Played through 17 and WTF!! (SIMPLE PATCH ISSUE!!!) (Full Version)

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doomonyou -> Played through 17 and WTF!! (SIMPLE PATCH ISSUE!!!) (7/3/2002 7:55:50 PM)

So I was sitting around sipping tea at PM and enjoying the generally placid pace of my mega-airbase on a thunderstorm'd day (yes around PM that's roughly 60% of all day and night. Nothing but thunderstorms. I lose more aircraft to lightning strikes than enemy action....) so in any case the japanese are invading Gili Gili not far away and of course over four days PM is socked in completely. Can't get a plane off four days in a row. Well fortunes of war I guess. I am totally @#$!ed, the japs land unopposed with the exception of a prowling sub that does put two of thier AP's down (which also apparently doesn't matter, by August of 42 I had confirmed sunk just shy of 60 jap AP's and thier op tempo didn't slow). So I send out my cruisers from PM (this is where the fun starts). Well apparently the thunderstorms are very small because my cruisers get detected and get all sorts of @^%@%@#$#@#@$ by Rabul air. So I think to myself, hmmmmm, I guess the thunderstorms are pretty small over PM (I mean none of 200 airplanes could do anything all day there) and the rabul guy must have found a break in the clouds and nuked my cruisers. Sigh. Then it happened. and by it I mean IT. and by IT I mean IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rabual bombed the snot out of PM. There PM is with thunderheads up to 35000 feet, rain blotting out the sun, 200 allied warplanes includign the b-17, one of the toughest prop bombers in history, under tarps on the ground unable to fly just over to Gili Gili and along comes a hundred plane alpha strike from seven hundred miles to the north, right through the impenetrable clouds, they drop thier JDAM's on PM (man those Japanese guys are accurate @#$@# bombers through thunderstroms), and fly home unmolested.

I am not a "Punch the monitor" kind of player. But I wanted to load up a B-17 and fly a 1000 foot mission over Matrix.

For the next patch let me distill this experience down. IF MY PLANES CANNOT GET OFF THE GROUND THAN THE OPPOSING FORCE CANNOT BOMB ME AT THAT VERY SAME BASE THAT VERY SAME AIR PHASE THROUGH THUNDERSTORMS GODDAMMIT!!!

Otherwise I love this game, I stay up 30 minutes past when I should playing it all the time, and I have suggested to two of my friends that they must buy this game.



Spooky -> (7/3/2002 8:06:45 PM)

If you are not happy with the weather system ... just toggle it off :)

BTW, what is indicated is just a forecast and not the real weather ... so maybe there was a storm on Gilli Gilli but only a slight overcast on PM ;)

Spooky



doomonyou -> But you misunderstand... (7/3/2002 8:19:14 PM)

none of my pm planes took off to do anything. There were other naval strike targets and other ground targets...so it appeared to me as if they were socked in...hey no problem. But in a base is socked in then it can't be bombed...right?



worr -> (7/3/2002 9:33:39 PM)

Weather can change from the time an attack takes off to the time it arrives. You aren't hitting at the same times...but rather at the same phase. That is why also, you've noticed, that your CAP still welcomes the attack.

Worr, out



FirstPappy -> (7/3/2002 9:49:32 PM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by worr
[B]Weather can change from the time an attack takes off to the time it arrives. You aren't hitting at the same times...but rather at the same phase. That is why also, you've noticed, that your CAP still welcomes the attack.

Worr, out [/B][/QUOTE]

While this all may be true, UV is still a game, played by gamers, and both are traditionally governed by rules. If too much randomness enters into any game - such as the situation above, it could become extremely frustrating to an otherwise excellent gaming experience.



Spooky -> (7/3/2002 10:05:52 PM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Pappy
[B]

While this all may be true, UV is still a game, played by gamers, and both are traditionally governed by rules. If too much randomness enters into any game - such as the situation above, it could become extremely frustrating to an otherwise excellent gaming experience. [/B][/QUOTE]

Weather in this area was very random ... and very frustrating (just read the book : Fire in the sky from Eric Bergerud - ISBN : 0813338697).

That's why I think we have the option to switch off the weather.

Spooky



doomonyou -> I guess I will just have to turn it off... (7/3/2002 10:16:01 PM)

I understand random weather and lucky breaks but if a storm grounds my air force at one end of the runway while my enemy bombs the hanagers through the rain...that just plain sux.



