Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Joch1955

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ORIGINAL: metaphore
His point was all about game mechanics and sloppy coding, not fighter quality, and his frustration came from another dodgy answer used to divert the blame into supposed game balance effect: "we won't fix it because it would give an advantage to this side blah blah blah" or, in this case, "the rules are the same for both players so it's not broken"... which is a moot excuse when consequences for each side are not the same.

Well I don’t see that at all, “sloppy coding” is a bit harsh. As Denniss pointed out, F4 production in July was just starting up. The F2 was still the main production model and around 250 were produced after Barbarossa began. All we are talking about is including F4s in some units in June and maybe tweaking the reinforcement schedule.

The WitX series are very complex and track every AC, AFV, Artillery piece, etc. in the theater. There are bound to be errors/guesstimates in the OOB. WW2 was a very well documented war, but often when you try to track down details, you find the info is not there. IMHO however, the Devs are committed to this series and will eventually fix any errors pointed out to them.

As I said, this is a tempest in a tea cup and nothing to get worked up about. As it is, the F2 wipes the floor with the VVS. I have been checking the Air Combat results for June-July and whenever VVS fighters run into 109s, even the E model, they suffer massive losses. This is even the case with the MIG-3 which was arguably the best Russian fighter in 41 and on paper roughly equal to the 109. This is because the LW skill level is much higher than the VVS one. Having more F4s would not change the results.

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ORIGINAL: Nix77

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ORIGINAL: erikbengtsson

The Luftwaffe being "bled white" of 109's in late summer, early fall of 1941? How on earth can that possibly happen?

The air war is still being looked into, and if you mean bleeding dry the Luftwaffe in human control, that's absolutely possible, depending on how you use them. With AI control, first turn losses are 500ish German aircraft iirc, and that's still a sustainable number. With some tweaking and human intervention, the losses can fall well below 100. Do that tweaking every turn and you won't be "bleeding white".

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ORIGINAL: erikbengtsson

My post was a reaction to one of the original poster's claims that I thought was a bit over the top. ;)

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ORIGINAL: metaphore

But, in our actual game with the current system: 0 Bf 109 are delivered in August (F2 or F4)

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ORIGINAL: metaphore

But, in our actual game with the current system: 0 Bf 109 are delivered in August (F2 or F4)

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ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

Again, I say that 2by3 does not design games for wargamers or for fans of history:
They create games for data miners.

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A true data miner doesn't care if a game stress point is realistic, believable, or accurate. All a data miner cares about is whether the stress point is a) repeatable and b) meaningfully exploitable.
You can look at any single weapon system in the game and see clearly that the game is absurdly over-engineered. The players who are considered great are data miners and always have been. The play testers (well, you guys are the play testers; I'm speaking of the ALPHA play testers) were all data miners.

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You cannot shove this much data into a Grand Strategy Wargame without expecting the kinds of unrealistic exploits that have been commonplace since WitE(1) and WitW. You can count on 2by3 giving this game a lot of support and patching, but it will be a long time before gameplay isn't overshadowed by unrealistic exploits and/or game-killing bugs.

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ORIGINAL: MarkShot

Very big learning curve. With people's feedback they will get it where it needs to be.

Yes, this game is intricate or complex if you want simple and period feel play HOI4. It has the music, graphics, and terminology.

...

So, the game you want exists today. You even have database like here, but it is of no real consequence. I thought that is what people are discussing here making the output database reflect plausible outcomes of 39-45.

GG, devs, betas ... keep going, you have a great start!

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ORIGINAL: MarkShot

Very big learning curve. With people's feedback they will get it where it needs to be.

Yes, this game is intricate or complex if you want simple and period feel play HOI4. It has the music, graphics, and terminology.

Of course, air was just simply a code hack on top if the political state zones to make air and sea zones. Despite having no hexes, planes halt exactly at the coast line; because it corresponds to the political map boundaries. Despite being realtime, planes don't transit, they simply appear in the target hex. Everyone is talking in the news these day about FOB weapons, but Paradox had them first in 1939. Air control of a zone is simply binary. If I have 5001 fighters of The Channel, the OPFOR has 5000, I got control; and I do mean enough planes that more would be lost by collision than by fire.

So, the game you want exists today. You even have database like here, but it is of no real consequence. I thought that is what people are discussing here making the output database reflect plausible outcomes of 39-45.

GG, devs, betas ... keep going, you have a great start!

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ORIGINAL: carlkay58

A few comments:

1. The majority of Air Directives are Ground Support and Recon. Ground Support is defining the Air Directive and then you can turn it on or off through the button or hot key. This also helps you concentrate the Ground Support exactly where you want it. Recon Directives are setup once and then you just adjust them to where you want them each turn. In both cases it is very minimal management after the initial setup and even the setup goes fast once you are experienced at it.

