Warplan 2 wishlist

[kklemmick]

One thing I would really love to see is a breakdown of what my maintenance costs were. i.e: How much was spent on each unit to reinforce or upgrade it, or at least a breakdown by unit type.

This is partly because I have no good idea how much it actually costs to reinforce units (sometimes air units appear to get reinforced with no manpower cost, for example), but also because it would be easier to judge how much to allocate. It might also be nice to be able to control each one separately, but I'm not sure if that would be to much micromanagement.

[kklemmick]

One more I can think of while I'm doing one of my turns:

Would be nice to see what your merchant marines are being used for. The API shows the change in use for adding or subtracting a route, but it's not always very clear which existing route is using what.
It would also be nice to be able to prioritize these.

In my current game as Germany, I own all of the middle east so am floating in oil, but I seem to be using the 30 MM to transport Persian oil I don't need instead of the Nordic iron ore, which I really need.

[generalfdog]

It would also be nice to see how many vps you have vs your opponent without counting them up

[kklemmick]

It would also be nice to see how many vps you have vs your opponent without counting them up

That's already shown in the War Panel. Bottom of the panel.

[FrancPeinovich]

I would like to see the tech advancements system reworked. Instead of using points to advance a certain unit advancement, you should use points to advance universal characteristics. This removes the issue of just min-maxing and putting all your points into heavy armor vs breakthrough, or assault vs anti-tank.

Instead, each player would be able to put points into guns, firearms, tanks, naval air attack, etc. This creates more strategy instead of just putting all research points in a single advancement and only using that advancement for combat. For example, you could put very few points into tanks and still field effective mechanized units with more artillery and anti-tank guns.

This rework wouldn't be overly complex and would work well with a global setting.

[AlvaroSousa]

Pretty good idea that follows my vision for how the game mechanics would work. I wasn't 100% satisfied with the tech system myself.

[ncc1701e]

I agree this is a good idea.

[FrancPeinovich]

My rework of the supply system:

It seems to me that the current supply system is intentionally simplistic for the sole purpose that a more complex (see: realistic) supply system would be to difficult to implement. I am not a programmer myself so I will not request a physical HoI4 style supply system (a system in which all supply is traced from industry to the specific ports and units).

However, I have two recommendations that would probably be easier to implement while still simulating a more realistic system.

1) port supply reworked

The issue of magical port supply can be fixed by having a player trace a supply route from a main supply hex to the port they wish to supply. This will be done manually and will require a certain number of merchant marines depending on the distance of the route. This will not be overly tedious for the player, as they will have to plan their supply route carefully as it can be attacked by the enemy player with subs and ships.

Example 1: Italy starts the game in 1939(???) with a supply route from Sicily (main supply) to Tobruk (controlled port). Italy has a reserve of merchant shipping and can redraw the route if they wanted to.

Example 2: The United States invades France via the UK. In the same turn as they land, they draw a supply route from Portsmouth to a beach hex on the landing area. Portsmouth is connected via rail to London, which is a main supply hex for the Allies. Because the supply route ends on a beach and not a port, there is a penalty.

2) Main supply

Main supply hexes can be encircled by the enemy and will eventually run out of production. This only applies when 2 or less main supply hexes are encircled (you can’t make all of the Red Army out of supply by capturing the AA Line).

Example: A German army is encircled in Cologne and Düsseldorf. The Axis player will lose access to the production of both encircled main supply hexes. Instead, a percentage of their production will go to an invisible reserve that will be used to reinforce the German units in the pocket. This starts at 60% of encircled production and decreases by 10% each turn. The Allied player could also bomb the encircled cities to further starve the pocket.

These ideas are both just rough ideas.

[FrancPeinovich]

Simple idea for fortifications:

Replace the "hold" vs "defend" toggle with a "hold" vs "fortify" toggle. If set to fortify, the unit will consume a small amount of production each turn to build entrenchment (a 70p division might use 10p each turn to fortify, for example). The first level of entrenchment would be free and would be acquired by a unit set to hold as well. Fully fortified units would be somewhat more powerful than current WP units with full entrenchment, but not to an overpowered degree.

In my opinion, adding separate production for forts is a bit too much of a micromanagement, especially for individual units.

[FrancPeinovich]

I would like to see the tech advancements system reworked. Instead of using points to advance a certain unit advancement, you should use points to advance universal characteristics. This removes the issue of just min-maxing and putting all your points into heavy armor vs breakthrough, or assault vs anti-tank.

Instead, each player would be able to put points into guns, firearms, tanks, naval air attack, etc. This creates more strategy instead of just putting all research points in a single advancement and only using that advancement for combat. For example, you could put very few points into tanks and still field effective mechanized units with more artillery and anti-tank guns.

This rework wouldn't be overly complex and would work well with a global setting.

To expand on my suggestion...

Nothing needs to be changed about unit attributes or how they affect combat. Below would be an idea of a tech advancement system. It would work the same as the current one, with the player putting a set number of points in each to progress research. Keep in mind that all of these would provide only a +1 value in 1 to 2 traits every 3 or so years of advancement, so you wouldn't have vastly better units in 1943 compared to 1938 level units (although it would make sense that Iran would have less advanced infantry than the Soviets in 1941).

