Something for everyone [RHSPPO and ESO]

[el cid again]

I was going to make RHSPPO a variation of RHSBBO with more political points (and in fact I still am)

and ESO was just going to be a "Japan enhansed" variation of that.

But ESO turns out to be more like CVO - after all

Japan should not be building Yamato class battleships to increase its chances!

SO RHSESO (Empire Of the Sun) is based on CVO

which means those who asked for political point options for CVO will get it.

This means if you are good as Allies - and need a "tougher" Japan - particularly under AI direction - you can try ESO - after you always win autovictory in a year doing CVO. It also is better play balance - the US may NEED all those carriers in ESO!

[mlees]

Err, you lost me with all those abbreviations...

RHSPPO = Political Point Option... Russians inactive?
(What is the PPO?)
RHSBBO = Battleship option
RHSESO = CVO = Carrier option

Is this right?

[witpqs]

I like the sound of that el cid.

[el cid again]

RHSPPO = Political Point Option... Russians inactive?
(What is the PPO?)

It is RHSBBO (Battleship Oriented) with extra political points
most units appear at home - and you assign them where you want -
discussed in its own thread in response to players desires

To release after BBO - which releases tomarrow (hopefully)

[el cid again]

RHSBBO = Battleship option
RHSESO = CVO = Carrier option

Is this right?

Dead on right. Also

RAO = Russian Active Option version of CVO
RPO = Russian Passive Option version of BBO

CVO and RAO are now getting stable and may settle down.
BBO and RPO should then release tomarrow.
PPO a day or so later.
ESO a day or so after that.

[Buck Beach]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

RHSBBO = Battleship option
RHSESO = CVO = Carrier option

Is this right?

Dead on right. Also

RAO = Russian Active Option version of CVO
RPO = Russian Passive Option version of BBO

CVO and RAO are now getting stable and may settle down.
BBO and RPO should then release tomarrow.
PPO a day or so later.
ESO a day or so after that.

You forgot LSMFT[:D]

[JeffroK]

Will it be tested before it is released?

[el cid again]

Will it be tested before it is released?

Actually, the RHS family is essentially identical. All the planes and almost all the ships are the same. RAO and CVO are identical except for one switch (and Russian submarines being in one); RPO and BBO are similar: there is one field different: Russians Active? Yes or No. PPO is identical to BBO - except for two fields - political points - and the command assignments of reinforcements is usually "Home" - whatever that means.
ESO is almost identical to CVO - although it is the most different - the differences are small in programming terms.

In effect we are testing ALL the scenarios at one time. I have done some RAO tests - and they are remarkable only for how much they look like regular CVO. There is no Zhukov. Russia is not at war - except its submarines go hunting - and are hunted. PLAYERs could change that - but that is what we want: player options.

No - I plan no tests of BBO. I regard it as the same as CVO - just certain ships appear in different forms (e.g. Shinano as CV or BB). In any case, no test possible can discover what players in numbers will, in their many ways, put a scenario through. I stand ready to fix any problem detected, large or small, significant or wholly academic. No computer war game in history ever had a near real time support system before: but RHS has one. I spent decades as a field engineer - test technician - technical consultant and administrator of an electronics firm; I am supported by a vast array of testers and topical experts - people who for their own reasons wish to see this product work well - and there are few problems not imposed by the structure of the game design we cannot fix - and we are attempting to address some of those as well. You simply cannot put this sort of thing out - and fix whatever goes wrong - for very long and not end up with a very fine, stable, and likely popular product. Note that many of the problems we are addressing are issues of long standing - but we are addressing them and fixing them regardless. We do not care why it is wrong - we only care that it is made as right as can be done. We don't care if it is hard or easy - several problems have involved massive amounts of data entry - and this project has easily generated 10 to 20 man years of work in just six months - all of it volunteer by members of the Matrix WITP Forum. It is attracting so many volunteers now that we can generate 10 man years every month - and soon every week - if we needed them - which I predict we will not. This is very close to structurally right - and what remains will be correcting the date of appearance of Merchantman number 1285 - stuff like that.

[JeffroK]

Sid,

I was referring to the Dogs Breakfast of the release of RHS.

The problems have (to me) overwhelmed the massive amount of work you have done in creating these mods. Weapons in wrong slots etc rather than the flow of the war.

Spend a little time in ensuring the files are correct etc.

[el cid again]

I was referring to the Dogs Breakfast of the release of RHS.

The problems have (to me) overwhelmed the massive amount of work you have done in creating these mods. Weapons in wrong slots etc rather than the flow of the war.

Spend a little time in ensuring the files are correct etc.

If you spend time in any WITP database - stock - CHS - RHS - you name it - you are going to find hundreds - nay thousands of bad fields. If you dare to actually change something - it impacts others. After you test for weeks on end you need to put it out to a wider audience. IRL nothing like lots of different people to find things you never would think to look for or test for. Yes - many errors are my fault (either as an individual or as administrator). But many of the errors being corrected are inherited, and are in the games you play. In many cases I send notes to various people about official or other scenarios - identifying the slot and issue - so they have the chance to fix them as well. What is different now is that a process of actively addressing errors has produced lots of people looking. Seek and ye shall find. Further, "no program longer than 10 lines is error free." Few databases are dirtier than WITP because of the nature of how it was built - half blind without definitions - an editor that never heard of object linking and embedding - conversion utilities that change fields - and things we do not even know about. They are not going to stay dirty. It is a question of overwhelming the data with effort - and most of all - of attitude. We will win this war.

[JeffroK]

But Sid,

Before releasing it, and having many errors in weapons on aircraft etc, run it past a few people to check things. Often the creator is the worst person to do this.

You could ask some of those you respect to do the checking.

No-one minds minor glitches or differences of opinions, but after looking at the lists provided, this work comes across as seriously flawed.

[el cid again]

Before releasing it, and having many errors in weapons on aircraft etc, run it past a few people to check things. Often the creator is the worst person to do this.

You are writing as if I didn't do that. But I did. Granted, you were not one of the people. But I took all willing to look and listed to all they said.

I am surprised at the problems we have seen - slightly. I knew the data set itself was awful. I knew the utilities were dangerous. But I didn't know just how awful or dangerous. Had I known I might not have done it at all - or I might have tried a different mechanism to address them (this would be hard for propriatary reasons, but in principle it might be done).
Doesen't matter. I am used to dealing with whatever problem rears its ugly head - and fixing it. IF it can be resolved by what we can do, we will fix it, whatever it may be. [I once had a boss ask "when was the last time we DIDN'T fix something? The answer was "never."]

[el cid again]

You could ask some of those you respect to do the checking.

No-one minds minor glitches or differences of opinions, but after looking at the lists provided, this work comes across as seriously flawed.

What if I did the former and still got the latter? Is that a mitigator?

What you are missing is this: until it was released we didn't have enough interest or attention to get the things we now get. It is clear people are looking at EVERY field and finding EVERY error in a set. IF we exploit that data by fixing every identified error, we are going to run out of errors - even with the number of issues we have here.