ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker
We can list a whole whack of amateurish design examples which are critical to the games arguable failure as anything approaching a simulation. What me to start? Saying that the inclusion of a historically significant ship is amateurish but I have not heard you criticise the actual game design flaws like the wholly inadequate supply model (this was completely fabricated and hardcoded before any real testing was done to see if it was rubbish or not), land combat, naval combat, air combat, asw combat...this seems rather harsh by you on the CHS guys.
Now... this is old Ron we all know and love [;)] But is also an argument worth discussing IMO.
If you use such harsh words to describe WITP ("failure as anything approaching a simulation"), then any mod is already moot before any work is started. You ask me why I criticise CHS, and am silent about apparently bigger design mistakes of the original game? A valid question. But then you have to answer will anything save the game that is so flawed ultimatelly as to represent, well, a failure, in your opinion?
My opinion is exact opposite of yours - despite all glitches, shortcomings and quirks we all know I think WITP is the most historically accurate game I have ever seen. AI vs AI play produces fantastically historic results considering how incredibly complex the game is and how many things can go astray in such design.
To achieve this, TONS of playtesting was needed. To get the PH results approaching history, I guess beta guys and devs did *thousands* of PH runs, until someone said "thats it". OK. (In my opinion, average PH result still falls short of history, but that's just my opinion.) NOW. What do you CHS guys do? You add another bomb soaking ship to the equation to skew the things even more. [&o] And you even admit that the ONLY function of this ridicolous game device is to "soak bombs". It's not a "historic ship" that "sacrificed itself" Ron. It's a game device to skew the results.
You don't do any testing, because simulating historic results of PH strike is not CHS task, your task is to add every possible imagiinable Allied hull in the game, be it as ship, or BSD (bomb soaking device).
Mog said some time ago that in order to comment "wrong-ness" of some design decision, we need to know why it's there at the first place. I assume anything we see in the game is result of TONS of testing by betas, and discussions on the dev and beta boards. It's not there just because someone said "lets put a bomb soaking device here and see what happens".
End result? Simulation of PH strike is skewed. But Utah is there. What's more important for the Pacific war? I rest my case [8D]
Now to answer your question. I like to think I know the reality of modern PC game design (wargame design included) very well. Some issues are simply unrealistic from business/design/man-hour/programmer standpoint, and will never happen, as you have been told so many times. More detailed supply system belongs to this cathegory. You will never see supply divided into food, ammo etc. - considering realities of wargame business it's simply not going to happen. Perhaps I would like to see it like yourself, but unlike you I know this discussion will lead nowhere and that's why I keep my mouth shut. And, it is my opinion, it would not change the mechanics of the game all that much. So any discussion about this is flogging the dead horse.
Utah & co & other CHS incosistencies do not change the mechanics of the game that much either - though they help reduce already less-than-historic-on-average PH strikes even more. I will come to regard them as just plain funny [:D]
O.
[:D]
