Expanding Base Forces

[Paulchen]

The build up happened based on the computer picking out one Base Force as the primary unit in a base, and I think if a base was under supported, it would create the replacements for the primary base force.

Yes, this is the problem, i believe.
At ai bases units will attached to a base and get replacements,
at human bases no unit will automaticly or can from the player attached to the base.

[BPRE]

I think Joel might have said the word! 'under supported'.
I don't know about you others but I tend to avoid having more aircraft (except for maybe 10-15 extra) than I can support to avoid having too many of them damaged.
Those bases are probably not considered 'under supported' by the computer so I don't get any reinforcements/replacements for the units.

It might be worth trying to move in extra aircraft to some backwater base to see what happens.

/BPRE

[Sven Nyqvist]

I have never seen any replacement for Base Forces. I assume that a Base Force, which should grow (according to the manual) receive this growth just like any other replacement in Truk/Noumea/ Brisbane. I played the allies till Nov 42 in Campaign 17 whithout it happening once.

[Reiryc]

Originally posted by EricLarsen
Ross,
Your comment regarding putting engineers in bases to help them expand is really stupid. You must think we're idiots or something, and now that many players are complaining about the same **** thing why don't you stop playing these idiotic "let's blame it on operator error" rather than blaming it on poor programming as is the case. Besides, base forces include engineers which do expand bases so your comment makes me wonder if you have ever played the game. I read the rules and made sure to have plenty of supplies and support at the bases, and even with engineer units to expedite the expansion process there have been no new additions of aviation support for my human sides. I have gotten to 11/1/42 and have not gotten any new avaition support for any base force, including the one at Truk where it would incorporate automatically. The AI side always gets more aviation support so there is something wrong on the human side of the program equation. I was wondering if maybe it has something to do with the turn scale. I have been playing daily turns and not multi-day turns. I know that Erik Rutins said he played a campaign game and got more aviation support, but was he playing multi-day turns or was it something he saw working in a prior version that may have gotten broken in a newer update. Please stop wasting time trying to deny these valid player complaints and just say thanks for the tip and we'll get to fixing the problem ASAP. That's what we want to hear!
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

So, who pis'sed in your cheerios this morning?

Lighten up francis, it's really not that serious.

Reiryc

[Joel Billings]

Ok, we need help here. Gary looked at the code and says it looks like it should work. It's supposed to pick one base force as the primary base force for each base (the player won't know which). Then, whenever the airfield goes up in size, the computer should check to make sure that the primary unit (by itself) has enough aviation support to handle the number of aircraft at the base (or 30 times the current airfield size, whichever is larger). If not, then a replacement/reinforcement unit should be created within a week or so and should go on the reinforcement track.

With that said, it is possible that we disabled this for the human player (Gary and I can't remember if we did this intentionally or not, but in any event he can't find this in the code). Can someone send us a save just before a base increases in size in such a way that should guarantee a replacement base force being generated for a human player. If we get the save, Gary will look at this issue. Please send this save to 2by3@2by3games.com. Thanks.

[juliet7bravo]

"If not, then a replacement/reinforcement unit should be created within a week or so and should go on the reinforcement track."

Stop the presses! I've seen "partial" base force sub-units show up at Brisbane/Noumea as reinforcements, like 1/105th. I've seen them and went "WTF, where'd that come from?" and wrote it off as having lost a sub-unit of the 105th on a sunk AP or something and just not remembering it. Now that IS happening unless I was right and really did lose the sub-units during transit.

I was under the impression that the base force would "grow" in size at the base where it was located. ie. jump from size 60 to size 120 as example during the reinforcement phase.

[BPRE]

I've mailed a file from the day before Russel Is. increases from 3 to 4 in scenario 6. 109th Base Force is at 60 Av. Support and 4 weeks later I have yet to see any replacement/reinforcement.
The only explanation I have in case it does happen is that I'm right then adding the 107th Base Force with an extra 60 Av. Support so in total there's enough to fulfill the requirement.

