PLEASE FIX AIR COMBAT!

[Mike Scholl]

Couldn't agree more John. Over half of all aircraft losses in the Pacific War were non-combat. That's on both sides. On average, about 10% of the aircraft in the theatre were lost to operational causes PER MONTH! The game doesn't begin to reflect this.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

The Turkey shoot was only a turkey shoot because the Japanese sent lots of small raids against the US instead of one large one. Had they sent all 500 planes at once I doubt history would be calling it a turkey shoot.

Correct ... and this goes back to the ability to launch that number of aircraft in one group simply didn't exist. This is not England with 100+ airfields all launching aircraft at once against a target.

Midway is a great example that it takes time to arm and refuel and launch aircraft. Even with multiple CV's (airfields), there is a FINITE rate that aircraft can be launched and recovered. You can't exceed this rate no matter how many aircraft you have parked there. The current model doesn't impose this type of control because it looks abstractly at a day of air activity.

You stole my thunder. [:)] I was just about to comment with that precise answer. Another design issue. Bad bad bad.

You know, I wish you'd send me an email with your list of things in this game that you personally believe to be "right." I have my own list, and it's a short one, believe me. Yours may or may not run longer. I'd have interest to read it in any event.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

I wonder if anyone is reading this who can make the decision to have this fixed?

What exactly would you like done Ron?

Problem: Players use aircraft in quatities never seen in WW II

Solution: Forbid players from playing the way they want

It's human nature to stockpile and throw it all in at once. You can't fix human nature with code.

There are tons of restrictions in the code but they all fail because people just keep increasing the numbers until the restrictions are meaningless.

Who's "they"? 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?

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Not true, Japan did throw 500 planes at the US in the Turkey shoot and there were 900 planes on the US side, so your argument is false. Large numbers of planes were used, it's the results the game produces when that happens that we have a problem with.

The Turkey shoot was only a turkey shoot because the Japanese sent lots of small raids against the US instead of one large one. Had they sent all 500 planes at once I doubt history would be calling it a turkey shoot.

Because the Turkey Shoot is the biggest Navy air combat in history - and because we suffered an operational defeat - (it was an overwhelming tactical victory IN SPITE of that operational defeat) - we study it a lot. It is fair to say you are about 90% confused about what happened.

Our commander THOUGHT he understood the Japanese situation, and the Japanese commander DID understand our situation. Hard to believe as it may be, the Japanese managed to get nine carriers UNDETECTED into strike range of our forces, and to launch a full strike. It was a properly organized strike which, at other times, even against us, would have inflicted severe damage. But several things went wrong for the Japanese. First of these was technical surprise - they were unable to compete with a new US Navy fighter plane. This was exaserbated by effective changes in organizing air defense. It had become cost prohibitive for ANY combination of aircraft to attack our ships in any conventional sense - even WE could not do it had somehow we needed to face a similar opponent. This organization was so well achieved that even the leakers which did penetrate the fighters were generally destroyed by the AAA defenses - with what - one exception? It does not matter what the Japanese had done formation wise - we were literally listening to the air controller (who was in the air and we let him live too) and responding to his tactical decisions. No possible combination would have mattered materially to the outcome. In 1945 the Japanese went over to "dribble attacks" and these WORKED - because we were NOT well organized to deal with such things. So your criticism is backwards - major strikes were going to be intercepted and cut up - period. We should really be ashamed of the Turkey Shoot - not because we lost - and not because we shot down so many planes - but because we were operationally outmaneuvered. No really competent commander should have allowed the enemy to achieve such a position - the risk of a success were too great as far as we knew. We should have had much better reconnaissance given our commitment of vulnerable and slow amphib forces to operations in the area. Serious professional analysis does not gloat over tactical success in the context of gross operational errors. We study this battle in order to learn how to get everything right - starting with insuring it is US who achieve launch position undetected by the enemy.

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. The "operation" was an overwhelming victory, no matter that Japan managed to get off a series of doomed carrier and land-based strikes. I mean, it's not as if we weren't expecting them to challenge our move, or were caught with our pants down. We cleaned out the Marianas, and made short work of them, too, with no significant losses (in an operational sense--I don't make light of even one one Marine, bluejacket or GI who gave his life).

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

I wonder if anyone is reading this who can make the decision to have this fixed?

What exactly would you like done Ron?

Problem: Players use aircraft in quatities never seen in WW II (Whose fault is that? Design decision: verdict...fixable by reducing supply to reign in Japanese fantasy economy and change Allied replacements/starting pools in editor.)