FAdmiral -> (7/3/2002 10:20:47 PM)

I know what he means about the weather patterns and the aircraft that fly in them. My war planes are socked in and
cannot do missions but my PBY always seem to fly for recon
missions. The C47s seem to always deliver supplies come
H*** or high water. Even a bombed out runway doesn't seem
to stop them. My subs when shooting an Air Combat Task
Force always pick a DD to shoot at. They always miss and the
DDs always hit with DCs. I might be able to see how this would
play out on the hardest option setting but I am on the Easy setting, 1 step below historical. But i sure love it when those
Jap AI ships hit my well laid mines, WHAM**** sunk 7 out of
67 with them, even thought you have to go to Noumea to get
them all the time.

JIM BERG, SR.



Spooky -> (7/3/2002 10:25:33 PM)

Well, in a storm, I would rather be in a big Catalina with a lot of fuel than in a small P-39 :)



FAdmiral -> (7/3/2002 10:41:46 PM)

But how would you take off and land in 7 foot waves????????

JIM BERG, SR.



Spooky -> (7/3/2002 10:55:55 PM)

Hum - the take-off would be a little difficult ;) but the waves should not be that high in a port ... and that's why there are operational losses in UV :D



bradfordkay -> (7/3/2002 11:04:29 PM)

I believe that turning off the weather will not change things much, if at all. Turning off the weather only puts it in "partly cloudy" mode every day. The local weather for each air base has little to do with the general forecast. There have been many "clear" days where PM (and other airbase) aircraft are unable to take off due to poor weather. While I realize that PM is probably one of the worst airstrips in the world for weather, I think that doomonyou has a point in asking that incoming a/c be subject to the same weather difficulties that outgoing a/c run into.

It's just one of those little frustrations that make you walk away from the game for a few days (until you just have to get that UV fix again!).



NorthStar -> Grainy Time (7/3/2002 11:27:26 PM)

The problem you guys (and all of us really) are having is not so much randomness, as graininess of the time scale.

Your strikes get up early, have their mission briefing, and then watch the storm roll in. The mission is delayed, delayed again, and then delayed some more. Finally, at some point, the morning missions have to be cancelled in order to have time to run afternoon missions. Unfortunately, twenty minutes after cancellation, the storm clears, and there are the Japanesse bombers -- which have been flying all morning already -- waiting to attack through the clearing.

Yes, its all one phase, but there is a lot of time involved that there doesn't really need to be the same weather in a hex for every strike. The problem is that since the game abstracts these things, they become "random". Nature of the beast, I guess.

However, I do find it odd that supply planes and search aircraft do not appear to be affected by weather. This, I think, should be corrected.

Also, I suppose it should be possible to overfly a base -- and thus drop bombs -- in weather that would make take off and landing too difficult to risk.



Spooky -> (7/3/2002 11:39:31 PM)

Great post Northstar :)



doomonyou -> not go over the same ground but... (7/3/2002 11:43:22 PM)

so my strikes are cancelled...fine...the japs rolled through a momentary magical 12 minute cloud break...could happen I suppose..but how precisely did these japanese planes cover all the distance from rabul and back in thunderstorms without suffering? I mean if the weathers so damm bad that I can't find a moment to launch a six bomber strike on some passing APs (not a lot of form up time on a six bomber strike) then how to the enemy planes get to PM? Did they really fly through (or even worse from a fuel standpoint around) dozens of thunderstorms from there to PM without getting scattered or using up so much fuel to fight winds that they can't get home and have to land elsewhere or ditch?

I love this game but the weather system in it is crap. For programing simplicity just have the day's weather in the region assigned a number between 1 and 9. 1 is crystal gorgeous and 9 is hurricane force. Have planes be less accurate (already coded and present) and more importantly have them have to turn away from targets or be grounded totally within the map, the whole map past a certain weather level. its slightly unrealistic but far more realistic than this patchwork crap where a 11:30 no aircraft can move and at 12:15 zero's are on deck straffing the runway having just arrived in after three hours in the air. very long distance flying on a bad weather day should just be plain impossible. IMHO.



FAdmiral -> (7/4/2002 12:48:31 AM)

Of course, there are a lot of days when PM gets no attack from
Rabaul at all. Could it be that the planes are flying every day
but just not getting to PM through some reason or another. Since
we have no readout on that, we really don't know if that is true.

