Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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I think the key issue that screws up the player ability to tweak production and upgrades is research. I like the earlier suggestion of undirected research. It removes the ability for the player to power tech their way to the top line fighters, and appears to remove most of the problems with flexible upgrades.

I agree completely ... research is research period. It should not be able to be directed at a specific plane. I think if it was simply removed instead of being targetable, this whole problem goes away. 2BY3 attempted to do this as best as they could without rewriting major parts of the game by making research ineffective against planes too far in the future ...

Where I seem to keep running into the wall here is that people want to use the *loophole* in the code and research aircraft against the grain then complain that because they did what the developers said no to, they should be able to use the fruits of their ill gotten gain.

I would not care about the ability to switch aircraft around at all *if* it was not the product of this *loophole* of skipping over research of planes to get to super plane xyz instead.

Some people are intent on exploiting this loophole then cloaking their intent with the "I have the planes, why can't i use them" defence. Please give a little more credit to people to see through that defense.

Just to set you straight, I am one of those who fought for user selectable aircraft within class limits. What I do not accept is using a weakness in the code to bypass aircraft to get there. I couldn't care less if you refit group with different aircraft within limits. I care about the system being exploited to achieve this due to a way of fooling the code because it doesn't say "has oscar been developed yet? If not, then no frank no matter what"

The alternative is non-directed research where no aircraft type is determined and they are all in one big list of what happens and you just get the next one in the list as available once you have spent enough on R&D. (but again, this requires major code changes so realistically is not going to happen)

Some of you need to grasp the reality that the game has been written, it is done. There will be fixes and some new features but they are not likely to gut major portions of the code because of the large numbers of problems it causes.

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ORIGINAL: Oznoyng

What I want to fix is this:

It is late '44 and I am losing badly, Saipan just fell and B-29's have begun destroying Japan. A couple of CV battles in 42 sent the pre-war American CV's to the bottom. I reached PM and was able to capture and damage Auckland, though I had to retreat. I held Guadalcanal til early March 43. Oz was cut off for almost 6 months. Oil and resources from the SRA have sustained the economy, but those supplies no longer come. Steel sharks of the US navy tear apart our merchants and litter the seabed with the oil and ores that would otherwise feed the economy. All is lost and there is nothing left to fight to the bitter end.

The juggernaut that is the United States has produced and produced and produced and is simply grinding us to dust. In the 6 month reprieve that I have gotten, I managed to produce an extra 1800 aircraft, mostly late model fighters. Over 1000 Oscar's are still in service, despite the fact that I have better aircraft to replace them.

Why? Cuz someone thinks that Saipan fell 6 months ago.

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But even if you take research away (or just make it generic), but still allow tweeking of production that results in those Franks, even if delivered on schedule we still should be able to use them to replace those Oscars still flying around in late 1944/early 1945....IF they are available in quantity in the pool. And open up the Allies, too....to be consistant...

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ORIGINAL: Culiacan Mexico

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ORIGINAL: Oznoyng

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ORIGINAL: Culiacan Mexico
It distorts the game historically.

History goes out the window as soon as I enter orders and the random number generator gets involved in resolving the first turn. We can adhere closely to the realities of WW2, but we can't reproduce it. And why would we want to? I can go read books if I want that. The problem with this rule is that it crosses the line between adhering to the realities and enforcing history on a situation that differs from history.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think most of us want certain limits. We want the game to maintain some kind of historical flavor as I believe the developers do also. While allowing every Japanese army unit to fly Franks might be great in the game, was it likely to happen historically… I don’t believe so.

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag
If people can get together and agree on the fact that these to are linked together, perhaps we can come up with a solution that (a) makes people happy and (b) can be sold to 2BY3

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My problem is that the upgrade paths editable in the scenario and db editors are not flexible enough and will actually cause more focus than a player may want. If I make Oscars upgrade to Tony's, and then to Tojo's then all production of Oscar's ceases when the Tony is available and all Tony's when the Tojo appears. The factories autoconvert. When an upgraded model is available, I can then produce it and only it. On the other hand, I may want to have all 3 around.

