China et al

[Skyros]

Some historical maps of china.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historic ... china.html

[Skyros]

ORIGINAL: Symon

Great stuff you guys. I'm always impressed at the detailed level of knowledge of folks on these boards, particularly as relates to logistics. So it is with a heavy heart and a great deal of trepidation that I must say it just can't happen.

The engine works the movement thing by checking the LCU Type (Inf, Armor, Arty, Eng, HQ, AA, CD) and applying it to the terrain (or road) type it is attempting to move through. The engine does not consult the 'interior' of an LCU, it just looks at Type. Can you imagine the work needed to consult every moving LCU and determine, from its 'device' list how many tanks, and/or vehicles, and/or MotSup devices it has as a % of unit totals, and what the affect different %s will have on movement rate? We're talking at least 6 man months.

Even then, it couldn't be done, because, as prolific as Michaelm is, he is limited by the 2 Commandments. The First and Greatest Commandment is "Whatever thou doest, it MUST default to the commercial stock version!" The Second Commandment is "Thou shalt honor the First Commandment!"

Everything Michaelm has done for us has been done with attribute fields in the database. Gotta special attribute, then the algorithm goes one way. Don't got it, algorithm goes vanilla. But there's simply no way to tag a very complex movement algorithm, with multiple check and recalc levels, with an attribute.

Hate to get technical, but ya'll modders need to know the limitations of what's possible. That's why Babes is simply a "code specific" tweak to things. Everything we do MUST fit within the code parameters; that is OUR First and Greatest Commandment.

Ciao. JWE

I guess we can't bump up the movement cost for some of the more difficult to travel terrain?

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: Skyros
I guess we can't bump up the movement cost for some of the more difficult to travel terrain?

Nope. That's embedded.

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
I am all FOR this idea. Will gladly allow RA 6.0 to be a guinea pig for this sort of grand experiment.

Okey dokey. Almost done. Did Korea, Manchuquo, China, Cochin China, and Burma. India's a rats nest and didn't touch it.

That's pwhexe.dat #1. Fairly gentle, but should slow down the usual Huk Rebellion of furiously maneuvering LCUs in the hinterlands just a bit.

Am also working on a #2 that the Texas game group requested. They lurk and saw my comment about reducing road scale and wanted a gang-reduction of everything within a set X:Y range, allowing tweaks to make the game work. So I'm doing that too. This one is killer.

I'll send you #1 in a couple days. I'll send you #2 as well, soon as it's done, but be prepared for screams and howls of outrage, from fanbois of both sides.

Ciao [:D] JWE

[LargeSlowTarget]

How about reducing certain river crossings from major road to minor road or even less - at those places where bridges did not exist untis after the war. And maybe reducing the deliberately flooded Yellow river area to foot trails?

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: Symon

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
I am all FOR this idea. Will gladly allow RA 6.0 to be a guinea pig for this sort of grand experiment.

Okey dokey. Almost done. Did Korea, Manchuquo, China, Cochin China, and Burma. India's a rats nest and didn't touch it.

That's pwhexe.dat #1. Fairly gentle, but should slow down the usual Huk Rebellion of furiously maneuvering LCUs in the hinterlands just a bit.

Am also working on a #2 that the Texas game group requested. They lurk and saw my comment about reducing road scale and wanted a gang-reduction of everything within a set X:Y range, allowing tweaks to make the game work. So I'm doing that too. This one is killer.

I'll send you #1 in a couple days. I'll send you #2 as well, soon as it's done, but be prepared for screams and howls of outrage, from fanbois of both sides.

Ciao [:D] JWE

Looking forward to it. Perhaps using this and raising the garrison numbers will slow down the instant 'death star' stacks from forming and moving.

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
Looking forward to it. Perhaps using this and raising the garrison numbers will slow down the instant 'death star' stacks from forming and moving.

Hope so. That's the plan, anyway. Comming to your email just about now.

Ciao. JWE

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget
How about reducing certain river crossings from major road to minor road or even less - at those places where bridges did not exist untis after the war. And maybe reducing the deliberately flooded Yellow river area to foot trails?

Kinda, sorta, did that. On both sides of the big river, I got rid of all 'stubbies' running to it, unless there was a graphically discernable gray or brown road graphic running to it. The only roads that cross the river are in those hexes where there is a clear road graphic that crosses it. Don't know if those bridge locations are irl or not, but they are on the map so they are in pwhexe. This should help you a bit.