JIM BERG, SR.



dgaad -> (7/4/2002 1:42:58 AM)

I have by now played literally thousands of turns.

I have NEVER seen a strike hit a base where that base could not launch due to bad weather. Not once. Ever.

My understanding of the game is that if your planes cannot fly out of a base, that base also cannot be hit by enemy planes. This understanding comes from the many many turns I have watched being processed.

If you are saying that PM was hit by a Japanese strike from Rabaul when your fighters (or anything else) could not fly due to bad weather, I think you need to re-check what actually happened. I think you might have gotton mixed up on which base had bad weather; your bomber groups may have been targetting an area which had bad weather and then their missions got cancelled. You may not have had your fighters set to cap, but instead set to escort with no cap reserve, in which case they would NOT have flown CAP over PM even with blue sky.



Joel Billings -> (7/4/2002 2:01:40 AM)

During development Gary attempted to put something in the code that would make a hex that is closed down during an air phase due to weather closed down for both sides (planes taking off from the hex and planes bombing targets in the hex). At least I think we tried to get this in. It seemed to work at least for usually preventing one side's carriers from getting an attack off while the other side could not strike back due to weather. I say usually because the code in this game is so complex and with a life of its own that I'm pretty sure it doesn't always work (at least in my experience, and other players have the same experiences).

There is so much going on in the code, and not everything that is happening is explained in detail to the user, so very often I'm left trying to figure out why something just happened that seems to be against the rules as I know them. During development when this happened and I questioned Gary, I would find that sometimes it was because another (until then unknown) rule was functioning, and sometimes it was due to a bug, and sometimes Gary couldn't figure out why it was happening.

I understand your frustration with this kind of thing as I come from the belief that the user should know why things happen in a game. I could argue that everything that is reported as odd, actually happened in real life because real life is a lot messier than any set of game rules we come up with. As true as this is (airstrikes did get shut down only to have the other side arrive at the time when they could see the target - remember airstrikes, especially against a moving target take time to prepare and launch) I myself find it unsatisfying as an answer. The reality is that without a major investment of time, which could literally be infinite, the code can't be made to do certain desired things without breaking other things that could be much worse.

I have come around to the view (admittedly self serving) that most of the strange things that happen in UV (at least around air ops) are just the way the game system is modeling reality. If it occasionally gets it wrong, or does something that is seemingly breaking the rules as we know them, its part of the game. As it is I think the game allows players to fly more missions than were historically flown.

By the way I'm not saying that major bugs won't get addressed or that some changes won't be made. Just that previous attempts to fix some of these anomalies have been made and in some cases it won't be possible to fix them due to a very unfavorable risk/reward ratio. I too wish it weren't so.



doomonyou -> You know what I love about this comapny? (7/4/2002 2:18:08 AM)

You guys actually have honest answers....such a startlingly rare commodity. In any case, issue dealt with although I assure any who wonder if I got hit elsewhere and mistook it or wrong setting et al I assure you it is not the case. I have no other airbases on new guinea, and therefore in that game at that time there were no other targets to hit and my settings were set as I typically always set them. Insofar as CAP it is irrelevant as I have no issues with it.

Thanx for the post Joel...



Panta_slith -> Yes, Weather algoritms can be improved. (7/4/2002 2:23:20 AM)

I agree with most of the previous statements, though I won't repeat myself. What I think about weather-related problems is in a separate topic under "Weather forecast".
Despite my criticisms about many aspects of the game, I reckon that UV is a great (albeit much improvable) game. After playing it for countless hours, trying to overcome many frustrating bugs and illogical behaviours, some weather-related, some others not, I begin to understand, at last, the huge logistic problems involving the extense of the war theater. I also bought the excellent "The Pacific War Encyclopedia", by Dunnigan & Nofi) and started studying the area maps as well.
After all, "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics" (or so).
I hope the folks from Matrix will correct most of the reported bugs, and the others, and continue improving the game because, despite my many annoyances, that frigging UV is extremely addictive!
Cheers,
Panta



TheProfessional -> Setting expectations (7/4/2002 2:33:35 AM)

Joel,

Thanks very much for the post. It gives us 'outsiders' a view of the development of the product and more importantly, its own design limitations.

Myself personally, it helps to reset expectations for future patches for the released version. The future is bleak for UV (guess sales are not that strong) but that's ok, wargames have always been a niche market.

