PLEASE FIX AIR COMBAT!

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

CAP is not able to do what Japanese CAP could really do - engage in OTHER hexes. [See the record of Genda's Blade for one - and there was a similar JAAF outfit. They used recon planes to find enemy strikes far from their targets and engage them with fighters en route. They used electronic warning systems to find the strike packages. NONE of this is EVER possible in WITP - so you NEVER have to worry about what real commanders had to face.]

I regularly see my area CAP effectively intercept incoming strikes against targets up to two hexes away.

So have I.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

All well and good and interesting, except you misstate the case when you call the USN intelligence error an "operational defeat." It was nothing of the kind.

You are not using your terminology precisely: a failure of reconnaissance is an OPERATIONAL failure, not an intelligence failure. And the Japanese understanding of our intentions was a judgement by their commander, not intelligence superiority. Our failure to understand the Japanese intentions also was an error in judgement by our commander, not a failure of intelligence. I repeat - you are about 90% confused about what happened - so you cannot achieve a useful analysis - until you come to terms with what happened. IF you don't understand our OPERATIONAL failure, you are still confused.

A "failure" or "mistake" or "momentary or one-off lapse" here and there during an operation is one thing, an "operational defeat" per se is quite another. My point is that we did not suffer any kind of defeat, in any manner, shape or form, in the Marianas. You said we did. Therefore you were mistaken. End of point.

I'm hardly about 90% confused as to what happened, Sid. You're not the only person on this board who has a sound education in military history. You ought to believe that, though you sometimes seem not to.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Make fatigue a greater factor by increasing the fatigue rate so those silicon pilots and soldiers become in effective unless they are rested and fed. So players would be foolish to abuse them so...

Go over to UV and look up the way players felt about heavy bombers when they would not fly without being treated like babies. It may be that bombers and crews were temprimental, but players don't like units like that!

But that's not the way to handle it. It isn't a "morale" issue but a command decision. "Morale" is always an issue in war (it's always an issue in life!) and must be (should be) taken into due consideration. But if pilots are available to fly planes that are capable to fly, and those pilots are ordered (wisely or no) to fly those planes, then those planes ought to fly. That is how it works in real life.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker




Well Cid, if you are saying the sqweeky wheel get's the grease, I'd say you are generalizing. I'm like a screaming seized bearing and have been, but no joy aside from getting Canada in...guess you have to be loud and wrong to get something alterred.[8D]

I got a favorable response by being polite and right...

I used to be polite...[:(]

I tried "polite" for about fifty posts myself. I never actually expected that to work, company boards tending to be what they are, but I did try that initially at least. When the rude responses started pouring in I took off the gloves. [8|]

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Have you looked at the stock OOBs and replacement rates and such? Does any of that suggest anyone could expect historical play, given the system in place?

I have. They are pretty awful. We can certainly expect a lot better results if we fix them - which we can. We probably cannot make a useful criticism of the model until we do. And if you play me, you may expect historical play by the other side. Maybe creative - I won't promise not to invade Hawaii - and in fact the only reason I won't is it is impossible with the current system. But it was really possible and should have been done - for lots of reasons. It totally changes the strategic situation, and focus of operations, and gives a nice bargaining chip to end the war with. If the US tries to take Hawaii back and fails (which is fairly likely since there are no air bases in range) - it may prefer a neutral Hawaii to a Japanese one. But I do expect historical play - not gamey play.

See the 'Bloody Pacific' AAR. Admiral Laurent captured Hawaii.

I believe a number of players have done this, haven't they? It's certainly possible in the game, and would have been possible in real life, though the Japanese could hardly have held it if America wanted it back. Even had America not wanted it back (and it would have), everything there simply would have starved to death in short order. No one can live on sugarcane and pineapples and fish for long. For sure a military garrison needs more than that to remain functional. Japan couldn't even keep its troops properly supplied in the Central Pacific, much less try to keep the entire Hawaiian Island chain supplied, civilian population and all. That's a ridiculous thought. That it could be achieved (perhaps, for awhile) in the game is an example of just how far off the logistics side of matters actually is.

[Demosthenes]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

snip...

Very large battles get very bloody and differences in quality of aircraft and pilots (especially on the order of a 20-30 point difference in experience) tend to exacerbate that.

...

Has anyone (other than Ron Saueracker) considered simply lowering pilot quality down?
Say Japanese at 55 to 60 and Allied 50 to 55? (+5 for CV and elite sqdns).

