patch update

[SGT Rice]

As for improving fleet AA, I would like it to be consistent and minimize change. The first thing is to simply increase AA capability (Glory does this with a research bump in AA for HFs, maybe it could be larger). Hitting AA=4 for fleets is a big difference from AA=3. For consistency, the best thing would seem to be that if the number of naval vessels is more than twice the number of attacking air, the AA gets a bonus like land flak does in the same condition. IMO, this would be a huge change making land based air a lot less effective in places like the Med, where I usually see just a couple of air units supporting the navies.

I would not propose this; as you note it would give a huge and unwarranted boost to all ship AA. What I did have in mind was to treat upgraded vessels like land-based AA. During the war there was a quantum shift in AA firepower that's not well represented by a 1 point increase in the combat rating; this allowed mid/late war vessels to function as dedicated AA platforms.

How about this. It will be easier to code, and is largely the same.
1. Unique targeting of naval (non-transport) units by CAG.
2. Once all naval (no-transport) units are covered by CAGs, independent selection using the normal (weighted) CAG probabilities.

This seems a reasonable compromise. Two questions; in step one does the unique targeting still give priority to CVs? And, what about non-CAG targeting?

[SGT Rice]

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet (from the Lightning Tourney thread)

I believe victory (for scoring purposes) is actually checked on the start of the German Turn ...

I believe you're right; that does appear to be what happens. But that doesn't match the game manual's description; I believe this is either a bug or some errata needs to be added to the patch release to to correct these rule sections:

Section 13.1.1 German Surrender:

For Germany to surrender either of the following conditions must be met at the end of any player's turn:

Section 13.1.2 Japanese Surrender:

For Japan to surrender at the end of any player's turn ...

... both of which seem to indicate that Axis surrenders will take place at the end of Allied player turns. and ...

Section 14.3 End Game Victory Conditions:

Decisive Allied Victory - Axis surrender by the end of the Summer 1945 turn.

... which seems to indicate that victory level is determined by the turn in which the final Axis power surrender takes place.

I don't have a preference; would just like the rule as written to match the rule as coded.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: SGT Rice

As for improving fleet AA, I would like it to be consistent and minimize change. The first thing is to simply increase AA capability (Glory does this with a research bump in AA for HFs, maybe it could be larger). Hitting AA=4 for fleets is a big difference from AA=3. For consistency, the best thing would seem to be that if the number of naval vessels is more than twice the number of attacking air, the AA gets a bonus like land flak does in the same condition. IMO, this would be a huge change making land based air a lot less effective in places like the Med, where I usually see just a couple of air units supporting the navies.

I would not propose this; as you note it would give a huge and unwarranted boost to all ship AA. What I did have in mind was to treat upgraded vessels like land-based AA. During the war there was a quantum shift in AA firepower that's not well represented by a 1 point increase in the combat rating; this allowed mid/late war vessels to function as dedicated AA platforms.

I don't like it either ... I'm really just trying to say that if anything is done it should leverage existing rules for consistency and ease of understanding.

No way I'm going to reflect "upgrades". That is confusing, there is no GUI to indicate it.

IMO, there is a big difference between AA=3,4,5. Beyond 5 there is no big difference. In GG, all powers get a little tech push on the way from 3 to 4, and I reduced the world standard so it is cheap to continue. IMO, that captures the effect. It just takes a player that is interested in pursuing it.

ORIGINAL: SGT Rice

How about this. It will be easier to code, and is largely the same.
1. Unique targeting of naval (non-transport) units by CAG.
2. Once all naval (no-transport) units are covered by CAGs, independent selection using the normal (weighted) CAG probabilities.

This seems a reasonable compromise. Two questions; in step one does the unique targeting still give priority to CVs? And, what about non-CAG targeting?

Answers. Yes, the unique targeting would use the priorities. The non-CAG targeting would be unchanged.

1. Unique targeting of naval (non-transport) units by CAG, with existing weighting towards warships and CVs.
2. Once all naval (no-transport) units are covered by CAGs, independent selection using the normal (weighted) CAG probabilities.

I'd still let CAGs target transports, just not count it towards uniqueness. I.e. the first step doesn't exclude transports, but doesn't punt to the second step until all _warships_ are targeted.

Looking at the implementation, it is a little more difficult than I had thought. So it may evolve a bit.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: SGT Rice

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet (from the Lightning Tourney thread)

I believe victory (for scoring purposes) is actually checked on the start of the German Turn ...

I believe you're right; that does appear to be what happens. But that doesn't match the game manual's description; I believe this is either a bug or some errata needs to be added to the patch release to to correct these rule sections:

I don't understand, particularly the comment "for scoring purposes".

I looked through the code. It looks to me like the victory check is at the end of the WA or Sov turn, as described.