Solution: Forbid players from playing the way they want. It's human nature to stockpile and throw it all in at once. You can't fix human nature with code.
(Exactly! Many players treat everything like a toy and have to game the system. But this can be addressed... Fischer Price the darn thing with limitations like stacking limits so that Midway can't be turned into SAC HQ by the tiny tots!)

There are tons of restrictions in the code but they all fail because people just keep increasing the numbers until the restrictions are meaningless. They would not be able to if the restrictions were well thought out and applied. Ever think the restrictions are not sufficient? All these problems stem from MAJOR design oversights, not minor ones. If the levels of supply were reduced to make wholesale gearing up of Japanese economy more "in tune with reality", stacking limits were assigned to atoll bases and applied to engines as opposed to airframes, AV support applied one per engine and not airframe, there was no +250 AV windfall (at AV support of 250 there is no limit to number of aircraft servicable!), perhaps we would be on to something.

"What exactly would you like done Ron?" As I've suggested previously...

A) Sever the supply from resources dynamic so the modders can fiddle with it and find the sweet spot. This should be easy enough and will please everyone from those who think no change is necessary (carry on then and stick to stock games[:)]) to those who do (CHS and others will mod this until the system feels right and anyone can then play a non stock version as well.

B) Deal with the CAP mechanics. For a few years now I've been suggesting strongly that CAP mechanics are a problem and that CAP is UBER but was told I was making it up. Now, I don't know of anyone who thinks CAP is OK given that everyone uses the phrase UBER CAP and there is a mod out there designed specifically to address this previously ficticious UBER CAP issue I was raising.

There are a number of things which contribute to this (unlimited ammo, durability, weapons effectiveness, no energency landings for LBA, suicidal tendencies of high morale pilots, no mechanism for disengaging due to odds etc, some of which are adequately dealt with through the editor and some which only code changes can address), but the basic design mechanics are the main culprit. We have any number of reasons why strikes are penalized, from unwarranted strike bonuses for the Japanese to requiring strikes to split for attacks on multiple targets before CAP resolution instead of after. We also have no restrictions on CAP, either design or historically warranted such as fighter direction bonuses for Allies to counterbalance the issue.

My suggestions again for issues not editor friendly...

-Have CAP phase come before the strikes split for multiple targets (ie currently, if a squadron targets a hex with multiple LCUs, many times this squadron will attack more than one LCU. Problem: the split comes before CAP resolution so each split has to run the CAP (which does not have to split to engage these multiple strike elements...an unfair mechanics driven advantage) Solution: have CAP phase occur before the strike split.

-Seeing as we have a strike coordination penalty for Allies and a bonus for Japanese (historically unwarranted vs naval targets mind you), and, since this was historically warranted, add a CAP bonus due to fighter direction improvements for Allies (have this increase over time due to technical improvements and operational prowess) and a CAP penalty for Japan due to lack of fighter direction short of visual sighting and pickets...add an AA penalty to Japanese Air Combat TFs to boot to simulate that the ships were spread out to assist in early warning and did contribute to AA defences on par with Allied Air Combat TFs)

- Make CAP less exact in terms of numbers. a 60 mile hex should not guarantee that whatever number of aircraft is airborne will be the same number of aircraft which attack strikes. Randomize this so that a variable percentage of CAP may intercept.

C) Add ammo capacity to aircraft (MGs and Cannon)

D) Have stacking limits assigned to atoll bases and applied to engines as opposed to airframes.

E) AV support applied one per engine and not airframe and remove the +250 AV windfall (at AV support of 250 there is no limit to number of aircraft servicable!)

Thank you.

[Feinder]

While it's all very noble for us to say that we don't care about vps, they -are- in intrinsic part of every game. They determine the winner and the loser. While in my own PBEM games, we have agreed to play beyond an auto-victory, vps still hang over your head.

I will reitterate again however, the problem with increasing ops DESTROYED, is that it further attrits the Japanese pilot pool.

I'm all for as much historical realism as possible. If we can simulate the historical percentage of ops losses, so much the better. But I think that wiping out Japanese pilots in droves due to ops destroyed, will end up being a serious detriment to historical accuracy.

-F-

[treespider]

From what I've seen the code already exists to implement some of the changes suggested....

#1 - Severing Supply from Resources....Not sure how the code is written but I imagine there is something that tells the engine to generate 1 supply per resource...lets add a decimal place and generate .1 supply per resource. Then go back and adjust for any perceived deficit by adding Daily supply allocation to different bases. Of course then all of Matrix's Scenarios would also have to be re-written.

