WAW v30

[rickier65]

I've just started this as Germany against the AI. The first couple of turns the AI went surprisingly fast. ( I suppose there's not much happening for the allies yet.).

This looks really nice. I've been trying to block out some time to play this for a while.

Thanks for this scenario Tom,

Rick

[freeboy]

Hi Tom,
Did u reduce the overpowered CA vs Air?

[freeboy]

?

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

Hi Tom,
Did u reduce the overpowered CA vs Air?

Isnt that like asking someone if they stopped beating their wife?

Rick

[tweber]

CA is reduced for early tech levels

[von altair]

tweber: Currently the German can build everything at Munich (ss). Before only troops and trucks and tanks could be made up there. Is it in purpose or by accident?

Xp requirement with tech upgrades was very good idea!

[SMK-at-work]

IMO the XP requirement is silly - you an have raw recruits coming online with new equipment, but be unable to upgrade your line units because they're a few points short of the requirements - I dislike it intensly.

Also the French readiness and British commitment cards are either overpowered or underpriced IMO - they completely negate the blitz and provide a wadge of troops - they seriously imbalance the game IMO - it's pretty easy for the allied to have played them by November 1939.

[tweber]

For the special units, it was inadvertant to allow them to create A/C and will be change in the next update.
 
@SMK, I see your point and am a bit on the fence with experience requirements for upgrades.

[SMK-at-work]

If upgrading is too cheap then the answer, if it's possible in hte game, is to make it more expensive?

Also I think removal of PP from supply points is a mistake - I always thought it represented using excess production for civilian/political purposes, and was fine with it.

In this version the West ends up with 3000 supply/turn in SE ASia that can't go anywhere except India because the UK is too far away - India ends up with 10's of thousands of supply stockpiled (I'm on 25,000+ by May 1940) & may never have to produce a supply point of its own for hte rest of the game!! lol

[JAMiAM]

You'd be surprised how many supplies you can burn through in version 30. My German OKW HQ last turn had supply requests of over 25k supplies. This was for June 1940 and I've only got about 2/3 of the normal force that I usually have at this stage of the game, because of trying to keep a decent research program going and to feed the troops I already have. Just wait until you put a fleet into port that has been consuming supplies for several turns, and has taken some damage. You'll see those supplies vanish in a hurry.

If you're smart, you'd start shipping every supply you can, from India to Wavell, otherwise you'll find yourself starved in the Med if your opponent uses any U-Boats in the North Atlantic to isolate Gibraltar, and around the Cape to isolate South Africa. Of course, if you're just playing the AI, then there's probably not too much a worry about that.

[SMK-at-work]

I'm only playing the AI to see what the changes look like, and for sure it's no great threat, but that's not my point.

If you need those places to provide supplies then you can do so, but if you don't, or you don't want to lose them to U-boats so you just leave them at he closest HQ, or whatever, then they build up to unreasonable amounts.

Wavell gets 3k/turn from Mosul and Kuwait...he's not about to run out either any time soon.

The UK could do with supplies, and building a transport fleet in India helps shift them there, but it's still vastly over-supplied, as is hte Dutch East Indies as soon as the germans invade the low countries & I wonder if some of those sources shuold be left turned "off" for a while??

[von altair]

Something has to be done in North Africa. Currently it is NOT worth fighting at there at all. Only 1000 supply resource center at there.

I prefer, next update should have 1000-2000 resource center near Alexandria. Not near beach though. It's too easy to capture it. SE direction, 1-2 hex from Alexandria would be a good location for it. That amount of production could be taken off from India and Asia area, so the balance stays. This will make North Africa worth for fight again. So we could see Rommels wrath again at there Now, it is really no point for German to waste anything at there.

There is also real balance problem with a Japan atm. It needs some boost. I think, I will make new patch and fix these and then test them out.

[von altair]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

IMO the XP requirement is silly - you an have raw recruits coming online with new equipment, but be unable to upgrade your line units because they're a few points short of the requirements - I dislike it intensly.

Also the French readiness and British commitment cards are either overpowered or underpriced IMO - they completely negate the blitz and provide a wadge of troops - they seriously imbalance the game IMO - it's pretty easy for the allied to have played them by November 1939.

It is quite logical, that regular linetroops with an old equipment have more harder
time to get used to with a brand new enchanced weapons. They need to learn use them.
New units instead are trained with them already at training camps, and comes along with them in fronts. Exp requirement with units is very good thing.

