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Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2018 12:09 am
by captainjack
It's these unintended consequences that made me disable it. I doubt I play any better, but I enjoy it more.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:05 am
by AnalogGamer
I am seriously considering turning soft cap off. I hit 100% two or three battles into the GC '39(didn't think to look that early). WTF is that all about?

My confusion stems from the other threads about piling on hordes of units for "hero-farming".

How can one have extra units without sacrificing loads of prestige during each battle?

Playing on "General" for my first run through, and have a good amount of prestige going into Norway, but from what I have seen here there is a storm on the horizon in '43.

What am I getting wrong? How can one hero-farm and make prestige?

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:44 pm
by goose_2
AnalogGamer wrote:I am seriously considering turning soft cap off. I hit 100% two or three battles into the GC '39(didn't think to look that early). WTF is that all about?

My confusion stems from the other threads about piling on hordes of units for "hero-farming".

How can one have extra units without sacrificing loads of prestige during each battle?

Playing on "General" for my first run through, and have a good amount of prestige going into Norway, but from what I have seen here there is a storm on the horizon in '43.

What am I getting wrong? How can one hero-farm and make prestige?
1st) You want soft cap 100% this means you are earning 100% of the prestige you are supposed to.

2nd) You can have as many units in reserve as you want they have no impact on your soft cap. Soft cap only takes into account the units you have deployed.

3rd) In order to attain the most prestige possible, I am well over 100k into 44 on Manstein, almost always buy regular replacements between scenarios, and never overstrength anything but artillery, AA, and maybe Bombers, on the Campaign's 39-41. Once you get to 42 you can start spending money on elite replacements, and overstrength, and upgrades, and stuff like that.

4th) Hero farming is about building a strong reserve force that you have many and various units to tap into once you start losing experienced units in 43-45. You do not want to be always relying on any single one unit that when you lose it you feel ready to quite the game. So in 39 I work on getting many units to 1 or 2 stars. 40 2 stars and 1 hero. 41 and 42 3 stars and 1 hero. 43 4 stars and 2 heroes...44 and 45 it is a free for all. ;)

Hope this helps

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 5:47 pm
by hugh2711
Joe6778; Since you started this thread I started a thread with attatched replays in the AAR section which explains all the things like farming heroes/prestige/other strategies and particular scenario tricks. It is done/explained from the point of view of not very experienced player ( so NOT at one of the really hard unlockable bonus levels) so it might? be of use to you. Only in GC43 at the moment but you still might find it useful.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2018 8:05 am
by captainjack
If the soft cap annoys you it's quite easy to disable it if you are willing to edit the gamesrules file (back it up first).

Nico has created a Softcap off mod if you would prefer a slightly safer option.

If you have disabled softcap successfully, the percentage reading doesn't show up.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:30 pm
by MaxF
I don't like to modify the game's file. I deal with the Soft Cap on my own.
I find it strange though that now for example, in GC East '44 I should Not deploy my best units such 3 Tigers, 1 FW190, 1 Elefant.
I'm still using a Pz III M with the hero Albert, who can still keep up vs a IS-1 ( losses: 2v2 in the last match).
I deploy Inf, AT and Arty without transports.
Overstrenght everything to 11 or 12 ( my idea is to keep the OverStregth units sane till the end of the scenario, for example a Tiger +1 Elite = 70, which is the same cost of a +1 Elite during the battle: if I would deploy it with 10, I would [easier] lose 1, so I will need 70 prestige to make it 10 again --- if I instead deploy it at 11, when I will [less probably] loose 1 and having it to 10, I will Not need to spend the 70 presting during battle, although I''ve already spent it in the deployement phase).

Max prestige I got has been 15k, now am dealing with 5k. And things will be worse and worse -- for example now I can deploy the Bf109-K ... it's no brainer to keep the G, since the K will cost more, but will do more damage and suffer less loss.
My problem is that I have set a Prestige Difficulty very low: to 50%.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 10:37 pm
by captainjack
I often struggle with prestige at 75% and no soft cap, so you're doing better than me. Even with these settings, it's important not to waste prestige as you never know when you will have an emergency - three tank destroyers catching a 5* panzerwerfer in the snow, leaving it at 2 strength can make in-game elite reinforcement look like a good idea no matter what the cost.

Your prestige management plan looks sound. Transports are surprisingly expensive over a campaign. Making your infantry walk everywhere also keeps them fit, allows then to appreciate the natural beauty of the countryside and is environmentally responsible. Well, maybe that's not quite the point, but it sure improves your planning and deployment skills including appreciating where a well placed paradrop can add value. If you have horse transport available, it's dirt cheap, can be faster than trucks across country and in snow, can enter terrain that truck can't and and never runs out of fuel.