#2 - Launch rates - Abstractly handled by the basing limitations. Lets either alter the basing restriction formula or increase the do not fly penalty once basing exceeded. May not affect Carrier Ops however.

#3 - Ammo limits - Without adding new code adjusting the weapons system range downward seems to adjust for this as pointed out by Cid and Nik.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

While it's all very noble for us to say that we don't care about vps, they -are- in intrinsic part of every game. They determine the winner and the loser. While in my own PBEM games, we have agreed to play beyond an auto-victory, vps still hang over your head.

I will reitterate again however, the problem with increasing ops DESTROYED, is that it further attrits the Japanese pilot pool.

I'm all for as much historical realism as possible. If we can simulate the historical percentage of ops losses, so much the better. But I think that wiping out Japanese pilots in droves due to ops destroyed, will end up being a serious detriment to historical accuracy.

-F-

Does anyone know if there is any provision within the code for pilot survivabilty when an Ops loss occured...perhaps the fix is as simple as changing a decimal point or multiplier.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Sneer

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Air combat is fine....it is the LCU combat that needs to be fixed.

Air combat is fine? That's a joke, right? [8|]

I think he is serious
surface combat fire distribution and LCU cobat is worse than A2A

All three don't work. All three came and remain, in their own distinct ways, broken. How much "worse" than broken is there?

[Mr.Frag]

Another design issue.

Soon as I get that design document, we can discuss all my ideas and build them into it. I have tons of ideas, but you seem to not understand my roll. I was put on the team to find and report bugs, not reinvent 2BY3's game. Had they asked for design work, I would have filled that roll, but the general principal is life is that he who pays the bill picks the rules.

I do not believe personally that 2BY3 missed the mark as far as you would like to make it seem. The fact that people are still playing to this day pretty much says they were right on the mark. I look at the number of games being posted in the AAR forums and they number in the hundreds.

I have hundreds of games (2 bookshelves worth) as I have been playing since back in the "Hunt the Wumpus" days on punch cards. Many of them provided < 48 hours of amusement. Many did not even make that mark. Sometimes people tend to loose sight of the reality of computer games because of their passion.

I am not saying there isn't room for lots more and there isn't frustration free gaming (on that point, I don't think I have ever played a game that didn't frustrate me at some level) but at the end of the day, people are having fun. That is the purpose of a game.

Certain folks want WitP to be a historical accurate simulation. By it's very nature, it can not be a simulation as that would require a completely different scale and timeframe (perhaps even down to 1 hour turns). These folks will never be happy and I frankly don't loose much sleep over people who think that you can have a historical simulator with input ONLY every 24 hours. It is beyond realistic. It's like saying you want to use one of the advanced aircraft like PMDG's 747-400 in MSFS but you only get to set the flight plan and can not touch the controls until after the aircraft has landed at the other end.

I'm not really interested in getting into another forum war of posts with you TJ as it really serves no purpose. You know when my money is ... waiting ... for your design document

[treespider]

Soon as I get that design document, we can discuss all my ideas and build them into it. I have tons of ideas, but you seem to not understand my roll. I was put on the team to find and report bugs, not reinvent 2BY3's game. Had they asked for design work, I would have filled that roll, but the general principal is life is that he who pays the bill picks the rules.

Not knowing anything about copyright ...perhaps the community could make WitP like the American Football Green Bay Packers....a community owned enterprise. Perhaps we could pool our money and buy the rights to WitP from 2By3 and Matrix and open the code...sounds laughable I'm sure but it seems that there are any number of individuals on this thread who could contribute to tweaking the code.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Aircraft replacement rates can be addressed with the editor, at least. It would help immensely if Matrix would throw us a bone and also 1) limit stacking and 2) increase operational loss rates by a whole lot. Not holding my breath, of course, but that's what is called for in this particular case.

I wish you'd taken Matrix up on their offer to use you on the development team. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall had that hypothetical materialized. Or maybe just as good, be privy to the private correspondence between you and Ron during that period . . . then make book on which one of you got canned first, and for what lame excuse.

Speaking of bones ....change the resource point/supply point ratio when resources and supplies are generated and allow the modders to set daily supply values in Japan. Japan would then still have to ship resources to Japan for HI and then supplies out of Japan.

That's basically where the logistics model needs to be for that side of the board. Depending on where it was, the Japanese could find food stuffs to a degree--local fruits and vegetables and fish--but still needed to devote significant shipping to this need alone. The rest was for troop movements and the movement here and there of all the various war materiel from the resource centers to the home islands and then to the front from the home islands. It's a non-stop routine of "go to collect what's needed, then take that back to the home islands, convert that to what's needed at the front, then finally ship that to the front . . . whereupon the assigned shipping repeats that cycle all over again" routine that's missing from game play. All of which was done much more slowly historically than in game for all kinds of reasons, another problem still. Bottom line: everything runs too fast.

