This whole discussion is very similar to one going on over at Consimworld about a lady who posted negative reviews of GMT's Flagship at the Funagain site. Her problem? The game doesn't do what it never was intended to do (what?) - also known as, the "this game does exactly what it set out to do" problem. Put simply, she wanted the card game to play like a strategy game - sans combat. The card game itself, however, is advertised as - and always has been - a Tactical Space Combat game. The whole point of the game is to destroy - via combat - the other player's ships. This was the intent of the game from the beginning. It was made very clear. However, this lady comes along and rips it in a review because "the only way to win is through combat." Huh?
UV is exactly what is was billed to be - an operational level treatment of the action in and around the Solomons. To be honest, I am surprised that it has as many tactical options as it does. That nothwithstanding, the game does what it intended to do from the beginning. It is your prerogative (or anyone else's) to be "fed up" if you like. However, it is a bit silly, imho, to be frustrated with a product (or company) for doing what it was programmed to do. Like many before me have said: this is not a tactical game.
I've followed this thread carefully and I understand the frustration you get from the timescale/ground scale ratio of this design. That was also a feeling that I had initially.
I have had Task Forces positioned on the edge of a 10x10 hex area where I knew a major battle would occur within the following 24 hours and, like you, I had that feeling of frustration that, once I clicked Yes in the End Orders Phase window, I would have absolutely no personal control over what happened next. I had to watch (usually with horror) at what occured and wait helplessly until the next Orders Phase when I could once again take control (usually to pick up the pieces). I can't count the number of times I wanted to leap into one of my TF Commander's seat to tell him not to send his air squadrons to attack the enemy transports but to attack the damned IJN CVs that were breathing down his neck instead.
In this respect it is indeed a frustrating game. But, unlike you, I have not found that disappointing. Nor would I call the timescale/gamescale, which is what causes this frustration, a design fault. It brings us closer, surely, to the frustrations that Nimmitz and Yamamoto must have felt when reviewing the actions/non-actions of their TF Commanders that they sent into battle. I'm quite sure that both would many times have wished that they were in personal control of their task forces, carriers, etc to be able to influence the battle. But they weren't able to and couldn't take control at that level. Both had to fight their war with the operational tools they had. UV, I think, succeeds in mirroring this aspect far better than any other wargame I have played.
You are right, too, that there is a fine line between tactical and strategical game. I think UV is pretty close to that line. and I'm liking it that way. But I don't want the timesacle reduced.... that, for me, would move the game closer to the tactical level and away from the operational level: we would become more Spruance than Nimmitz.
And there are several aspects in the game that I'm only beginning to appreciate and use in the limited decisions I can make. One is the choice of Task Force Commanders..... the guys who end up taking the tactical decisions you want built into the game for yourself. Their influence, I suspect, plays a greater part in the outcome of their battles than we appreciate. I ignored them at first... along with fatigue and morale factors.... but I'm not doing that now and I'm seeing better results because of it. So I'm beginning to use another operational tool that Nimmitz and Yamamoto had. Sure....... it still goes pear-shaped when my (supposedly) well picked (by me) commanders don't perform as I think they should but they're the results of my operational decision..... and not the game's design.
I'm enjoying this game more and more as I get to know its depth and intricacies. I want to keep the basic design as it is.
I guess I have to agree too that UV just isn't for me.
I loved CAW ( and still play it ) , GNB and other tactical and they are fine.
I loved PACWAR and other Gary Grisby games and they are fine.
I even enjoyed huge WWII 'managing games' like Battle of Britain or 12'O clock High with somewhat huge management to be done, but they are fine.
What amaze me is that UV just .. bore me. It is gorgeous, with plenty of detail and all the hype but I just doesnt find it fun. In fact he make me play PACWAR again.
I guess that part of the idea behind the release of UV is to test operationnal combat for WiTP and all the combat routine btw. And they are nice. But somewhere while zooming from strategical to operationnal something was lost and the fun isn't here anymore. I guess it is perhaps because there is so much thing to do and take care.
