Impact of Leaders in WitP

[mogami]

Hi, Yes a rank modifier would be nice as well as the abilty to spend PP to promote officers (so they would have the proper rank)
A demote function is not required because you just don't assign leaders you don't like. Unless of course the PP costs would be modified to reflect ranks. Trying to assign a junior officer over the heads of more senior would increase the PP cost.

[pasternakski]

You didn't say whether you wanted to see monkeys fly out of my butt.

People say it's fun when that happens. I dunno. I'm never in a position to watch.

If we ever get the code to this thing, I'm gonna try to sh1tcan everything about leaders and start over. Of course, I'll be about 213 years old by then...

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Admiral Scott

So a leader's Air rating has no effect on anti-aircraft fire?

Why would it?

[WhoCares]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Admiral Scott

So a leader's Air rating has no effect on anti-aircraft fire?

Why would it?

Leaders who are capable to launch air attacks effectively might also be able to setup and train their forces to defend more effectively against air attacks. Just an idea[>:]

Edit: Disregarding the fact that a commander capable to launch good attacks is not neccessarily a good defender as well, but at least he has a better understanding of the mechanics of an air attack [;)]

[LargeSlowTarget]

Terrible Turner was a good defender agianst air attacks by virtue of clever maneuvering - how does this translate into the WitP leader rating system (and/or combat model)?

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Gary put together the following lists of the impact of various leader ratings on different aspects of the game. Here it is:

LEADER RATINGS

SKILL:
skill roll by air unit leader effects pilot experience gain

MORALE:
morale Rolls effect number of patrol aircraft that fly
morale Rolls effect number of strike aircraft that fly
morale roll effects land unit fatigue reduction
morale roll effects land unit morale reduction due to fatigue
morale roll effects land unit element disabled due to fatigue
morale roll effects disabled land unit element destroyed due to fatigue
morale roll effects air unit morale recovery
morale roll by HQ leader effects attacking land unit assault value
morale roll by HQ leader effects defending land unit assault value
morale roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit assault value
morale roll by unit leader effects defending land unit assault value

NAVAL:
naval roll by ASW ship commander effects sub search (ASW TFs only)
naval roll by sub captain effects sub contact chance
naval rating by sub captain effects subs chance to survive ASW attack
naval roll by TF commander effects chance of "crossing T" in surface combat
naval roll by TF commander effects chance of attaining surprise in surface combat
naval roll by ship captain effects ship's chance of locating a target during surface combat

AIR:
air roll by group leader effects number of strike aircraft that fly
air roll by air HQ leader effects number of strike aircraft that fly
air roll by air HQ leader effects number of patrol aircraft that fly

LAND:
land roll by HQ leader effects attacking land unit assault value
land roll by HQ leader effects defending land unit assault value
land roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit assault value
land roll by unit leader effects defending land unit assault value
land roll by unit leader effects defending land unit's firing accuracy
land roll by unit leader effects defending land unit's experience gain
land roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit's firing accuracy
land roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit's experience gain
land rating of amphib HQ's leader effects chance of amphib unload success

ADMIN
admin roll by unit leader effects ability to use supply to reduce disruption and fatigue
admin roll by HQ leader effects ability to use support to reduce disruption and fatigue

AGGRESSION
aggression roll by TF commander effects chance of Bombard TF to change mission to Surf-Com
aggression roll by TF commander effects chance TFs will converge more rapidly in Surf-Com
aggression rating of sub captain effects chance of contacting enemy TFs

I'd be interested know how these "rolls" work. When during the course of a major combat resolution block is the random number generator seeded? With what is it seeded with? And just what is used for a generator? A simple 'C' rand() call or something more sophisticated. A lot of the behavior about why things in WitP work the way they do has to do with exactly how you guys use random number generation.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Gary put together the following lists of the impact of various leader ratings on different aspects of the game. Here it is:

LEADER RATINGS

SKILL:
skill roll by air unit leader effects pilot experience gain

MORALE:
morale Rolls effect number of patrol aircraft that fly
morale Rolls effect number of strike aircraft that fly
morale roll effects land unit fatigue reduction
morale roll effects land unit morale reduction due to fatigue
morale roll effects land unit element disabled due to fatigue
morale roll effects disabled land unit element destroyed due to fatigue
morale roll effects air unit morale recovery
morale roll by HQ leader effects attacking land unit assault value
morale roll by HQ leader effects defending land unit assault value
morale roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit assault value
morale roll by unit leader effects defending land unit assault value

