Yet MORE Suggestions

[jbcurtis]

Greetings,

First of all, thanks to everyone concerned for patching one of my all-time favorite games. I am looking forward to many of the other upcoming items as well.

Perhaps it's too late for more suggestions, but I only found out about this update recently. If you ever release a follow-on patch, perhaps you could consider the following for that.
(Apologies if some of the following are already in your plans, I was going by the "features" list.)

BUGS I've noticed in 1.22:

* When selecting a Leader or an Air Leader for an HQ, one can only select from the first "page" of leaders displayed. (When selecting a TF Commander, all leaders are accessible.)

* Bug or Feature? At the start of each turn, beginning in 1944, several US Army units are switched to either 6th army or later 8th army commands regardless of their status the previous turn. If this is a feature, I would just as soon lose it; for a human player it requires extra shuffling of troops and micro-management to avoid overloading the HQ so it doesn't run out of PP's. An AI Allied player DOES run of PP's, especially given the AI's habit of activating each unit whether it will attack that turn or not.

* In the Leyte Gulf/Marianas scenarios, the alignment of the carrier air groups in the db is different than in the later scenarios. After the first execution phase for these scenarious, the program "corrects" these slots, resulting in many US CV's having British air groups and vice versa.

* Besides the Calcutta/LA transfers you are already addressing, I've noticed Allied AI's winding up with a lot of DD's and DE's in Columbo and Perth. I haven't watched this one closely enough to determine whether it's RC related or not.


* In "Review Battle" mode, not all of the previous turns battles show up. (Mostly fights between land-based air, I think.)

* This is one I just noticed by accident a few turns after it happened, but I suspect it was the first 1944 turn in a 1942 campaign game. My five surviving Clemson DD groups, which were in LA on RC duty, disappeared. PWREPORT showed them converted to Manley APDs with a submarine-style location "21 X 0 Y".
I converted them via editor back to Clemson in LA and they were re-converted the following turn.
I suspect this event is triggered by the Clemson type rather than by its slot in the DB. One Clemson group (slot 509 out of 508-513 or so) that had been destroyed and rebuilt as a Fletcher was unchanged. When I converted all Clemsons via PACEDIT to Bristol class DDs, they remained in LA unchanged.


Sorry for being long-winded, but there was a delay in getting registered, so I've had several days to think all this stuff up.
And of course, the concept of a BUG-FREE Pacwar has me really excited, as you can probably figure out.

I think it speaks very well of this game and for Grigsby that it is still played and gets all this discussion after all these years. I'm sure his new game will be great.

Best wishes,

John B. Curtis

[Don Bowen]

Mr Curtis makes some very good points. I know that PacWar makes some automatic upgrades/changes to simulate late-war activity.

The re-assignment of combat divisions to 6th, 8th, 10th armies is historically correct, but different dispositions may develop during a given game that make it improper. This is also used to bleed Anzac units into SWPac, which is probably addressed by the new Australia Defense Force HQ. Perhaps the auto-assignment should be dropped.

The conversion of 4-pipers to APDs is also historical, although more of them became DM/DMS/DE. It would be great if this (and all similar) upgrades could be optional under player control. If not, it depends on availability of an editor. With an editor, the player can make these changes manually. If no editor is available, the option should be retained to prevent the player being stuck with obsolete vessesls.

And a quick question please - will Samoa be in the Matrix Project Upgrade?

Don Bowen

[This message has been edited by Don Bowen (edited August 03, 2000).]

[jbcurtis]

Thanks Don, for your reply.

Adding auto-assignment for 6th/8th armies probably was done for historical flavor, but I think game mechanics will result in valid results if assignment of LCU's is left to the player. With SEAC/14th Army/Eastern Fleet, I only assign a few forward bases )where most of the LCU's are) to 14th Army control, and only Eastern Fleet's HQ under Eastern fleet control. The rest are under SEAC control. This arrangement allows me to use 14th Army's PP's for LCU activation, Eastern Fleet's PP's for TFs, and SEAC's PPs to fiddle with Air Units. I'd like to use a similar arrangement for SWPAC/6th&8th Army/7th Fleet, and decide for myself which LCU's are assigned to which HQ.

Auto-upgrade of ship units is fine with me, but when the Clemsons/Manley's showed up with locations of "21 X 0 Y" rather than a number of turns till arrival it looked like a bug.

A few other bugs I've noticed:

* "Fireborne" noticed in an earlier post that Surface and Bombardment TFs need to be recreated every time to avoid an altered hex code that prevents them from doing anything. I've noticed a few case of Carrier TF's with similar behavior in the period right after 5th fleet HQ comes along.

* I've noticed that assigning a target for Land-Based air squadrons can have unpredictable results. Sometimes they will do nothing, even though the target is well within their range and their base has abundant supplies and fuel. Cancel their assignment, and they will fly again. (Unless it's the one Chinese squadron, I've never been able to get it to fly, even with Chennault as Air leader.)


Minor Bug:

* LCU experience gain was described in PWHINTS as being one per turn for US, ANZAC, and British units until they reach 50. I have noticed, however, that sometimes a full-strength unit will get its experience "stuck" in the mid 40's or occasionally high 30's range. If the LCU is Activated each turn, however, the experience gain will continue until 50.

Best wishes,

John B. Curtis

[Major Tom]

Hi

[Major Tom]

The reason about the transfer of troops to different HQ's (US Armies) is basically done for the benefit of the AI. Without this the US Armies would remain without troops if the AI was playing the Allied player (as the AI doesn't manually switch around troops to different HQ's).