Matrix Aircraft Upgrades

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Lemurs!
Get over yourselves... you are wasting our time and our brain cells with your moronic spew. If anyone in your camp ever actually answered a question honestly i would probably just keel over and die.
You either trust Garys production system or you do not. If you make any further idiotic comments about the production system i will know that you think that Gary's game is broken.
It will be interesting to see your response.
Actually, it won't... Frag has never read a post in his life.

There's no place for this - these statements accomplished nothing but a personal attack and one based on extremely shaky foundations at that. Between this and your previous "this is my ban me post" I begin to think you are for some odd, self-destructive reason really looking for moderator attention.

You obviously have a lot of knowledge in this field based on your other posts. Please stick to civility and factual debate.

Regards,

- Erik

[mogami]

Hi, Once again the upgrade paths are also there for the AI. The human player has to put up with them so he can play against the AI. In a 2 human game much of the need for set upgrade paths is gone. However there would still remain the exploits. The aircraft factories on rd are for the AI. So aircraft enter production on or about a certain historic date. Then based on the number of factories the AI will update certain groups to certain types. WITP would only need 3 data files per scenario to make everyone happy. 1 Japanese AI 1 Allied AI and 1 both Human.

The RD factories do not actually exist. They are for the AI but a human can set them to producing actual aircraft as soon as he has the supply and there is 2,000,000 supply on Dec 7th. All these factories would have to be removed before freedom was given.

[Rainerle]

Hi,
First: It is not a game breaker and I never would consider giving up on the game !
Second: Japan needs (nearly) all freedom in regards to production/research !
Why ?
The destruction/disabling/ruining/wrecking etc. of the japanese industry is the allied players job. period. If the allied player does nothing japan should have a super-duper empire with big ships and mighty aircraft carriers and sophisticated bombers/fighters crossing the skys by the thousands. If the game takes this responsibility away from the allied player and introduces some historic limits it is not fair because this very history (and the imposed limits on Japan in the game) has been influenced by allied action. So the resulting 1) drop of pilot quality 2) low numbers of aircraft 3) resource/oil shortage 4) problems of introducing more and better aircraft are a direct result of the allied war effort - or better the result of what this entire game is about.
So effectively the japanese side is doubled punished as it has to live with historic limits (imposed by allied action) and on top of this the allied player imposes his own actions (bombing, subs, mines etc.). Hopefully I could bring my point accross.

The 'nearly' from the top. This means that some common sense needs still to be applied like army/navy rivalry and some research limits like C after B after A or some such thing.

Very respectfully and thanks for listening/reading

[Nusskuchen]

@Rainerle:

I agree mostly with you- but for me the game is broken. Why? Because I am more a "what if" kind of player, I have the strong feeling some are better off to setting AI vs. AI and then watch the "game" with enjoyment.

And I also think it is stupid to take one point of 5000 factors and say "we must do this, because it is historic", when you completly ignore the other ones which have a big influence on the one you fix. Example: youre Oscar groups take ahistoric high losses in 1942 and now you need to switch the "historic" production of better planes to this old junkbird because you cant use the 1000s of better Army Fighter planes you have in pool. Only one thing of many which can go completly wrong.

[mogami]

Hi, Yes there are some built in game items that annoy those of us who want to write the history fresh. But since WIR2 (the first on for IBM) GG has always set the reinforcement schedules to historic. So we are given the groups and ships and LCU that were used in the war and not allowed to invent new ones. WITP continues this tradition and it should surprise no one. We have to plan around it.

However in WITP if the Japanese are winning and the Allies are not hurting the transport of oil and resource and Japanese HI is growing the Japanese will not suffer from a lack of trained pilots. (Do I really need to go over this again?) But the Japanese player will again (Crap more work [X(]) have to manage his training program on map using groups for training. The Japanese player will end the game on 1 Jan 1943 or he will be faced with a long defense. If the game does not end on 1 Jan 1943 is means the Japanese player has failed in phase 1 or phase 2 operations. If he fails in phase 1 then all debate over production is pointless because he will be starving by 1 Jan 1943 (the game might still end here. In an Allied Victory) If he fails in phase 2 then he will have either sat on his butt or he will have suffered heavy loss. In the first case he will be strong and have a large pool. Good for him. There are massive battles looming on the horizen. If he suffered serious loss then he will be rebuilding and many of the groups he might have wanted to upgrade will be disbanded and out of play allowing his production to concentrate on those with better aircraft that still remain.