U.V. isn't really an operationnal wargame, sure his landscale is operationnal and his turn lenght too. But his unit scale and command are mainly Grand Tactical to Tactical. Except that we lack part of the tactical command we wil have to get. PAcWAr was great because it was detailled but still playable, UV is just too detailled to be enjoyable. there is a lot of thing the player had to take care of that can be automated and a lot of thing that are automated that the player want to take care.
I guess the problem come from the too big detail, this look like tactcal wargame, this taste like tactical wargame but this is operationnal wargame.
By example :
- You can command personnaly all and every of your air squadron and give it precise order as target, % cap , training and so ( in fact the bad thing is that you HAD to do so ). This is tactical control.
- You cant command them while in action , this is operationnal control ( and somewhat frustrating as you are deemed to do all the paperwork and cant do the fun part ).
I guess I will try WitP when it will be released and this time I will try to invest myself more deeply. From now on I look at the sc.17 starting map and thought: " Ok, there is a lot to do but it can be done ", then I look at the date and : " Forget about it, I wont invest that much just for an operation, I want to go to the bitter end, to Tokyo or bust ". Frankly I will love to have a UV that can play with the level of detail of PACWAr, with all thoses fine tactical tuning taken out of our operationnal control.
Well it seems to me that the membership is split of the issue of shorter turn lengths. I thought it would be interesting to take a poll on the subject but although the option exists in the New Topic options I couldn't work out how to do it.
I thought 6 options going from the status quo to the ridiculous and see where the consensus lies on this debate:
Happy with current turn length
12 hour turns
6 hour turns
3 hours turns
Hourly Turns
Continuious play with option to intervene at will.
[/list=1]
Be interesting to see how many players like me would prefer shorter turns.
One thing that irritated me about CAW was that once you launched a strike, your TF just stayed there, and didn't close on the enemy TF, so they could just waltz out of range...
Originally posted by Didz
That ought to have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the this issue is not a symptom of player preference. The players complaining here and elsewhere about turn length are all long term strategy gamers who have identified a flaw in the design of this game.
So if your point about a design flaw is proven "beyond a shadow of doubt" by longterm strategy players, then there's nothing more to discuss, I guess. Those who disagree with you must all be newbies, eh?
Each day is comprised of three "phases"; night, morning, and afternoon.
During phase execution, what is happening?
Does the game plot the movements of each phase in smaller increments? (Essentially deviding a phase into "impulses")?
I am not certain.
It seems to me, for example, that subs intercept shipping only at the end of the move. Suppose that the tracks of opposing warship plots cross. Is their a chance a move will be stopped due to a mid-course interception?
I have just started to dig into it that deep, and I have so far found this to be NOT true.
=====================================
CV to CV combat.
Is their some sort of "initiative" calculation?
By this, I mean, does a chance that one side might get the jump on the other exist?
That does seem to be the case.
And if the "impulse" system works, then how do ships get spotted during impulses? Air missions (including search) happen AFTER ship movement.
So if your point about a design flaw is proven "beyond a shadow of doubt" by longterm strategy players, then there's nothing more to discuss, I guess. Those who disagree with you must all be newbies, eh?
Hartmann
As you may be aware you are quoting me out of context above.
My comments were in response to your original suggestion that those of us who would prefer a shorter turn length in UV were doing so because we had a natural preference for tactical rather than strategic games.
My point was that by now the number of people who had raised turn length as an issue and also attested to being long term players of PACWAR and other grand strategy games ought to have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the issue has NOT arisen because of certain players preferences for tactical games but because a quite a few veteran stategy gamers like myself find the UV turn lengths to be too long.
The question as to whether this is a flaw in the games design or not depends on whether you consider it a problem or not. If like me you feel it is ruining your enjoyment of the game then what else can you call it but a design flaw.