Overstrength is also very expensive and even without soft cap I rarely overstrength front line units beyond 11 unless I have a specific reason for it. Even then it will be for specific tasks such as clearing out a blocking position quickly and is usually matched to heroes - eg 3D or better means you are likely to keep overstrength, but 3A means your chances of one-shotting a suppressed defender are much improved when at 13 trength. For back line units, AA is always at max strength, but artillery and aircraft is usually only 12 or 13 overstrength and artillery 10 if ROF <100.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 11:55 pm
by MaxF
hugh2711 wrote:joe6778; in terms of maximising your prestige/revenue i recently tried using a particular strategy and i found that in most of dlc 43 east (on field marshall difficulty) and i was still getting quite high income from captures. Its quite simple, EARLY ON I disband any infantry se units so i only have/get se tanks. since these do not count towards the soft cap I have them overstrengthed to the max but my ordinary tanks are not overstrengthed. My air force which also does not count towards the soft cap is overstrengthed. even at late 1943 values the infantry (dont use expensive transports) is nowhere near the soft cap threshold of 400 but the tanks always are over. consequently i can start gc43 east with 6 SE tigers ( 5 overstrengthed one inexperienced), 3 ordinary heroed tigers, a mean airforce, a full complement of units - one i can get a dv with and still get 90% of soft cap income.
I have been playing for years but this new strategy was a revelation for me, my game went up a notch. If you look through the threads about soft cap you will find tips about getting more income to the point where the soft cap wont irritate you anymore.

EDIT; Sorry my mistake; air units DO count towards the softcap. My airforce is mean because it is always heroed up as I nuture it/strafe/do whatever to get it heroed fast/ early on.
Really the Air Force doesn't count for the Soft Cap?
I've been keep it down for nothing till now?

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:08 am
by MaxF
captainjack wrote:I often struggle with prestige at 75% and no soft cap, so you're doing better than me. Even with these settings, it's important not to waste prestige as you never know when you will have an emergency - three tank destroyers catching a 5* panzerwerfer in the snow, leaving it at 2 strength can make in-game elite reinforcement look like a good idea no matter what the cost.

Your prestige management plan looks sound. Transports are surprisingly expensive over a campaign. Making your infantry walk everywhere also keeps them fit, allows then to appreciate the natural beauty of the countryside and is environmentally responsible. Well, maybe that's not quite the point, but it sure improves your planning and deployment skills including appreciating where a well placed paradrop can add value. If you have horse transport available, it's dirt cheap, can be faster than trucks across country and in snow, can enter terrain that truck can't and and never runs out of fuel.

Overstrength is also very expensive and even without soft cap I rarely overstrength front line units beyond 11 unless I have a specific reason for it. Even then it will be for specific tasks such as clearing out a blocking position quickly and is usually matched to heroes - eg 3D or better means you are likely to keep overstrength, but 3A means your chances of one-shotting a suppressed defender are much improved when at 13 trength. For back line units, AA is always at max strength, but artillery and aircraft is usually only 12 or 13 overstrength and artillery 10 if ROF <100.
Another thing I use to do is to move a heavily damaged unit in the back line, if I want to keep its exp, but not spending for it during the battle -- while keeping the Soft Cap low.

Not only Infantry are without transports: I plan a roadmap from my most advanced deploy spots to the least firing range distance in the final available turns. If my arty can make it moving 1 hexe per turn + turns to reload, then I deploy my famous slow advancing force which is formed by Art, AA, AT and Grenadiers/Pioneers alle zu fuss!
I always deploy this footed force: when it can't reach the major objective it can have another order. Deployed also in defensive scenarios of course.


Heavy Artillery does not take advantage of overstrength, or is it only to keep the costs low?

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:12 am
by goose_2
MaxF wrote:
hugh2711 wrote:joe6778; in terms of maximising your prestige/revenue i recently tried using a particular strategy and i found that in most of dlc 43 east (on field marshall difficulty) and i was still getting quite high income from captures. Its quite simple, EARLY ON I disband any infantry se units so i only have/get se tanks. since these do not count towards the soft cap I have them overstrengthed to the max but my ordinary tanks are not overstrengthed. My air force which also does not count towards the soft cap is overstrengthed. even at late 1943 values the infantry (dont use expensive transports) is nowhere near the soft cap threshold of 400 but the tanks always are over. consequently i can start gc43 east with 6 SE tigers ( 5 overstrengthed one inexperienced), 3 ordinary heroed tigers, a mean airforce, a full complement of units - one i can get a dv with and still get 90% of soft cap income.
I have been playing for years but this new strategy was a revelation for me, my game went up a notch. If you look through the threads about soft cap you will find tips about getting more income to the point where the soft cap wont irritate you anymore.