Firearms (adds firearms stat)

Anti-Tank (adds to guns stat)

Artillery (adds to artillery stat)

Heavy Artillery (adds to artillery and guns stat, but only by a small amount as this would be an optional research investment)

Light AA (adds to anti-air, also minor buff to firearms stat)

Heavy AA (adds to anti-air as well as guns stat to simulate effective anti-tank guns like the 88mm, Germany starts with 1939 tech in 1937)

Combat Engineering (adds to defense and firearms stats, another investment option)

Armor (adds to tanks stat)

Radio Communication (adds to tactical bombing, defense and firearms)

Naval and air advancements would work the same way. Although as you can see by radio coms there can be some overlap in research effects. The only type of advancement tech that wouldn't be universally applied would operation points/range. In order to avoid confusion, I would clearly distinguish naval, air and land operation points in the research tab.

[AlvaroSousa]

As for the supply suggestions as a game developer you have to balance CPU time, game mechanics functionality, coding complexity, and a few other things I can't think of at the moment.

Supply will be better in WP2. But it still has to be simple and low micromanage.

[FrancPeinovich]

As for the supply suggestions as a game developer you have to balance CPU time, game mechanics functionality, coding complexity, and a few other things I can't think of at the moment.

Supply will be better in WP2. But it still has to be simple and low micromanage.

Fair enough. WP has a good supply system as it is, far better than a lot of other games like Panzer Corps 2. Haven't played enough of SC but it seems to be better than SC as well.

[AlvaroSousa]

It is based on SC. I think the difference is all ports provide supply in SC while in WP they have limited capacity that reduces over distance.

[FrancPeinovich]

Minor suggestion, not sure if already mentioned: add Slovakia as minor nation. Building and controlling 1 or 2 divisions/corps from minors is very enjoyable in WarPlan, such as one mechanized or mountain corps for Bulgaria.

[kklemmick]

Supply will be better in WP2. But it still has to be simple and low micromanage.

I agree 100%. Supply and movement need to be simple enough that the player can understand how it works and visualize it easily, otherwise attempting to stay in supply or cut the supply of your opponent would be overly complex to understand. I think this is more important from a game-play standpoint than realism.

I would LOVE to see a better AI for WP2. As a game AI programmer I can offer a lot of suggestions here, but a big one would be to expose the AI behavior more than in WP1. From what my limited poking around of the WP1 data files indicates, while there is a bunch of scripting to direct the AI to do certain things most of the AI behavior is in code and isn't data driven. By making this more data driven you could leverage community members to help improve this and hopefully we'd get an AI that's good enough that it's at least fun to play against casually.

[kklemmick]

One other thing that keeps coming up in my games is that players get frustrated with the wide range of potential results. I realize there is some gaming/realism value to that, but it does make strategy difficult. For example, my entire Italian fleet was wiped out to the ship in a single naval battle once, when in most games it's pretty hard to even sink one ship. My opponent is frustrated because I knocked his invasion army out of it's port with a single lucky 2:1 attack. Narrowing the range of results for given attacks would be preferable IMO, but at minimum it would be nice to document what the potential outcomes could be, so players can better know the risks involved in their moves.

Also, to be fair, the naval detection rules are pretty well documented in the manual but they don't really help much practically with determining whether a fleet has a good chance to find and engage or not - more detailed in game documentation would be best IMO - like showing the chance to detect as part of the tooltip, as well as some indicator of the range of outcomes.

[sveint]

The possibility to add a short message when you post a PBEM game.
ex: "Beginners welcome", that sort of thing

[AlvaroSousa]

Supply will be better in WP2. But it still has to be simple and low micromanage.

I agree 100%. Supply and movement need to be simple enough that the player can understand how it works and visualize it easily, otherwise attempting to stay in supply or cut the supply of your opponent would be overly complex to understand. I think this is more important from a game-play standpoint than realism.

I would LOVE to see a better AI for WP2. As a game AI programmer I can offer a lot of suggestions here, but a big one would be to expose the AI behavior more than in WP1. From what my limited poking around of the WP1 data files indicates, while there is a bunch of scripting to direct the AI to do certain things most of the AI behavior is in code and isn't data driven. By making this more data driven you could leverage community members to help improve this and hopefully we'd get an AI that's good enough that it's at least fun to play against casually.

The A.I. has 3 layers.

#1 a tactical later that determines where to move, who to attack based on other orders.
#2 an operational layer of map orders in the editor.
#3 a strategic layer that says are we attacking or defending and where are our goals via scripting.

[AlvaroSousa]

The possibility to add a short message when you post a PBEM game.
ex: "Beginners welcome", that sort of thing

Perhaps a skill level flag. Like saying "I am new to this game"

[sveint]

Also the ingame chat is confusing and I often forget what is being discussed. If we could have a history of the last 3-4 messages instead of only the last message.