Attention Matrix Staff: Aircraft Upgrades

[Tankerace]

LOL. It's flawed for both sides, but moreso for the Japanese.

[Kikka]

So where's my poll? I vote #2: If I can build it, and the allies haven't bombed it, I should be able to deploy it!!!
-kikka
Axis fanGAL

[Sultanofsham]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac
Na the second sorest point is having all those Seafires in the pool in late 42 and not being able to upgrade Fulmers for 6 months and then to Wildcats...but then I am an RN fanboy [:D][:D]

What ticks me off is that the Singapore RAF Buffalos cant upgrade to Hurricanes till MAY but the RAAF Buffalo sqaud can upgrade to the Hurri at will in January. Didnt try them in December because they were a little busy and I didnt want to pull them out of the line till the end of Singapore.

Now the Aussies have bright shiny new Hurricanes and the RAF are screwed even though there are 50 plus Hurri's in the pool.

[Tankerace]

One word.

FUBAR

[MadDawg]

I havnt played the larger scenarios yet but by follow this thread I think I can see where the problems are. If Im correct then basically there is no real need in researching Japanese planes early as they cant actually be deployed or taken out of the pool - is that kinda what we are getting at?

I think Ive had one or two of these problems in smaller scenarios, too. I have a bunch of airgroups flying A6M3's that have been depleted down to 4-5 aircraft each and are pretty much useless, yet I have 70 A6M5's sitting in storage that I cant use, even temporarily. I do realise that technically they shouldnt upgrade, but if it means the difference between holding Lunga or not surely the Japanese would have thrown them into action (as Id like too) as they did everything else they had at hand? Chances are they are going to get trashed anyway, hehe.

Dawg

[Tankerace]

From what I gather, yes.

[Mr.Frag]

I havnt played the larger scenarios yet but by follow this thread I think I can see where the problems are. If Im correct then basically there is no real need in researching Japanese planes early as they cant actually be deployed or taken out of the pool - is that kinda what we are getting at?

Not true.

Moving forward production of aircraft that *are* within the upgrade path of aircraft you have is quite valuable.

Researching aircraft you are not going to get until 1945 is pointless. Researching '43 aircraft like the Oscar and Zeke and moving them into '42 is quite an advantage. There are lots of aircraft worth moving forward, but people always want to go to extremes and simply pick the best there is [;)]

[2ndACR]

Mr. Frag,

What most of us want is to be able in 1944 or 1945 upgrade the Ki-43-II Oscar to Franks if we have them in the pool.

As it is now all those groups are stuck with Oscars. At least that is what i want. The ability to upgrade my units with the better a/c if I spend the time and resources to produce enough to do it. Or to Tony etc.

[Caltone]

Just curious how many Franks do we expect to have in say late '44? Do people think they will be at full production in all thier factories by this time?

I sense many here think they will have 100's of Franks in the pool and lots of Oscar squadrons. I'm hitting some shortages already and looking ahead I gather it will be getting worse, not better. Once Japan runs through her starting reserves, I think it has been proven that she will forever face a shortfall. This is assuming she captures all her objectives and the Allies do not retake anything.

I expect the Allies to start hitting back in '42 and by '44 its going to get tough. I do not expect to be running my factories at full steam to research new fighters while my infantry starves for supplies. I'm gonna need arms as well.

Am I way off base here? Just saying I like the game as it stands. I don't go real crazy at the start, in fact I halt production at several aircraft factories. Converting them causes damage and costs supplies too, both to convert and to repair. While I'm usually the eternal optimist, I see major shortages in Japan's future and I'm trying to prepare for it, can't imagine what it'll be like in '44-'45.

Ok, flame away [:D]

[2ndACR]

Not going to Flame you. I too forsee shortages, but I would like the ability to make the change if I so choose.

Take an example: You have an Oscar group in mid 44. They have been beating up on the Chinese etc. They are at an experience level of 90 (hard to believe but it could happen). Every Oscar group you have sent against the allies have been chewed up and spit out. Even your 85 experience units you have carefully hoarded and trained. You have Tony groups at 70-75 who are giving the allies fits. You have 70 Tony's in the pool. Do you really want to send a high experience unit into certain doom with the Oscar's or would you like to give them a better chance with the Tony.