EDIT; Sorry my mistake; air units DO count towards the softcap. My airforce is mean because it is always heroed up as I nuture it/strafe/do whatever to get it heroed fast/ early on.
Really the Air Force doesn't count for the Soft Cap?
I've been keep it down for nothing till now?
Fighters count towards your soft cap.
Everything counts against your soft cap, except SE units.

If you have a unit marked SE, it does not count against your soft cap.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:25 am
by MaxF
goose_2 wrote:
MaxF wrote:
Really the Air Force doesn't count for the Soft Cap?
I've been keeping it down for nothing till now?
Fighters count towards your soft cap.
Everything counts against your soft cap, except SE units.

If you have a unit marked SE, it does not count against your soft cap.
Thank You...

So in order to keep the deployed prestige I could desire a SE air-unit, not only them on Tigers and Panthers ( the SEs I have now are 1 Inf, 1 Grenadier, 1PzIV, 1 Panther, 2 Tigers) Can happen that if I disband one (the new Pz III I got in '44...) I recieve a Fighter or Bomber?

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 1:51 am
by goose_2
MaxF wrote:
goose_2 wrote:
MaxF wrote:
Really the Air Force doesn't count for the Soft Cap?
I've been keeping it down for nothing till now?
Fighters count towards your soft cap.
Everything counts against your soft cap, except SE units.

If you have a unit marked SE, it does not count against your soft cap.
Thank You...

So in order to keep the deployed prestige I could desire a SE air-unit, not only them on Tigers and Panthers ( the SEs I have now are 1 Inf, 1 Grenadier, 1PzIV, 1 Panther, 2 Tigers) Can happen that if I disband one (the new Pz III I got in '44...) I recieve a Fighter or Bomber?
In game you only receive 1 SE Fighter, (that I know of) It is in Grand Campaign West 44 Cassino for escorting off the 2 trucks from Monte Cassino

Oh yeah I guess you just get one in Berlin
Michael Whitman
But you can never be awarded an SE Fighter

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:41 pm
by huckc
In US Corps you can get the highly coveted SE P47 fighters the whole way through.

Stat-wise, SE infantry get the biggest bonus as a percentage of their base stats but the soft cap free-roll is the biggest benefit by far though. So with Germans the optimal SE units are tanks which can be upgraded to Tiger IIs. Western allies it's the SE fighters, not sure about the Soviets.

I actually like the soft cap, the Grand Campaign as designed would be way too easy without it and it adds some interesting meta game aspects. Surprised it's not getting carried over to Panzer Corps 2, but I'm sure they have a better way in mind to fix exponential player strength.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:37 pm
by captainjack
HuckC

The idea behind soft cap is sound, but the soft cap itself is difficult to understand and manage.
For me the main flaws are that the settings take no account of difficulty level (it was especially nasty before teh tooltip was introduced in 1.3 as you could may have no idea it was having an effect), it is over-complicated and changes during individual scenarios (making it hard to manage and creating unintended consequences), and it duplicates other more controllable features (increasingly expensive overstrength, loss of overstrength for out-of-series upgrades, prestige and experience sliders), and it was introduced after a lot of the grand campaigns had been released, distorting the game balance on these. the game also lacks the necessary unit controls (the ability to disband points of overstrength on individual unist before deployment and a predicted soft cap display during deployment phase). Also it is not selectable, even though there is an option to use the pre-softcap settings (which included about 6 other very welcome changes). Most of these could be addressed in a soft cap mechanism for a new game or through an alternative mechanism such as scenario-prestige-limit an extra "special core" category so you could deploy 12 core (max 3 special) and 3 SE units where special are either historically rare or are maybe units less than 6 months old so you can't do an instant Tiger conversion across the board. Anyway, with soft cap in its current for, I'd rather stick with prestige and experience sliders and self-imposed challenges so I have soem idea what's going on.

MaxF
Rotating damaged units out of line is almost always a good plan (one of the rare exceptions is when you have a 2 strength nebelwerfer in a snowy forest with three hellcats nearby). Having said that, it feels good to seize the final victory hex with a 1 or 2 strength unit.