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

So remember all, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"...BOTH SIDES can attack with hundreds of planes at any one spot and overwhelm an unwary or unprepared opponent. Both sides have 1000s of planes that they can almost instantly mass at a given locations. That's just the way that the game is designed...

This is a comment about the early war period. LATER in the war it is not the case. Players who have survived out of the early war period - and tests I have run in 1945 - indicate that Japanese air is not effective AT ALL. Regardless of numbers. I put US ships in Japanese hexes - to get some experimental planes to fly - but I didn't get rid of all the regular planes. The entire Japanese combined air forces can attack all day long - and get something like one bomb hit - when there are NO opposing planes at all!

Was that "normal" attacks only or did it also include kamikaze attacks?

In any event, it doesn't sound "wrong" to me on a gut level - normal Japanese attacks shouldn't get through the US AA during 1945 if you've left in the 1945-skill level Japanese pilots.

What you see in advanced games such as PzB's ongoing saga is that if the Japanese player works hard and smart to keep his pilots well trained then he can still damage the Allied forces badly past 1943.

Cheers -

Dave Baranyi

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

Couldn't agree more John. Over half of all aircraft losses in the Pacific War were non-combat. That's on both sides. On average, about 10% of the aircraft in the theatre were lost to operational causes PER MONTH! The game doesn't begin to reflect this.

Of course it doesn't reflect it. It doesn't try to reflect it. And how hard would that be to change? What it would take? Ten minutes to open the file and alter the OP losses percentage or whatever it is? Then close the file and save it and pack it up with the next patch? It wouldn't even require testing. A simple glance at any number of game totals of total sorties of all kinds versus OP losses juxtaposed with published OP losses based on total sorties of all kinds would tell the person doing the fix what the new ballpark "percentage" ought to be vis-a-vis whatever he finds in the code. So what? I'm understating the time it would require? Okay, then, let's say half an hour or even a full hour (tops) instead of ten minutes?

There's so much that could be done so easily to fix so many of this game system's worst problems (not all of them, but we could certainly make a serious dent) . . . if only there were the will. [8|]

[Speedysteve]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

There's so much that could be done so easily to fix so many of this game system's worst problems (not all of them, but we could certainly make a serious dent) . . . if only there were the will. [8|]

Talking of will. How's the Design Document coming along? You haven't been around much for the past couple of days so I presume you've been pondering over it? [8|]

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

While it's all very noble for us to say that we don't care about vps, they -are- in intrinsic part of every game. They determine the winner and the loser. While in my own PBEM games, we have agreed to play beyond an auto-victory, vps still hang over your head.

Only if you allow them to. I choose not to. Why shoud I care a whit about what the designer thinks with regard to relative VP totals?

I will reitterate again however, the problem with increasing ops DESTROYED, is that it further attrits the Japanese pilot pool.

I'm all for as much historical realism as possible. If we can simulate the historical percentage of ops losses, so much the better. But I think that wiping out Japanese pilots in droves due to ops destroyed, will end up being a serious detriment to historical accuracy.

I imagine pilot losses due to OP losses would be a simple change as well. While "the fixer" was in there doing his thing he could change that as fast as the OP loss rates themselves.

To be frank, the only real problem I see around here is one of attitude.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Feinder

While it's all very noble for us to say that we don't care about vps, they -are- in intrinsic part of every game. They determine the winner and the loser. While in my own PBEM games, we have agreed to play beyond an auto-victory, vps still hang over your head.

I will reitterate again however, the problem with increasing ops DESTROYED, is that it further attrits the Japanese pilot pool.

I'm all for as much historical realism as possible. If we can simulate the historical percentage of ops losses, so much the better. But I think that wiping out Japanese pilots in droves due to ops destroyed, will end up being a serious detriment to historical accuracy.

-F-

Does anyone know if there is any provision within the code for pilot survivabilty when an Ops loss occured...perhaps the fix is as simple as changing a decimal point or multiplier.

[i]Duhhh. . . .[/i]

[Mr.Frag]

Quit trolling TJ unless you plan on joining Lt. Calley

One word posts just to annoy people is not acceptable use of the forums.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Another design issue.

