Things I still don't understand!

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: treespider
Hopefully the dog did not eat it......I say release the the hounds..

Well ... she didn't eat it ... she drooled on it some ... but then, she's a springer.

Ok, so just where do you suggest I stick it? [:D]

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: treespider
Hopefully the dog did not eat it......I say release the the hounds..

Well ... she didn't eat it ... she drooled on it some ... but then, she's a springer.

Ok, so just where do you suggest I stick it? [:D]

The possiblities are endless....[:D]

[WingedIncubus]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: Drakken

ORIGINAL: pad152

- Canada has more medium bomber replacements then the USA for first 60-90 days!

I don't see how it is ahistorical. Canada was at war for more than two years when the US joined the war. Its factories were building ships and aircrafts as replacements for the Royal Air Force, and it sent aircraft contingents and pilots to Britain to fight against Germany.

The US hadn't even an independent airforce arm until after Pearl Harbor (it was part of the Army branch), the full industrial complex hadn't been mobilized yet, and the federal governmement had imposed a draft only one year ago to meat up its skeleton army of the thirties.

Er, the USAF didn't become independent until 1947.

I stand corrected. But the rest still stands. [:D]

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: treespider
The possiblities are endless....[:D]

Don't mess with me bro; I'm doing a sauerbraten; 3 days; dog is a real "c'mon Dad, drop something" kinda girl; you tell me up my butt, that's just where it will go,

So where does it go? Ya'lls choice.

[pad152]

ORIGINAL: Drakken

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: Drakken



I don't see how it is ahistorical. Canada was at war for more than two years when the US joined the war. Its factories were building ships and aircrafts as replacements for the Royal Air Force, and it sent aircraft contingents and pilots to Britain to fight against Germany.

The US hadn't even an independent airforce arm until after Pearl Harbor (it was part of the Army branch), the full industrial complex hadn't been mobilized yet, and the federal governmement had imposed a draft only one year ago to meat up its skeleton army of the thirties.

Er, the USAF didn't become independent until 1947.

I stand corrected. But the rest still stands. [:D]

Where were the 160 B25s in Dec 1941? They didn't go to England, they were not even used in the ETO. In late 1941 they were building 40 a month.

The USA was gearing up before 1941 and shipping planes to England even before Pearl Harbor.

[TOMLABEL]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: treespider
The possiblities are endless....[:D]

Don't mess with me bro; I'm doing a sauerbraten; 3 days; dog is a real "c'mon Dad, drop something" kinda girl; you tell me up my butt, that's just where it will go,

So where does it go? Ya'lls choice.

OUCH!! Better take J serious on this one before you reply!!!![:D]

[Scott_USN]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: treespider
Hopefully the dog did not eat it......I say release the the hounds..

Well ... she didn't eat it ... she drooled on it some ... but then, she's a springer.

Ok, so just where do you suggest I stick it? [:D]

LMAO....

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger
Time and time again I beat my head against the wall trying to make playability and fun the driving force. I was over ruled almost every time.

Believe it or not - I expect most AE Team members feel this way to some extent - myself included. AE is/was not really about "what I want" - but more about gaining sufficient consensus to sell your point of view. There were/are many, many points of view, at least as many as we had people, so definitely there was lots of juggling, but given the nature of the effort, I don't consider that to be "wrong". Actually I think my point of view failed to win consensus far more than it succeeded - but I'm ok with that - I consider that to be the rules of the game!!!

I will say I learned a lot about managing a virtual team (virtual in almost every respect) through a major project like this - and if I "do it again" there will be some changes. We did not start the design "from the perspective of the player" as I think it should be done - but we did not fail to do this because we were stupid - but because we were building on the vision of the player role that was already in place - and decided early on we could not try to change that without starting over. I think the design team needs to start small - to ensure we gain consistency of vision and can then sustain that.