I agree with you about those anti-westblitz cards. They need to be flagged as "Prepared France" option at start. So players can choose different start if they want to. Also costs are really too cheap.

[tweber]

Certainly Libya, Algiers and Egypt are not worth much.  However, the capture of Gibraltar triggers a 10% chance to get Spain in the war and the capture of the Suez gives a 10% chance for Turkey to join the war.  Also, Gibraltar makes the defense of the Med much easier for the Axis and the Suez opens a short path to the Indian Ocean so I think they are both attractive targets. 
 
I do not think it is ever a good idea to turn off supply production centers.  You can always ditch the supply later if not needed. 

[SMK-at-work]

It is quite logical, that regular linetroops with an old equipment have more harder
time to get used to with a brand new enchanced weapons. They need to learn use them.

 
Yes they might get withdrawn and retrained for the big stuff - but that's not a matter of experience, that's a matter of taking them out of the line, not how experienced they are.
 
For small arms it's only a matter of a day or 2 to become familiar with equipment.
 
 

[SMK-at-work]

Japan vs china is now historic after the fall of Paris....but of course boring!
 
But it gives Japan some chance to alter itself prior to going to war with the west - so a player can customise his forces a bit.
 
Japanese relations with Russia aer still wrong - nomonhon happened in 1939 - the cease fire was signed in mid September - only 2 weeks after the invasion of Poland!!  So allowing it any time through to Pearl Harbour is kind of weird.  I posted earlier about what hte historic relations between eth 2 nations were that I still think gives a better option.
 
North Africa for the Germans was a face saving exercise because of Italian incompetance.  There was little or no resource actually there (Libyan oil hadn't been discovered yet - rommel could have used it!!), so it should probably be represented by some sort of event if it is captured by the Allies - a loss of all the Italian command units perhaps, representing Italian subordination to German command because of it?

[zook08]

]
It is quite logical, that regular linetroops with an old equipment have more harder
time to get used to with a brand new enchanced weapons. They need to learn use them.
New units instead are trained with them already at training camps, and comes along with them in fronts. Exp requirement with units is very good thing.

I'd support higher upgrade (supply) costs, but the XP requirement doesn't make too much sense to me, either. Under the new system, troops with the new tech can be built without penalty, but older ones, even when built in the turn the tech was bought, have to wait 2-3 turns to get 40 XP.

[SMK-at-work]

Was just reading a RAF polish sqn history - it looks like they'd get re-equipped with a new mark of spitfires and be flying that very same day.....http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/ ... 41szy.html, and an account of some Brit tankers being upgraded from crusaders & Valentines to Shermans who went into action teh day they got their new tanks too - at Kasserine Park - http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stor ... 6138.shtml

Ideally troops would be taken out of combat for retraining .....but I guess in war you do what you ahve to!!

[JAMiAM]

You guys are looking at the upgrades too literally. The main reason that I put them in, in the first place, was to slow down the effect of mass upgrades, which is even more ahistorical. That is, by a mechanism other than simply pricing the upgrade costs out of reach of easy mass conversions.

With the experience threshholds as they are, then the following effects generally take effect:

Early war the step up from Level I to Level II, favors the Germans somewhat. This is because most of their forces start off with 50 XP, and it is trivial for them to upgrade before the French Campaign. The French and British starting forces can usually upgrade right before the French Campaign, as long as they don't mix fresh recruits into units that have already started on their semi-logarithmic, experience growth curve. The minor countries, Benelux, the Balkans, et cetera, won't be able to take advantage of immediate upgrades upon their invasions, since their starting XP is 0.

Early to mid-war, when the USA becomes an active antagonist, their starting forces should be somewhat vulnerable for the first few months, since they were not really prepared for war. There are some starting USA units that defy this generalization (the surface ships and Marines on the West Coast). However, it is silly that they should be able to, on the first turn that they come into the war, suddenly gain the benefits of technological and doctrinal advances that the research levels are assumed to represent.