Let's see if that won't make ALL air combat - and especially large ones - less bloody?


Demosthenes

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Demosthenes

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

snip...

Very large battles get very bloody and differences in quality of aircraft and pilots (especially on the order of a 20-30 point difference in experience) tend to exacerbate that.

...

Has anyone (other than Ron Saueracker) considered simply lowering pilot quality down?
Say Japanese at 55 to 60 and Allied 50 to 55? (+5 for CV and elite sqdns).

Let's see if that won't make ALL air combat - and especially large ones - less bloody?

This has been discussed since forever. All it takes is time and willingness to run the tests.

I'd guess it couldn't hurt to lower pilot ratings. As it stands now a slough of superaces develops for both sides (as far as I know--I haven't played a human as the Japanese, but I have taken the Japanese side into the early spring of 1942 versus the AI several times, and from what I've seen out of those short tests it's clear to me this situation is the same for both sides). I think I had one Allied pilot (flying for AVG) with almost 50 kills in the spring of 1942 already, and there are always a plethora of pilots (both Army, Marine and Navy for the Allies) with experience in 90s within the same time frame. That superace of mine recorded almost all of those kills versus Oscar escorts over Rangoon, by the way.

I sometimes wonder if that counter for air kills isn't whacked somehow--that is, like in real life, different pilots claim the same kill, only in the games case there's no "debriefing" to try and set the kill record straight. (That could be determined one way or the other from an analysis of the game's counters, but I haven't gone to the trouble.)

Whatever, it would make sense to see how things developed if pilots started out universally at a significantly-lower base experiencewise, and then also had the rates with which they gain experience truncated as well. Whatever the eventual best-balance cure might be, this mechanic, too, appears to be errant somehow.

[BossGnome]

well, the most I ever got a japanese pilot to get was 21 kills, and then he got downed over china... guess no Nichizawa or Sakai for me...[:(]

[Crimguy]

I'm ashamed to admit that I read most of this thread, even after promising myself I wouldn't get embroiled into any rants.

I really like this game, and after 18 months really want to love it, but I think I'm going to have to finally admit it's screwed up beyond repair, hope someone starts from scratch on a similar project, and just try to enjoy my pbems despite some wacky outcomes. It's the "healthy" thing to do, and I suggest you all take a step back and stop bitching about the mechanics. It's like complaining that it keeps raining.

Anyone with me?[&:]

[herwin]

WWII fighter combat is well-known to have had *exchange ratios* that were *insensitive* to the strengths of each side. See Morse and Kimball. The factors that were significant were pilot experience and training and aircraft characteristics and performance (mostly speed). If the game models exchange ratios as anything else, it's highly inaccurate.

[Nomad]

But, an *exchange ratio* is something that happens over time for a number of engagements. You can not expect that ratio to hold for every engagement. There were times when the Japanese, even in 1945, were able to achieve surprise and had a positive *engagement ratio* for that engagement. Additionally, the historic *engagement ratio* is for historic forces. As soon as a game of War in the Pacific gets to turn 2 things are no longer historic.

[Redd]

ORIGINAL: Crimguy

I'm ashamed to admit that I read most of this thread, even after promising myself I wouldn't get embroiled into any rants.

I really like this game, and after 18 months really want to love it, but I think I'm going to have to finally admit it's screwed up beyond repair, hope someone starts from scratch on a similar project, and just try to enjoy my pbems despite some wacky outcomes. It's the "healthy" thing to do, and I suggest you all take a step back and stop bitching about the mechanics. It's like complaining that it keeps raining.

Anyone with me?[&:]

Amen, brother. This game will never be recoded untill Matrix feels that they can turn a profit on their time spent. I heartily aplaud all those who spend their free time working on the many mods [&o][&o][&o]. I beleive that they will be the ones to realise the maximum potential with the code that we already have. Constantly implying (or in some cases, blatently saying) that the devs are incompetant is only going to push them away.

Don't try to pull a mule. You're not going to get there any faster, and it pisses off the mule.[;)]

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Crimguy

I'm ashamed to admit that I read most of this thread, even after promising myself I wouldn't get embroiled into any rants.

I really like this game, and after 18 months really want to love it, but I think I'm going to have to finally admit it's screwed up beyond repair, hope someone starts from scratch on a similar project, and just try to enjoy my pbems despite some wacky outcomes. It's the "healthy" thing to do, and I suggest you all take a step back and stop bitching about the mechanics. It's like complaining that it keeps raining.