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ORIGINAL: Warspite**

The argument that to change it would make it unhistorical is wrong because its not historical now. Here is a list of fighters and the Sentais that used them. Bold are sentais that upgraded from Nates and Red from Hayabusas.

Nate equipped Sentais = 1, 4, 9, 11, 13, 18, 21, 24, 33, 50, 54, 59, 63, 64, 70, 77, 78, 85, 87, 144, 246.
Hayabusa equipped Sentais = 1, 11, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33, 48, 50, 54, 59, 63, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73, 77, 101, 102, 103, 104, 112, 203, 204, 248.

Shoki equipped Sentais = 9, 22, 29, 47, 85, 87, 246.
Hien equipped Sentais = 17, 18, 19, 23, 26, 28, 37, 55, 56, 59, 65, 68, 78, 105, 244
Hayate equipped Sentais = 1, 11, 13, 14, 20, 22, 25, 29, 47, 50, 51, 52, 64, 71, 72, 73, 85, 101, 102, 103, 104, 111, 112, 200, 246.
Only 2 Sentais operated the Randy

Okay it didn't keep my colours or bold face from my word document I created, nor allow me to attach it, so here is what you have left over after the upgrades:

Nate equipped Sentais = 4, 70, 78, 144.
Hayabusa equipped Sentais = 21, 24, 30, 31, 33, 48, 54, 63, 77, 203, 204.

We can see that the upgrade paths in the game are meaningless anyway, as there are no where near 34 groups of Hayabusas in WW2 nor anything like 12 Ki-102, and as we can see most surviving Sentais were equiped with the Frank. Its wrong now so whats the deal with letting us use what we build.

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

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ORIGINAL: irrelevant

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My problem is that the upgrade paths editable in the scenario and db editors are not flexible enough and will actually cause more focus than a player may want. If I make Oscars upgrade to Tony's, and then to Tojo's then all production of Oscar's ceases when the Tony is available and all Tony's when the Tojo appears. The factories autoconvert. When an upgraded model is available, I can then produce it and only it. On the other hand, I may want to have all 3 around.

I believe it is possible to edit the upgrade path by group. If I understand correctly it is not necessary to make the change you describe here. I could be mistaken though; I have not looked at the editor, this is just based on reading other threads, which might contain misinformation....

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That is why I distinguish between "adhering closely to the realities of WW2" and reproducing it. Frag views the amount of resources that Japan has, and the state of her economy as being fixed to historical results.

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Unfortunately, Frag is muddying the waters. He is using research as a reason not to do this. I have already expressed, numerous times, that I don't think research in it's current form should be in the game at all. I think it should be gone from the game or rewritten. I agree with Frag completely on that point. But to me, they are seperate issues.

The problem is, research can be dealt with as a seperate thread and ultimately can be handled by a house rule: "No research of aircraft other than those at start, and no reassignment of research factories to anything else." Fixing aircraft upgrades, at the very least, requires an OOB change. To be truly effective, it requires code changes.

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And whatever I set by group is what dictates what I have available in 4 years into the game. I can't predict what I will want in 4 years because too much is unknown.

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IMO the problem requires no "fix" and is not an error. For those who understand how to use it and what the production system allows it should work fine. For those who want a "phased plasma rifle in the 40 GW range" for every Japanese squad, play Pacific General and you can have all the 'Axis-X-Plane-Fantasy-Realized' thrill-bytes you want.

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The question as to what sorts of aircraft a unit may fly is answered in advance. You do not get to wholesale rewrite history and deploy advanced aircraft to lots of units that never had them.
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Why not? We are rewriting history with every turn of every game already.

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In effect, you get to optimize, to a certain degree, production in a way that allows you to get the right kinds of replacements for depleted units. It's a good way to allow you to fix "ahistorical" problems in equipping units that might come about as a consequence of "ahistorical" choices as regards which units are deployed where, and losses that differ from historical ones.

I fail to understand the need to enforce rigid history on players who are not that interested in playing historically, when the designers gave players the means to significantly alter history in so many areas of the game.

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It does not seem ever to have been intended as a way for the Japanese to crank out lots of advanced aircraft in greater numbers earlier than usual.