Don't know squat about deliberately flooded Yellow River area. I did away entirely with the massive secondary road spiderweb. First thought about replacing with "track', but in clear terrain, 'track' defaults to clear, so a difference without distinction. So got rid of the irrelevant 'tracks' too. Map is a lot more open and empty and easier to modify. This should help you too.

Ciao. JWE

[John 3rd]

Got the file. It will be added for RA.

THANKS!

[Symon]

You are welcome. I'll put it up on the Babes site so others can check it out too. Keeps it in a known place with revision histories.

Anyhoo, please, ya'll, let me any comments (bad or good). I'll want to fold this into the regular Ext Map data set for Babes. It works for our purposes, but as Francois pointed out there might be some unintended consequences in GC games.

ps. On the really gnarly one, finished the consultations and have a pretty resonable combinatorial logic set for road type + terrain Got a few new RR rules too. Adding two new road types. Supply and LCU movement matrix is pretty big, but the swinish thing actually does reduce and converge. Maybe have to start a new thread for that one.

Ciao. JWE

[Mac Linehan]

ORIGINAL: Symon

You are welcome. I'll put it up on the Babes site so others can check it out too. Keeps it in a known place with revision histories.

Anyhoo, please, ya'll, let me any comments (bad or good). I'll want to fold this into the regular Ext Map data set for Babes. It works for our purposes, but as Francois pointed out there might be some unintended consequences in GC games.

ps. On the really gnarly one, finished the consultations and have a pretty resonable combinatorial logic set for road type + terrain Got a few new RR rules too. Adding two new road types. Supply and LCU movement matrix is pretty big, but the swinish thing actually does reduce and converge. Maybe have to start a new thread for that one.

Ciao. JWE

John, Thank You for making it available at the Babes Web Site; I am very much looking forward to checking it out.

The vivid image in my mind is of one of the many photos of Japanese Infantry moving slowly down a dry dirt road under a very hot sun...

Also:

I feel less than informed in asking: Can I install this map in an ongoing Babes C game, or is a restart needed?

Thank You again,

Mac

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: Mac Linehan
John, Thank You for making it available at the Babes Web Site; I am very much looking forward to checking it out.

The vivid image in my mind is of one of the many photos of Japanese Infantry moving slowly down a dry dirt road under a very hot sun...

Also:

I feel less than informed in asking: Can I install this map in an ongoing Babes C game, or is a restart needed?

Thank You again,

Mac

Yep. It's a dat file. Just restart the engine from desktop, reload your savegame, and the new dat files will be loaded. Just grip it and rip it, my friend.

Oh, yes. The vivid image in my mind is what I confronted as 'roads' way back when. Sure as heck not the same as even the FM network in Texas or the Midwest. Just try going from Amarillo to Odessa in July, even in 2013 [8D]

Ciao. JWE

[Mac Linehan]

John -

That is just awesome, Life is Good!

Thanks,

Mac

[spence]

The same pictures of the Japanese infantry marching down dusty roads also show carts drawn by horses and carts.

Armies supplied by trucks ARE restricted by the road net and when the road net sucks the amount of supply decreases. But when the road net sucks horses and carts don't do any better. Any advantage gained by leaving the road is transitory and only of tactical significance.

Just consider how many armies have de-motorized in the last century before you confer some advantage to horse drawn logistic support.

[Symon]

Whoops. Hold up there good buddy. No one said anything about confering advantages to anything, horse, motor, or otherwise. I hope I was clear enough, elsewhere, that this is not possible with the game engine. In fact, the point of the whole exercise is to 'encourage' movement and supply flow along the arterial road network. As the Japanese would say, just put your mind at ease.

J

[el cid again]

We are testing a new set of changes specifically intended to "make China stronger"
in RHS. Test series 9 has players on both sides saying "it is an entirely new game."

There were several different kinds of changes, some of them had to be done globally to
be fair.

1) Chinese units were generally no longer started with horrible rates of exhaustion,
disorganization and virtually no planning. I call this being "pre-defeated." IRL,
according to the ROC official history, the quality of the ROC army declined over time,
while the game data has it starting terrible and getting better.

2) Chinese cities were carefully reviewed for population. Those with 400,000 or more
are classified as Urban Light, those over a million classified as Urban Heavy. By
defining manpower centers at 100,000 population, this also means a player can know if
a city is Urban Light or Urban Heavy - by looking at the manpower centers:
0 to 3 - not Urban
3 to 9 - Urban Ldght
10 plus - Urban Heasy

3) Cities with walls 30 or 40 feet thick were given an initial fortification level of 2.

