ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi,
1. I still don't agree there is too mch supply. I run out all the time as Japan. Period from Jan 42 to May 42 I am always low. I posted SRA status in several PBEm games. It is 1943 and I have repaired SRA to 10 percent of possible total. I have been stalled, lost battles and have low production directly as a result. I have not built production so that did not consume my supply (always wait till June 42 to begin playing with expansion because I don't know what my supply status will be before I capture SRA. Posts stating it as a matter of fact that there is too much supply in SRA ignore the fact that what Japan will actually have for use is unknown. So it is a fact that Japan does not have too much supply unless the SRA is captured intact or near intact and this only occurs in games where the Allied player removes the engineer units to use the avaition support else where.
It is the "Sir Robin" that results in extra supply for Japan and this case it is not the extra supply that results in Japanese rapid expansion and abilty to maintain the offensive but the fact that Japan is able to conduct the SRA operation without the need for Air cover or Surface escort and using smaller LCU while the rest goes out and attacks places otherwise safe from attack. The Japanese will still experiance a shortage but it won't matter as much because they are able to use much less for the historic needs and gather forces for unhistoric adventures.
It's quite possible for the Allies to evacuate all sorts of valuable assets from the SRA and still leave enough LCU and engineer units to force Japan to invade in force and have a good chance of destroying the production facilities in the region. As far as that goes, what does the presence of aviation support units have to do with the destruction of oil wells and whatnot? Not much, I'd say.
Anyway, it isn't just that Japan gets too much of everything with regard to supply, but the entire logistics model is out of whack. And this causes unrealistic play on both sides of the board. It simply doesn't work, and no amount of denial will change that. Bad logistics generally lead to play that's entirely too fast and far-reaching, with ahistorical employment of assets all across the board, resulting in games that proceed too fast and are too bloody.
2. Every post that noted a bug in ASW and provided a save was looked at to see if bug could be reproduced and thus fixed. In the end a file was sent that was the correct version and reproduced the bug. It was posted the error existed quite a while before it could be fixed. Not every case of a submarine being spotted and sunk was a result of the bug.
No, but enough evidence had been provided to demonstrate the case clearly. What? Matrix won't bother to play its own game in order to find these bugs/anomalies from play and remove/correct them? I see. Just like it wouldn't develop the game properly to begin with.
"Supply? Is there a problem with supply? All's well here!"
"What do you mean there's too much Japanese shipping, and that it doesn't work with the logistics model?"
"Ports? What do you mean they're too easy to use? They're not too easy for me to use."
"What do mean naval bombardments are misused? You just don't know how to defend your ports properly!"
"Too many B-17s? Our studies indicate otherwise."
"The Tony's come too early and are too effective? We studied that closely, and our experts say. . . ."
"Japan's already conquered China [i]and[/i] India by the middle of 1942? Hey, you never heard of what-ifs?"
"Somebody's stacked twelve divisions on Tarawa? Ease up, fella, it's only a game after all."
Every time a bug is reported the testers attempt to recreate it and when it can reproduced it is fixed.
Maybe, maybe not. In any event the company has apparently "moved on" to other projects, and the people who bought
this game are left to pretty much hold the bag.
3. WITP is bloody because the players are bloody. We accept loss rates that would make actual commanders cry at night.
That's only part of it.
There is too much supply for Japan, probably too much for the Allies early on (after 1943 America can be considered a supply nexus of unlimited wealth, but before then there ought to be a limit--even America had to ramp up).
The conception of "port sizes" is woeful. Apparently little effort went into this aspect of play. I dare say Gary never bothered to give it another thought at all after
UV, and plenty of complaints were registered about this there and then, by me if nobody else, so it's not as if there wasn't enough time left to make it better.
A simple change might be to expand the scale of ports to something on the order of 1-100, which shouldn't be all that difficult to code, but nooooooo, let's just leave it as is and have it utterly impossible to make sense of the greater logistics scheme by at least toning some stuff down with the editor.
So, do players abuse the system? Of course they abuse the system. But that doesn't mean it's their fault. A proper model wouldn't allow the kinds of play abuses we see in the first place.
What's so hard about that to understand?
What is conceptually "good" about a game system that requires lists of house rules in order to play the game with anything that approaches historicity?
I've played people who simply bulldoze me dispite the loss of every transport involved LCU being wiped out from being moved too far forward without air or naval cover, submarines parking right in Tokyo Bay for however long it takes to finally sink them, people who overstack airfields right in range of my LBA without realizing the airfield is only a size 1 and can't operate offensive missions.
However true, these are 1) extreme examples from play and 2) ignore the essential problems of the system.
Since I am involved in games with players who are very casualty mindfull (Kereguelen)
I can refute the notion the game is inhertly bloody. He has been able to maintain a successful defense without suffering high loss rates in ships men or aircraft.
I really feel their should be more a point loss for "Bloody" play
Well, that would be your solution, wouldn't it? A "point" penalty. You just love those "points," don't you? But then of course you would. You're only here to play games.
Me, I'd rather see a more intelligent
simulation with models that didn't suppose it necessary to provide players with such false support mechanisms as Victory Points, models that didn't allow players, just for instance, to install a gazillion CD assets on some atoll, and have these be all operational in the very next phase.
Somehow, that doesn't impress me a whole lot. To blame players for "abusing" this sort of modeling is to mistake the problem outright. Or, in your case, to turn a conveniently blind eye to it.