2. Air Superiority is NOT what you think it is. The only use for Air Superiority is to enable a chance of intercepting enemy aircraft far from friendly air bases. On the Eastern front neither side really have fighters with the range to take advantage of this mission. I strongly suggest never using it.

3. If you want fighter interceptions of enemy air action you have two choices. To counter enemy Ground Support directives then you assign your fighters to your Ground Support directives and they will do the job very nicely.

4. If you want fighter interceptions of non-Ground Support directives then base them in a well-supplied air base (use Air Supply if the air base needs more supplies). DO NOT ASSIGN THESE FIGHTERS TO ANY OTHER DIRECTIVES. This is the step that everyone seems to forget. If you do this then you will be able to intercept enemy Ground Attacks, Ground Support, Recon, and even Strategic Bombing in the area of the air base (about six to eight hexes). I assign single air groups across the front at different air bases to give good coverage. It works. It has always worked and it still works. You may not get the 50+ fighter interceptions but you will get interceptions that hurt enemy air activity - either Axis or Soviets - and REALLY punish unescorted bombers.

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ORIGINAL: GibsonPete

carlkay58: "3. If you want fighter interceptions of enemy air action you have two choices. To counter enemy Ground Support directives then you assign your fighters to your Ground Support directives and they will do the job very nicely."

~ Absolutely agree. This is the way to get the job done.

Zemke: "Frankly, the whole Air Model seems too complicated, not very intuitive, and a lot of clicks to get something close to what you want, and even then, you don't know if the computer is going to do what you tell or not, or it seems that way."

~ I agree but we play the cards dealt.

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ORIGINAL: Thogode

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ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

Again, I say that 2by3 does not design games for wargamers or for fans of history:
They create games for data miners.

Is the WWII data mining community large enough to make such an approach of the developers economically feasible?
I guess the developers have to pay a rent. And the publisher also likes to earn some money.

quote:


A true data miner doesn't care if a game stress point is realistic, believable, or accurate. All a data miner cares about is whether the stress point is a) repeatable and b) meaningfully exploitable.
You can look at any single weapon system in the game and see clearly that the game is absurdly over-engineered. The players who are considered great are data miners and always have been. The play testers (well, you guys are the play testers; I'm speaking of the ALPHA play testers) were all data miners.

How do you know that all testers are data miner?
And if the testers are all data miners, why are these errors/exploits are showing up now? Shouldn't these things have shown up during testing already?

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You cannot shove this much data into a Grand Strategy Wargame without expecting the kinds of unrealistic exploits that have been commonplace since WitE(1) and WitW. You can count on 2by3 giving this game a lot of support and patching, but it will be a long time before gameplay isn't overshadowed by unrealistic exploits and/or game-killing bugs.

This threat is, looking at WitE2 itself, confusing and gives me little hope for the future development of WitE2.
From your conclusions and the remarks from Zemke I am inclined to think the starting message of the thread is right: The common player should come back to this game in a few years - if you will be able to come back in a few years because only the data miners and their discussions about exploits will remain. But will such a not-so-common audience increase sales and profits?

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ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

Again, I say that 2by3 does not design games for wargamers or for fans of history:
They create games for data miners.

A true data miner doesn't care if a game stress point is realistic, believable, or accurate. All a data miner cares about is whether the stress point is a) repeatable and b) meaningfully exploitable.
You can look at any single weapon system in the game and see clearly that the game is absurdly over-engineered. The players who are considered great are data miners and always have been. The play testers (well, you guys are the play testers; I'm speaking of the ALPHA play testers) were all data miners.

You cannot shove this much data into a Grand Strategy Wargame without expecting the kinds of unrealistic exploits that have been commonplace since WitE(1) and WitW. You can count on 2by3 giving this game a lot of support and patching, but it will be a long time before gameplay isn't overshadowed by unrealistic exploits and/or game-killing bugs.

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ORIGINAL: MarkShot

I DON'T think this game is over modeled.

It could well be argued that it under modeled.

Why? Because much of the behavior modeling is based on randomness and complex rule sets. (First, this is either mainly done due to its BG history; or you can get a great number of moving parts without overloading the hardware it is running under.)

An entirely different was to build a game of this type is using physics equation and agents.

When done well, either approach should give you results that correspond to historical outcomes.

The physics approach given the scale of this game would probably grind play to halt. But one of the advantage of agents, and physics is you can get emergent behavior which will never happen with rules and dice. Physics is reductionist, but can lead to unanticipated outcomes since not all interaction where explicitly coded for.

---

As a retired software engineer, I am happy with either approach as long as the game is immersive, believable, logical vis a vis real world practice, and had a good UI and docs. I consider this game to be a master piece of the rule set approach of design. Something like MIUS and CMx2 have generally increased processing power to be physics based. (Besides rule based tending to lack emergent behaviors, they also tend to be more subject to boundary conditions. Of course, if the designer is not careful, boundary conditions are often the basis of the start of an exploit chain.)