4) Army Group Headquarters units were given organic units - not just support. These
include an AT company, an AAA company, a recon or cavalry battalion, and 2 infantry regiments.
These units also have a higher morale and proficiency rating than line units, so when they
"command" lesser units tend to stiffen them. Generally these formations use the typical
attachments - but in one special case - the "recon" company is the surviving mechanized
force - a battalion of armored cars with a company of light tanks (Russian).

5) Army Area Headquarters got a similar treatment, but on a lower scale. They only have one
independent infantry regiment, for example.

6) Army artillery was completely revised so that the "heavy guns" which won, for example,
the Second Battle of Changsha are not wholly absent from the OB. These generally are 105 or
150 caliber. The number of regiments was increased, and specialist CD regiments were also
added along the Yangtze - their defense of the upper river was never breached.

7) Two regiments (triangular) of Marines were added - both assigned to a navy HQ which permits them
to load. We already had the peculiar junk modified into LCM popular in China until the 1960s.
A number of "river steamers" with 3 inch guns were added. More important, the ROCN can convert
river steamers to gunboats, minelayers, minesweepers, etc - and it has THOUSANDS of Russian
riverine mines (and over a thousand big sea mines too).

8) We revised the air force - modeling more types - but including the weird special cases -
three trainer squadrons used operationally for recon and bombing - and added the historical
(limited) aviation manufacturing capability. The full compliment of both nationalized airlines
were added (one with its German tri-motors) as air transports - which are most useful.

9) We discovered sources of fuel for industry - coalgas - natural gas - and one hydro dam -
which are all modeled as fuel (small amounts) that is used to power inland industry far from
the oilfields. A refinery at Sian does not feed industry at Chunking: natural gas in the same
hex did, however. Seems China had been exploiting this for over a thousand years!

10) We maxed out locations - borrowed at Mifune's suggestion from Treespider's mod - although
not quite to the same extent he did. Each location is a potential fortification, and virtually all
generate resources and process some of them into supplies. We found, for example, a vast area NE of
Sian which starts with lots of units doomed to starve - but those units really were locally supplied.
Now they get local supplies, can fortify (and benefit from walled cities already present), and als
take advantage of the rough country for defense - instead of "retreat or die without supplies."

11) We added the 200th Division. Formerly a tank division, when the tanks and armored cars were reduced by attrition, it became a motorized infantry division. It was very effective - combined with an army Group HQ
that starts in the same hex and which usually operated with it - which group has its former tanks and armored cars and other special assets. These two - in the mountains near Burma - were effective historically. The 200th Division is, in game terms, the only fast moving unit - we rate motorized units as "armor" for movement purposes even if they don't have tanks in them.

[spence]

In the current game system I have serious reservations about helping the Chinese too much. Since the Chinese had little in way of motorized support giving motorized support some sort of advantage wouldn't help the Chinese much at all. However, if non-motorized supply could be simulated in such a way as to be increasingly less efficient depending on distance from a rail or port that would muck up the offensive potential of the Japanese in China and Burma (almost exclusively).

I find the postulate that the solution to 3 years of stalemate in China was to declare war on the rest of the world to be terribly suspect. Supposedly rational Japanese Players are forced to accept that their historical mentors constructed a world where that postulate makes sense. That is not a reason to design the game in such a way that that delusion becomes a viable strategy.

[witpqs]

In the current game system I have serious reservations about helping the Chinese too much. Since the Chinese had little in way of motorized support giving motorized support some sort However, oi non-motorized supply could be simulated in such a way as to be increasingly less efficient depending on distance from a rail or port that would muck up the offensive potential of the Japanese in China (almost exclusively)

Spence, I find that really unclear. Could you say that again in a different way?

[spence]

I can see why you're confused witpqs. Seems like whenever I really get going at typing on this machine it decides to omit half a sentence or relocate the cursor. I really should pay better attention. Sorry.

Go back to the original post now if you have any interest in what I have to say.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: spence

I can see why you're confused witpqs. Seems like whenever I really get going at typing on this machine it decides to omit half a sentence or relocate the cursor. I really should pay better attention. Sorry.

Go back to the original post now if you have any interest in what I have to say.

Got it. Do not totally agree, as Japan did not have a plethora of motorized transport - more than the Chinese but less than the other Allies. Within the current game system there is no granularity to work with; supply movement is generic.