AE Land and AI Issues [OUTDATED]

[Andy Mac]

Taking the fifth on that one for now sorry Chad will try to answer whn I can

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Play the game 'in the box' and I think the AI will give a good game at least as good and hopefully better than stock (Joe will shoot me now for saying this) into and beyond 43 but the truth will be in the testing I hope it will give a good game.

Play the game out of the box and as long as my sick and twisted mind has pre empted you - you may get a nasty suprise (if you don't look at the AI file) - I have set up certain traps for folks who try to 'break the AI' paradigm for either side.

If you come up with something I haven't thought of or prepped the AI for then the results will be unpredictable and there is a limit to what I can do in this area....

I honestly believe the AI will give a decent game or I and others would not have been working on it for over a year - but I cannot tell what you lot will come up with that I have't thought of.

Andy

I assume this is the case, but just to be sure . . .

The new AI will have scripted events/reactions to draw from for the duration of the war correct? And there will be multiple reactions it can choose from correct?

And these are limited to 'If allies invade XXX within dates YYY and ZZZ, react with either: move units AAAA to defend BBBB or attack with units CCCC at location DDDD' type scenarios right?

[Andy Mac]

same as stock unless you overstack in which spoilage increases

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

The penalties are supply based and also increased disruption/fatigue - basically more supply spoils because not enough space to store it and men get grumpy and cannot remain combat effective because they are all standing on each other !!!

This is interesting Andy. Thanks. What determines supply upper limitations (the level where it begins to spoil)? Is it the facility level (like WitP) or troop levels now?

[bradfordkay]

Okay, in an invasion what are the supply limits? Are they still based upon the size of the facilities that the enemy owns, or are they based on a 0,0 base size? I have never quite figured this out, so I tend to send a lot of supply with my invasions so as to overcome the spoilage with more being unloaded the next day. 

[Andy Mac]

Unloading limits are such that there are limits as to how much you can unload whether you own the base or not and how fast the size of the enemies facilities are irrelevant

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Taking the fifth on that one for now sorry Chad will try to answer whn I can

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

As always, no problem. Its a work in progress, we know. Just drop us a tidbit when you get a chance.

[Chad Harrison]

I had posted this outside the Land thread and Andy asked that I put it in here as a friendly reminder for him to answer once those bugs let up.

So heres the original post Andy:

The stickied threads have become so large, and the search feature is buggy at best, that I am starting to forget what was actually said about AE a year ago and what I have imagined (is this a common problem as you get older and have more kids??)

One thing that I am unsure about is I *think* that I recall it being said that the number of aviation support squads in base forces were going to be tweaked to a smaller amount. Is this correct?

If this is correct, can we get a typical idea of what *full* strength base forces will have as far as avaition support squads? And dare I ask, perhaps even an OOB for a typical American and Japanease base force? I would also be curious to see how they look in AE (currently atleast).

In vanilla WitP, it was 30 aviation support for the typical base forces, and the large (for lack of better words) base forces were split between an aviation regiment with 270 support and an oversized base force with 90 support.

I have to admit my ignorance on this subject as it relates to reality. I have no idea how they worked it out in real life.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks in advance Andy. You always seem to have the burden of answering my never ending questions. Thanks for keeping the answers coming despite never ending work on your end.

Chad

[Andy Mac]

OLD POST re QUTED from Thread

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Oh now msieving1 you just hit upon an issue that we went round and round and round and round on in the land team CW Av support !!!

Lots of debate on this one [:D][:D][:D]

I ended up for CW as opposed to US and Japanese with a 4 level Aviation Support system.

Lvl 1 and biggest Air Group Base Forces combined arms units with AA (equivalent to a LAA and HAA Regt in each one), radar , garrison, RE field park coy, support etc etc for each CW 'Group' HQ you get 1 central Base Force with 75 AV Support (or it could be 90 I would need to go check) - I think RAF gets 6 of these, RAAF 2 and RNZAF 1 basically bases designed to act as nodes for operations of a series of subsidiary fields

Lvl 2 a series of historical RAF, RAAF and RNZAF Wings each with 75 Av Support and NO support or other units - these replace the old Aviation Regts in CW terms they are significanlty smaller 75 v 250 AV Support but you get more of them (I assumed 4 RAF Sqns plus a recon or transport flight per Wing).

Lvl 3 Normal base forces with 16 or 32 AV Support (1 or 2 Sqns) and with a small garrison, support and AA echelon - broadly these forces are 1/3 or less than the Group base forces especially in AA assets these are the most common base force type in mid war and are general purpose 'utility' base forces.

Lvl 4 What I call outpost base forces a few AAMG's if they are lucky, a platoon of ISF troopers/Dutch Militia/NZ Can or Aus Militia  enough AV support to cope with a flight of planes from a dirt strip - these vary a lot and are by far the most common base force type at start there are about 25 in India, 10 or so in Burma and most of the DEI, Malaya base forces are of this type each with bespoke addons where appropriate (there is one lvl 4 base force in one of the Dutch islands with 2 attached improvised AFV's (trucks with a bit of metal stuck on front and an LMG on top) where I have the data to give these small units non TOE addons I have done so.

Typically the lvl 4's will be destroyed in the Japanese advance or can amalgamte to form lvl 3's but the sheer number of new bases requiring a little av support in a rear area will I think mean that a lot of these small detachments will persist for a while.

Just so I am clear lets take 221 Group RAF it will have a Group HQ, a Group Base Force and 2 - 5 Aviation Wings plus it may have attached 1 or 2 small type 3 or 4 Base Forces for smaller strips it may also have attached AA Regts .

Whereas 9 RAAF Gp will have fewer aviation wings but it has a few more small base forces and  several construction squadrons attached.

