Resource Convoys

[Larry Smith]

Would you be able to tell us if the game will handle the shipping of resources via convoy points differently from how it did when Chris M. was programming? I always found it annoying that, despite being able to dictate preferred pathways via the "Convoy Information" sub-screen, the program would sometimes send resources around the world the long way. Never mind that every time a change to the naval deployments were made, the computer would spend several minutes doing calculations. If you had a late war game, and say - Japan had lost all of its at-sea convoys, you'd have to use the "Place Unit" editor to give them a convoys point, just to speed up the program during its calculations.
Whenever I used the previous beta, this was the one part of the game that dragged on the longest, due to the constant re-caculations, etc. Will there be features to allow us to tag certain resources, build points - etc. - as immobile, say if a situation arose preventing their transport, thus telling the program to just ignore them until the tag is removed (which could be automatically done at the end of a turn).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Larry Smith
Would you be able to tell us if the game will handle the shipping of resources via convoy points differently from how it did when Chris M. was programming? I always found it annoying that, despite being able to dictate preferred pathways via the "Convoy Information" sub-screen, the program would sometimes send resources around the world the long way. Never mind that every time a change to the naval deployments were made, the computer would spend several minutes doing calculations. If you had a late war game, and say - Japan had lost all of its at-sea convoys, you'd have to use the "Place Unit" editor to give them a convoys point, just to speed up the program during its calculations.
Whenever I used the previous beta, this was the one part of the game that dragged on the longest, due to the constant re-caculations, etc. Will there be features to allow us to tag certain resources, build points - etc. - as immobile, say if a situation arose preventing their transport, thus telling the program to just ignore them until the tag is removed (which could be automatically done at the end of a turn).

I agree completely and intend to rewrite the convoy placement code from scratch. That includes redesigning how to designate the flow of resources from resource hexes to factories. I haven't given this a lot of thought yet, but when I get to it, I'll post my ideas before writing any code so forum members can help make the design flexible, efficient, and effective. There is only one search routine in CWIF that I like and that is not used for the convoy and supply calculations.

[pak19652002]

Lars will tell you that this is one of my pet peeves also. I was complelely befuddled by CWiFs CP management and it took a lot of patience from Lars to help me learn how to make them behave. Now, it's second nature, but new players should not have to go through such a frustratingly long learning curve. It's good to see that Steve has this scheduled for a full makeover. I'll be paying close attention.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Larry Smith
Would you be able to tell us if the game will handle the shipping of resources via convoy points differently from how it did when Chris M. was programming? I always found it annoying that, despite being able to dictate preferred pathways via the "Convoy Information" sub-screen, the program would sometimes send resources around the world the long way. Never mind that every time a change to the naval deployments were made, the computer would spend several minutes doing calculations. If you had a late war game, and say - Japan had lost all of its at-sea convoys, you'd have to use the "Place Unit" editor to give them a convoys point, just to speed up the program during its calculations.
Whenever I used the previous beta, this was the one part of the game that dragged on the longest, due to the constant re-caculations, etc. Will there be features to allow us to tag certain resources, build points - etc. - as immobile, say if a situation arose preventing their transport, thus telling the program to just ignore them until the tag is removed (which could be automatically done at the end of a turn).

I agree completely and intend to rewrite the convoy placement code from scratch. That includes redesigning how to designate the flow of resources from resource hexes to factories. I haven't given this a lot of thought yet, but when I get to it, I'll post my ideas before writing any code so forum members can help make the design flexible, efficient, and effective. There is only one search routine in CWIF that I like and that is not used for the convoy and supply calculations.

[c92nichj]

I believe that anyone who played the CWIF version is equally frustrated.

See a horror example in post:
fb.asp?m=917402

[pak19652002]

That post captures the sentiment quite well I would say. You are right that one of the key problems is that CWiF's CP management is built around a sea area "avoidance" system as opposed to an "assigment" system. Once you get the hang of that counterintuitive approach, it becomes much easier. I assume there is a good reason why it was done that way, but I can't think of it.

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

I believe that anyone who played the CWIF version is equally frustrated.

See a horror example in post:
fb.asp?m=917402

[Larry Smith]

I read your post about the Venezualean oil, and though I usually just told each in turn to avoid the destinations (Toronto, Montreal), it was still annoying, as the process had to be done four times.  The real horror happens when you have build CW build points going to the FF, FF resources going to the CW, and both oil and BP flowing from the US to the CW and/or the FF.  I always tried to keep the flow going in one direction, if possible.  However, the worst part was that while you could assign specific resources to satisfy Lending commitments, the BP's were wholly at the AI's discrection.  Furthermore, it would prioritize a capital-to-capital transfer, meaning that BP's from the US had to be sent to London, rather than having two go to Canadian factories to avoid having to ship them overseas.  Finally, while I do realize Chris was a long way from finishing, there was a problem with the program whenever the (neutral) US convoys were intended to carry Allied supplies, whether via US Entry options or for the suppliying of China; in the former case, it just refused to carry any Allied materials until the US was in the war.  In the latter case, if there were Allied convoys in the sea areas with the US convoys carrying Chinese materials, the Allied convoys were used instead, and the US ones would sit there, unused (probably because the program was prioritizing the lent resources and BP's). 
Finally, the routine would not necessarily assign resources/BP's to the closest factory - it would assign then in the order that they appeared in the "list" of factories.