ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
That the Allies didn't have enough penalties/the Japanese didn't have enough bonuses already?
i think the sub doctrines were an attempt to make sub ops more historical. They hurt us both equally because IJN subs are far less likely to engage anything other than a major warship. Can't tell you how many convoys went by between SF and PH and my subs wouldn't shoot. Just like yours with my units steaming by.
Chez
Actually I'd welcome your subs to attack my supply and troop convoys. They're usually escorted with five or six flushdecks, often some cruisers just in case, and those DDs are pretty efficient at ASW work.
But let's get to the nub of it. If the Allied sub doctrine rule was an attempt to make this sim more realistic it was an ill-founded attempt. At best. In the early war Allied subs at least made the
attempt to attack. I do have that correct, yes? But with this outrageous ruling they in fact make zero/nil/nada attempts. What is that? Already in
UV the Mk 14s were programmed to be less effective, as they ought to be, so why would it be necessary to further cripple USN sub operations? And why isn't this rule documented, and if it is documented, where can I find it? I just want to read this crippled rationale for myself.
As for Japanese sub doctrine, at least that has a basis in history. If the Japanese player wanted to play with it off, okay, I've no problem with that. As I've said, it would likely only lead to massive casualties on that side of the board. (Probably too massive from I've read and experienced thus far, but that's just yet another problem, right?)
It's almost as if the development group for
WitP had been composed only of 1) a certain groupie type and 2) gaming drunks. Because there is just so much in this "simulation" which doesn't make good sense, and it could only be in there because "the club" decided (or agreed) it should be in there.
That's all I get out of it. And why? Are these people actually gaming drunks (defined as those who have no clue as to the history of their subject, and are furthermore happily disposed to cornball rules like this one, no matter how much the rule might compromise the simulation), or did they know/see/sense somehow that this was a fundamentally bad thing but acquiesced anyhow on the assumption they might otherwise be kicked out of "the club" for complaing? I wrote about this two years ago, quite literally beat the horse to death, as it was abundantly plain then (to me at least) that this awful dynamic was assiduously at work and so threatened the good course of the project. Of course all I got for my trouble was to be shouted down without mercy by the more prominent club members, helped by more than a few misguided hangerson and wannabes and whatnot.
Whatever happened to
serious playtesters? I well remember "back in the day" that while it might not have been possible to make gross design changes once beta rolled around, while it might not have been possible to get every single problem ironed out before release, at least the games would be tested to where you didn't experience universal glitches such as dropping to desktop (I suffered two of those today just making my first morning move) periodically while the player views his reinforcements. At least that sort of stuff was caught and sorted out. (Mostly. We always had a few people with problems--for a few years I refused to buy AMD processors because of the pointing finger at its supposed inherent conflicts, for example, not to mention the good old DOS conflicts--balky sound devices leap to mind.)
Anyway, what I don't recall are silly rules like this (apparently undocumented) bogus Allied sub doctrine, replete with its ridiculous effect on game play, getting into our sims. Maybe I just have a bad memory. Now there was still plenty of Gary's rather odd views of history to go around--I mean he's always had this crazy fascination with all things A6M2, just for instance--but nothing quite as silly as I see here. I also don't recall testers being so arrogant about their work, or so afraid to "rock the boat" when warranted. In fact during one product test we were collectively on GEnie screaming at the top of ours lungs. That I remember well. (Maybe the developers, too. Maybe the developers have taken steps to "correct" that situation.)
Be that as it may . . . was this Allied sub doctine rule actually argued for by the test people, or was it just something that got "stuck in" at the last moment unilaterally, you know, something Gary dreamed up one night, with no reference to those who were supposed to be (and presumably were) testing this product for "feature effect"? What went on?
I read somewhere that the vast majority of "tests" for
WitP were run AIvsAI. If so, that might explain some of this. I can't imagine a less efficacious approach to "testing" than that. Certainly some of this would be necessary to see how the gross numbers were percolating down from time to time (bottomline figures like casualties after four years or so), but the nuts of bolts of testing this kind of software (any kind of software) is to go in there and painstakingly play around with it in a real-life sort of way. This takes a lot of time, it requires concentration, some knowledge, some expertise even of what one is about, and coordination between the testers so engaged, but that's the only way to see what's actually going down in there in terms of game effect. At least the only way I can imagine.
Maybe I read that wrong, though. Maybe AIvsAI wasn't the most common form of testing this product. Wouldn't surprise me if it had been, though. It has all the earmarks of such sloppy work.
So, here I am complaing again. God help me! Do I really imagine that this sort of rant will affect good change? I guess not afterall. [:(]