NAVAL:
naval roll by ASW ship commander effects sub search (ASW TFs only)
naval roll by sub captain effects sub contact chance
naval rating by sub captain effects subs chance to survive ASW attack
naval roll by TF commander effects chance of "crossing T" in surface combat
naval roll by TF commander effects chance of attaining surprise in surface combat
naval roll by ship captain effects ship's chance of locating a target during surface combat

AIR:
air roll by group leader effects number of strike aircraft that fly
air roll by air HQ leader effects number of strike aircraft that fly
air roll by air HQ leader effects number of patrol aircraft that fly

LAND:
land roll by HQ leader effects attacking land unit assault value
land roll by HQ leader effects defending land unit assault value
land roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit assault value
land roll by unit leader effects defending land unit assault value
land roll by unit leader effects defending land unit's firing accuracy
land roll by unit leader effects defending land unit's experience gain
land roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit's firing accuracy
land roll by unit leader effects attacking land unit's experience gain
land rating of amphib HQ's leader effects chance of amphib unload success

ADMIN
admin roll by unit leader effects ability to use supply to reduce disruption and fatigue
admin roll by HQ leader effects ability to use support to reduce disruption and fatigue

AGGRESSION
aggression roll by TF commander effects chance of Bombard TF to change mission to Surf-Com
aggression roll by TF commander effects chance TFs will converge more rapidly in Surf-Com
aggression rating of sub captain effects chance of contacting enemy TFs

Many thanks for this list!

BTW, I always suspected that, additionally, leaders have their influence in how Air2Sea targeting is done (i.e. how air groups based on CVs and land based air groups choose their targets in target rich environment - when multiple enemy TF targets are present within range).

Is this my "imagination" only or, perhaps, this is as well simulated (this is not mentioned in list above)?


Thanks in advance!


Leo "Apollo11"

The fact the leadership ratings affect these areas is only a small part of how this whole thing works. What is the MEAN weighting of the leadership rating in each of these. It is 5%, 10%, 25%??? What is the coded standard deviation around that mean? This gives us an idea of how variable a leadership rating might or might not effect the operation.

When is the random number generator seeded in the process? Seeded with what value from what source? And just what do they use for a generator?

Lots of missing info here. I still cannot have any idea just HOW leaders affect combat, even with this info. While it's nice to know WHAT is affected by leader ratings. We still have NO idea HOW IMPORTANT a leader is to the outcome without having some idea of the rest of this.

[von Murrin]

Joel said in another thread it would take too much time they didn't have to dig up the leadership formulas. I think the reason we got these at all was because a few of us specifically stated we wanted to know what it affects but not necessarily how.[;)]

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: von Murrin

Joel said in another thread it would take too much time they didn't have to dig up the leadership formulas. I think the reason we got these at all was because a few of us specifically stated we wanted to know what it affects but not necessarily how.[;)]

I'm pretty sure most of us pretty much knew WHAT leadership affected. At least if you've read the forums as long as some of us have. We really wanted to know how significant these ratings were. We all knew for years they tended to affect most aspects of combat resolution, but by HOW MUCH? If they are a relatively small part of a combat resolution algorithm then the effort to sqaush all these leader bugs may better be spent doing other things.

I've followed the development of this game and its predecesor in detail for almost five years. The fact that one has to even "dig up" the leadership formulas pretty much tells the story. This is a classic old DOS-style piece of procedural spaghetti code from the get-go which is why they've completely abandoned this engine for all future endeavors. It explains a LOT about the types of problems this game has. The odds of any of most of this being really fixed is virtually nill. They will continue to address the most glaring bugs like CTD's and such, but the rest? Don;t hold your breath. We are talking three guys here with a hot new release getting ready. where do you think they are going to spen their time? They've made their money here.

