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Aden in RHS

 
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Aden in RHS - 2/16/2009 11:44:08 AM   
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Bogo Mil
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If you look at New Oleans in RHS, you see a very nice "feature": New Orleans has lots of manpower centers, and lots of HI, but insufficient ressources. Thus the player has to send ressources if he wants full production there.

I think Aden should be modelled the same, maybe even more extreme. Look into history: The Suez channel was very important for Britain, because it was the main traffic route to Inidia. Why did they need this route so badly? Because Britain needed ressources from India!

I think this can (and should) be modelled in RHS. Aden should have only very limited supply generation for free (feed the base force, some 100/turn surplus, maybe another 1000 to pay for HI expansion). But like in New Orleans there should many manpower centers and HI and enough oil to feed that HI. The idea is simple: If the player fails to deliver enough ressources to the UK, Churchill is in trouble in Europe and it's impossible to send combat supplies to East Asia.

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RE: Aden in RHS - 2/16/2009 1:24:00 PM   
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el cid again
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There are problems with this proposal - which is not bad in its intent.

The big problem is that Aden involves compromises for lots of different functions in the game.

In RHS Level 7 Aden is a map edge supply source - representing a point we want players to send ships TO in order to get units (which cannot be starving) - supplies and to a lesser extent fuel. The oil/fuel function of Aden - present in CHS and RHS Levels 5 and 6 - is now mainly served by Muscat. Not that Muscat makes them - but it represents oil production in Iraq, Iran and the Gulf States. OK - in Level 7 then Aden is where all the shipping of the Med (later in the war) - of Egypt and Red Sea locations - of East Africa - reaches (well almost reaches) the map edge - where players can "pick up" the things these ships have brought to Aden. In Level 5 and CHS it also represents ships going around the bottom of Africa - but in Level 6 and 7 this is represented by Capetown. Over time the import of Aden has declined - as we stripped out the things now entering the map at Muscat and Capetown; nevertheless - it is an important point where many units arrive and no few supplies. These supplies have two functions: to permit units to be at proper strength - and to feed shipping - so players want to go to Aden to get the supplies. Otherwise - they won't go there to get them.

What we did at New Orleans was try to create a way for players to be rewarded for sending PTO recources long distances. This mainly represents production in the Eastern USA - but also in UK. It does work if a player is realistic - and sends resources from New Caledonia or Australia or even India there. But a gamey player - or one who does not understand the design intent - will send resources from California!!! It is a difficult thing to create a mechanism that works well in all respects - and New Orleans is an experimental effort to see if we can get players to send resources OUT OF the map area?
When/if we get more slots - I can do more of this sort of thing. RHS is not going to abandon the shipping track system entirely - we likely will use something like Level 6 with a simple map edge track - because it is perfect in terms of speed time distance effects - because it causes uncertainties for the Japanese (when things will arrive in what area becomes hard to know - you cannot tell looking at a reinforcement table) - and because we can do things with logistics. To a degree less than I like - we do some of this in the tracks now - but we need more locations. Recife represents to a certain extent shipping from UK for example - but we are unable to use locations of this sort as arrival points for land and air units (unfortunately). It appears there are code problems with the extreme map edge - even if you don't extend that as RHS did - and so we also don't have land units appear at Salt Lake City or Canada - to avoid those issues.

What we might be able to do is implement this idea at Capetown. It could represent industry "behind" Capetown - say in the UK. Or even at Recife - but again the problem is - players can feed it from the US West Coast. And - of course - it is a long way from India to UK around the Horn - so it does not directly address the desire to send resources TO UK via Aden. On the other hand - Aden also is not a good way to do that while the Med is closed to shipping - and whatever we do - it does not change easily. RHS did make some effort to have supplies grow at the map edge over time - but it isn't easy to make a function (like sending resources off the map) start mid war.


< Message edited by el cid again -- 2/16/2009 1:35:56 PM >

(in reply to Bogo Mil)
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RE: Aden in RHS - 2/16/2009 2:13:07 PM   
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Bogo Mil
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I'm in 5/42 against the AI in RHS-MAIO. That's where most of my experiences are from.

In the Indian Theatre, I have a good surplus of AKs now. Dozens of these are sitting around idle. I start to send some of these to the Pacific, I don't have enough there. If I had to send ressources to Aden, the large merchant fleet in the Indic would have more importance. There would be more reason to send ships to Aden, not less! You also had to send convois to Calcutta on a regular basis - the Japs could try to intercept this shipping, so you had to fight... All in all, I think the theatre would be both more realistic and more interesting.

As I wrote, a small supply surplus "for free" is ok. But not as much as in New Orleans. If you don't send anything and don't move several divisions out, they will start to starve eventually - so what? I don't think any human player would be that stupid, though.

For pure realism, Aden should need oil as well. But shuttling oil from Muscat to Aden would only be boring routine work, the Japs wouldn't have much options to interfere (it's all off map shipping channel), so I think this can be skipped, Aden can be self sufficient in oil.

You are right, the idea can be applied at Cape Town, too. The player could utilize the resource surplus of Australia there. Recife and the other South American towns should stay what they are, imho. This is 3rd world and it should export ressources, not require them. I think it's perfectly in line with the primary house rule to send ressources from South America to New Orleans.

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They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin)

(in reply to el cid again)
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