/BPRE

[MatrixFan]

Okay it seems the base force replacements come but they only arrive in truk atleast for the japs. Say i got 18th base force in lunga replacment will say 1/ 18th base force but arrives in truk.

[BPRE]

OK,

I received the following answer from Joel Billings in reply to my saved file:

As for the base force replacements, Gary found that sure enough it was disabled for human players. We honestly don't remember, but we assume we did this intentionally and forgot to take it out of the manual. It is very possible that we decided that since the player doesn't know who the primary base force is, and since the human player already has enough assets to work with, we'd get rid of it (but leave it for the AI since they need the help).
We haven't decided what to do about this yet. The options are explain that it only works for the AI and leave alone, or put it back in for the humans
and let them get the windfall of the extra units (without their really knowing how it's happening). I'm tempted to leave it alone as I believe the
Allies have enough support and the Japanese don't deserve to get any more.

My personal opinion about this is that it's OK. I think that as a Human vs the AI I don't need this extra help once I get to know the game a bit but the AI might. We should also be a bit careful with requests to change things that aren't faulty since the chances if them causing new faults are a possibility.
Since I don't have any experience of Human vs Human play I can only guess that it would affect both sides equally.

Any other comments/opinions about this??

As for the experience that some people had with replacements coming in could that be due to losses? It's happened to me. I lost part of a base force (possibly due to a bug but that's another story) and 4 days later I received notification in
the Ground Replacement schedule that I would receive a replacement unit within 7 days.

/BPRE

[mjk428]

My personal opinion about this is that it's OK. I think that as a Human vs the AI I don't need this extra help once I get to know the game a bit but the AI might. We should also be a bit careful with requests to change things that aren't faulty since the chances if them causing new faults are a possibility.
Since I don't have any experience of Human vs Human play I can only guess that it would affect both sides equally.

As far as having base forces expand is concerned, I would consider this a minor issue not worth implimenting. It would be nice if Matrix could put a manual correction in their next patch readme so people aren't left wondering why it's not happening as described.

Thanks to Joel (& BPRE) for getting this info to us.

MartyK

[elmo3]

Joel

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the issue but how will air units get support as bases expand and new bases are built/captured if there is no way to get additonal Base Units? Seems like this would be critical in the longer scenarios and unrealistic to not allow additional support units to be brought into the theatre in some manner. I don't think air units would be brought in without some support as well.

elmo3

[Joel Billings]

There are many base forces that come into the game as regular reinforcements. That's one reason why it seems ok to get rid of the extra units that this rule would generate that would probably allow players more support than they should really have. They should be able to work with the normal reinforcments.

[EricLarsen]

Joel and BPRE,
Thanks for finally confirming that the base expansion was turned off for humans when playing the AI. I beg to differ with BPRE's personal preference to leave this alone. The rules state that base force expansion works a certain way and the game should work the way the rules say. I'm playing the IJN and am at 11/5/42. I was very frustrated to have to start pulling base forces off of most bases to gather enough avaition support to bomb Port Moresby back into the stone age. It is very frustrating to have the rules say we get base force expansion and now you want to kill it because it's the easy way to solve the problem. I would like to know how this works in human-vs-human play, do both human players get base force expansion? If so please make the human-vs-AI mode consistent with the human-vs-human mode as I think many players like myself like to practice against the AI to learn how the game works and if the modes of play aren't consistent then it blows this practice learning mode for us. If there should be some kind of historical base force expansion limits for either or both sides then maybe there should be some way the scenario designer could set these levels as part of the scenario design. That way you can leave that historical limitation to the scenario designer so he can set it the way he wants for his scenario. Personally I want the game to work the way the rules say it is supposed to, even against the AI.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[EricLarsen]