It does look, however, like the game will effectively continue to progress to the next turn after the victory is determined. So the next turn has essentially started by the time you get to the victory screen. This may cause some issues. Actually, it also looks like this is a change that I made, in order to make the "continue game" option work correctly (it used to dump you to the victory screen directly and avoid a bunch of code that needed to run for the game to be able to continue). Looking at it now, it looks like a mess to try to fix everything.

[MrQuiet]

What I meant by 'for scoreing purposes' is that I think it determines axis have surrendered  durring the current season but does not calculate the 'score' i.e. victory level until the start of the next season.
 
This is all just a guess because most games that are not early DV seem to turn out this way.
I certainly may be wrong.
I just figured the person who wrote the manual was not the person who coded the game and they somehow got comunications crossed on when victory level is decided.

[SGT Rice]

I would simply suggest publishing some errata in the Read Me file that adjusts the wording used in the relevant rules section ... something like:

14.3 End Game Victory Conditions

For All Campaigns and Scenarios I, II and III
Decisive Allied Victory - Axis surrender during the Spring 1945 turn.
Substantive Allied Victory - Axis surrender during the Summer 1945 turn.
Marginal Allied Victory - Axis surrender during the Fall 1945 turn.
... etc.

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: SGT Rice

I would simply suggest publishing some errata in the Read Me file that adjusts the wording used in the relevant rules section ... something like:

Would that really solve the problem?

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet
I just figured the person who wrote the manual was not the person who coded the game and they somehow got comunications crossed on when victory level is decided.

No, this is definitely not the case. Having looked at the code, I can say that I unintentionally changed it when I fixed the "continue game" option. My oopsie. First time, I think, that I've had the displeasure of identifying a bug I myself put in a released version .

If that is the only problem then that should be easy enough to fix it back. It would still progress to the next season, but I can subtract 1 season in computing the victory level.

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

If that is the only problem then that should be easy enough to fix it back. It would still progress to the next season, but I can subtract 1 season in computing the victory level.

If and only if the WAllies finish the Axis, right?

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
"I agree with MA that the current 1+d4 or 6+d4 bumps could use a little extra muscle. However I would prefer more base and not more randomness. So I feel the d4 works well enough. We should start with at least +2 more on the base. 3+d4 and 8+d4 seem like a good starting point. But I would even support 4+d4 and 9+d4 if others felt it needed it.

I don't see a real game problem in need of fixing with the tech events, personally. If there were a lot of support, then I could tweak all of them by adding +1 (better to do a small tweak and see what happens instead of a larger one).

Everything that is 1+d4 would become 2+d4, everything that is 6+d4 would become 7+d4.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: GKar

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead
If that is the only problem then that should be easy enough to fix it back. It would still progress to the next season, but I can subtract 1 season in computing the victory level.

If and only if the WAllies finish the Axis, right?

Correct. I guess I'll have to pay attention not to introduce another bug here, eh?

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

1. Unique targeting of naval (non-transport) units by CAG, with existing weighting towards warships and CVs.
2. Once all naval (no-transport) units are covered by CAGs, independent selection using the normal (weighted) CAG probabilities.

I'd still let CAGs target transports, just not count it towards uniqueness. I.e. the first step doesn't exclude transports, but doesn't punt to the second step until all _warships_ are targeted.

Looking at the implementation, it is a little more difficult than I had thought. So it may evolve a bit.

Sounds good. But what would happen if you just changed the transport weight to zero? Would the system still allow CAG to attack transports if they are the only thing left? If your alternate suggestion is difficult to program as you say it might be, then using zero weight for transports may just be the simplest coarse to take. It's also more agreeable with me anyway, since any rule that makes CAG favor warships over transports is a good one. Your alternate suggestion was a bit softer in this regard and allows CAG to sometimes spill over and waste themselves on non-warships. Was that a preference, or was it a matter of programming convenience?

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

I actually like Marshall Art's (do I credit this correctly?) idea that you get CA "points" depending on how many unit-class "teams" you have. IMO, TB needs more weight than other units. So I end up with something like this:

• every arm/inf/art/TB "full team" you have, each member team gets the CAM.
• for each arm/inf/art "partial team" you have, not to exceed the number of TB, each member gets the CAM (this gives the overweight of TB, which basically gets to contribute to 2 teams instead of 1).
• In addition, each such (full or partial) team could provide one other range 1 unit (outside of a team, and note that range 1 excludes art) a CA benefit.

For example, with 4arm+10inf+8art+2TB, you'd get 2 full teams, and 2 partial teams. These 4 teams provide 4 extra CA units (in this case, infantry units not in a "team"), so that in total you'd have 18 units firing with CA (4 arm + 8 inf + 4 art + 2 TB).

