This is both a naïve and myopic statement. One which you have repeated ad nauseum over the years notwithstanding the rebutals which have been consistently provided.
1. You came to AE from the Paradox universe, in particular from HOI. It beggars belief that you can imply with a straight face that Paradox game manuals, in particular HOI game manuals, provide more details and greater assistance than the AE manual. I can only conclude that you have never bothered to read the Paradox manuals. I have so you can treat the rest of the posters on this forum as fools buut you can't fool me.
I won't defend Paradox, there's a reason why I've not bought any games developed by them since Crusader Kings II. Plus, I've had the AGEOD series of games take over that gaming niche in the past few years.
However, you'll agree with me that they're very transparent in how various modifiers influence combat and other aspects of the game
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I'm most familiar with HoI 3, and in that, in the case of ground combat, one can easily see the respective numeric influences of various issues. Crossing a river to attack a mountain province, for example, has a series of modifiers that you can look at and make an informed judgement about the risk of making such a move. In AE we don't get that, just the information that river crossings, when opposed, cause a shock attack and disruption. How much disruption? Doesn't say.
2. You obviously have never bothered to read the Paradox forums if again you are implying with a straight face that they provide more details and greater assistance than the AE forum. Paradox devs do not, I repeat, do not participate in their forums. Their developer diaries, which are a relatively recent development, are nothing more than advertisements for their forthcoming games. Paradox forums are totally dependent on the goodwill of fellow players providing the benefit of their experience. In that they are most definitely not better than the AE forum. Furthermore the AE forum, for 5 years after the game release, had regular contributions from many of the devs. Those contributions greatly expanded on the manual's explanation of both game mechanics and rationale for game design decisions. None of that is found in the Paradox forums and was provided for free so for you to consistently dismiss the efforts of the devs to support the game merely shows you to be an ingratiate at best.
What I will say is that the notion of Paradox's developer diaries was a good one in that it outlined game mechanics in a structured way, that you can refer back to as needed. While I more than agree that the level of support from the devs on the AE forums is far superior to that over at Paradox, the fustrating thing is that the comments are scattered across the forum and picking up the various threads can be tedious at best and sisyphean at worst.
3. No AE patch has ever been charged for. there have been 7 official AE patches (which included substantial game updates) plus there are the unofficial beta patches. Paradox incorporates their patches into cosmetic updates which allows them to justify charging their customer base a substantial sum of money to maintain their base game up to date. I have never seen you state that you would be quite happy to have paid money to receive any of those patches and updates. Where in this world, where the average mortal has to be engaged in paid employment in order to meet their living expense, (oh I forget you live in academia although whether that is as an academic or merely as a student has never been made clear), is it expected,, as a right, to receive support and information always in a pro bono capacity. Try to walk in the shoes of the AE devs and imagine how much more additional assistance they could have provided if their participation generated additional revenue post game release.
I've actually been quite impressed with the Paradox model regarding updates/DLC, at least regarding Crusader Kings II. The correct balance between paid content, essential bugfixes and cosmetic trinkets has been on the mark bar a single dubious addition (retinues being locked behind DLC, IIRC).
AE has a steep up-front cost, but in terms of the hours played, one of the best gaming investments I've ever made. Would I be happy to pay for continued updates and patches? Absolutely!
FWIW, I did my undergraduate degree in psychology and finished my MSc in Clinical Psychology last year. I self funded the MSc.
I also don't think it's an unreasonable expectation to have purchased a product and to then receive information and support on the working of that product, especially in the context of software. The fact that support for released software is normally a drain on resources is well known, and even more so in the case of an older game such as AE. It's extremely fustrating to see what's already been done with comparatively little and to see what potentially could be done.
4. No one doubts that you personally lack the skills, but if you could tear yourself away once from thinking about yourself, I can assure you that there are individuals on this planet who would be greatly assisted in reverse engineering the game and creating their own PTO games to compete with AE if the detail you consistently demand, were to be provided. There are also PBEM game security considerations which come into play but you would have to know something about the world outside of your own personal universe in order to appreciate that.