Ross,
Sorry to have jumped into your case so hard but your reply just rubbed me the wrong way. I've been beta testing games for over 10 years so I full well know the problems of releasing games with as few bugs as possible. I gave up expecting perfect games a long, long time ago. Now I know that if I'm one of the first kids on the block to buy a game I'm paying for the privilege to become an unpaid post-release beta tester. So no I do not underestimate your dilemma of being a beta test manager and I do thank you for your efforts. By the same token your comment didn't seem to take into account that players were doing things correctly and that base forces contain engineers and can expand base forces all by themselves, albeit slowly. I know you were trying to help, but please be careful to really ascertain what's going wrong so that you don't suggest something that doesn't help correct the problem but looks like a denial of a possible bug. As for how much I've played the game I know it's not as long as you but I've played enough to know how the game system works and have done quite well cleaning the AI's clock. After all this game is merely a marriage of Gary's Pacific War and Bombing the Reich game systems, both old friends of mine. Keep up the good work and just make sure to appreciate those of us who care about the game enough to complain about problems and bugs we may find.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[UndercoverNotChickenSalad]

Ross never denied anything and they took your question all the way to Gary Gibsgy for crying out loud. THE MAN himself looked into it. That's good service you should apologize to Ross a little more.

[elmo3]

Originally posted by Joel Billings
There are many base forces that come into the game as regular reinforcements. That's one reason why it seems ok to get rid of the extra units that this rule would generate that would probably allow players more support than they should really have. They should be able to work with the normal reinforcments.

OK, thanks for the clarification. Your continued support is much appreciated.

[Joel Billings]

Eric,

There's another way to interpret the situation. That is that the manual is wrong and that it needs to be corrected. Gary and I had forgotten that we had deleted this special reinforcement rule during beta testing, and had simply forgotten to take the rule out of the manual. The fact that we left it in for the AI was one of the few things we did to give the AI an always needed boost.

I realize that players that have started a game and taken certain actions, based on anticipating the rule to function as stated in the manual, are taking a hit. However, there's also the issue of what's best for the game assuming players know the actual rule in operation. I think the normal reinforcments we are giving players are more "historically accurate" than the extra base forces that Gary was generating. I feel the bonus replacement rule will probably give players more aviation support than they deserve to have. Remember the Allies kept a lot of planes in the rear areas (as my uncle who served on an airbase in Australia throughout the war can attest), and the Japanese didn't have a strong support network. Also, remember you can alwasy base an infinite number of planes at one base with 250 aviation support and have enough support. As it is the pace of combat in UV is way above history with regards to air and naval operations, and giving more aviation support is only going to make this worse.

Since this is a lower priority bug relative to the list Mike is currently working on, I thought it best to get a few opinions and think about the issue before we decide to change the code. For now, assume the manual is wrong for human players (whether playing against the AI or another human player).

[strollen]

Joel

I'm fine with the change (or rather non-change). However, since there are a number changes like this that aren't reflected in the manual (i.e. docked TFs using endurance, reduced effectiveness of Norton equipment bombers under 6000 F2 shows shallow hexs etc.) I'd suggest you guys update the manual.

Current players probably don't need this but new players do. Nothing is more frustrating to me than tobuy a game based on good word of mouth. And discover while playing the game that manual is sadly out of date. The only advantage of an electronic manual vs. a paper one (other than cost!) is they can be easily updated.

[mjk428]

Joel,

Would you be so kind as to ensure that the manual is corrected in the "readme" with the patch? (If not this patch then a future one).

A comprehensive update of the .PDF at some point would be even better.

Also, I'd like to personally thank you for all the great games you've helped to see the light of day for more than 20 years.

Thank You,
Marty Keneally

[EricLarsen]

Undercover/Not Chicken Salad,
Try reading Ross's comment more carefully and understand what is said and what is inferred. While I know he was trying to be helpful his comment was totally off the mark and inferred that those of us complaining about the base force discrepancy did not know what we were doing. His suggestion would have done nothing to correct the problem being reported. I was just trying to open people's eye's to a bug that has since been confirmed. Obviously Ross's inference went way over your head, rook!