This is a little more complex, but it's still fairly straightforward (the combat pop-up would display "number of CA teams" instead of the current "Attacker has CA"). And all CA benefits are simply proportional to how much balance you have.

I think I prefer either leaving it alone entirely, or going to something like the above.

I really like the unit class teams concept, it helps to encourage proper proportions. If your willing to program this, then by all means do. If I understand you right what you are basically saying is this without the use of full or partial team descriptions.
Number of units getting CA +3
2arm/2inf/2art/1TB
plus an extra
1arm or 1inf/1TB

I think it's a good ratio, but I think it can be simplified further. Instead of using a second rule to add further range 1 units to the mix, this below is pretty much the same thing.
2arm/4inf/2art/1TB

Instead of allowing both range 1 units as extras, just make it infantry only. Much simpler to have one uniform ratio. Infantry were the backbone of the army so to speak and the ratio above gives twice as many infantry the CA bonus.

Rearranging it, the 4inf/2art/2arm/1TB ratio boils the CA bonus down to the essence of what you described without the use of much language. Plus its a really easy ratio to remember. I'm in full support of this idea, and if others think the ratio should be something else like 3inf/2art/2arm/1TB or whatever, the beauty is that this is so configurable.

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

As for improving fleet AA, I would like it to be consistent and minimize change. The first thing is to simply increase AA capability (Glory does this with a research bump in AA for HFs, maybe it could be larger). Hitting AA=4 for fleets is a big difference from AA=3. For consistency, the best thing would seem to be that if the number of naval vessels is more than twice the number of attacking air, the AA gets a bonus like land flak does in the same condition. IMO, this would be a huge change making land based air a lot less effective in places like the Med, where I usually see just a couple of air units supporting the navies.

I like giving HF's 2 AA shots instead. Before anyone argues that it's not consistent with the game now let me point this out. Among the land units only one gets to shot twice because its considered a dedicated AA platform. Why not of all the sea units give only the HF's this same special advantage? The army has one unit that's great at AA and now the navy could have one too. I think it totally fits. Same rules would apply. HF's would get to target air first and only if there were more air than what the HF's could handle would it then spill over to the other ships AA. Another benefit of allowing HF's 2 shots would allow players to focus on only HF AA tech in the same way players only focus on Flak AA tech. Does anyone ever tech up infantry AA? No. This one simple change helps put HF's back in the game as a viable unit and makes tech investment in their AA rating more worthwhile. No new rules need to be made up. Simply stated, you can now say that the double shot power of flak now applies to HF's too. What confusion could come from that?

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
"I agree with MA that the current 1+d4 or 6+d4 bumps could use a little extra muscle. However I would prefer more base and not more randomness. So I feel the d4 works well enough. We should start with at least +2 more on the base. 3+d4 and 8+d4 seem like a good starting point. But I would even support 4+d4 and 9+d4 if others felt it needed it.

I don't see a real game problem in need of fixing with the tech events, personally. If there were a lot of support, then I could tweak all of them by adding +1 (better to do a small tweak and see what happens instead of a larger one).

Everything that is 1+d4 would become 2+d4, everything that is 6+d4 would become 7+d4.

Well as I said I think starting with at least +2 is the right move. MA seems to think +3 is the right value and WH says +1. So lets just go with +2 because it's in the middle.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
I really like the unit class teams concept, it helps to encourage proper proportions. If your willing to program this, then by all means do. If I understand you right what you are basically saying is this without the use of full or partial team descriptions.
Number of units getting CA +3
2arm/2inf/2art/1TB
plus an extra
1arm or 1inf/1TB

What you've said is clearer, but subtly different, in that 1arm/1inf/1art/1TB would not get the benefit. Basically, I'm saying that any number (including an odd numbers, which your clearer rephrasing excludes) of 1arm/1inf/1art teams up to twice the number of TBs would get the CAM.

That was why I phrased it that way.

As for my description about range 1 for the "bonus units", it is because that was how I was thinking of coding it. Don't look at unit types at all, just look at what the range is. I think it would be easiest to code because each range is one loop with the units in a random order. The first N units at range 1 would get the bonus. Using the range, it would also include militia and flak. Which I like. I do like to see militia benefit from CAM, just not contributing to whether you get CAM or not.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

1. Unique targeting of naval (non-transport) units by CAG, with existing weighting towards warships and CVs.
2. Once all naval (no-transport) units are covered by CAGs, independent selection using the normal (weighted) CAG probabilities.

I'd still let CAGs target transports, just not count it towards uniqueness. I.e. the first step doesn't exclude transports, but doesn't punt to the second step until all _warships_ are targeted.

Looking at the implementation, it is a little more difficult than I had thought. So it may evolve a bit.

Sounds good. But what would happen if you just changed the transport weight to zero?

