Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: juntoalmar

How is the situation regarding solitary game?

I remember there were some issues with production and with air combat not being able to finish (sometimes the button to close the A2A form was missing). Is this fixed?

Cheers!

quote:

ORIGINAL: vonpaul

another year almost done without any work on the missing scenarios :(

quote:

ORIGINAL: davidachamberlain

quote:

ORIGINAL: vonpaul

another year almost done without any work on the missing scenarios :(

That won't happen until AFTER they get the relatively bug free version 3.0 out. That could be next month assuming everything goes well.

After that, the scenarios and optional rules are prioritized.

I understand that there was previous work for the scenarios that was already done, so that may not take very long to do once things are stable.

Dave

quote:

ORIGINAL: Centuur

quote:

ORIGINAL: juntoalmar

How is the situation regarding solitary game?

I remember there were some issues with production and with air combat not being able to finish (sometimes the button to close the A2A form was missing). Is this fixed?

Cheers!

Air to air combat should be running smoothly, I believe. If there are still any problems there, I've not seen them.
Production planning still does have some issues which mainly have to do with selecting which factory is producing the build points which are traded overseas.

quote:

ORIGINAL: TeaLeaf

How's the convoy system managing the routes nowadays (especially those of the CW, France and the USA)?

Last time I tried to get away from version 2.7.5 (a good working, stable convoy system), I noticed the most annoying bug (for me anyway) returned: mainly that the program does not accept player corrections whenever it messes up some of the routes.

Last version I was trying my 2.7.5 save on, was version 2.9.0.4 and that didn't go very well so I switched back to using 2.7.5.
Since I haven't seen any patch notes related to convoy routing on any later versions so far, I haven't tried any later version yet and I'm wondering how the current state of the game handles convoy routing? Any complaints/praises regarding this from CW-fanatics?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Centuur

The fewer manual changes you make, the better it is for convoy routing. Thing is: the program remembers your default routes and wants to do them first, messing up things totally if you lose convoys. I let the program run things for me. I sometimes even eliminate all default routes, let the program recompute the lot back to basic and start from scratch again. That seems to be the trick for me...

But it's still a lot of work, that's true.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rkr1958
or give the option to the player to fully control how resources are routed to factories.

quote:

ORIGINAL: juntoalmar

quote:

ORIGINAL: rkr1958
or give the option to the player to fully control how resources are routed to factories.

I would go for this one. A toggle that allows to switch off the AI and let the player decide 100% of his routes, which are stored statically. If a convoy is sunk, the route that was using it (and only that one) would be affected. Automatic convoy routes are not a part of WiF and I think it shouldn't be imposed to the player.

quote:

ORIGINAL: juntoalmar

How is the situation regarding solitary game?

I remember there were some issues with production and with air combat not being able to finish (sometimes the button to close the A2A form was missing). Is this fixed?

Cheers!

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

Many players play World in Flames for decades and never use the Search & Seizure rule. Though it survives into the Collector's Edition rules, I think it would be fairly safe to leave it at the very bottom of any and all To Do lists and just move forward with no plans to ever use it as if it were an Optional rule. If it was, the most common vote on using it or not would be "don't care."

Most players also play face-to-face and enforce the Resource transportation rules just fine. I don't understand why the program can't allow a player to designate what each of his Convoy Points is doing with a resource-by-resource and BP-by-BP click chain through the sea areas needed. If Trade Agreements are not met at the end of the process, the program could display a message and not allow the player to advance the phase. The player would be forced to "Recompute", not the program. This would be frustrating, but the players would learn the rules, and eventually ace all the rules procedures, and have 100% control over all of the decision making. If the Oil use phase burns up an oil they thought they could use in production, they just learn the hard way to make that decision during the Re-org phase, as the rules work already. It is a common mistake to think oil coming in from Trade Agreement can be used in Re-org, sure. With rules enforcement, most players should learn that on the first turn.

Multiple Major Powers participating in a convoy chain would be challenging. Each time it is done, for each sea area, an MP and rarely a 3rd MP would have to be queried for approval. Unless the program knows it is running in a "2 Player" environment. Programming for that could be done first, with Multi-Player permissions coming along later. Players in a multi-player game could handle the permissions amongst themselves to get started.

Then there are Neutral Major Powers and US Entry Options. Many, many programming headaches there I am sure. I haven't played them yet, but I believe the Collector's Edition rules carefully cleaned up some 'edge cases' in rare game situations with these rules; perhaps the CE language could be used where needed to make rules procedure work most simply. US Refutes Naval War Zones would be especially challenging; rather than worry about designating what a US CP is doing _before_ any Naval Combat phases, go with the CE rules technique of including them in combat if they "could" be carrying resources to an MP at war with the Axis. Or simplify it further and just put USA CPs into any naval combats that occur on the map, anywhere, if this option is picked. This would theoretically allow a US CP in the Pacific to be attacked while there would be no connection to China or the USSR or a CW port incapable of storing Oil - but I think that incredibly rare condition would be tolerated by players in exchange for full control of their convoy points, which they don't have currently.

Resource and Build Point "lending" are one of the true hearts of the game. How much to support your Ally is one of the key decisions in a game designed to be a multi-player game, but with just one winner. Until MWiF allows 100% player control over the process, I won't play the game.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Giving the player 100% control of the convoy routes - as I understand what that means to the players - would enable them to violate the rules.

The most common problem I see when I look into routing problems (as reported in Tech Support) is that the player wants to have resources going through a lot of sea areas and getting to his factories for full production. Which is a good and noble thing.

1 - But what about trade agreements? According to the rules a player has to fulfill those first.

2 - And if he uses oil for reorganizing units, then those oil points won't be available for use in factories (or for being shipped to a different location and saved). This often happens when the player is planning on using oil from trade agreements to reorganize his units [which isn't permitted]. So the player mistakenly uses oil which had been routed to factories for production to reorganize units. Then after the Use Oil phase, he wants to change what happens to the trade agreement oil - which is sitting there unused - but the program won't let him change destinations/usage/routes for resources received in trade agreements after the Return to Base phases. That restriction is imposed because of the Search and Seizure rules [yeah, I know, that isn't coded yet; I'm waiting for the controversy about Production planning to quiet down before finishing that code].

3 - And if resources are being shipped through congested sea areas, then there might not be enough convoys to ship build points [after the factories produce them].

4 - And then there are the limits on how many resources (including build points) can pass through a minor port. If you are shipping resources to the USSR through Murmansk, you might tap out the maximum and not be able to get any build points through that minor port.

5 - Plus there are the rules about using convoys from friendly major powers.

All in all, the rules of the game limit how the player implements production and saving oil/build points. When playing over the board, or with other methods that don't check the rules, the player can get away with anything his opponent doesn't 'catch'. My objective was (and is) to have the program play the game according to the Rules As Coded.

quote:

ORIGINAL: paulderynck
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I'd say allow the players to do anything they want in both preliminary and final production phases, but then enforce the lending rules at the end of the turn, and provide a simple pop-up saying "production lost due to convoy chain constriction" and let the player learn from what happened. If he can't see why, then he can post a save and the brain trust here can check if it's due to him or to a bug.
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