[Nusskuchen]

However in WITP if the Japanese are winning and the Allies are not hurting the transport of oil and resource and Japanese HI is growing the Japanese will not suffer from a lack of trained pilots. (Do I really need to go over this again?) But the Japanese player will again (Crap more work ) have to manage his training program on map using groups for training. The Japanese player will end the game on 1 Jan 1943 or he will be faced with a long defense. If the game does not end on 1 Jan 1943 is means the Japanese player has failed in phase 1 or phase 2 operations. If he fails in phase 1 then all debate over production is pointless because he will be starving by 1 Jan 1943 (the game might still end here. In an Allied Victory) If he fails in phase 2 then he will have either sat on his butt or he will have suffered heavy loss. In the first case he will be strong and have a large pool. Good for him. There are massive battles looming on the horizen. If he suffered serious loss then he will be rebuilding and many of the groups he might have wanted to upgrade will be disbanded and out of play allowing his production to concentrate on those with better aircraft that still remain.

Ok, but why cant I decide which airgroups get the new planes and which one get disbanded? Why I have to resort to such micromangement instead just picking the best airgroups and upgrade them with the best aircrafts?

I dont understand why a game with such flexibilty does fix a point which can bring you a lot of problems if you dont work around- like you do.

As I see it: nearly every decision you do in this game is ahistoric, I dont understand the beef of some people if a player goes on and upgrade more groups of planes with Franks. Is it really worse then attacking Australia or taking Midway? Its like saying as the Allies you cant attack Okinawa before 1945.

[mogami]

ORIGINAL: Nusskuchen

@Rainerle:

I agree mostly with you- but for me the game is broken. Why? Because I am more a "what if" kind of player, I have the strong feeling some are better off to setting AI vs. AI and then watch the "game" with enjoyment.

And I also think it is stupid to take one point of 5000 factors and say "we must do this, because it is historic", when you completly ignore the other ones which have a big influence on the one you fix. Example: youre Oscar groups take ahistoric high losses in 1942 and now you need to switch the "historic" production of better planes to this old junkbird because you cant use the 1000s of better Army Fighter planes you have in pool. Only one thing of many which can go completly wrong.

Hi, When your Oscar groups suffer ahistoric high loss they will be withdrawn from combat and disbanded. Then the remaining groups will be able to return to service away form where they are useless. At the front they will be replaced by the newer groups with better aircarft that your production is supporting.

Japanese airgroups cannot remain in combat and suffer high loss unless you provide trained replacement pilots. If your going to use untrained pilots you should use them in your older aircraft and not the ones you are saving for your good pilots.

Japanese players should understand (And all will learn someday) that Japan cannot engage in sustained combat all accross the board. She can pick 1 or 2 areas and if she stretches resources maybe 3. If she loses in anyone of these areas it will cause the loss of the others. Really I still don't see where any complainer has actually encountered this dreadful handicap of being unable to upgrade a group. In Phase 1 the Nate can handle any opposition except for USN and AVG. In both cases if you provide A6M2 support the Nate can continue to fight.

Why worry about 1944 aircraft types?

[Nusskuchen]

Because I dont want to have a great airgroup stick endless with Oscars when I can upgrade them with better planes.

What youre saying is valid, but this would be also true when you would allow the player to upgrade with more freedom.

[WhoCares]

ORIGINAL: Mogami
...
Really I still don't see where any complainer has actually encountered this dreadful handicap of being unable to upgrade a group. In Phase 1 the Nate can handle any opposition except for USN and AVG. In both cases if you provide A6M2 support the Nate can continue to fight.

Why worry about 1944 aircraft types?

Just think about losing half of your airgroups with Franks and having to wait for them to return in 90 days because you can't promote another unit...

[mogami]

Hi, Ok in your current game what is the date and how many great Oscar groups do you have and how many better aircraft are in the pool? I'll try to figure out a plan to use them. Send the file to Mogami69bsa@aol.com Then I will post the solution here for everyone else. I can't use any of my games because I don't have the problem. (I built what I needed not what I wanted)

If you edit your groups to OscarI and set them to auto upgrade they will use what ever aircraft are in the pool. But the upgrade paths exist for the AI. We'll all need to get together and make 3 files for every scenario. Then the players will have more freedom without changing a line of code.

