Let's talk pop cap

I've always used the phrase pop-value density. I've only used cost as a rough index of value because that's what it is. While not perfectly accurate we'd spend years deriving some other index of value, and I know this for a fact because balance team has spent the past 5 years trying to perfect the already existing index of value i.e. cost!

You'd see this if you were honestly evaluating the merits of the idea, but it's clear you're straw-grasping instead of admitting to yourself that you rushed into an argument without actually thinking it through.

I fully agree on value density, however you have defined value density as purchase cost per pop over multiple posts. And with that I fully disagree.

Balance team has done a good job so far. You still have not shown in any way that your approach has any merits. Your only try was a theoretical Ober vs Penal comparison (based again solely on purchase cost) assuming they are already perfectly balanced pep population but not per purchase cost. But they likely are not, at least you have not shown so other than 'after 5 years of balancing I assume thiese units are balanced'. Which they are not, which is why there will be at least two more balance patches.

I have then asked you to explain how your ratio of purchase cost/pop (which was the only definition you gave gor value density up to the DPS post) can make predictions and how this value changes when you try to balance out units. I provided reasoning that it does not change with actual unit balance with both units as in the live game as well as a hypothetical scenario.
You have ignored responding to all of that and finally said that one needs to look at DPS. Which was, among other things, exactly what I argued for in the first place.

I am done with wasting my time on this.
Have a good one though.

Popcap and reduced manpower income are there to give an opportunity to the losing team to come back.

Maybe add that you can get above 100 pop, but since you need manpower to reinforce reduce manpower income about 75% when going above 100, so you have to have a haevily mechanized army and are not really able to rebuild losses until you reach lower pops (at least 70-80 to get actual manpower) but if you keep your stuff alive you will be able to boast a massive unit count, whch u still have to micro well so not to lose a ton of units/models to keep it (up)

Maybe add that you can get above 100 pop, but since you need manpower to reinforce reduce manpower income about 75% when going above 100, so you have to have a haevily mechanized army and are not really able to rebuild losses until you reach lower pops (at least 70-80 to get actual manpower) but if you keep your stuff alive you will be able to boast a massive unit count, which u still have to micro well so not to lose a ton of units/models to keep it (up)

that will ruin team games entirely and make them extremely one sided as one side will end up against vetted units AND increasing volumes of armour. the pop cap ensures that the numbers can only get so high and playing against 8 churchills or panthers a player just because you couldnt kill the damn things earlier does not sound like any fun at all

As a though experiment: what if instead of raising pop cap we reduced all units pop by 1, and increased upkeep from 1.5 to 1.6

A 7 pop mainline infantry would go from 10.5 upkeep/min to 9.6 upkeep/min (-9%)

A 20 pop heavy tank would go from 30 upkeep/min to 30.4 upkeep/min (+1.3%)

Overall upkeep for a 100 pop army would go from 150 to 160 (+6.6%)

While not numerically the exact same thing, this is essentially the same idea while being a bit more work intensive.

Popcap is fine. If the only concern is that you can't reach 0mp income worth of popcap then I dont see an issue-a solution might be to increase the mp upkeep to a full 2.5mp(or however much necessary) to pop so that you have zero income at 100 pop rather then rebalance all units around an increased pop max.

Some units are balanced around taking up a certain amount of your maximum army potential most notable in heavy tanks. A tiger will take up 21% of your army potential while only allowing you to be in one place at a time. An su85 and an at grenade upgraded con squad will counter the tiger and be able to cap and be able to recrew weapons teams will costing fewer resources and only 1 more pop cap.
This is fine because it rewards the player who has a better composition instead of the player who has the better units. All units and compositions have counters and thus there is no situation where a single army composition could max at 100 pop and be unbeatable.

Popcap is fine. If the only concern is that you can't reach 0mp income worth of popcap then I dont see an issue-a solution might be to increase the mp upkeep to a full 2.5mp(or however much necessary) to pop so that you have zero income at 100 pop rather then rebalance all units around an increased pop max.

