP, to prevent a total glut of one type of unit causing all lesser items to be dumped to create such a glut of new equipment, which would be bad for the games environment and immersion. New stuff should replace old stuff gradually and there should always be a variation and range of stuff available, not just all uber stuff everywhere. These rules cover such things as how many changes you can make to your equipment list and how quickly, so that we don't have 20 Spitfire.Vb's replacing all the Spitfire.Ia's in one fell stroke, for example.
There is a secondary cost associated with RDP, but to their cycle times not their costs which are taken out of the avialable budget. This determines the length of your base cycle (although it in turn is affected by the health of your RDP facilities, but the baseline is 100% health) ... while it is possible (at 100% RDP factory health) to complete a "short cycle" in as little as 3.1 days, it could take you much much longer (even more than a week) at 100% RDP factory health if what you choose to build and research is high enough in cycle cost (manufacturing and research time) ...
Prototypes cause much longer cycle times than new varients do if looked at by themselves, but increases and decreases of existing production cause cycle time increments also. Once a newer varient is introduced it has no further leash to previous varients, and can be increased independantly.
Once your command staff have selected their choices for introductions or increase/decrease of existing production ... and balanced it so that those choices are within their budgets ... a cycle time is calcualted on those choices, to represent how long it will take to research new production or change existing production. This "time cost" is based on one of 4 things.
1. Increasing an existing units production numbers (how many in the spawn list) has a small cost.
2. Decreasing an existing units production numbers (how many in spawn list) has a smaller cost.
3. Researching (introducing) a prototype has the highest cost in time close to double that of a varient)
4. Researching (introducing) an improved varient of an existing unit is about half the cost in time of introducing a prototype.
TOTAL CYCLE TIME = the sum of all these changes.
However, while varients are quick and cheap by comparison to prototypes as far as introducing them goes, they are tied to existing production of their preceeding varient. Thus, if for a hypothetical case you had a side with all varients there is not the ability for that side to run through cycles twice as fast as another hypothetical side with all prototypes to research. Therefore, while it takes as little as half the time to produce new varients (general average) you might be able, in the much longer cycle time a prototype takes, be able to introduce more of them even though they take longer, on a unit by unit basis.
So, let's say you are the CinC, and with the advice of your officers leading your various branches, as to their plans and the needs the current situation has revealed over the last weeks fighting, you are going to do your RDP requests.
You decide to research (introduce) your next tier tank and it's a prototype. You look up the rules regarding numbers introduction (the same for all countries) and you whack the maximum you can have of those into your spreadsheet.
Oops, now you're over budget.
So you drop some older tanks. Ok, that's a little closer. Take out a couple of bombers. Now we have a little surplus. Cool, let's put in some next tier fighters too.
Oops, now we're a lot over budget. Drop some older fighters. Ok, drop some more. Cool, we're there now, the <insert enemy here> will be pwned now !
Yikes ! Our base cycle time is 6 days ! Without being bombed !
Ok, we'll cut back on the new fighters. Hmmm ... cycle time now 4.8 days, that's better, but still a long time. We have more budget now too, but spending it will blow out the cycle time some more.
B(
Let's increase AA guns and trucks to tow them and give us more MSP's, see what happens.
Oh cool, cycle time went up only .3 of a day. AA guns and trucks are cheap !
What happens if we drop the tanks and make do with what we have, and just go with fighters.
Oh wow, base cycle just went down to 3.1 days. What happens if we add the new tier ATG to that ?
Cool ! Base cycle is only 3.6 days, and we didn't go over budget. We got new fighters, newer better ATG's to help defend while we wait for the cycle to go through, then we'll go for new tanks.
We got more trucks (MSP's and ATG towers) and increases to AA gun numbers. Let's run with that.
That's one example.