BTW: I have even tried playing it with the fog of war turned off and I still find it irritating that both my TF's and the enemies are jumping huge distances in an extremely unpredictable manner. Such that one minute your CV TF can be in the middle of an empty ocean and next minute close alongside an enemy BB battlegroup with no warning or chance to react.
It seems to me, for example, that subs intercept shipping only at the end of the move.
I get that impression too although its difficult to be sure without knowing the code. I have certainly never witnessed a TF attacked or spotted in mid phase and in my most recent game with the FOW switched off I was able to set up several submarines along the track of an enemy TF none of which managed to intercept them.
I would have thought that the program would be testing for every ship in a TF and every aircraft in an air group everytime it crossed a hexside to see if it was spotted or spotted something else but its difficult to tell if that is whats actually happening.
I like the game alot, and am playing the **** out of it.
BUT...there's some problems. I definitely won't be playing this game 15 years from now like PacWar. It's sort of unfair to judge UV by PacWar, but PacWar IS the standard.
Mainly, you're at the strategic level, but your minions are idiots, and you get left with all tedious management chores.
(1) You can't let your commanders off the leash, or they do stupid stuff like driving their carriers up to Rabual on a reaction move. Ergo...reaction moves as useless, and you HAVE to play TF commander, only without any real ability to do so built into the game design. Leaves you basically a crippled and innocent bystander watching a train wreck in progress. Being able to give your TF commanders some operational level guidance and parameters would be nice...then if you want the guy to show some initiative, you put an aggressive TF commander in change.
(2) Game balance. Lots of things still need to be tweaked in the game. Not a bitch or a complaint, just a statement. PacWar is 15 years old and we're still tweaking it.
(3) The micromanagment aspect, especially supply. The interface is clunky for one thing. Another is the computer supply routines are really kludgy...you end up doing it yourself as you can't afford too many mistakes with the limited resources you have. It's really frustrating when your troop convoys split without loading all the troops, and loaded supplies instead. Irritating as hell to have to make 2-3 trips to pick up that HQ unit you need desperately to get your fighter CAP up and running. An option to load 50% supply, 50% fuel would be nice. Managing fuel is even tougher than managing supply since you have to make separate convoys to do so unless you have spare AO's/TK's around...more tedious beancounting.
One hundred screens, steps, and button clicks to go through to get anything done, and you're still left with "this isn't what I want to do".
It'd be nice to be able to give the AI orders "reinforce Lunga", and have it start gathering resources and moving supplies and troops with whatever it's got to work with...then be able to jump in and micromanage if you feel the need. Not sure if that's the answer, but something isn't "there". Like someone else pointed out, something got lost in the translation.
(4) The "it's too late for UV, but we'll consider it for WiTP" syndrome. Okay, why do I want to even get attached to this game? The point seems to be crystal clear that this game is a training run and test bed for Matrix. The glaring stuff will get fixed I'm sure, but after that it's going to be forgotten. What we got was "half a game", and we basically are paying to be beta testers for WiTP. WiTP is at least a year away, and the appeal for UV ain't gonna stretch that far. The half we got is pretty cool...but it's still just half a game. How great the half we got is, just highlites the half we didn't get.
(5) It's supposed to be a strategic level game...but other than making the strategic decision "I'm gonna take out Lunga first, then island hop to Rabaul", the rest is all beancounting as you have no real operational control. You can't define objectives to subordinate HQ's and let them handle anything. You can't tell your carriers to "proceed to point X at flank speed" or to launch strikes against specific targets...it's really frustrating to have 6 carriers "barge busting" with a damaged carrier TF in range and running away. You can't issue orders to subordinates; you have to literally feed, cloth, and move each individual unit, monitor their health, hope they have good attitudes, personally hold each unit commanders hand, and then when it's time for combat you push them off the cliff and hope they learn how to fly before hitting bottom.