Some units are balanced around taking up a certain amount of your maximum army potential most notable in heavy tanks. A tiger will take up 21% of your army potential while only allowing you to be in one place at a time. An su85 and an at grenade upgraded con squad will counter the tiger and be able to cap and be able to recrew weapons teams will costing fewer resources and only 1 more pop cap.
This is fine because it rewards the player who has a better composition instead of the player who has the better units. All units and compositions have counters and thus there is no situation where a single army composition could max at 100 pop and be unbeatable.

I dont like the idea of 100 pop meaning 0 mp income (if i read that right) as that means you wont be able to do...anything. reinforce, build caches, re-tech if you lose it (okw), bunkers, weapon racks ect...

I dont like the idea of 100 pop meaning 0 mp income (if i read that right) as that means you wont be able to do...anything. reinforce, build caches, re-tech if you lose it (okw), bunkers, weapon racks ect...

Nor do I, but it seems to be what the OP is interested in.

Nor do I, but it seems to be what the OP is interested in.

Sure. If you reduce infantry pop to like 2-3, and heavies to around 8-9.

Sure. If you reduce infantry pop to like 2-3, and heavies to around 8-9.

In other words, its not really about the mechanic, its about the scale of the game? You just want to be able to field an arbitrary amount of more "stuff" regardless of whether its through unit popcap reduction or max pop cap increase?

Sure. If you reduce infantry pop to like 2-3, and heavies to around 8-9.

That would just lead to more snowballing.

In other words, its not really about the mechanic, its about the scale of the game? You just want to be able to field an arbitrary amount of more "stuff" regardless of whether its through unit popcap reduction or max pop cap increase?

It's about removing an artificial limit that arbitrarily punishes strong mid-game strategies in favor of late game strategies.

If a player decides to invest heavily in light vehicles, medium tanks, and infantry to try and close out the game before stalling his momentum with upkeep why should he suddenly not be able to invest further into his army while the player who simply pushes "big tank win butan" can continue to build heavies and super-mediums?

EFA factions are particularly punished because they have less options for scaling unless they started the game with scaling in mind, or they picked one of the two viable doctrines they have available to scale such as VSL/ostruppen, or some sort of heavy tank doctrine for the soviets.

Grens will never compete with double BARed rifles, or double brenned sections in the late game. Pgrens kinda, but pgrens aren't a minute-0 option. Soviets will never compete with panthers and tigers without a heavy tank doctrine, and conscripts have their scaling problems also against Volks or any of the other elite infantry OKW can field easily.

People think this will lead to infinitely sized armies but it won't. 100 pop itself isn't maintainable for any serious amount of time because of upkeep. You're really only get to 100 pop through a lop-sided mid game, or very very tepid fighting. Players hitting pop-cap merely waste 10 minutes trying desperately to get any value out of their floated resources while their opponent can continue to invest.

...

I understand that you believe limiting pop results in lower strategic depth and favors factions that have overall higher performance to pop ratios. I agree to an extent on the latter part.

However, imposing a limitation actually forces players to make important decisions. The smaller the pool of units you have to fill, the more important each pick is. Taking a heavy tank literally means you are deprived of 3 mainline infantry slots so you have to weigh the cost of fitting it into your composition. If this consideration has never been an issue in your time playing, then you may simply not be at a skill level yet where its become important.
If you have ever watched competitive warcraft 3, the entire concept should be familiar to you.

I think we should get rid of tech and unit costs. Why are we limiting the game with arbitrary prices of things when we could just have all the units we want at any time?

Why this thread is still going?

OP clearly is in denial about any kind of balance reasoning behind the system and nothing is going to change his mind.

Its pointless to replay to him as he has deflected everyone and every single reason, logic and fact based argument while constantly repeating his own thing, like a broken record.

This thread is just a dog chasing own tail at this point, its not going to get it, but its also not going to stop it as long as you give it any attention.

Nor do I, but it seems to be what the OP is interested in.

But the OP is trying to fix something that isn't broken.

I've read a bunch of these posts, and don't think anything would be an improvement on the live patch. Unit preservation is already rewarded through veterancy. The current system gives a moderate comeback mechanism while still rewarding performance in the early game. I know some people like to bash Relic and/or the balance team, but they've really done a good job with pop cap. Most of us are down to arguing points like whether a Churchill should be 18 or 19, etc, etc.

It would be fun to have a 4v4 automatch mode on wide maps like Steppes where pop cap was 200 and MP income started at 450, but that would need to be something that you could pick when you want that type of chaos.