I appreciate the suggestion, and for a moment thought it a good simple way to get moving. But then I realized it wouldn't quite work out, not if we want the naval priorities to continue in effect for targeting after all the combat naval units are targeted once. In fact, I also realized that my own proposed scheme doesn't even fix the problem I wanted to fix, which is that multiple CAGs can target the same TF instead of spreading over multiple TFs.

I've pondered this for the last hour or two, started some coding, scrapped it, started over, scrapped it, started over. Here is what I've come up with.

1. CAGs first uniquely target combat naval units (CV/HF/LF/SF) according to the priorities (40/4/2/1)
2. Once all combat naval units are targeted, CAGs uniquely target all ship units (CV/HF/LF/SF/TF, including transports) according to the priorities (40/4/2/1/1). "Uniquely" means that after this stage no transport will be targeted twice, and no combat unit will be targeted thrice.
3. Once all combat naval units are targeted twice and all transports are targeted once, CAGs will select targets randomly and independently (with no more prioritization).
4. After CAGs have targeted, all other air units will uniquely target ship units that have not yet been targeted
5. If all ship units are targeted, non-CAG air units select targets at random.

This implementation is pretty simple, 3 strategically placed lines of code.

[Lebatron]

What I was basically saying was that once someone understood what you were saying about CA teams they would essentially take my shortcut and not think in terms of full and partial teams. It was implied that one understood that you did not need 2arm/2inf/2art per TB to get the bonus. 1 of each would suffice too. My statement just reflects the upper limit of total units to recieve that bonus.

But yes your right it does have to be carfully phased to include that assumption. So I'll try again.

1. One tactical bomber can support a combo of 2 (1arm/1inf/1art) teams max.
2. For every team that gets CA, one randomly chosen range 1 land unit, not already part of a CA team, will recieve the CA bonus too.
3. Therefore at max, 1 TB can support up to 8 units. So 9 in total would recieve +3, ei  the TB and the 8 supported units.

I hope this is exactly what you intended. 

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron

What I was basically saying was that once someone understood what you were saying about CA teams they would essentially take my shortcut and not think in terms of full and partial teams. It was implied that one understood that you did not need 2arm/2inf/2art per TB to get the bonus. 1 of each would suffice too. My statement just reflects the upper limit of total units to recieve that bonus.

But yes your right it does have to be carfully phased to include that assumption. So I'll try again.

1. One tactical bomber can support a combo of 2 (1arm/1inf/1art) teams max.
2. For every team that gets CA, one randomly chosen range 1 land unit, not already part of a CA team, will recieve the CA bonus too.
3. Therefore at max, 1 TB can support up to 8 units. So 9 in total would recieve +3, ei  the TB and the 8 supported units.

I hope this is exactly what you intended. 

With the two additional points: (i) exclude artilllery from #2, (ii) a number of TBs up to the number of teams from #1 also get CAM (if you have fewer infantry than TB, for example, the number of TBs with CAM may be limited).

Point (i) is actually important from the implementation side _because_ of the way range is done. I would need to have something distinct to do at each range. If I track all the units separately (like for each team I know that exactly one artillery, one arm, one inf) it is OK. But if I allow a random unit class like for #2 then it is difficult to randomize correctly over units that fire at different ranges.

While I like this rule, I've still not signed up to do it. It's a fairly large change, both in play implications and code work. It's gotten some support here from 4 people (me, Lebatron, SGT RIce, Marchall Art) I think, and indeed I don't think anyone spoke against it, but still I'm reluctant to change it for everybody. This would certainly not be mod-ability, but a complete change.

[Marshall Art]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

While I like this rule, I've still not signed up to do it. It's a fairly large change, both in play implications and code work. It's gotten some support here from 4 people (me, Lebatron, SGT RIce, Marchall Art) I think, and indeed I don't think anyone spoke against it, but still I'm reluctant to change it for everybody. This would certainly not be mod-ability, but a complete change.

What could make you fully buy into it is the fact that nobody yet disagreed that improving CAM was a bad idea. As simple the current rule is as unrealistic it also is. The long debates about this IMO have cumulated in a rule proposition that seems to combine the best of all ideas while also being "codeable".

The current proposal encourages the players to build a distributed force but also leaves some randomness open which "additional" units beyond the teams do get the CAM. Thus 4/2/2/1 units (Inf/Arm/Art/TB) can get CAM as well as 3/3/2/1. I very much like this idea of not limiting the CAM to fixed unit ratios but rather to the number of units obtaining CAM.

What I am uncertain though is if Militia and Flak really should get a benefit. If it cannot be coded otherwise so be it but I'd prefer not to include them for the same reason why they do not qualify as units allowing CAM: they shoot at Air units (AA) or simply suck as offensive units (Mil).