[Godisard]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, Yes there are some built in game items that annoy those of us who want to write the history fresh. But since WIR2 (the first on for IBM) GG has always set the reinforcement schedules to historic. So we are given the groups and ships and LCU that were used in the war and not allowed to invent new ones. WITP continues this tradition and it should surprise no one. We have to plan around it.

Nobody is complaining about historic reinforcement schedules. This debate is about the upgrade paths. In the strategic level Grigsby games I've played, upgrades for airgroups (and tankdivisions) were not as rigidly fixed as they are now. If you argue otherwise you've never played any of his earlier strategic level games.

Ok in your current game what is the date and how many great Oscar groups do you have and how many better aircraft are in the pool? I'll try to figure out a plan to use them. Send the file to Mogami69bsa@aol.com Then I will post the solution here for everyone else.

I shouldn't have to mail a betatester to do something that should be pretty simple. The game was advertised with having as one of its features "complete player control of aircraft upgrades". When I bought the game, I indeed expected it to have that, just like I had in for instance WIR and BTR (can't remember if PacWar and Western Front had it - too long ago since I played them). Those games didn't turn into fantasy games even though I could upgrade my airgroups with more freedom. Why? Because as Lemurs already pointed out in his first post in this thread (ignore the insults), GG designed a production and upgrade system that put certain penalties on upgrades. These penalties ensured that upgrades happened within limits and as a result I would always get a game that was what I would consider a realistic alternate history of the German war against Russia or the allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany.
Creating alternate histories is what these games are all about. You're kidding yourself if you think the game will be more historic with rigid upgrade paths for aircraft. Once you start turn 1 of WitP, you're writing history fresh. The game is one long "what if?" and it wouldn't be fun if it was otherwise.
What if the reality of the alternate history I'm creating, forces me to upgrade (or downgrade) one fightergroup to another type of fighter that my pool is full of? Even though I may have 500 of that fighter in the pool I can't upgrade the fightergroup if those 500 are not in the fixed aircraft upgrade path or can I? In the context of the alternate history I'm creating that would be ridiculous imo.

If you edit your groups to OscarI and set them to auto upgrade they will use what ever aircraft are in the pool. But the upgrade paths exist for the AI. We'll all need to get together and make 3 files for every scenario. Then the players will have more freedom without changing a line of code.

That doesn't solve a thing I think. I'd like to have a choice. Ideally, I would want a "change aircraft" button which should bring up a list of aircraft (and how many are in the pool of each type) I can upgrade or downgrade to.

[Lemurs!]

So I finally have an answer from Mogami.

The production system is broken and is too easy to manipulate to ahistorical results. BTR was not broken at least in this manner.

Why couldn't Frag or Mogami or someone just come out and tell us this? I have already from my modding noticed that there is way to much manpower in the game for Japan. I lowered the number somewhat but i am unsure as to the long term effect.

Maybe this can be the first thing Matrix works on, a balance to the Japanese production?

Mike

[mogami]

Hi, Who said it was broken? It works exactly like it is supposed to. But then there are those who don't like it and want to change it. Now we are EXPLOITING it. Many things are designed for a purpose but can be used for other purpose as well. A wood saw used to produce music is not broken but it's not sawing boards either.

[pyaeen]

Godisard, Good points! [:)]

[Lemurs!]

A properly working production system is not expolitable to any great extent. Any system that allows production of 1000 tanks a month as Japan in
1942 is broken.
So, to answer your question, you said it was broken.

In BTR the system was not manipulable to this extent.

When a system can be EXPLOITED, to use your emphasis, this easily by a newbie playing their first game is broken where i come from.

Although if we can get some honest discourse going we can probably fix this.

Mike

[mogami]

Hi, I think I've played every GG game except BTR. In Western Front you can change production but you can't change airgroups. (I thought you could when I bought it but I didn't have a fit when I found I couldn't I just stopped building 2000 ME-262) Western Front was released in 1991!!!! So this is not the first GG game with this exact same system.

[mogami]

ORIGINAL: Lemurs!

A properly working production system is not expolitable to any great extent. Any system that allows production of 1000 tanks a month as Japan in
1942 is broken.
So, to answer your question, you said it was broken.

In BTR the system was not manipulable to this extent.

When a system can be EXPLOITED, to use your emphasis, this easily by a newbie playing their first game is broken where i come from.

Although if we can get some honest discourse going we can probably fix this.