Taking a heavy tank literally means you are deprived of 3 mainline infantry slots so you have to weigh the cost of fitting it into your composition. If this consideration has never been an issue in your time playing, then you may simply not be at a skill level yet where its become important.
If you have ever watched competitive warcraft 3, the entire concept should be familiar to you.

No one is deciding that they want another 3 squads of infantry in the late-game because heavy tanks are the best value you can get for your resources and pop.

If you've ever watched COH2 you'd realize that you don't start building hero units in the first 5 minutes of the game and then populate your army with lower value units. The entire value composition of armies is reversed.

I think we should get rid of tech and unit costs. Why are we limiting the game with arbitrary prices of things when we could just have all the units we want at any time?

Yeah! We can start by reducing grenade tech costs for soviets! People have been complaining about those for years.

If you've ever watched COH2 you'd realize that you don't start building hero units in the first 5 minutes of the game and then populate your army with lower value units. The entire value composition of armies is reversed.

Your rebuttal to my statements about unit composition being "But warcraft 3 STARTS with a stronger unit!" clearly demonstrates your level of understanding here.

If we go by your logic, we would expect to see tri-hero builds in just about every game from every player because heroes are supposed to have the highest population to strength ratio. However we do not see this. Instead double or even single hero builds are very common at a professional level. The reasons for this are varied and situational but there are similar elements in CoH.

No one is deciding that they want another 3 squads of infantry in the late-game because heavy tanks are the best value you can get for your resources and pop.

Quite simply this isn't true. If we take a hypothetical scenario where a player has 79 pop, plenty of resources and has an otherwise balanced army except for having no mobile infantry and having no heavy tank, what does the player fill that remaining pop cap with? Occasionally the heavy tank might be chosen as a way to close out a game in which said player was already dominating, but in most other circumstances the infantry are going to be built instead.

Not only this but if your opponent is fielding 2 tank destroyers and 2 AT guns, I can assure you that selecting a heavy tank would be a complete waste of resources and infantry would be far more helpful.

The thing about a unit's value is that its not just about the raw stats vs cost vs pop that needs to be factored in. A units strength is also derived from its place inside its roster, its place within a given army composition, it's strength against your opponent's composition and the terrain you will be fighting on.

If we go by your logic, we would expect to see tri-hero builds in just about every game from every player because heroes are supposed to have the highest population to strength ratio. However we do not see this. Instead double or even single hero builds are very common at a professional level. The reasons for this are varied and situational but there are similar elements in CoH.

Or it could just be that experience mechanics, and micro taxes reward two hero builds over tri-hero builds for the most common game lengths.

For WCIII to be a contradiction we'd have to see something like no-hero builds winning high level games.

Not only this but if your opponent is fielding 2 tank destroyers and 2 AT guns, I can assure you that selecting a heavy tank would be a complete waste of resources and infantry would be far more helpful.

I suggest that if your opponent is already fielding 2 tank destroyers and 2 AT guns before a heavy is even on the field then your opponent either doesn't know what he's doing, or they've merely confirmed the overwhelming value of heavies with their disproportionate preparation.

Or it could just be that experience mechanics, and micro taxes reward two hero builds over tri-hero builds for the most common game lengths.

For WCIII to be a contradiction we'd have to see something like no-hero builds winning high level games.

Problem is that tri hero builds aren't uncommon, micro tax is not suitable as an argument. True experience mechanics can mean that heroes you may want to level are deprived of exp but there are level benchmarks that you want to achieve with most heroes and after that, the experience gain isn't as important so you would expect all players to grab 3 heroes at SOME point in any match longer than 15 minutes. But we do not see this. Instead we sometimes see single hero builds in matches that last 30 minutes, and sometimes tri heroes in 12 minute matches.

I suggest that if your opponent is already fielding 2 tank destroyers and 2 AT guns before a heavy is even on the field then your opponent either doesn't know what he's doing, or they've merely confirmed the overwhelming value of heavies with their disproportionate preparation.

Or you already lost a heavy tank to your opponent and those forces were produced originally to counter it? Or you have been dominating in the tank department while your opponent has stronger infantry so generalist tanks aren't necessary for him?