Andy

[Andy Mac]

And another one

ORIGINAL: Blackhorse

US Base Forces are similar to the CW, with a few twists.

The 270-Squad Uber-Aviation Regiments from stock and CHS are gone. US Aviation regiments (including four Marine Air Wings) now have 90 support squads each.

There are a few static base forces with large amounts of aviation support at start -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, March Field, etc.

Otherwise, there are three types of US Base Forces "Army Air Force" (USAAF), "Army" (USA), and "Navy" (USN). Unsurprisingly, USAAF Base Forces have the most aviation support, followed by the Navy, then the Army. Army Base Forces can only support a single full-strength squadron.

At the beginning of the war, there were battalion-sized US Navy civilian contractor base forces (mostly engineers, but small air support as well) on several Pacific islands. These are included in AE. They disband in a few months.


[/quote]

[Chad Harrison]

Thanks, once again, for the replies Andy.
 
So it would appear that the days of having max aviation support at multiple front line bases are over. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on balance of play.
 
The more I learn about AE, the more I see that it is going to play out much differently than stock WitP. Oh and incase it isnt obvoius, I mean thats a good thing [:D]

[pad152]

At the beginning of the war, there were battalion-sized US Navy civilian contractor base forces (mostly engineers, but small air support as well) on several Pacific islands. These are included in AE. They disband in a few months.

When units like this disband, I take it there will be some other scheduled AV unit to take it's place?

Witp has the option of variable reinforcement of upto +/- 60 days, could a base lose it's AV support for 60 days?  Old unit disbands and new unit doesn't arrive for 60 days, air units get stuck no support, this sounds like an need less issue (a car crash ready to happen!). If a base has active air units, AV support shouldn't be pulled out from under them without a 30 day warning (think British withdraw in witp).

I hope there is a new screen in AE that shows all of the units (British withdraw, AV, gound/Air units, ships, etc.) that will disband in next 30 days and lists the PP cost for keeping them! The player will need something to budget and plan their PP spending without going crazy!

[Andy Mac]

No they don't but as they disband 6 months away from start and as they are 'mostly' construction units the player and AI will need to adjust deployments to accomodate this.
 
Andy

[pad152]

I always liked the variable reinforcement option, it helps add replayability but with this new disband/withdraw system, it sounds like there need to be a variable withdraw system with the two tied together.


Is there some sort of list that shows what units will disband/withdraw in the next 30day along the PP cost?

[Andy Mac]

Yes there is a disband/withdraw list just below the reinforcement list but you have no control over it you cannot use PP's to hang onto LCU's when they go they go.
 
 

[pad152]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Yes there is a disband/withdraw list just below the reinforcement list but you have no control over it you cannot use PP's to hang onto LCU's when they go they go.

Well, I guess that's one way to stop the allied player from saving/striping LCU's from the resource area in 1941. I still don't like the idea of an active airbase (with squadrons) losing it's AV support. Maybe a way of spending PP's to delay the withdraw is needed!

[wworld7]

I plan on moving any air units away before the AV goes away or transporting in another AV unit. I can live with this.

[pad152]

ORIGINAL: flipperwasirish

I plan on moving any air units away before the AV goes away or transporting in another AV unit. I can live with this.

Sounds nice in theory but, what if you forget, it's one of those out of the way places where it's too far to fly them to another base, or there is no other AV available for 30-60 days? I just don't see it as very realistic or historical for an active air base to have it's AV to just disappear!

I always thought you could use PP's to keep anything? Guess not![8|]

Being able to spend PP's on another AV unit to transfer it to a different command yet, not able to spend PP's just the keep the unit I have in place, makes no sense.

[Dili]

Maybe if the game issues a warning 10 days before happening: "X unit will retire in 10 days"

[Andy Mac]

We are talking about 5 small units each one less than 300 men guys there are limits to what we can code or accomodate this didnt make the cut.
 
There is a list of all units that withdraw available that is sortable by date
The unit screen has a countdown clock for every unit that leaves
 
There is a limit to what we can do.
 
Re using PP's to stop withdrawal of LCU's deliberatly not included if we did how do you model the impact of 5th British DIv not heading to Italy or 7th Armoured Bde to the middle east or the US Corps going to Europe from the West Coast or the Russian forces going to the Western Front (do you really think any amount of political influence would have stopped Stalin shooting a commander that withheld troops ?)
 
In 99% of cases where units withdraw they are permanently retricted anyway and cannot deploy overseas so its all a rear area issue.
 
The 1% would have required rewriting several routines to accomodate a minor issue and we don't have time for it.
 
There is also a global option in the game set up that disables all disbandments - it greatly favours the allies so its mostly going to be a v the Allied AI tool but if you feel that strongly about it disable the whole feature
 
Andy
 

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: flipperwasirish

I plan on moving any air units away before the AV goes away or transporting in another AV unit. I can live with this.

Not all units allow their commands to be changed. Most "national" units (Phil, Burma, Thai, Dutch, ect) as well as some west coast units you CANT change the HQs for. The "Sir Robin Defense" doesnt work as well in AE as in WitP.

Edit: And a lot of other units have withdrawl dates within 6 months so you have to ask yourself: is it worth it to withdraw them?

As Joe said a while back in another thread, in AE you have to develop new strategies.

[Andy Mac]

Actually looking at it the most controverisial withdrawals are all CW.
 
7 AA Regts are disbanded in 44 in order to provide a 1 time injection of British Infantry replacements you get no choice in this
 
A number of emergancy formed Ard Regts are disbanded in India NZ and Australia largely because they were needed either as Inf replacements or after the crisis is over they realised they couldnt all be equipped or used.
 
Again you get no choice in this
 
Apart from these the other units that leave are Withdrawals and these are units leaving the theatre