Mike

Hi, No it is not broken. Japan can build 1000 tanks per month. It may not be wise for Japan to do this. Does the system only have to allow sensible play? You are allowed to totally ruin Japan on Dec 7th 1941 if you so choose. Just start expanding everything untill you use up all the HIP and supply. It's stupid but it's the players call.
I can't comment on BTR and I can't use any comments by others since I have no frame of reference. But I've yet to find a game I could not exploit. WIR, Western Front, PACWAR, UV all have exploits. If you know they are exploits and you still use them thats your call. Knowing the AI requires a setup and then using it for your advantage is an exploit not a broken system. I've pointed out the easy remedy. All scenarios with production will need versus AI data and versus human data. The upgrade paths for human versus human can be removed without impact because there is no AI involvment in assigning or using airgroups. All the AI factories will be removed and the human Japanese player will be unable to exploit them. with out this exploitable production the Japanese player will have a hard time upgrading the entire Japanese airforce.



(To anyone reading this thread. Do I come accross as opposed for no reason? Hostile? or am I as I hope to be trying to explain why WITP exists as it does and what all besides merely throwing in a toggle will be impacted. )

[Lemurs!]

What we need is a system that allows the Japanese HI to double more or less from the game opening and allows military production to expand eight times, more or less, within that doubling of HI.

This should not be too dificult to accomplish.

Within those bounds Japan should at least have the OPTION to produce whatever you want. If you destroy your countries economy by producing to much HI or if you don't produce aircraft because you build tanks that is of course your problem.
That is what i would like to see; a historical start and historical limits but allow us the player to screw up or not screw up Japan's economy as we wish.

The thing that strikes me as in error in the production system right of the bat is manpower.
When i first read about this game and that it would have manpower directly represented i thought that would give us the opportunity to represent the dichotomy between the Japanese facories and the Japanese armies. Which do we use our manpower on?

I think one thing that could help this system would be for HI to require manpower points on a daily basis to run. This represents the factory workers. Since we produce manpower on a daily basis i propose that factories start using it on a daily basis.
That would give us a powerful limiter on expansion.

The reality was that there were both more resources & oil available than Japan could ever use IF they could get it to the factories. Manpower was not something that could be expanded however.

Mike

[mogami]

Hi, I don't actually think Japan expanded HI by 8x during the War. What they did was go from 21 percent of GNP for war production to 43 percent GNP while GNP rose from I think 38million yen to around 50 million yen. There was an increase in production to be sure but it was not some much a result of expanding HI to converting HI from civilian to military production. Aircraft production was around 700 per month in 1941 and rose to 2500 per month in 1944.

[Adnan Meshuggi]

Hi Mogami...

i think the BTR is the "problem"

in btr you could play a long time.....
you had to produce engines, parts and "aircrafts" for any plane.
For example you had me109 parts and daimler-engines, and different version of messerschmidt me109 planes..

now, in a place you had for example 10 daimler engines, 5 daimler engines, 8 me109 parts, 3 me109g6 and 6 me109g10parts... also say 1 macci202-part.
If you changed the macci part, you got a delay of 10 days (for each 1 part 10 days of retooling)...
so, if you changed all to fw190 and fw190parts and bmw-engines, you dropped your capacity of this place for a long time (in my example for 10+100+50+80+30+60=330 days of production = around 4800 engines, 3000 planes and 3000 parts...
)

With this method you could easily manage to force the japanese player to be careful about airplaneproduction.... some larger plants (with around 25 engines) never could changed cause of the huge delay of retooling..

So many people who played btr are really upset (or at last irritated) that this good production system was thrown into the ocean for something really bad... combined with this, you should have zero problems with upgrades or research... cause a factory did research AFTER the retooling was finished, correction, after ALL retooling was finished.

This kind of production would have solved any problem in witp...

if you make a fixed production for american and some british planes +onmap-production for certain things (like australian facories could produce australian and british planes FREELY) you could solve the whole production mess.

The most important leson of btr is, that you really spent a lot time to play and get upset if you drop a game for some stupid bug after 200 or 300 hours of gameing.

Myself want to play longer, but not only allways the beginning of the pacwar... i want to fight it out to the end... for both sides. And i have no interest in investing time in a japanese position with silly upgrade paths (oh, don´t forget the downgrade thing!) cause if i did a good job in 42 but miss the autovictory (i even would avoid it cause i hate such things) i want to do better in 43, 44 and 45... but the actual production/upgrade thing forbid this....


but against the ai i have the editor....