I'm thankful that UV saw the light of day.



willgamer -> (7/4/2002 2:38:06 AM)

Just wanted to jump in to commiserate! :(

I had a similar experience in scenario #6. As the Allies, I'm pounding the landings at Buna and Gili Gili when the Jap CVs show up. We spot each other. My strikes are cancelled, his (carrier only) strikes get thru fatally striking both carriers with hardly a scratch on any other ship. Game Over!

I've printed and RTFM and RTFPosts on this forum, but it's still a discouraging result because I can't grasp what I'm doing wrong.

The UV vets have (and probably will again) flame away at us noobs who find UV frustratingly opaque. However FWIW, what's so wrong with:

[list]
  • showing carrier aircraft ranges (with toggle)
  • showing on the base screen that the base is in/out of a malaria zone
  • showing a percent completion on enginering base construction
  • showing the range of enemy LBA (w/toggle)
  • showing an enemy TF move radius (based on it's reported composition)
  • indicating the number of aircraft a base can support w/o penality
    [/list]

    IMHO, this is all stuff that a real commander staff would have assembled for him (whether or not he can multiply a single digit by 50! :rolleyes: )



    • Joel Billings -> (7/4/2002 3:26:04 AM)

    [QUOTE]Myself personally, it helps to reset expectations for future patches for the released version. The future is bleak for "UV (guess sales are not that strong) but that's ok, wargames have always been a niche market.[/QUOTE]


    My comment about risk/reward had to do with the risk of breaking the game (causing worse bugs and anomalies) vs. the reward of actually fixing the problem being worked on. It wasn't intended to imply a financial risk reward, although that clearly goes into decisions to invest time on patches.

    I did not intend to imply that the future is financially bleak for UV. I hope that sales will continue strong as the word continues to get out about the overall quality of the game. Grognards will always come up with an unending list of improvements (not serious bugs) for a product. However, since we don't sell ongoing subscriptions to pay for ongoing improvements, I sure hope that people don't expect us to make all of these suggested improvements. If we did, I guarantee that we would go out of business and no other products would ever be completed.

    What I was trying to say is that there are some things that we would very much like to fix (and that players have asked for) that we won't be able to fix due to the state of the code. Hope this clarifies my earlier post.



    FAdmiral -> (7/4/2002 3:59:07 AM)

    I think in a lot of ways, UV is a spring board for the much larger
    WITP being worked on right now. Much stuff we would like to
    see won't be available for UV but may be incorporated into WITP.
    WITP will be a much better game when released because of the
    work, development and player suggestions that went into UV.

    JIM BERG, SR.



    TheProfessional -> Same wavelength (7/4/2002 4:23:49 AM)

    Joel,

    Just to answer your previous post... yes, it does exactly.
    My point was just to remind everyone that this is a business (albeit a labor of love) and that given the choice, I'm sure that Matrix Games would rather devote resources to WiTP or future projects than to maintain/improve the existing code base.

    It just doesn't bring in revenue and since the game is pretty bug free right now (not perfect but who is?).. it's easy to move onto other exciting projects.

    Whatever happens, I'll be grateful for any fixes forthcoming, just watch out for that regression!

    Good luck.



    strollen -> (7/4/2002 10:11:32 AM)

    Joel

    If this computerized wargamingy thinging doesn't work (after all you given it 25 years.) I have a suggestion you could give seminars to companies about how to run a successful support BBS. Vast number of companies could benefit from you teaching them how to provide excellent customer service without bankrupting the company.

    This is going to sound a bit snide but really I am truely being complimentary. What really happened here is:

    1. Yes, we have a bug it happens rarely.
    2. We tried to fix it but couldn't.
    3. If we tried to pull off the duct tape to fix the whole engine might break, so it is too risky to fix. Only one guy understands whats going on.
    4. We really can't afford to fix cause bug fixes don't pay the bills.
    5. Actually when you think about it really isn't a bug it is a feature.

    Now when you put my way it sounds pretty slimey. However, when phrased the way you put it. It sounds entirely honest (and I have no reason to doubt that), extremely reasonable and completely logical.

    The orginally complainer went away happy and everyone reading the thread thought gee 2by3 really listens to their customers.

    Most importantly, it didn't cause Gary any additional work.

    I briefly ran Intel on-line support efforts, and I would have paid big money to try and teach this skill to the support folks.

    Tell Gary you earned your paycheck today!



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