If we do start over - that is where we start - designing from the perspective of the player. What does a player DO and what does a player NOT DO. What decisions does a player make, what decisions does he not make, what buttons does he click etc.

I think one of the aspects of WITP and AE that fascinate those of us that have played it almost every day for 5 years - is actually the mixture of high level responsibility and low level responsibility. I decide where to send my Army Corps - and I also manage the training schedule for each individual air unit. So this "duality" (or plurality) is both a strength AND a weakness. I do believe however, that we can have some plurality of role without so many trivial button clicks. So one personal goal I would have in a complete redesign would be to keep the duality - but significantly reduce the non-value added button clicks.

Well, I'd best not get started talking about this topic too much as that will take me off the current topic - which is working on patch 01 for AE - so back to that!!!
[:D]

Yes, quite. What Yamato Hugger consistently fails to recognize is that no matter how much we wanted things to go one way or the other, the overriding factor that drove AE was the underlying code. The structure that was previously WitP. Another persons opinion.

I can sit here as a Team Lead and tell everyone all kinds of dirty little secrets based on my "insider" perspective, and how this or that should have been handled. You know, if I could ask for the world, this is how AE would work,...but we had limitations. Real limitations. Time; Energy; Manpower; The original design of the UI, and the code in general.

The luxury a Beta tester has is one of Johnny come lately, detachment, and no awareness of the boundaries you are subject to, you know, limitations. "It should be this way..." OK, great idea. How does it fit within reality? (here's reality by the way...<shows the BT reality>) "Oh, well it should still be this way..." Well I agree, but have you met reality yet? "Oh...no...not really. It's not part of my job description."

If we could have done a thing better, we likely would have. If there is a failure to reach the moon, it was likely a victim of reality, or boundaries, or limitations, not intelligence or know how.

In the future we aim to improve those things as best we can. I think our team did a pretty good job within the realm of reality. I know we can continue to do so. Especially with all the positive feedback, and constructive criticism.

[TOMLABEL]

ORIGINAL: TheElf


Yes, quite. What Yamato Hugger consistently fails to recognize is that no matter how much we wanted things to go one way or the other, the overriding factor that drove AE was the underlying code. The structure that was previously WitP. Another persons opinion.

I can sit here as a Team Lead and tell everyone all kinds of dirty little secrets based on my "insider" perspective, and how this or that should have been handled. You know, if I could ask for the world, this is how AE would work,...but we had limitations. Real limitations. Time; Energy; Manpower; The original design of the UI, and the code in general.

The luxury a Beta tester has is one of Johnny come lately, detachment, and no awareness of the boundaries you are subject to, you know, limitations. "It should be this way..." OK, great idea. How does it fit within reality? (here's reality by the way...<shows the BT reality>) "Oh, well it should still be this way..." Well I agree, but have you met reality yet? "Oh...no...not really. It's not part of my job description."

If we could have done a thing better, we likely would have. If there is a failure to reach the moon, it was likely a victim of reality, or boundaries, or limitations, not intelligence or know how.

In the future we aim to improve those things as best we can. I think our team did a pretty good job within the realm of reality. I know we can continue to do so. Especially with all the positive feedback, and constructive criticism.

Accurately described and nicely explained .

TOMLABEL

[t001001001]

check plz[8|]

[Vincenzo_Beretta]

ORIGINAL: pad152

Realism Bites! - I don't think the following are realistic or very historical.

- That there is no economic info for each country!!!
- Canada has more medium bomber replacements then the USA for first 60-90 days!
- Naval Support detachments are now the most important unit in the pacific war!!!
- No list of ground units lost in the pacific war!
- RAAF Wirraway can't preform CAP or escort missions but, can do ASW missions!

I hope some of these are addressed in future updates!

My exact feeling. Exp. re: "No list of ground units lost in the pacific war!" "Reality bytes" as long as that part of the development team found it cool. If this didn' happened, then reality went down the drain. Having to wear the shoes of all the quartermasters in all the Pacific Ocean harbors was deemed "cool historicity", but getting fundamental info needed run a land war as the theatre commander was "low on priority".

