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Don Bowen -> RE: Da Babes Mod (12/17/2009 4:06:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Buck Beach
quote:
ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
In case you all have not yet guessed it, John is the true master of the mod. I can dig up a ship name from some obscure reference and gleefully chortle "Oh Look, a ship, a ship!". But John is the one that merges it into the OOB, determines what class is should be and what attributes, provides the artwork, and (sometimes) tells me "now that one is really too insignificant".
Well got it and looking it over. Not surprised it did not contain more than a few of the tub of ships I have discovered over the last several months, but, I am still scanning it so others may show up. This does not disappoint me in the least because after all the stuff quits hitting the fan in the regular game, I will tweak and include everything but the kitchen sink to the Da_Babes to my hearts content.
I would like to know the changes made to the devices and the locations to get a head start with my changes. Also there was some talk about trying to add some sort of adhoc or otherwise change Naval Base Force TOE to provide maybe some generic Naval Support to assist in loading and unloading ships at those bases not having any Naval Support. Was this new aspect left out as not feasible or for other reason (or is in there and I just haven't discovered it yet)?
As John points out, there are a couple of problems with including every ship that can be verified to have been in the Pacific at a certain date and time.
First of course is world wide movement. A ship might touch at a Pacific Port, then move back to the Atlantic, US West/Gulf Coast, England, Africa, then maybe an Indian Port, then do it all over again. This has been attacked since PacWar days by averaging out the ships in theatre. If 10 ships each spent some portion of their time in the Pacific, put one or two of them in and exclude the rest. Back in CHS days, when we did not have ship withdrawals, we tended to put in ships that were in the Pacific during some specific event. Ships present on December 7th if possible, or those that had some role during some campaign or another. And of course those that were lost. AE gave us ship withdrawals and returns, but only one time per ship. We have data on some ships that made several cruises into the Pacific, then right back out. Don't have the controls for this and it would not aid playability if we were to put them in. So, once again, we do averaging. That means that one can examine the database and find ships that are in that can be verified to be somewhere else at that time and ships that were in the Pacific at a specific time but are not in the OOB. I don't think anything can be done about this until some poor fool attempts to write a whole-earth World War II game.
Another issue is classing and art. Many small and interesting onsie-twosie ships might be included, but each requires a separate class and artwork. Lots of work for very little benefit. Sometimes we generalize classes - standard pacific tramp freighters in small, medium, and large for instance. Many other times we just leave them out. John and I constantly work at the boundaries of put-in/leave-out for this ship and that (currently Kaula).
And of course there is playability. Does it really help to put in a dozen coastal passenger ships that moved passengers and cargo in the Vancouver-Victoria-Tacoma triangle route? At some point even I think the detail becomes too much and playability suffers (and that is saying something!). Again, a sample here and there seems a good idea. But once again, one can find ships that were in the Pacific but are not in the OOB.
Incidentally, I too am going to take the final "babes" and make my own mod with still more detail. Only mad dogs and fools like me would ever want to play it.
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