el cid again -> RE: Editor-Distributed data injection capability? (1/20/2007 7:24:09 PM)
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We are now in almost purely a data correction mode - prepratory to abandoning development of Level 5 and 6. We will then go into a human testing phase to find errors editors cannot - and address that. We MIGHT add some Allied planes to EOS - but otherwise have no development plans. Instead we will move on to expanding the map at Level 7 - if possible. I must take exception about the term "Russian chrome." I regard it as a significant (if not gigantic) failure of WITP in general not to make the Soviets active at all times - or able to function if passive - and to fail to give them a Navy, a naval air force, a long range air force, airborne troops, etc. IRL Russia was the BIGGEST problem Japan faced - at least according to Foreign Minister Togo - and this view is almost certainly correct: Russia is hostile, gigantic, and close by. It also is a place that resources and even oil and industry can be had if invaded successfully - and bombers based there are much more a threat than almost anywhere else the Allies can get to. Minimalizing the Soviet force/options wholly and ahistorically and grossly distorts the geopolitics and the strategic choices the Japanese (and Allies) must (or should) make. The historical choices were made in the CONTEXT of the position, forces and politics of the USSR - not ignoring them. Why should Japan be free to send major air forces and land forces South with no risk? Guaranteed no risk? Why should the Allies not be able to propose - as they really did propose - to use Soviet territory as a basis for the primary axis of attack on the Japanese Empire? IF it could be worked out - it would shorten the war significantly. The ALCAN highway was supposed to be the first stage in a project to build a RAILROAD to Nome, Alaska - from which ships were to carry supplies to bases built along the coast of Siberia and offshore Soviet and US islands. From these bases (as indeed really happened from the Aleutians) even medium bombers can reach Japan. And it places Japan in a horrible strategic connundrum: its focus is (and pretty much must be) operations in China and the SRA - so anything sent NE is either taken from those operations or no longer available for them. It is never clear that IJA can defeat the Red Army either? It MIGHT be possible in 1942. But this isn't clear with the imatiated forces present in WITP. Just as the Soviets always (and grossly) minimize the contributions of its Allies to the defeat of the Axis, so we (almost as badly) minimize the role the Soviets played - and not just in ETO. It isn't fashionable in the US in particular to write or believe the Soviets had any important role in WWII - never mind a majority of Axis troops always faced them - and that very specifically is true because Japanese armies are part of the package - not just a function of the European situation with other Axis nations. To the extent we are attempting to move toward a simulation in which players need to make choices in their full context - we need to add the Soveit factor as much as we need to add logistics. IMHO. Ships have been the main focus of WITP. Further, ships were the main thing I wanted to correct - and when CHS was unable to address ship corrections in the same year - I began RHS. We continue to upgrade ships. But EVERY major ship has been reviewed - most more than once - and the errors that remain are not nearly as important as completely missing units/capabilities. We now have data washed class files - and I am forcing the individual ships to line up with these class definitions at this moment. There are no less than 60 pages (that is, 3000 lines) of ship errors that will be corrected just for x.61 release.
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