The thing with the heavy artillery is that when RoF is less than 100, you somtimes get no benefit from overstrength - 170 and 150mm guns at strength 10 fire 8 shots (80% of 10). At 11 strength they fire 8 shots (80% of 11 is 8.8, rounded down to 8), and at 12 strength you only fire 9 shots. It can be worth putting them up to 11 or 12 strength for other reasons, but usually there's other better ways to spend prestige.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 4:06 pm
by MaxF
I downgraded my "Doppler" +1mov 210mm to a 170mm, and OSd to 14 !!
Then, now in Babyusk, June '44, where I need to defend I wanted another range 4 unit so I sacrificed a 105mm for the 280mm K5 8) raised to 12, for Soft Cap's sake :(
I see now that has only 60% RoF = total shots 7

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Sat May 05, 2018 5:29 am
by captainjack
Heavy artillery is good for long range kills despite the low ROF, but the lower ROF is not good for suppression. Generally speaking Gernan artillery seems to provide the best mix in that there's a big variety of units and they can all be useful at some time, but every one has some kind of trade off in range, hitting power, speed, ammo, RoF etc. Even the towed 75, probably the weakest of the lot, can be useful early on, though I'm thinking a 2 move version with 5 or 6 ammo might make a better infantry gun.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 10:30 am
by MaxF
Can you explain how the Soft Cap reacts as you increase, in the difficulty setup window, the Overstrenght number?
I.e. if I raise it to 12, Soft Cap will have to consider a different total prestige to cap ?

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 4:20 pm
by dalfrede
MaxF wrote:Can you explain how the Soft Cap reacts as you increase, in the difficulty setup window, the Overstrenght number?
I.e. if I raise it to 12, Soft Cap will have to consider a different total prestige to cap ?
The difficulty window has no effect.
The total cost of the core units on the map is divided by the total number of core unit slots.
If the value is above 400 the prestige you earn is reduced by an unknown [to user] formula.
SE units are not counted.

Overstrength increases cost of a unit, understrength reduces cost.
Gifted units above the core unit allotment increase total cost as well.
Leaving core slots open reduces cost.

Soft Cap can be adjusted or turned off by editing the gamerules.pzdat file.
Note: Each DLC Data folder has it's own gamerules.pzdat file.

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Thu May 10, 2018 1:42 am
by MaxF
dalfrede wrote:
MaxF wrote:Can you explain how the Soft Cap reacts as you increase, in the difficulty setup window, the Overstrenght number?
I.e. if I raise it to 12, Soft Cap will have to consider a different total prestige to cap ?
The difficulty window has no effect.
The total cost of the core units on the map is divided by the total number of core unit slots.
If the value is above 400 the prestige you earn is reduced by an unknown [to user] formula.
SE units are not counted.

Overstrength increases cost of a unit, understrength reduces cost.
Gifted units above the core unit allotment increase total cost as well.
Leaving core slots open reduces cost.

Soft Cap can be adjusted or turned off by editing the gamerules.pzdat file.
Note: Each DLC Data folder has it's own gamerules.pzdat file.
I didn't know about leaving some core slots open...

My question about overstrength is that if for example a Tiger, from 10 to 11 it will cost +70 prestige. I read that with a greater number in the difficulty, a Tiger 11 would cost less (35 per strenght like from 1 to 10')

Re: Soft Cap

Posted: Thu May 10, 2018 3:41 am
by dalfrede
MaxF wrote: My question about overstrength is that if for example a Tiger, from 10 to 11 it will cost +70 prestige. I read that with a greater number in the difficulty, a Tiger 11 would cost less (35 per strenght like from 1 to 10')
I don't know, I don't think anyone has tried it.

If I start a new campaign with imported army, and I overstrength existing units no. And a two star unit can only overstrength to 12.
But if a buy a new unit it will start at 12.

You can edit the gamerules.pzdat file to change it, or turn off soft cap.

From gamerules.pzdat :
. . .
# *** Prestige soft cap
# 1=use soft cap, 0=don't use
UseSoftCap 1
NormalPrestige 400
MaxPrestige 800
MinKoff 20
. . .
# Overstrength cost, in percent of ordinary elite replacements cost
OverstrengthCost 200
OverstrengthCostPerPoint1 100
OverstrengthCostPerPoint2 150
OverstrengthCostPerPoint3 200
OverstrengthCostPerPoint4 250
OverstrengthCostPerPoint5 300