Soon as I get that design document, we can discuss all my ideas and build them into it. I have tons of ideas, but you seem to not understand my roll. I was put on the team to find and report bugs, not reinvent 2BY3's game. Had they asked for design work, I would have filled that roll, but the general principal is life is that he who pays the bill picks the rules.

Sheer genius, that. And who, may I ask, "pay the bills" around here if it isn't the . . . paying customers?

I do not believe personally that 2BY3 missed the mark as far as you would like to make it seem.

They didn't, eh? Then fine. Please explain to me all the things Gary got right in your opinion. Keep it private if you wish. I don't need to ridicule that guy. Actually, I like his work in the main over the years. I'm just tired of these same old designs of his this far down the road. I'd like to see improvement the third and fourth time around, you know?

Look, Ray, all I wish to know is what you actually think, thoughts which I somehow doubt you'd ever publish here.

The fact that people are still playing to this day pretty much says they were right on the mark. I look at the number of games being posted in the AAR forums and they number in the hundreds.

I have hundreds of games (2 bookshelves worth) as I have been playing since back in the "Hunt the Wumpus" days on punch cards. Many of them provided < 48 hours of amusement. Many did not even make that mark. Sometimes people tend to loose sight of the reality of computer games because of their passion.

The reason people are still playing (I am not currently, for example, and there are others in my boat) is because this is the only game on the subject available. Or at least it was until that Polish team (yes?) released their similar product. (It was released, right? I didn't like what I saw and never pursued it a number of months ago. Have you seen it? Was it any good or trash?)

Anyway, so it's a case of play Gary's game or don't play any game at all on the subject. That doesn't sound like a meaningful test to me. No matter that, these boards are riddled with complaints, this critical feedback emphasized by any number of people who have committed themselves to trying to fix at least the worst of the system's more obivous flaws as far as might be possible using the editor. That sounds to you like Gary got it "right" or no?

I am not saying there isn't room for lots more and there isn't frustration free gaming (on that point, I don't think I have ever played a game that didn't frustrate me at some level) but at the end of the day, people are having fun. That is the purpose of a game.

That's fair as far as it goes. No game's perfect. But really, this was a major industry project undertaken by one of the most talented in many respects (Gary's true genius is that he knows how to create games that are fun to play--nobody could take that away from him) and the most experienced writer of computer-wargame software still around (correct me on that last point if I'm mistaken) and so I don't think it's unreasonable to have expected something more. I certainly did, though I had grievous doubts as soon as I looked at UV for the first time.

Certain folks want WitP to be a historical accurate simulation. By it's very nature, it can not be a simulation as that would require a completely different scale and timeframe (perhaps even down to 1 hour turns).

Nonsense. These boards are filled with common-sense suggestions to improve matters appreciably that wouldn't require a "team" of devoted code people "months" to affect.

These folks will never be happy and I frankly don't loose much sleep over people who think that you can have a historical simulator with input ONLY every 24 hours. It is beyond realistic. It's like saying you want to use one of the advanced aircraft like PMDG's 747-400 in MSFS but you only get to set the flight plan and can not touch the controls until after the aircraft has landed at the other end.

I'm not really interested in getting into another forum war of posts with you TJ as it really serves no purpose. You know when my money is ... waiting ... for your design document

Right. [8|]

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Soon as I get that design document, we can discuss all my ideas and build them into it. I have tons of ideas, but you seem to not understand my roll. I was put on the team to find and report bugs, not reinvent 2BY3's game. Had they asked for design work, I would have filled that roll, but the general principal is life is that he who pays the bill picks the rules.

Not knowing anything about copyright ...perhaps the community could make WitP like the American Football Green Bay Packers....a community owned enterprise. Perhaps we could pool our money and buy the rights to WitP from 2By3 and Matrix and open the code...sounds laughable I'm sure but it seems that there are any number of individuals on this thread who could contribute to tweaking the code.

It would make more sense to approach Matrix with the idea of some community kind of investment in that company's direction on some sort of "share" basis, with voting rights on projects exercised at "meetings" held periodically (online meetings, needless to say). I'm not sure how that would fly, but it's the only possible way to "get through" to the company with regard to production values. For instance, the story goes the company cut bait with both UV and especially WitP because of lack of capital to fund more development. Fine. Then perhaps this new "invested membership" of Matrix would decide to adequately "fund" similar projects in the future by paying considerably more (how much more I don't know, but more for sure, you could bank on that--these people do have to eat) per title than the current going fare. And so on.

That's half-baked, I realize, but the germ of a potentially interesting approach. The primary question would be: are there enough people so inclined? That I don't know. A critical mass would be needed to get it going initially.