[von Murrin]

There have been plenty of posts to the effect that many didn't know exactly what leadership affects, mine included. I think how much they affect any one thing is obvious. I've seen large-scale land assaults go from 0:1 to 4:1 just by frigging with the leaders involved. If you kill all possible leaders in a CV combat, your strikes WILL be a horrible nightmare of coordination and CAP will suck rocks.

While I understand why you want the formulas, I agree on the reasons you don't think we'll see them. WITP wasn't, isn't, and never will be a money maker. GGWAW can be, and they have to focus on the bread and butter title. In place of definitive effects tabulation, I'll keep assigning the best possible leaders as appropriate and hope luck goes my way.[:)]

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: von Murrin

There have been plenty of posts to the effect that many didn't know exactly what leadership affects, mine included. I think how much they affect any one thing is obvious. I've seen large-scale land assaults go from 0:1 to 4:1 just by frigging with the leaders involved. If you kill all possible leaders in a CV combat, your strikes WILL be a horrible nightmare of coordination and CAP will suck rocks.

While I understand why you want the formulas, I agree on the reasons you don't think we'll see them. WITP wasn't, isn't, and never will be a money maker. GGWAW can be, and they have to focus on the bread and butter title. In place of definitive effects tabulation, I'll keep assigning the best possible leaders as appropriate and hope luck goes my way.[:)]

I believe it is good design that leadership traits can have significant impact on combat resolution. We wanted to know the just how big an effect they had before making too big an issue of the leader bug. It seems to be a really nasty one to fix.

As Matrix games go, I thing WitP has made 2x3 good money, considering 2x3 is essentially three people. Matrix didn;t do too bad either. 10,000+ sales at $70 a pop, DR gets their cut, Matrix there's, and the three 2x3 guys the rest.

World At War is a MAJOR attempt at getting to the non-grog market, though. I've got the impression this is REALLY an IMPORTANT title for these guys. Much more so than even WitP. They didn't advertise WitP in the mainstream game media the way they are peddling WAW. And now they are even positioning WAW in PC Gamer right on the Wargame column in the back that used to be Desktop General's slot.

Bottom line, that's where they are spending their time. WOW is an attempt at "break out" title for 2x3 and Matrix. WitP is essentially a finished, back-burner product for these guys. It is what it is going to be. Poster here need to realize that.

[von Murrin]

I could post a meaningful reply, but we're already talking over each other's shoulders.[;)]

Let's hope the community can get the source code some while down the road and some very talented individual here can do something with it, because I'm sure we'll both still be playing this 5-10 years from now.

[JustinL]

Kudos to 2by3 and Matrix Games,

The officer listed in this screenshot, W.C. Sams, was my great-grandfather, who retired as a Colonel in the USAF after the war. I was more than pleasantly surprised to see that he was listed in the game.

Kudos!





Attachment (1)

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: von Murrin

Joel said in another thread it would take too much time they didn't have to dig up the leadership formulas. I think the reason we got these at all was because a few of us specifically stated we wanted to know what it affects but not necessarily how.[;)]

I'm pretty sure most of us pretty much knew WHAT leadership affected. At least if you've read the forums as long as some of us have. We really wanted to know how significant these ratings were. We all knew for years they tended to affect most aspects of combat resolution, but by HOW MUCH? If they are a relatively small part of a combat resolution algorithm then the effort to sqaush all these leader bugs may better be spent doing other things.

I've followed the development of this game and its predecesor in detail for almost five years. The fact that one has to even "dig up" the leadership formulas pretty much tells the story. This is a classic old DOS-style piece of procedural spaghetti code from the get-go which is why they've completely abandoned this engine for all future endeavors. It explains a LOT about the types of problems this game has. The odds of any of most of this being really fixed is virtually nill. They will continue to address the most glaring bugs like CTD's and such, but the rest? Don;t hold your breath. We are talking three guys here with a hot new release getting ready. where do you think they are going to spen their time? They've made their money here.

Not only that, but Joel leaves it hanging with SKILL only affecting experience gains by pilots? What's that? A blatent mistake? A stupid design feature? What? Then he says MORALE actually equates into INSPIRATION, so we're left wondering just how much thought went into this list of his in the first place. With, as you wisely point out, no qualification whatsoever as to the actual effects these ratings have on game mechanics. We're told that would be too difficult to . . . retrieve? Hello?