The amazing thing is to see people boasting about the first feature *while* dismissing the importance of the second one in the very same post. [8|]

[AttuWatcher]

Can't think of any good reason not to have the ground unit list. Of course if technically it's too late in the game to implement it; that is understandable.

[Scott_USN]

Yeah is no game stopper not to see unit loses&nbsp;not even as important as a good patch just something if possible would be cool. It is "cool factor" and "immersion stuff" for me not that I need it to win or will even notice.

[myros]

The whole pointless air units thing imo just adds extra micromanagement to a game that has no shortage of it. They serve no purpose other than to suck up more time from the user - my constructive criticism = remove them and save us all a few hundred pointless clicks

[timtom]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

ORIGINAL: pad152

There seems to be a ton of air groups no replacements some with only 1 plane that withdraw in 30 – 60 days, what’s the point?

I asked about this several times. Thats the way the air team wants it is the simplest answer I can give you. I agree, it makes no sense. If you notice, the 7th BG goes away in Apr 42 and comes back in May 42 in India because in real life they were sent through Africa to India so even if you have them operating out of India in Apr 42 (which personally I would if I were the allies) you still have to withdraw them, so they can make the move to India. I went round and round on this point (and lost).

Here's what I answered YH when he brought this one up.

ORIGINAL: timtom

Following the loss of Java, what remained of the 7th air echelon was folded into other units, 19th BG primarily but also other units such as eight pilots going to the Air Transport Squadron, forerunner of 374th TCG. The ground echelons of HQ, 9th and 88th squadrons left for India aboard USAT W.A.Holbrook, arriving Karachi mid-March. 7th BG had deployed via the Atlantic ferry route and nine aircraft and crews had been delayed following various mishaps enroute. However with the loss of Palembang, these nine crews were unable to rejoin the rest of the 7th and found themselves stranded in India. They became the nucleus of the reformed air echelons of 9th & 88th (436th) BS'. From early July to early October, 9th BS operated out of Lydda, Palestine. Later in the year 492nd & 493rd BS' are added to 7th BG. Meanwhile the 11th & 22nd BS' were transferred to the US "without personnel", basically meaning a paper transfer. Cadres for the new 11th BS (M) and 22nd BS (M) were provided by 17th BG (M) then based at Columbia AAB, SC, not least drawn from the socalled "Project 157". The Doolittle raid having been flown by volunteers from 17th BG (sans fighter pilots), the idea was to form another provisional unit from the group, labelled "Project 157". This unit was to transfer to China and join up with the Doolittle raiders as a part of the general if small scale effort to reinforce the Chinese with US airpower. Project 157 would eventually mature into the 341st BG. While the advance echelon of the 11th & 22nd left the US end of May, the last personnel didn't arrive India until the end of July. A forward detachment of the 11th entered combat with the CATF almost immediately, flying a six-plane strike on Lashio enroute to Kumning. Neither units would be fully engaged until towards the end of the year, not least because they provided cadres for 490th and 491st BS' which would make up the rest of 341st BG.

So to recap, to start 7th BG consists of 9th, 11th, 22nd BS' + 88th RS. 9th BS is called to withdraw because it deploys out of the theatre, returning 11/42 with a full complement of B-24's. 11th & 22nd BS' are called to withdraw because they were disbanded and reformed in the US as entirely new units with no connection to their forerunners. These return 7/42 with 24 shiny new B-25C's between them. So in these cases the withdraw -> return system doubles as a way of manipulating the replacement rate. Now it appears that in reality 7th BG was combat ineffective for the better part of '42. Just ignoring this in this case and others for the sake of expediancy results in fundamentally misrepresenting the actual force levels available at the time. If the idea is that the flow of the game should at least relate to historical realities then IMO these issues must be tackled head-on, "inconvenient" as that might be.