How do you come by that conclusion? It appears they gave us about 50% of the ability to do just that. The only thing I can conclude is that they were either conflicted as we are in the design room, or failed to realize that an attempt to provide the player a means to "balance" his production after bombing raids and such actually gave them a "warcraft" kind of ability as well.

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The people complaining about it seem to fall into two camps: 1. Those who thought the system could be used in that way and lack a means to correct the production mistakes they've made. Maybe you can edit your game-in-progress to restore some balance to your production. 2. Those who seem to think that this capability to address some balancing problems caused by ahistoric losses should be morphed into some sort of Starship Troopers type time-warp that has the Japanese knowing in 1941 which of their 1944 designs will be the best at countering the as-yet-unseen 1943-44 Allied designs.

Yes, that about sums it up. The designers gave them tools to just that, but only about half-way. And that's the crux of the problem.

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IMO the problem requires no "fix" and is not an error. For those who understand how to use it and what the production system allows it should work fine. For those who want a "phased plasma rifle in the 40 GW range" for every Japanese squad, play Pacific General and you can have all the 'Axis-X-Plane-Fantasy-Realized' thrill-bytes you want.

And this is where your argument is all wet. The fact this thread is now going on 12 pages indicates this is indeed a HUGE error. Not so much an error in code or even in design, per-se, but an error in communicating a consistant intent to the player. For good or bad, it is quite obvious a significant number of players are demanding the ability to want their phased plasma rifles because the designers gave them the very tools in the game to build them with. As far as I'm concerned, if they can provide the rest (open-ended-on-the-fly-upgrade-paths) with a fairly small amount of work, they should, to make these people happy. Doing that will not in any way detract from the way the "rigid adherence to history fanatics" want to play the game.

I fail to see why, if BOTH crowds could be provided the facilities to play the game in accordance to their view of its intent why it should NOT be done. And it is the not that the "historical fanatics" view of the game is wrong, it is the desire to impose that view on others, when the game clearly allows for that other view, that IS wrong.

(in reply to mdiehl)

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Just given up the game.

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ORIGINAL: MG3

BTW "Mr." Diehl:

to tell people to play Pacific General or suggest that they want plasma rifles just because they want to use planes which they produced to the GAMES OWN SYSTEM is typical for you. I easily say youre the biggest and most arrogant selfcentered useless asshole on this board.

Maybe you should found the wargamer asshole organisation- you would be a worthy leader.

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ORIGINAL: irrelevant

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Just given up the game.

We'll miss you.

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Please answer me my question (which the better players club failed to do): why do you want to force us into a gamesystem which you as "Mr. IKNOWITALL" (as you have show in many other threads) think is the only right thing, when the new upgraderules wouldnt even be mandatory for all players. You could simply play as before.

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1. Filter the available-to-research planes by a date. Not perfect, because ideally a plane would become available because its predecessor was in production. Designing and defining a precedence list would be far more work and code than we will get. A simple date filter would be easy to do.

2. Edit the upgrade paths to allow more/most/all Nate groups to upgrade Nate-Oscar II-Frank. Or set some to go to the Tony or Tojo. I'm sure plenty of folk have the research materials to set this up reasonably.

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If you want to go add an additional upgrade path to the Oscar and change all the starting R&D factories to size 0's, you have removed research from the game and dealt with the #1 complaint of Oscars not upgrading. That can all be accomplished without a single piece of code work.

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl

I'm saying I don't see it as Matrix/2by3's burden to recode the thing to provide a feature that they seem never to have intended to provide. It would cost yet more money. At some point game manufacturers have to show a profit or at the least break even.

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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1. Filter the available-to-research planes by a date. Not perfect, because ideally a plane would become available because its predecessor was in production. Designing and defining a precedence list would be far more work and code than we will get. A simple date filter would be easy to do.

2. Edit the upgrade paths to allow more/most/all Nate groups to upgrade Nate-Oscar II-Frank. Or set some to go to the Tony or Tojo. I'm sure plenty of folk have the research materials to set this up reasonably.

Thats exactly what I said in different words