As posted this list strikes me as incomplete and almost useless.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

ORIGINAL: Admiral Scott

What is a Carrier Task force leader's and/or Carrier Captain's Air rating used for?

The list only mentions air rolls for group leaders and HQ leaders, nothing about TF leaders.

Gary says:

The carrier TF leader acts as the air-HQ leader for carrier launched aircraft.

But whats his command range?

[freeboy]

Ron, try settingthe groups to follow tf, then they will be together for cap or other needs as needed

[JD009]

I am not a big fan of using Leadership at all in WW2 games. It makes sense in Civil War games, where bad leadership on the part of the Union was endemic. You can't make a game come out even slightly close to historical without rules to enforce poor Union leadership.

In WW2 games Leadership rules are just in the way. Because nobody ever makes real leadership rules, they just make leaders who help randomize die rolls. Would anyone really want to play an East Front game where the Hitler NO RETREAT rule forced you to leave units in places where you knew they would be surrounded and destroyed? "Units may move east, they can not move west, period." Or rules for the Chinese armies that simply forbade them from ever attacking anywhere at any time? Read Tuchman's book "Stilwell and the American Experience in China", or "The Stilwell Papers" edited by Theodore White. Chaing wasn't fighting the Japanese, he was doing his best to ignore them while hording the American aid for later use against Mao.

And what about the reason why people play games. Isn't it to see if you can do BETTER than the historical Leaders?? Can't do that when you are forced to mimic them! No, leave leadership rules for games about pre-1900 wars. WW2 is a technological war, a war of material, not of elan.

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: JD009

WW2 is a technological war, a war of material, not of elan.

That's an exceptional oversimplification. Nagumo was an example of a leader who lacked elán: he didn't order the third strike on Pearl Harbor, and he lost sight of his objective at Midway, thus costing Japan four aircraft carriers.

Leaders, good and bad, were very much a factor in WW II.

[JD009]

Terminus, you said: "Leaders, good and bad, were very much a factor in WW II."

That is quite true. Problem is that most of the Leaders whose goodness and badness were such a factor are the Leaders who the Humans playing the game are taking the places of.

As the human player I don't want to just say "OK computer, Let's attack in the Central Pacific", and let the computer do all the planning and plotting. I want to do that, doing the job that those good and bad leaders did, with some hope that I can compare my performance with theirs. I want my goodness [:)] (or badness[:@]) to be the influencing factor, not theirs.

Kurita's turn away at the Battle off Samar will undoubtedly spring into mind. Problem is this is such a well known event precisely because it was such an unusual event. It was not typical of Japanese naval leadership. Do you really want a game that models all of the flukes of history, or one that follows the general sweep of events. Focusing on the unusual events; the random Oops's of history, the sitting-in-port magazine explosions that sank ships, all distract from the whole point of wargaming. To let the human player guide historical units involved in historical settings through variations in historical events.

It would take a lot of research, and probably generate a couple of PhD's to show what I suspect most of us know intuitively. When WW2 Task Forces were told to do something they just about always did what they were told. Or died trying.

JD

[spence]

The decisions of the strategic leadership of a nation at war are always effected by the abilities and disabilities of those who serve in the chain of command, irrespective of historical period. In the present age of instant communications, the CinC may have a limited ability to intervene directly in tactical operations but only in so far as those operations are in fact VERY limited. Certainly in a global war, the scope of concurrent operations would quickly overwhelm the ability of any CinC to personally oversee operations, even with today's technology.

As to JD's comment that Kurita's turn away at Samar was not representative of Japanese leadership; well, I have my doubts actually. Nagumo's failure to attack PH with a third wave, his indecision about striking the US fleet at Midway, Mikuma turning away from the transports at Guadalcanal after smashing the covering forces, Abe's indecision (complemented by Callahan's indecision) at Naval Battle of Guadalcanal which allowed the range to close to point blank, the Japanese failure to close on the wounded Salt Lake City in the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, tend to indicate that there was considerable room for the personal characteristics of individual Japanese leaders to affect the outcome of important actions. If one were to look hard, something of a common thread concerning institutional leadership running throughout might be well argued.