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Alfred -> RE: First Impressions. Working on Turn 1 as Japan (1/2/2019 2:56:39 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PaxMondo
I don't think you can 'test' this. RE-read what he wrote. As I recall it, and hopefully Alfred will confirm, the devs determined that they could NOT get mines to work correctly within the timeframe they had. There were a number of reasons, I only recall them acknowledging one reason. They then 'fixed' the engine by limiting the mine production. Simply increasing mine production will not test anything, it will simply use a section of code that the devs already acknowledged gives an inaccurate result if you exceed the boundary that they created.
You are free to run what you wish, but do not think that any result you get is accurate. I can tell you one thing for sure, the IJ could NOT have increased mine production significantly. Mines consume inordinate amounts of explosive and the IJ had little additional capacity.
Both PaxMondo and witpqs are correct in their recollection.
Early in it's life cycle, both before and after release of AE, minewarfare was one of the most hotly argued topics. Often a very sterile discussion as the devs often explained that the choices made by them were done, within the context of the game design/code, in order to get outcomes consistent with the historical record. On the other side of the divide were the many player protagonists, who disregarding the game engine and historical context, vociferously demanded the "pretty" figures floating on the internet simply had to be reproduced verbatim in the game. Needless to say the pointlessness of explaining often drove JWE/Symon to exasperation, one of my favourite quotes of his on the subject being this one of 7 September 2009:
"Modding to IRL production figures would result in game effects that are ... interesting."
That was JWE/Symon at his most diplomatic when dealing with a poster who had no idea what he (the poster himself and JWE) was saying.
The game engine was the major consideration as it allowed some very cheesy player exploits. The relevant factors which the devs took into account were as follows.
1. Three months before AE was released, JWE quite categorically stated on 22 April 2009 that:
"Rewriting the code was deemed to be not cost/time effective."
This meant that the code from classical WITP was retained and the devs could only tweak AE to prevent players from employing the same questionable tactics in AE. These tactics are listed in points 2 and 3 and their elimination was a major and driving force behind the new AE design.
2. Classical WITP suffered greatly from exaggerated player mine laying. Amphibious landings on tiny atolls often found 10k - 30k of mines had been laid. These were atolls where just a few yards from the lagoon, the sea floor dropped dramatically. IOW mines were being dropped where physically they could not be laid, a deficiency of the game engine. Nor could the game engine distinguish between Japanese and Allied mine laying efforts. Terminus often pointed out just how few mines were laid by Japan during the entire war, yet Japanese players were not just matching Allied mine laying efforts, they were exceeding them by quite a substantial margin.
3. The other ill advised classical WITP praxis actually unbalanced the game completely in favour of one player over the other. Classical WITP had space for only 4,000 minefields in total, both the size of the minefield and which side sowed it being irrelevant. Once this total was reached, no further minefields could be laid. Some enterprising players quickly sowed minefields to reach the maximum and this prevented their opponents from laying their own minefields. To prevent this praxis, the devs did three things:
(a) increase the total number of minefields which AE could accommodate (this was a relatively easy and time/cost effective coding exercise)
(b) allocate separate maximum minefield totals for the Japanese and Allied player
(c) reduce the number of available mines so that players really had to determine where the better ROI lay
4. Another relevant consideration for the devs, and one always overlooked by the player protagonists, was neatly summed up by this quote from JWE of 29 July 2009:
"Way over 70% of all the mines laid in the Pacific were laid in areas where game engine does not allow mines to be laid."
All those figures sprouted by players were therefore largely irrelevant for they took no account of the context of the game engine. Wdolson on 29 July 2009 pointed out that IRL most mines were laid in defensive minefields very far back from the frontlines and not offensively or to defend forward bases. Taking into account the historical praxis, AE provided approximately the equivalent number of mines to undertake the historical praxis. The historical rear area defensive minefields is met by the approximately 18k mines auto sown on turn 1, all of which can be maintained with no decay by the new AE ship type, the ACM.
If the classical WITP mine production numbers had merely been transferred over to AE without any adjustment, the game engine would not prevent players from dropping that surplus 70% into the game, as per point (2) above.
5. A very significant point always overlooked by the complainers is the abstraction aspect of AE. The entire game is built on abstractions and minewarfare is no different. IRL battleships would have, on average, 900-1200 rounds of main gun shells in their magazines. In AE this abstracted down to less than 200 shells. No one complains about that abstraction. So why do they about mines in AE? The AE naval design team came to the conclusion that the game code gave mines an effectivity of 10x the nominal. Bearing in mind recoding was out of the question, the best solution to bring the effectivity back to the nominal was to abstractly view each AE mine as representing 10 mines. Conceptually the same treatment as accorded to battleship main gun shells.
The net result was that the devs were determined to avoid the game turning into Mines in the Pacific. The difficulties encountered by Allied players in setting up an economic blockade of Japan are not the result of the dev decisions made regarding mines. There are several other factors which play a significant role in stymieing this blockade, mines is not one of them.
Alfred
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