Anyone with me?[&:]

Agree somewhat but what's the point in attempting a WITP 2 if the various issues in WITP are not ironed out and explored further? Seems to me this game may as well be used as the test bed it actually comes across as. Fix the bugs, watch play for a year or so more, tweak various issues again, and so on. Then, when someone does attempt the project again they will have some idea and some experience. No point in just regurgitating the same concepts and design assumptions over and over as has been done up to now. You end up with something that hits a target like a shotgun rather than a tight grouping. A few shots in or near the bull, the rest just fanning out further and further from centre.

[dtravel]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Crimguy

I'm ashamed to admit that I read most of this thread, even after promising myself I wouldn't get embroiled into any rants.

I really like this game, and after 18 months really want to love it, but I think I'm going to have to finally admit it's screwed up beyond repair, hope someone starts from scratch on a similar project, and just try to enjoy my pbems despite some wacky outcomes. It's the "healthy" thing to do, and I suggest you all take a step back and stop bitching about the mechanics. It's like complaining that it keeps raining.

Anyone with me?[&:]

Agree somewhat but what's the point in attempting a WITP 2 if the various issues in WITP are not ironed out and explored further? Seems to me this game may as well be used as the test bed it actually comes across as. Fix the bugs, watch play for a year or so more, tweak various issues again, and so on. Then, when someone does attempt the project again they will have some idea and some experience. No point in just regurgitating the same concepts and design assumptions over and over as has been done up to now. You end up with something that hits a target like a shotgun rather than a tight grouping. A few shots in or near the bull, the rest just fanning out further and further from centre.

(Sorry, feeling evil today, can't resist the potshot.) You mean like from UV to WiTP?

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Crimguy

I'm ashamed to admit that I read most of this thread, even after promising myself I wouldn't get embroiled into any rants.

I really like this game, and after 18 months really want to love it, but I think I'm going to have to finally admit it's screwed up beyond repair, hope someone starts from scratch on a similar project, and just try to enjoy my pbems despite some wacky outcomes. It's the "healthy" thing to do, and I suggest you all take a step back and stop bitching about the mechanics. It's like complaining that it keeps raining.

Anyone with me?[&:]

Agree somewhat but what's the point in attempting a WITP 2 if the various issues in WITP are not ironed out and explored further? Seems to me this game may as well be used as the test bed it actually comes across as. Fix the bugs, watch play for a year or so more, tweak various issues again, and so on. Then, when someone does attempt the project again they will have some idea and some experience. No point in just regurgitating the same concepts and design assumptions over and over as has been done up to now. You end up with something that hits a target like a shotgun rather than a tight grouping. A few shots in or near the bull, the rest just fanning out further and further from centre.

But why run tests with a system that is broken...After a while I'm sure it became apparent that the square wheel just wasn't cutting it.

EDIT: Yes a bit harsh but afterall nothing would ever get fixed if no one complained.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Crimguy

I'm ashamed to admit that I read most of this thread, even after promising myself I wouldn't get embroiled into any rants.

I really like this game, and after 18 months really want to love it, but I think I'm going to have to finally admit it's screwed up beyond repair, hope someone starts from scratch on a similar project, and just try to enjoy my pbems despite some wacky outcomes. It's the "healthy" thing to do, and I suggest you all take a step back and stop bitching about the mechanics. It's like complaining that it keeps raining.

Anyone with me?[&:]

Agree somewhat but what's the point in attempting a WITP 2 if the various issues in WITP are not ironed out and explored further? Seems to me this game may as well be used as the test bed it actually comes across as. Fix the bugs, watch play for a year or so more, tweak various issues again, and so on. Then, when someone does attempt the project again they will have some idea and some experience. No point in just regurgitating the same concepts and design assumptions over and over as has been done up to now. You end up with something that hits a target like a shotgun rather than a tight grouping. A few shots in or near the bull, the rest just fanning out further and further from centre.

But why run tests with a system that is broken...After a while I'm sure it became apparent that the square wheel just wasn't cutting it.

EDIT: Yes a bit harsh but afterall nothing would ever get fixed if no one complained.

I agree, that's why this nonsence about testing everything while AARs do more than sterling service in this regard is another cop out. When a kid or two gets killed at an uncontrolled intersection, do we have to blow 50 grand on a "study by committee" or simply put a stop sign up and see what happens. My point is this game can be useful to try new game concepts, change assumptions, design practices etc when the current ones used in the game are shown to be wanting.

[el cid again]

I regularly see my area CAP effectively intercept incoming strikes against targets up to two hexes away.