I think if you've a serious commitment to reverse engineering AE and have the requisite knowledge and skills, what information is given or not given won't make the slightest difference.
5. The Combat Reports and the various other relevant game reports/intel provide much more accurate information than a real world commander gets. You want more unrealistic information, turn off Fog of War. Stop complaining if you have Fog of War turned on. Take a course on computer programming to try to gain some understanding as to what some of the practical limitations are.
No, Combat Reports provide much less information than a real world commander gets, especially regarding his own side.
Leaders (-) for example. What unit(s) suffered the penalty? How big was it? What aspect of the role did they fail? Same with supply, what units suffered from low supply, or disruption or fatigue?
Even in losses: a deliberate attack costs 100 squads destroyed, what units are they from?
It's not impossible, one stellar example can be found in AEGOD games and the combat reports they generate, where it's possible to drill down into the report to see how battles went right (or wrong).
6. You yourself in your AARs demonstrate a good grasp of game mechanics. Your play is not hampered by a lack of knowledge of game mechanics. You regularly post to other players AARs detailed posts explaining options based on game mechanics. How is all this possible if the detail of game mechanics has not been provided by the AE devs. Or are you expecting us all to believe that you are only the second person in the history of the world to have been visited by the Holy Spirit, the other being Mary the mother of Jesus whose gift from the Holy Spirit was the foetus of Jesus, whereas in your case the gift was all the detail knowledge of AE game mechanics which the devs allegedly did not provide. One does not have to be Richard Dawkins to not believe that to be the case. Instead your own statement about the lack of knowledge of what causes LCU artillery to fire at ships in bombardment/artillery TFs shows up this nonsense for what it really is for I have provided detailed posts on how it operates, and my posts have drawn upon earlier posts publicly provided by the devs. I have never claimed to have been visited by the Holy Spirit.
The fundamental difference between you and me is that whenever I have been uncertain about some game mechanic I have gone and researched the public resources and invariably found the answer. An answer which ultimately derives from the devs. Faced with the same situation, you don't make the same effort or if you do make the effort you can't be honest enough to admit the answer has ultimately been derived from the devs. For you it is so much easier to just blame the devs, and in doing so you consistently slander them. What is really astonishing is how someone in the academic world can survive with such poor research skills or failure to correctly cite and acknowledge the sources.
We're not as fundamentally different as you might think, to the point that it may make you uncomfortable. I have a research background, I like references. I like to see someone say something, then provide a reference back to the evidence for that statement. That way, someone looking for more information can follow the reference and see for themselves. Trying to do any sort of search for information on the forum is extremely frustrating, the sites native search engine is difficult, and while Google is much easier to manage, it's not ideal for filtering out other Matrix titles with similar subject matters. Two weeks ago I was trying to find information I remember being posted to a specific thread several years back, and even knowing the correct thread still had to result to manually clicking through the thread to find the correct post. It's more than likely it's my inability to make the sites native search engine work optimally, but others have found it clunky as well.
There's also the fact that you've been active on the forums since 2006, with AE being released in 2009. That's a lot of information, posts and interaction that I've missed. You'll have a much better notion of the reliability of sources than I ever will.
I'm not a stupid person; more often than not I'm the idiot in the room, but I have the capacity to learn. If there's the abundance of information on the mechanics of AE actually out there in the forum in enough detail at to help make informed decisions, it's now so difficult to access that it may as well not exist anyways. The FAQ thread remains a glimmer of what could have been if there had been a centralized and structured method to posting info on game mechanics...
In fairness, I should stop blaming the devs; they weren't to know that the information they were disseminating would be so hard to access again nearly ten years down the line.
Anyhow, that's the last I'll say on this topic in Mike's AAR, we've diverted from it enough already. Feel free to take it to PM or elsewhere on the forum Alfred, I genuinely enjoy your contributions and viewpoint.
