FWWC - Movement Elevation Modifier

[Volcano Man]

Maybe I am not fully understanding the issue, but 10 MP per 100m elevation is basically a standard amount for all FWWC, PzC and MC games since the beginning. It was a value that was decided to be sufficient enough to not be considered insignificant and it has been in use for some 15 years or so.

As I said I saw 2mp in some PC titles, unfortunately I have cleaned up my drive in the meantime but I think it were some newer titles.

Ah, well, looking at the PzC titles here, the most recent one (Kharkov '43 I think?) does have this set to 2 MP, but all the others are set to 10 MP (including Moscow '42).  So, that is 20 titles set to 10 MP, and 1 set to 2 MP.

That is hardly convincing that it should be reduced, and honestly I am not sure why it changed to 1/5th the standard value used all these years in that one title.  It might have been a misunderstanding by the designer - perhaps the elevation "steps" in Kharkov '43 is less than other titles, and so the MP penalty was reduced, but since it is handled as 'per 100m' then the engine will reduce it according to the elevation scale of the map automatically.

Now if there were good reasons why it was reduced to 2 MP in the latest game, then I could consider lowering it to 5 MP (I wouldn't go any lower than that though), which is 1/2 the standard value used all these years, or 8 MP as you suggest, but I am not convinced that it is necessary just yet. The problem is that I am a slave to uniformity...

[BigDuke66]

Have to correct my previous post:

Regarding road speed, in the FWWC notes I explained (or I thought I explained) that primary road movement for foot units basically costs less over what it is in other games, in order to represent historical marching distances. Now this difference in the series I guess this could be justified that WW1 infantry generally had less equipment than your WW2 or MC infantry.

I think today it's about 120 steps per minute with a step 75-100cm, that is a range of 5,4 to 7,2 kilometers per hour, in the game we have road movement of a C unit at 6 kilometers per 2 hours. Of course no breaks or whatsoever is in this calculation, but in the game we get 36 kilometers per day and that only if on a plain, any elevation will shrink this by 2 kilometers, doesn't sounds much but as I said except for the plain Northern portion of the map you will have elevations surely every 2-3 turns what lowers the daily marching distance at least to 32-30 kilometers.

The real problem seems to be that there is a difference how these values play out comparing the various campaign scenarios(20/31/24/12/24/14 days) with single scenarios(longest 5 with 11/9/8/7/5 days with all other below).
Just did a small calculation and taking average values one could march a C unit 5 full day circles before its fatigue would reach 96, after that it could rest on the 6th day before being able to march again in the 6th night starting with a fatigue of 6.
In these 5 days the unit could march 288 kilometers what makes a daily average of 57,6 kilometers. That is a lot but that also means that I can roughly simulate "Gewaltmärsche"(Forced Marches) in all the campaign scenario and that they pay out good. But in all the shorter scenario I can't benefit from this marching performance, not only because they are short but because they usually don't have any bigger distances to cover as they are only battle scenarios where fighting and not marching occurs.
So when looking at the fighting side of the game you again have the problem that a single clear hex + elevation costs 9 MP what leaves less than 2/3 MP and so prohibits any assaults that turn and only allows 1 shot. It explains why I feel a certain "slowness" in the shorter scenarios, not only because doing 36 kilometers a day isn't that much for fresh units but because the fighting is drastically slowed if you pursue an enemy up hill.

Again 8MP per 100 meter would solve this slowness in fighting but it would not be so low that the marching distances would go beyond any plausible values.
I understand that you want not go away from these long set values but than the fact is that the FWWC series does differ in a lot aspects from the PC or MC series, why not here too?

[Volcano Man]

I understand that you want not go away from these long set values but than the fact is that the FWWC series does differ in a lot aspects from the PC or MC series, why not here too?

FWWC differs in RULES, but not in data. Actually, all the unit combat factors are scaled from my _Alt database using in PzC, and the PDT data is identical in almost every situation in order to be consistent between both series. The idea being that if you play one title then you should know what to expect, and that the world/universe behaves in the same way between all the games. So in other words, you could theoretically put FWWC units into PzC and get predictable results, the only difference being the time period and of course any basic rules required to represent anything unique about WW1 (like the MG units needing to be in T mode to move, field guns and MG units require full MPs to deploy, etc).

Now this isn't such a big deal to some, but I strive for consistency.

Honestly I fail to see how saving 2 MPs when moving across a 100m step in elevation will make that big of a difference (which would only be 1 MP for 50m elevation). You would have to traverse 2 or 3 elevation increases per turn for this to really matter. To me a change is only justifiable if it is significant (I call it the 'rule of halves' (or doubles) in game design). In other words, a significant difference would be if the elevation modifier was either 5 or 20, not 8 or 12.  6 MPs would also be significant, as the difference is -4 MPs, which is the cost of moving +1 primary road hex (IIRC), though.

That said, I am not sure I will ever be convinced since the 10 MP value has been used for so long, and across so many games and series, but I will consider it. ;)