So have I.

Then comments this cannot happen in various threads are wrong -

and I am pleased. Two hexes is about right historically speaking.

[el cid again]

A "failure" or "mistake" or "momentary or one-off lapse" here and there during an operation is one thing, an "operational defeat" per se is quite another. My point is that we did not suffer any kind of defeat, in any manner, shape or form, in the Marianas. You said we did. Therefore you were mistaken. End of point.

I'm hardly about 90% confused as to what happened, Sid. You're not the only person on this board who has a sound education in military history. You ought to believe that, though you sometimes seem not to.

To begin at the end, I don't think I have a "sound education in military history." I once asked a (British) historian I knew fairly well - the historian of Evergreen State University - an unusual school that allows you to define your own program in any field - about getting a degree in history. She said "Don't you dare." She went on to say things too flattering to repeat - but the point is I have no education in history whatever in a formal academic sense - although I do write for academics and authors - particularly on the technical side - and particularly about Japan.

What I do have is a bit of formal military training - and exposure to IDF under circumstances we cannot talk about (because we were never there). And also I have an article from US professional naval literature whose thesis I am merely agreeing with - not inventing. The US did suffer an operational defeat at the Marianas - and we need to insure our naval-air students understand this - and why. There was nothing momentary about it. We had a fundamentally flawed operational plan, based on a wholly incorrect assessment of the situation by our commander. He thought he understood what the Japanese commander was thinking and could do - and he had it exactly backwards. The Japanese commander understood what we were going to do, and when and where we were going to do it. He did all you can ask a good fleet commander of the carrier sort to do: he put his carriers undetected in range of the enemy and launched what was to that point the largest naval air strike in the history of Japan - and possibly of the world. That it turned to mud tactically he could not know - nor could we. That the scope of our tactical victory outweighed the utter mess we made of things operationally does not change that we better NOT be letting OTHER enemy carrier fleets get undetected into strike range and launch a full strike against us. This is a really big deal and I don't care a whit who is upset by saying so - or what their formal credentials may be? It needs to be understood and I will say it at every opportunity. In fact the more unpopular it is the more it needs to be said. I think IDF has it right:

"The side that wins is not the side that makes the fewest mistakes. The side that wins is the side that learns from its mistakes fastest. This requires ruthless self criticism without any trace of sentiment."

[el cid again]

But that's not the way to handle it. It isn't a "morale" issue but a command decision. "Morale" is always an issue in war (it's always an issue in life!) and must be (should be) taken into due consideration. But if pilots are available to fly planes that are capable to fly, and those pilots are ordered (wisely or no) to fly those planes, then those planes ought to fly. That is how it works in real life.

Yes and no. Individuals may obey orders they don't want to obey. Military organizations are fairly good at making that happen. Further, if you are a combat veteran of any real battle of any sort, saying you "want" to fight is probably a contradiction - no matter how willing you are to fight - you can identify with Adm Nugumo's "Of course they are enthusiastic. Because they do not understand the nature of battle." But pilots are different. It does not do much good to order them into the sky under severe penalties - as Saddam Hussein found in 1991 (when the planes mosly went to Iran if they flew at all). There is lots of evidence US bomber units had major problems with daylight bombing based in the UK - problems being a very polite form to use. It is not at all clear that it was possible to force them into the sky - or that when that it was very unpopular it was effective to do so. My father (and mother) both served in USAAF - and in bombers - so I have been around US bomber people all my life. [My mother was in the very first class of enlisted women in US Army history - so early they were not permitted to wear women's underwear! something which did not last long. She is still alive too - in case you think this is not true.] I am not sure HOW to best simulate the problems - but just to say "I can order this piece of cardboard to attack - and it will" as gamer's do is probably not realistic.

[el cid again]

I got a favorable response by being polite and right...


I used to be polite...

I tried "polite" for about fifty posts myself. I never actually expected that to work, company boards tending to be what they are, but I did try that initially at least. When the rude responses started pouring in I took off the gloves. [/quote]

Guys - more is going on than you know about. There are also good reasons to think Matrix would like to make money and not alienate its customers. There will be new products - and new kinds of products - bye and bye - and sooner than you think. We may even be allowed to work on the code for the present version of WITP. And if we are not it will be to protect some future products we probably want to see.

Be a little patient. If in the end Matrix does NOT fix this game - some of us will anyway. For now lets fix what we can fix now - the data. I have reason to think before we can finish that we will have more to work with.