A problem with active Russians

[el cid again]

While testing RHSCVO indicates the AI is better at controlling the Allies on the extended map than had been feared, and while it indicates the AI is not wholly stupid about handling the Soviets,

it is simply not up to understanding the Soviets are not at war if they are active!

So if any player wants to play against AI as Japan -
or wants to play computer vs computer for any reason -
the Soviets simply CANNOT be active. This combines with a desire by some players to have the Soviets inactive for what they think are historical reasons to mean there ought to be a way to have the Soviets not be active.

In spite of both these requirements, lots of technical issues, and some very important play problems, are effectively addressed by having the Russians active. These include that the Soviets are not forced to have both a smaller than historical force and no ability to shift it around: we can only partly give the Soviets the correct force (there are slot issues), but we CAN give them the freedom to move. Also, an inability to move means outlaying Soviet locations are forced to starve and ships are unable to move (and possibly even unable to appear as they should when a war does begin). But the greatest impact is on the confidence with which the Japanese player can disregard this "frozen" front, and not feel any need to keep a capable air force, or a large enough ground force, next to the "hostile" (wink wink) Red Army. These reasons have led me to believe that the basic RHS scenarios should have the Soviets active (though not in a state of war - and allow BOTH players to decide when that changes - instead of ONLY Japan).

But that does not address that players needing to have the AI work as the Allies will find the Russians are actually fighting - want to or not! In an effort to address this issue, and to make happy those who think it is "not history" to have the Soviets able to do anything (including things they surely could do) - I will issue a version of RHSCVO with ONLY this change: the Soviets are inactive. Being a single field change, it means that this version will not be delayed. It will be called RHSARO (for Active Russian Option). Since the players who think that "history requires" building plans modified as they were AFTER Coral Sea and Midway (even if those battles do not happen soon enough to justify such changes in a fictional game) are likely to be the ones to think "history requires" the Russians be unable to attack at all (because they did not until Aug 1945) - it is clear that this option should be based on RHSCVO - which uses the actual historical ship construction data. This will also allow players to be Japan vs AI if they want to practice that way. Finally, it will allow modders to change something, and then run a computer vs computer test that works reasonably well. While RHS is a play by email or head to head mod, it seems easy to accomodate players who wish to use AI to some extent. They need to understand, however, that RHS ship cruising speeds are set by historical data, and not what the AI likes to see (which is apparently 15 knots for warships and 8 knots for other things).