Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
<snip>
what do u all think?
Thanks GJ

quote:

ORIGINAL: Symon

quote:

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
<snip>
what do u all think?
Thanks GJ

Agree. Neither I nor any of the Babes team have looked at the air aspect of the game’s database. I’ve always had (and still have) the greatest respect for the Air Team and thought that messing in their database pond would be like peeing in a bottle of Dom. Even our Babes airplane stats are generated directly from their paradigm, using their programs.

Thing is, there’s several ways to define upgrades – through the Airplane file or the Airgroups file: and an Airgroups upgrade links back to Airplane upgrades, and you will get one or the other, or both, depending on what switch you use. So it’s a real dog’s breakfast of possibilities.

Certainly worth looking at, but it will take a painstaking evaluation of every airframe and airgroup; Woof !!!
Ciao. JWE

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

GreyJoy,

Symon has alluded to what the fundamental problem is.

The fact is that over the years many have impugned the accuracy of the air teams OOB.  On every single occasion the complainers have failed to provide any concrete objective evidence that the air team, and TimTom in particular, were incorrect in their OOB.  Even when the air team has mentioned the assumptions it ultimately made when the source data was lacking, no one has successfully demonstrated that the assumptions were inferior to the complainers own assumptions.  Hence why Symon has such a high regard for the air team.

The primary upgrade path switch is that of the aircraft model upgrade.  Whatever the aircraft production will automatically switch to without player intervention, is what the air unit will upgrade to.  This can be altered, and has been on a few occasions to represent the historical experience, by the scenario designer for one upgrade in specific air units after which the pre set aircraft production upgrade will apply in that air unit.

I doubt that Symon would be a willing party to changing the aircraft production path unless you can demonstrate that TimTom got it wrong.  That leaves tinkering with the individual air units.  Again the problem is did the air team get it wrong.  Most unlikely.  So to achieve what you want entails very subjective decisions to provide non historical upgrade paths to individual air units.  Possible but it would rather run against the general grain of the DaBabes family of mods which is fealty to historical accuracy, albeit still retaining playability.  Not to mention the workload of examining each individual air unit.

The fact is that PDU ON provides Japan with a significant delta advantage over the Allies.  With PDU OFF, that delta advantage is reduced but not eliminated.  It all flows from the fundamental game design which allows Japanese control over their industry production whilst denying the Allies a similar control.  That design decision is not going to be altered.

I would suggest that a more fruitful approach to achieving your preferred outcome entails altering the production process.  For example, eliminating the airframe R&D bonus derived from aircraft engines.  Or perhaps making repairing R&D research factories even more costly the further away from the historical production date.  But not only would this entail much more dev effort, it would directly impact on the stock game and that is simply not an option as DaBabes must remain accessable to stock players.

Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Symon

I’ve been fiddling around with airplane upgrades for Op-SF, and boy, oh boy, it’s pretty complex.

With PDU-On, if the group is flying IJN fighters, what you see is a list of every IJN fighter as a potential upgrade – Plus every “specified” upgrade in the airgroup’s Upgrade field. If an airgroup has a “specified” upgrade to a Betty, and you select that, the next time you want to upgrade you will see a list of bombers, that you didn’t see first time around. Not to say that’s actually the case in the game, but it’s an available mod option. Pretty crazy, I know, but this feature, in combination with IJ aircraft production possibilities, makes for an outcome that an acid-head would be proud of.

With PDU-Off, what you get is what’s in the airgroup’s Upgrade menu “Up to a Point”. The definition of the Upgrade menu is critically important; it’s the only way the “airframe” upgrades get into the flow. Unfortunately, this aspect wasn’t developed as well as it could have been. Possibly, the implications were not realized, at the time, and if they were, there simply wasn’t the time or manpower to take advantage of it. Oh, well.

There’s 11 entry positions in the upgrade menu for an airgroup. The entries are taken in order, again “Up to a Point”. It’s going to be hard to describe the permutations textually, so I think the best approach is by an example, but first, an important note: for this to work, it’s going to take some incredibly difficult and, frankly, arbitrary choices as to airframe upgrade paths. Remember, these choices will be reflected in the “Nominal” aircraft factory upgrade flow, so the choices must be internally self-consistent and allow for rational production evolution, without necessitating player intervention. Many (if not most) players don’t dink with all that, so the default must be completely compatible with an easy and seamless gaming experience.

To begin: There’s 11 entry positions in the upgrade menu for an airgroup. Some are “specified” by listing an “airframe” number, some are blank. But they are not ‘simply’ blank. They have identifiers as Upgrade 1, Upgrade 5, etc. Their location within the Upgrade menu determines a lot of things.

Test Ku-1 is flying A6M2 Zeros. Upgrade entry 00 is to the A6M3a; entry 01 is to the J1N1-Sa; entry 02 is to the A6M5d-S; entry 03 is to Upgrade-4, etc. But A6M5d-S “aircraft” has no listed upgrade, so things stop there. So all you get is what’s listed.

But let’s say the M2 airframe upgrades to the M5, and let’s say the Upgrade entry 00 is set to ‘Upgrade-1’ and the rest are bumped down such that entry 01 is the M3a, and 02 is the J1N1, etc. THEN, the upgrade screen will show U-1, which is the M5, along with everything else.

There’s tons of cool stuff that can be done with this. Airgroups can have Zeros, and have U-1, 2, 3, clean to let them stay righteous, and then have U-4 be “specified” so they can change configuration, and have U-5, 6 be clean to let the new plane update according to its upgrade schedule, and then let some upgrade to the gnarly late war models by “specified” upgrades in the middle/higher menu entries.

I hope this all makes sense. It’s very convoluted, but once you get it, it’s like Woof!!

Not to say we can solve the problem anytime soon, but know what the problem is, and are looking at it. Trust me