As the war winds on, and higher levels of research are achieved, things start to change a little. Realistically, based on several PBEM tests, the higher research costs will end up resulting in maybe one level III per side by the end of 1941. As you get to level III, the XP threshhold for upgrading goes to 50 XP. This is not too hard to achieve for a goodly portion of your forces, as long as you are being smart and minimizing the dilution of your experienced forces with fresh recruits. Particularly for the Germans and Japanese (though good luck ever getting a level III with the Japanese!). The new recruits will now be level III, but generally of lower experience than those forces still fighting in the field. As those level II's fighting in the field start suffering and causing losses, without new level II replacements, their experience will rise more rapidly due to no fresh recruits diluting them. This will take a few turns in active theaters, but before a year is up, you will probably have either lost all your old forces, or been able to upgrade them. Again, the stepwise mass upgrade silliness is avoided, and the effect of technological advancement is more smoothly integrated into the game.

Later in the game, when the very few level IV upgrades occur, then again, you have the winnowing out and accelerated experience gains of level III's, mixed with unexperienced level IV's and a smoother effect.

Now, the question of what happens when a previously quiet front becomes active? Well, by and large, quiet areas were guarded by second-line troops that were low priority candidates for new weapons and training. Thus, for example, unless the player uses an active rotation scheme to transfer his 41 XP, level II troops somewhere that they will see battle, and gain experience, they will be assumed to be ersatz, reservists, and second-line forces. If they are mixed in with newer level III and higher forces, fine, as then the forces represent situations like Normandy 44, where mostly second-line forces were "stiffened" with a few, recuperating veteran divisions. If not, then they will less effective just as the numerous fortress, Volksturm, and garrison divisions were.

All in all, the XP threshholds were one of the devices that I used to change the "flavor" of the game from vanilla to something I liked better. Not all will agree with my tastes and I realize that. I'm glad that, so far, this is one of the changes to WaW that I made in my mod, that Tom kept when he used it to come up with version 30. Do I agree with all the changes Tom made? Of course not. There are some things that I like better in my mod than how he changed them for v30. However, the iterative process of design/playtest/redesign/replaytest offers a multitude of flavors as it enters each cycle. For most players, one of them is bound to eventually suit your fancy. If not, then one can always don the cap of scenario designer and institute the changes they feel would best satisfy them. Vic did a great job of creating a user-friendly scenario editor, and Tom's been incredibly helpful to budding scenario designers.

[SMK-at-work]

Which is all fine - trouble is it grates as a player.

Designing for effect is great.....but it really helps with the suspension of disbbelief if the process used to achieve the effect is also believeable.

In this case I think you have also only picked on one aspect of the re-equipment/tech progress process - there are all sorts of otehr things that were going on too - like raising 2nd line troops equipped with captured and obsolete equipment - you can't do that in AT - if you recruit SFT "A" then you always get the latest and greatest version of SFT "A".

Certainly troops in quiet areas tend to get the dregs and/or not get upgraded - that's what happens in AT games too....it's just that in AT it's REAL easy to upgrade, so few troops stay at the base level for long.

so what ACTUALLY happens when troops upgrade equipment?

Well firstly they get the new gear.....then they hand the old gear back (usually).  That much is pretty simple - but rarely does a country have enough new gear to re-equip all units in a short time frame, so you often get new and old gear serving side by side for long periods of time.....the Soviet union had 10 KV-2's still in service at Kursk...... 

sometimes the old gear keeps being produced - eg Pz-IV's were produced until the end of the war despite the original plan to replace them with Panthers.  Ditto Me-109's and Fw-190's.  Famously the Brits kept the 2 pdr gun in production after Dunkirk when they could have switched to 6 pdrs...but they would have had a gap in production....

with expensive equipment types old gear is often stockpiled when removed from service - eg the short 75mm guns from early war panzer IV's went to equip Pz-IIIM's and N's, and also some Sdkfz 250 and 251 half tracks as fire support vehicles.  But T34/76's were not removed from service when T34/85's were introduced - nor could they actually be upgraded at all in fact!!

Captured equipment is also used - but of course is almost certainly never going to get any significant upgrading. But you can often do so in AT - eg the captured equipment in the russia 1941 scenarios can e ugraded on the normal Axis path. ( But tt's possible to get around that - just define the captured equipment as belonging to the enemy population I think (the SS in russia 941 are "Russians" IIRC and can't be upgraded!)

so there are several things still wrong with the equipment model in general - 2 in particular are:

- equipment and troops are not seperated - so you cannot repalce the Pz-IV's from GrosssDeutchland with Panthers and send the old Pz-IV's to the newly forming 123rd PzDivision. And

- you do not have to worry about any production delay when you change to producing Panthers from Pz-IV's...so you CAN equip your entire army with them ....or introduce 6 pdrs all-round in the british army in 1940.......