Me i would rather have the option to upgrade the a/c to Tony's and give them a fighting chance. Right now they are doomed to have Oscar's. Plus you might have 6 Oscar groups basically shot to pieces waiting on replacement a/c
when you have plenty of other a/c they could use instead. As it stands now they will stay shot up and short of a/c until enough Oscar's are produced even though you have better a/c in the pool which could be sent to them instead.

[Tankerace]

I am not thinking on a scale of upgrading ALL Oscars to Franks, but if I have enough Franks to equip 1 Sentai, and have about 10 or so spares, why can't I do it? I am not talking about 1000s upon 1000s like Mr. Frag is saying we all are, I am talking one or two measly squadrons.

[Sultanofsham]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag
There are lots of aircraft worth moving forward, but people always want to go to extremes and simply pick the best there is [;)]

Once again thats not what is being asked for. [8|]

[Tankerace]

Mr. Frag, please, take a step back, and examine what is being asked for. All you are doing is blowing what we are asking for out of porportion. Please, don't criticise what we are askinguntil you can understand what we are asking.

[SunDevil_MatrixForum]

I think both sides have valid points, but there are a couple of things that I think are forgotten.

Mr. Frag is a beta tester. He has started and played hundreds of games.
The rest of us (me included) combined can maybe reach a total of 100 games.

Mr. Frag has had to test and play in all different situations and scenarios.
The rest of us have not even made through the end of 1942 in the grand campaign.

Mr. Frag has worked with 18 other beta testers who also have tested a lot of areas and situations in the game.

It could be a safe assumption that what these guys tested during the beta phase showed them that production to the Japanese later in the war makes those upgrade dead end paths a non-issue.

Another assumption is that we as a community found something that the beta testers have missed.

Mogami has not said anything about this topic, so I will hold my opinion until later, but considering that Matrix has not issued a statement yet, could we all agree that arguing with a beta tester over and over again is not really accomplishing anything. As Mr. Frag has said in the past, they really do not listen to him. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't until we get an official answer and reason behind this design decision or mistake, lets just leave this at 10 pages.

I am also sure that this community can fix this in a modded scenario, so in the end, either it will be changed officially or it will be changed by one of us.

[Caltone]

It'll be interesting to see what numbers of aircraft people have in their pools in late '44-'45.

[MadDawg]

It could be a safe assumption that what these guys tested during the beta phase showed them that production to the Japanese later in the war makes those upgrade dead end paths a non-issue.

Actaully I have seen a couple of beta testers mentioned that most of their testing was early war. As new versions of the game would often require restarts, I wonder just how many times this game was played through from beginning to end? It would be easy enough to test smaller chunks of the game, but I think we may see issues (such as this one) when playing through the grand campaign that are still unknown.

This is of no fault of the testers, its just such a huge game that it would be very hard to test an entire campaign through whilst new versions were being released a couple of times a month.

Dawg

[Tankerace]

Don't remember where I read it, but somewhere on this forum I read that the game was NEVER played from beginning to end, it was too long and Matrix/2by3 and the testers didn't have the manpower. So, for all we know Scenario 15 could just up and die in 1944 for a reason no one thought of. Hence, why we want something like this fixed now, before we all get to 1944 and get told "We fixed the issue, but you have to restart."

[brisd]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Mr. Frag,

What most of us want is to be able in 1944 or 1945 upgrade the Ki-43-II Oscar to Franks if we have them in the pool.

As it is now all those groups are stuck with Oscars. At least that is what i want. The ability to upgrade my units with the better a/c if I spend the time and resources to produce enough to do it. Or to Tony etc.

Wow, eight pages of posts, I finally finished reading. I, among others, brought up this issue because the Frank was the replacement of the Oscar and it would have replaced those squadrons. That is what is ahistorical IMHO. I don't want any major changes to upgrade paths or research abilities. I trust the designers to factor in what Japan was capable of in the best of circumstances. I liked Lemurs last post and look forward to checking out his latest scenario design.

Edit: #500 post for me, it's been a fun four years [8D].

[esteban]

OK, I am going to take a midpoint here.

I generally agree with Frag, that the Japanese player shouldn't have complete control of his upgrade path:

1. The biggest reason is that the Allies have no control over their aircraft industry, and I am not sure that their R&D facilities even advance aircraft replacement delivery. For the Japanese to have full control becomes a balance question.