On Pads more general question, underpinning the OOB design is a set of methodological guidelines which serves as rules-of-thumb when tackling the multitude of design decisions involved. Not only does this mean that the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented with every new unit, but it also ensures that
there's one set of rules is applied to all, and hopefully leads to a structured design for which at least plausible defense can be mounted.

So, with the "useless" WC units, how does this methodology go? Well, the first question is whether we're dealing with a combat- or combat-support unit operating in a manner explicitly modelled in the game on-map. In the case of the "useless" units, the answer is yes - these were combat units either fully formed or in the process of forming, temporarily assigned to the defense of the US western seaboard at the outbreak of war. Once the press realised that invasion wasn't imminent, these units reverted to full-time training and/or transferred east.

The basic contention that these units are "useless" begs the question "to whom and by what definition". Some players might enjoy the attention to detail and historiosity (is that a word?) and think it a quality in itself, or take note of the woeful state of many USAAC units as a didactic point in its own right. And of course the a very slight chance that they might be used in other than a patrol capacity - a posibility which would only increase if these units were not there.

However accepting the basic contention that the air units in question are useless, the OOB designer is then left with the problem of formulation a workable methodology which can be applied across the board without prejudice. How do you define whether a unit is "useless" or not? If it's a question of location, should then the RCAF units go as well? What about Alaska? Exactly where does this imaginary line of "uselessness" run? Is it that they never left the US? Then what about units which never left metropolitan Japan, Australia, New Zealand or Canada? Is it the number of aircraft in a unit? Does this mean that all small or understrength units should be eliminated? How many aircraft is enough be "useful"? Same question with the short availability dates. So rather than make a number of arbitrary decisions on the behalf of the player, this OOB designer chose go back to the simple starting point: Is the unit in question combat- or combat-support unit operating in a manner explicitly modelled in the game on-map? If yes, leave the decision whether a unit is "useful" or not to the player.

Anyone is obviously at liberty to disagree, but there is - I believe - a considered reason for the current setup which has nothing to do with overblow egos or a lack of comprehension. That said on my personal top-three list of fix-its is making the withdrawal procedure automatic like the way it works for LCU's unless the player invests PPs to keep a unit in play, but I don't set patching priorities or do the coding so can only promise to push for it.

The total number of restricted WC air units called on to withdraw (this is, disband) is 65. This out of 2011 Allied units.

ORIGINAL: pad152
Realism Bites! - I don't think the following are realistic or very historical.

- Canada has more medium bomber replacements then the USA for first 60-90 days!
- RAAF Wirraway can't preform CAP or escort missions but, can do ASW missions!

In repeat, what I wrote when Pad asked last weekend on the air thread. In addition I might add that at game-start, the Allied player has 79 B-26's available, 68 B-25B's in "useless" units, and 80 B-18's of which 18 are "useless". There's also 13 A-20A's and 101 B-17's of which 25 are "useless". By comparison there 12 RCAF Bolingbrokes with 56 airframes arriving as replacements up to and including July '42 to equip four sqns of 48 a/c.

ORIGINAL: timtom

ORIGINAL: pad152

No US medium bomber production, replacements, spares for 4 months 12/41-3/42. How is this historic ?

Below is an extract from Table 91: Airplanes on Hand in Theaters vs Japan, by Type and Principel Model from the Army Air Force Statistical Digest, World War II.



"On hand" just means "allocated to theatre" and could as well be a crated aircraft somewhere in CONUS as over Rabaul.

The MB "other" category is actual B-26's because this is how 5th AF categoried them for some reason. "2nd Line and Misc." by a process of elimination must be the B-18. Curiously the A-24 is booked as a fighter, maybe because its single-engined.