(6) The AI is...odd. About the most agression I've seen is the bombardment runs on Gilli Gilli...which came to a fast halt with some well placed mines. Units committed piecemeal. The first full scenario 17 I played, I didn't see a IJN carrier at all. Finally loaded up as the IJN player, and there was 1 CV, 1 CVL in Truk, the rest were in Japan.
I think what it boils down to is "Whose shoes are you (player)
filling in these games. In CAW, you were Halsey or Spruance
in command of carrier task forces. In the orginal PacWar, you
were Nimitz and MacArthur in command of entire theaters with
the logistics that went with it. In the upcoming WITP, you will
play them again. But in UV, your role is Ghormley and later on
Halsey (his theater commander role) guiding the SW Pacific
operational structure. SO, what commander do you really
enjoy playing???? I take quite a fancy to playing Nitimz myself.
In UV, the map is a little to compact for my tastes althought I
dearly love the game. But I yearn for the days when I can again
control the entire pacific like in the upcoming WITP. SOMEDAY.
I will get my ultimate game, control of the entire WW2 war machine on both sides of the USA.
As you may be aware you are quoting me out of context above.
My comments were in response to your original suggestion that those of us who would prefer a shorter turn length in UV were doing so because we had a natural preference for tactical rather than strategic games.
My point was that by now the number of people who had raised turn length as an issue and also attested to being long term players of PACWAR and other grand strategy games ought to have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the issue has NOT arisen because of certain players preferences for tactical games but because a quite a few veteran stategy gamers like myself find the UV turn lengths to be too long.
The question as to whether this is a flaw in the games design or not depends on whether you consider it a problem or not. If like me you feel it is ruining your enjoyment of the game then what else can you call it but a design flaw.
BTW: I have even tried playing it with the fog of war turned off and I still find it irritating that both my TF's and the enemies are jumping huge distances in an extremely unpredictable manner. Such that one minute your CV TF can be in the middle of an empty ocean and next minute close alongside an enemy BB battlegroup with no warning or chance to react.
Yeah, I forgot the SNIPs, sorry. I probably misunderstood your remark about the long term strategy gamers, still it seems to me that "proven beyond ...." was
meant to relate to "design flaw" in the next sentence, which is the reason I quoted those two sentences together. (For "design flaw" was your alternative to my "player's preference", no?)
Anyway, let's forget that. I agree with what you wrote in the last paragraph just now. I think, though that this is not a problem of the 24 hour turns per se. Rather, this could be quite easily remedied by a somewhat more sofisticated set of animation frames for displaying the 24 hours period, i.e. instead of units "jumping" we should be able to see them moving from hex to hex (like it is usually done in games which separate the orders phase from the execution phase). If this would be introduced in a patch, everything would be more than fine with me.
Hartmann
The question as to whether this is a flaw in the games design or not depends on whether you consider it a problem or not. If like me you feel it is ruining your enjoyment of the game then what else can you call it but a design flaw.
Uh...
You wouldnt call it a design flaw. What you would say is that you dislike the current choice of time management. Now let's be clear here, one is about personal preference, the other is about a something that causes the program to not operate as intended. The 24 hour time frame does allow the game to operate as intended, but some, such as yourself, don't like it.
That's a personal preference, not a design flaw.
The game's web page stated what it would be and the turn lengths would be anywhere from 1 to 7 days. The question for a design flaw would be, did the current design of the game achieve it's stated goal? I would say it does since the game does operate along the lines of 1 to 7 day turns. Just because one has differing preferences on what a turn should consist of, does not indicate a design flaw. Additionally, having 1 day turns in an operational game is and has been an acceptable form of operational gaming which is what UV is.
I have no problems with anyone saying they would prefer shorter turn lengths, what I do have a problem with is someone saying that the game has a design flaw without them. I believe that is a misrepresentation of the game. And as someone who wants to see this game succeed so that Matrix can succeed to provide us more quality games of this nature, I feel it necessary to point out the difference. This isn't about semantics to me, its about the perception being given that the game itself has a problem when it's the user that has the problem.