2. "Cost free" upgrades are probably not historic. There are political factions at work, and there will be some people who will be championing production of Oscar 2s.

However:

1. I don't like the determinism argument I see Frag using. If Japan is doomed to be overrun, regardless of how well they do short of an early automatic victory, then that reduces the incentive to play Japan, if you know that in 1945, no matter how well you did protecting your industry and resource/oil deliveries, you are going to have to send up substandard aircraft against F4U1Ds. If you do better than historically in aspects of the game, you should enjoy the benefits of such.

2. It's disingenuous to say that Japan is going to necessarily be producing 1900 aircraft a month, more than they can afford to produce engines for. Are you going to keep all your starting A6M2, A6M3, A5M4 and A6M5 factories producing variants of the zero flat out, as you progress through the family? No, you will probably start and stop production of the various AXM models at various points, because you have largish pools built up.

Besides, even if your various squadrons are eviscerated, and you are producing flat out, where are you going to get the pilots to rebuild the squadrons properly? It's suicide to send pilots with less than 50-60 experience out to fly missions. It's better to rebuild these units with the poor quality replacement pilots that you have, and then train them back up to a reasonable level before recommitting them.

If you send a bunch of 20/30/40 exp pilots into battle:

A) they are going to get slaughtered
B) If they don't, they won't hit anything
C) you lose the resources/industry you put into the planes
D) feed the allies VPs
E) you only further complicate your pilot replacement situation, because you have to go overdraw the replacement pool again to generate another poor quality replacement class to replace the one you just sent off before you should have.

Pilots is the real constraint on the Japanese air units, not aircraft.


So, I would suggest:

1. I like Beanies idea of making aircraft R&D a general expenditure, not aircraft specific. That way the Japanese player cannot target certain aircraft that he ahistorically knows to be good. You can put a lot into R&D, but you might see a bunch of that going into models of a more dubious nature than the Reppu.

2. Ahistorical upgrades be allowed, but with one or more of the following limits:
A) a hefty PP cost per plane upgraded, to represent overcoming the organizational resistance to getting new models out into the field.
B) A certain amount of "free" upgrades per quarter/year or such.
C) That you can only do free upgrades when the sum of your pool+max A/C number in existing planned and deployed squadrons hits a certain multiple of the max A/C number. And as you free upgrade new squadrons, their presence further increases this number you need to hit before you can get another free squadron upgrade.


Another point:

Maybe in the real war the ability to knock out Japanese industry was questionable, but not in WiTP. B-29s start showing up in late 1943. And there have been lots of documented cases of them generating several thousands of victory points per month once they get in range. If you had B-29s strategic bombing as per history, starting in October 44, at that pace the Japanese home islands would be UTTERLY devoid of resource centers, oil, manpower centers and all industry/shipyards by about February, 1945.

But thats ok, because most Japanese players can quite probably reduce China to poverty by strategic bombing their resource and oil centers after the Japanese clear the SRA.

[Sultanofsham]

ORIGINAL: esteban
2. Ahistorical upgrades be allowed, but with one or more of the following limits:
A) a hefty PP cost per plane upgraded, to represent overcoming the organizational resistance to getting new models out into the field.
B) A certain amount of "free" upgrades per quarter/year or such.
C) That you can only do free upgrades when the sum of your pool+max A/C number in existing planned and deployed squadrons hits a certain multiple of the max A/C number. And as you free upgrade new squadrons, their presence further increases this number you need to hit before you can get another free squadron upgrade.

Personally I'd like to see it be:

1. Auto upgrade paths stay the same and are free.

2. You can spend a small amount of PP to bring in an aircraft thats in the squads upgrade path early or switching to a past aircraft type.

3. You can spend a larger amount of PP to bring in an aircraft thats not in the upgrade path.

4. Aircraft have to be of the same class. Fighter to fighter, Bomber to bomber, and so on.

5. No using Army aircraft with Navy aircraft (unless it happend durring the war) or any other cross service jumping.

6. Group takes an exp hit for the switch.

7. Both sides should have this option.

8. It should be an option button set at the start of the game along with the ahistoric sub buttons. That way if ya want it then you have it and if ya dont then you never need to mess with it.