What you're essentially seeing is the arrival of 3rd (A-20, A-24, B-25) & 22nd BG's (B-26) plus a few 7th & 11th AF squadrons. As is evident, bar the B-18, medium bombers weren't available in any kind of numbers until March.

To make matters worse, the Dutch, Americans, and Ozzies have to share the early, meager allocation of B-25's...

Regarding the Wirraway. It was a general purpose a/c which fullfilled a number of roles, incl. CAP-type missions. AFAIK the Wirraway was credited with exactly one A2A kill. Later in the war USN dive- and torpedobomber shot down a three-figure number of enemy a/c and I don't mean by the reargunner either. Patrol a/c from both sides regularly engaged in combat with one-another. Any a/c with a gun can fly CAP.

However that's really beside the point. The reason why the Wirraway has been made a LB is two-fold: Primarily because it's believed that this better reflects the role it was actually used in rather than the role it might have been used in, but also to underline the historical situation concerning the state of Australia's home air defense. Why did 8th, 35th & 49th PG's go to Oz post-haste, and why were the Ozzies ready to accept hand-me-down P-39's and P-40's not to mentioned the almost criminal B339-23?

Yes, it'd be preferable if the Wirraway could also fly CAP. The Wirraway's isn't the only a/c that sits uncomfortably with the labels we have to work with. However the design-process involves compromises and trade-offs. If we were to code our way out of everything, kittens would still be dying.

[MkXIV]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: Drakken


The US hadn't even an independent airforce arm until after Pearl Harbor (it was part of t

Er, the USAF didn't become independent until 1947.

Well that was after Pearl Harbor [:)]

[pad152]

Your data shows no B25's before March 1942? The Doolittle raid started training before that.

The First [font="verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif"]B-25D-1[/font] model (USAAF B25C) rolled off the factory floor on Dec 23rd, 1941.

Heres a picture of it.
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/wyandott/naak.htm

Source: North Americal Aircraft Company.
B-25: 24
B-25A: 40
B-25B: 120 (1941)
B-25C: 1,620 (started Dec 1941)
B-25D: 2,290
B-25G: 400
B-25H: 1,000
B-25J: 4,390
_______________

SUM: 9,884
A total of 120 B-25Bs were delivered, all in 1941, finishing off the original USAAF (the "Air Corps" having become the "Air Force" on 29 June 1941) B-25 production contract.

Some good info here:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avb25.html

[Sgt.Fury25]

I agree,would to see ground unit info also.Maybe can be done?

[myros]

My definition of useless?
&nbsp;
A 1 plane unit that will never have more than 1 plane, will never be used in combat and only exists to force the player to click a button = usless/pointless. witp/ae already has a TON of clicks in order to play the game with units that actualy matter. Adding lots of additional units that serve no purpose other than to be clicked away ... the whole balance of historic accuracy vs playability debate thing. IMO someone went way over that line when adding these kind of units.
&nbsp;
But hey it was you guys choice, it just added an extra half hour or so to the (already huge) first turn to go through and find them all and get rid of them. Will be easier next time Im sure as I'll know where they are and/or I'll just go ino the editor and delete the pointless things ;p
&nbsp;
M

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Scott_USN

You know what you said about Unit Destruction should be addressed I was just thinking that last night Betties from canton sunk some AP's but for the life of me I couldn't remember who was on what ship. So I can't remember what I lost.. was it the 47 constr bde or 56th coastal guns.... I don't know

That's why i always make a save just before ending the turn....[;)]

Not a bad idea...But would you list unit fragments as well?

So lets say you have a 16 ship convoy carrying one unit and three ships are sunk? How do you list the unit? The parent still survives...

Unit/5, Unit/7 and unit/11 which were lost with the ship may all reappear again if you load the unit onto a new TF....so what do you list? I'm not a coder and it doesn't sound simple.

All the ops report and/or combat report has to say is ship x sunk carrying unit/5 or, ship x hit while carrying unit/4. You don't have to say the unit was lost just what it was carrying.