It is in reality much more complex arange of choices and consequences. What if you have morte than one unit poer tier you need to choose between, or perhaps choose both ? You can, but it gets hard to make all the trade-offs. PzKwIVg's and StuGIIIg's can be brought in together, two same tier fighters could be also. It's how you manage everything to make it possible that is hard, and not go over budget or stretch out the length of your cycle too long, which can cost you the war no matter how clever a plan it was.
Maybe it's worth holding out on a longer cycle and getting new planes and tanks together ? If they are both varients that is a good choice because varients are faster in cycle time to introduce. If your side is bombing well then this is an excellent gamble because your opponents face longer cycles than their base cycles, if they picked a long cycle and are bombed they are in serious trouble.
A further complication your HC's have to deal with is that they can increase the ability of their budget to cover the increasingly expensive (in cost not time) equipment each new item becomes, by not introducing something new and instead doing an "effeciency cycle" where they make the most expensive or most produced item (usually you try to get one item in number and cost that makes the biggest savings for you) cheaper to keep in production, and have some surplus to fit more new equipment into their budget.
It's hard to stay inside your budget though, the starter set doesn't leave much if any real surplus, and that's why in the first few cycles, until HC's do effeciency cycles later in a campaign, when their budgets are creaking under the weight of newer more expensive gear to reduce production costs of equipment ... numbers of tanks and fighters actually falls below starter set levels in most campaigns.
Let's recap some things in closing.
1. All units cost in budget terms according to their CVC value. This is the only real economy in a PvP game, that of the units combat effectiveness and superiority based on it's ability to fight and do damage to the enemy. The more uber the equipment the more expensive it is.
2. Budget is fixed but costs can be made cheaper at the surrender of an introduction unit that cycle, this buys you more of the gear you already have introduced or might introduce next cycle but cannot afford right now. Sometimes sheer numbers beats ability. A large bunch of cheaper less uber tanks at close range may well be a better deal in winning the war than 1 expensive Tiger is, we shall have to see. I suspect this will probably be the case. It doesn't just apply to M10's and Tigers either, the prociple applies to everything.
3. Time cost (how long your base rate is) of each cycle depends on how many increases, decreases and introductions of new equipment you request, within your budget.
4. New varients of older equipment cost less time to introduce than new prototypes do. This can be up to half the time required for a new varient versus a new prototype, but it varies according to all the other additional choices you make in that cycle, how many you introduce and the state of health of your RDP factories. Base Rate is measured at a constant for comparitive purposes, ie: RDP factories at 100% health.
5. To offset how much faster varients are to introduce, they are tied to existing older varients in terms of setting maximum INTRODUCTION numbers. Once introduced, this leash is non existant.
6. All new equipment, including prototypes, cannot exceed a preset maximum to prevent too many being introduced. Thus, just because it is a prototype and not tied to an existing varient, you are still restricted in how many you can introduce.
7. All rules of RDP are global, they apply to all countries in equal application.
One last item for RDP. Currently, while it does affect PRODUCTION in addition to RESEARCH, it appears to hurt research more because you can only introduce a maximum of two classes of equipment per cycle.
This is going to change.
We plan to revert to a more production orientated design. When we make this change, ALL tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 (etc. ad infinitum) unit types, whether they be fighter aircraft, tanks, bombers, ATG's, AA guns, whatever they be ... all of them will be in research from the start of a campaign.
They will undergo research at a base rate, so your HC will not choose what to introduce (it will all be in research all the time) instead they will choose numbers to increase or decrease and also be able to accellerate (to some degree) one type over another, at a cost to other production.
Additionally, we will allow the ability of HC's to allocate which factory produces what equipment, so that bombing affects a branch (air, armour or whatever else we expand on through tier structures) by it's actual physical location on the map being bombed. Production allocations will be able to be moved (much like deployments are) at a cost to production, in time ... as well as eventually separating PRODUCTION from RESEARCH by having dedicated RESEARCH FACILTIES and PRODUCTION FACILITIES instead of both being tied to a single general location.