Looking for some feedback

[Ormand]

I'm looking at some aspects of the game to make improvements, etc. I would like some player feedback on two aspects of the game.

1. I would like to know how players use aircraft carriers. How you find enemy ships, attack those ships, and if you use the air-recon mission with aircraft carriers?

2. Do use the air-recon mission in general for land-based air units? Is it effective and all that?

After you answer how you currently use them in play, you can then give your 2 cents on how you think they should work in the game.

[Ormand]

Just to be clear, I will use this feedback as I update the game and prepare it for a new version. I could use the feedback as I decide what changes should be applied to these aspects of the game. So, if you have ideas, please let me know.

[lion_of_judah]

I rarely if ever use aircraft carriers. Would like to see naval units more powerful when conducting naval battles. I would like to see more use of diplomacy, and add morale. So if a nation has been at war for a certain period time, morale starts to suffer. Built in economy increase via cards

[Ormand]

Thanks. My feeling is that CVs are not a main part of the naval game. Probably because it is a bit difficult to use them. By this I mean recon for the unit is fairly weak, so you have to wander around searching for units. You can use the air-recon mission, but it is rather inefficient. You have to use all the air units, and it robs the unit of air AP. So, if you do find something you might not be able to attack, leaving the CV units less useful than they should be. And they are expensive. Further, since the game doesn't have naval interception, they can't be used as a backstop to stop enemy operations.

So, I am interested in ways players would like to see them changed.

My ideas right now are:

1. Different recon ranges for land, naval, and air units. By this I mean how quickly econ falls off. My implementation still has all three at four hexes, but there are separate rulevars dictating how quickly it decays. I have kept it at four for a couple of reasons: 1) it would require some different coding to sweep the hexes, 2) longer would also use more CPU (read time) to update the recon on the map after moves, and 3) I didn't want a designer to make it infinite (the whole map) and then have trouble with it. My view is that land units have the fastest decay, followed by naval, and the air. In a scenario I have, CVs loaded with air can see out 4 hexes, while a naval unit about 2-3 hexes.

2. Introduce a sea-recon mission for units that can carry aircraft. I haven't worked this exactly, but it would be something based on the air power carried by the unit and would cost something like 10 AP. It wouldn't be as powerful as the current air-recon mission, which I view as concentrated effort to get intel on an area (think recon missions prior to D-Day), which is also one reason why you don't get any recon between the base and target hex with the current air-recon mission. You just get recon on the four hexes surrounding the target hex. This is one reason why the air recon mission isn't great for CVs, aside from using too many APs. Air searches generally involved planes being sent out in an arc with one plane per sector. All they needed to do was spot an enemy fleet and hopefully determine if it had carriers. They weren't always successful, especially in identifying all the ships, especially if they had carriers and air cover. For example, the Japanese never actually sighted the fleets containing the Enterprise and the Hornet at Midway.

#1 will work well with the planned naval interception concept. While #2 would allow CVs to reach out further than standard recon would allow. An alternative to this would be to change air recon to extend beyond four hexes. Instead of four rulevars determining the decay as a function of distance, do something similar to HQ power and allow it drop by a fraction for every hex, and then have a rulevar capping the distance. This is simpler, and has a true arc. But it probably gives too much info and is probably less fun than forecing players to do a search.

[lion_of_judah]

looking forward to these new changes. How hard will it be to make diplomacy more realistic, and add morale changes if at war for a period of time. Thanks

[Ormand]

For the time being, that is the next iteration of AT, there won't be any diplomacy to speak of. It is a bit challenging to do and I have a LOT on my plate right now. Especially with trying to make a better AI. Something like 80% of players play against the AI (me included) so getting a better AI is important. Plus, I need to do a lot of work improving the UI. These things have priority for now. Morale is something that can be dealt with via events, and I suppose diplomacy as well, but it is rather complicated. I would like to do that, but it is for later as I have a lot of work and things going on that are slowing me down a bit.

But very glad you think these things could be useful. I need feedback even if I don't eventually use it. It gets filed in a corner of the brain to work on.

[lion_of_judah]

one of my scenario's I made, you programmed a morale event using cards. If and when you considering adding this, I can send you the scenario. That way, at least you will have a template to work from. Just a thought... Appreciate all the work you are doing in order to make this game much more enjoyable.

[Etude]

I currently play online with Steve Arnold, and we found an annoying gameplay aspect If aircraft carriers are mixed in with battleships and cruisers in the same hex. There is no real way of getting a fighter on a carrier to stay behind for Combat Air Patrol (CAP) duty, to defend a fleet against dive bombers. ATG doesn't have such a nuanced order system. During a naval battle any fighters on carriers will stupidly engage enemy capital ships and get heavily damaged by a cruisers AA capability. We considered some workarounds like increasing a fighters defense and hit points against AA fire using the editor, but we eventually just decided to play just with carriers, destroyers and submarines (and cargo ships) , and omit the battleships and submarines. As we play a Pacific War scenario it seems to work out well. Capital ships like battleships and cruisers had far less impact on the outcome of the Pacific war than carriers, subs and destroyers, so their absence is not a big deal.

So to answer your question the way we currently use carriers is to use them as the main strike component of the navy. I would like to experiment with the crude workaround of simply making fighters much more durable against AA fire so that they can better survive their foolish attacks on cruisers but Steve seems pretty obsesses with the Pacific! If fighters can better survive AA attacks, we might try mixing in carriers with capital ships.

Getting a way of some fighters to stay behind for CAP duty would be an excellent addition!