I have to congratulate the participants of this thread on the polite and respectful tone of the discussion.
I went this morning after a long absence to the Combat Mission forum to check on the status of their upcoming game only to find a similar thread where a participant was criticizing the game for not being what he wanted (more operational). He was being raked over the coals, tarred and feathered with personal attacks, told to program his own game if he was not happy, and so on and so on. IT reminded me of why I voluntary left that forum last year never to return.
I posted a message pointing out the different attitude (including that of the designers and moderators) compared to the matrix forums, and was told that this is due to the larger number of messages on the Combat Mission forum. Wrong. it is a matter of attitude.
A paying customer should be allowed to vent and even criticize on a forum (within reasonable limits) without being the object of insults and assaults designed to humiliate him. The balance here is pretty good. Matrixgames respect their customers.
Tonight, I put Morrowind on pause (not to mention Lost victories where I am still on the second scenario...) and launch into the Pacific War. The following court martial will not be pretty...
With ocassional flare ups, this board is indeed an oasis in what can be a desert out there of common courtesy...
The thanks goes to the members here, who by internet standards are remarkably civil! (at least we seem to keep the uncivilized holed up at the Art of Wargaming forum )
When you say Carriers at War I think you may mean Combined Carriers at War, which is the only form in which it is still available. And it is an amazing game - the best of its kind so far.
UV is NOT like CCAW, as you are noticing. You are a FLEET ADMIRAL, and you do NOT get to make tactical decisions for your carrier commanders. This is realistic, if frustrating.
Originally posted by pad152 SNIP If someone went there to sell quarters for a dime in that news group, the discussing would be why dimes are better than quarters!
Well, we can do that, too! For starters, dimes don't take as much room and are lighter than an equal amount of quarters in the wallet. This is backed by the fact that dollar bills, which are definitely worth more than quarters, are lighter than quarters, too. Finally, if someone sells dimes for quarters, he only adds proof to our opinion that dimes are valued more than quarters. So how can this individual dare to come here and think we are idiots falling for his dirty little tricks! Never will he get our precious dimes in exchange for totally worthless quarters!
In my other working life (building h/w and s/w for the space program) we often get into long periods of "violent agreement" over the concepts of verification vs. validation
Validation is: Did we build the right thing
Verification is: Did we build the thing right
A subtle difference but one that is the source of much of the discussion here. I think this is the distinction the Reiryc is making.
Validation is infinitely harder than verification. To verify a design you simply test it against its requirements. To validate requirements you have to ascertain what your customer really wants and then write requirements that will give it to him. This is an immensely difficult thing to do. We frequently say that if you put 4 astronauts in a room and ask for their evaluations, you will typically get at least 5 responses.
I think the same would apply to any knowledgeable, passionate user community which this clearly is, as well. Of course, I am disappointed that not everyone finds UV to their taste, but I think that I have to agree with Reiryc that it does a good job of meeting the requirements that were set out for it.
Also it has to be realized that the suggested changes might very well be as unpopular with an even larger segment of the community. This is always the debate when you try to validate requirements.
If there is a large segment of the user community that feels that this approach does not result in a playable of enjoyable game then Matrix and 2 by 3 would have to rethink the whole concept of the WITP and follow on games. I, for one, hope that they do not, because I find the concept to novel, interesting and enjoyable.
In the end, I suspect that the final tale will be told by the sales figures anyways.
Iain Christie
-----------------
"If patience is a virtue then persistence is it's part.
It's better to light a candle than stand and curse the dark"
Put simply, she wanted the card game to play like a strategy game - sans combat. The card game itself, however, is advertised as - and always has been - a Tactical Space Combat game. The whole point of the game is to destroy - via combat - the other player's ships. This was the intent of the game from the beginning. It was made very clear. However, this lady comes along and rips it in a review because "the only way to win is through combat." Huh?
Never will he get our precious dimes in exchange for totally worthless quarters! 