Patch 07 - Unofficial Public Beta & UI Suggestions

[Barb]

Simply UNDOCK the carrier and have aircraft fly to the airbase.

[Trugrit]

ORIGINAL: Barb

Simply UNDOCK the carrier and have aircraft fly to the airbase.

You don’t have to undock.

Ships that are disbanded in port are at anchor. You can conduct flight ops at anchor.
You can swing a ship at anchor into the wind or any other direction that is safe for flight ops.
The planes can fly intact to the airfield without modification.

You usually don’t conduct flight ops when a carrier is docked for a number of reasons.
Piers can have fuel supply lines running under or over them and a crash may take out the ship, pier
And any other docked ships.

Planes can be craned off but then they have to be transported through streets and so they
May have their wings or other equipment taken off.
Moving through streets takes time as sometimes utility poles and overhead wires have to be moved.
They are also stripped of fuel and gun ammo for safety reasons. It is just a more complicated process.

The Question is; why does the game allow you to transfer to other airfields when a carrier TF is docked?
I don’t believe the game should allow that. You should have to undock first.
Maybe they did that in WW2 but I think it is just one of those game things – all docked ships that move aircraft to the base have them taken apart.

As a side note – once when my ship was docked in Norfolk (1977) we had a carrier docked across the pier from us.
When the carrier loaded nuclear weapons it was quite an operation.There was a long parade of marine security. We had to go inside our ship, dog down and could not look out under penalty of being shot on sight.

I wanted to see what was going on and was looking out a port hole on the signal bridge.
They called over and told me that if I didn’t get away from there they would open fire.

I could tell you what I saw but then the marines might have to kill everyone who reads this forum.
That would ruin a lot of AAR’s.[:D]

[Admiral DadMan]

ORIGINAL: Barb

Simply UNDOCK the carrier and have aircraft fly to the airbase.

I didn't say that I didn't know what to do, I said that it didn't make sense.

During development, it was decided to allow limited flight ops while docked or disbanded in port. My point is that the mechanism is inconsistent.

If you crane aircraft off at Pearl, it's likely while moored at Ford Island - no disassembly needed. It shouldn't take 3+ days to re-assemble them. By the same token, if you can fly them off to Hilo, you should be able to fly them off to Pearl. That would be consistent.

[witpqs]

For all the detail we see in the game, it is massive set of abstractions. The more things that are done and built in, the more effort to do it and get it right. Plus to make sure it still can run on machines that are far from the newest.

So what about transferring planes to other bases when a carrier is in a TF that is docked, or disbanded in port? It is true that IRL you could not do that. If that were not allowed in the game, you would have to simply un-dock the TF, or create a one-ship TF with just the carrier, make the transfer, then re-dock the TF or disband the one-ship TF you just created. The game engine allows you to make the transfer to avoid totally unnecessary player work. Those extra steps do not add to the game at all, so why force players to go through them?

OK, but then why make a player dock a carrier to get off planes when the carrier is too damaged to fly them off? Because the act of docking has checks in it: 1) make sure the ship(s) in the TF can fit at the dock, 2) make sure the total tonnage of the TF can fit at the dock, and 3) make sure no ship in the TF has fires burning.

Remember that every bit of smarts built into the software adds to the time, effort, complexity, chance of failure, etc. We make plenty of requests that get fulfilled. Would stopping players from transferring planes to other bases while a carrier's TF is docked or a carrier is disbanded really add anything to the game?

[Admiral DadMan]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Would stopping players from transferring planes to other bases while a carrier's TF is docked or a carrier is disbanded really add anything to the game?

I'm not advocating for either stopping or allowing. The inconsistency bothers me.

Even more so, what bothers me is that I can transfer to another base with no penalty from dock or port, but if I do it to the same port I'm docked of disbanded in, it takes 3+ days to get them "put back together". One day I could see, but 3+?

It's annoying, and it's petty, I know. But then again, so am I to some extent.

Rant over, carry on.

[Lokasenna]

I'm OK with how it works. If I want to fly them to the port they're sitting at, I'll just toss the ship into a TF real fast and do it. Then disband the TF.

Of course, if the ship is repairing, then it'll take a few days to transfer to the base and wait for the planes to be ready. FWIW, most of the planes in those cases are ready after 2 days. About half are ready after 1 day. This is assuming that they are at damage/fatigue levels of near 0. If the planes have been running a while and have high fatigue numbers, they will take longer to be ready - transferring them while docked/at anchor pretty much forces them through the maintenance routine, it seems.

[HansBolter]

Haven't read everything to see if this has been brought up, but the last few posts have addressed ship selection for TFs and there is one mechanism that is a royal PITA.

When my transport or amphibious TF comes up with insufficient space to accommodate my designated troops, I dare NOT let the AI add a ship because it will invariably make the worst choice possible.

I have to untag every LCU tagged for loading, exit the load TF menu and go back and manually choose additional ships and then run the experiment all over again.

It would be really nice to be able to select the additional ships needed without having to first untag all the LCUs.

Have no idea how difficult this would be to do.

[BBfanboy]

+1 Hans B. Quite annoying and quite common when shipping is scarce and you are trying to get the unit onto the minimum number/capacity of ships possible.

There is an option though - accept the load knowing that it doesn't quite fit, then go back into the TF screen and transfer in the ship you think you need to load the remnant. Then select "adjust TF load" and "Use all ships", the load will redistribute using the empty ship you added.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

+1 Hans B. Quite annoying and quite common when shipping is scarce and you are trying to get the unit onto the minimum number/capacity of ships possible.

There is an option though - accept the load knowing that it doesn't quite fit, then go back into the TF screen and transfer in the ship you think you need to load the remnant. Then select "adjust TF load" and "Use all ships", the load will redistribute using the empty ship you added.

If you have a lot of "stuff" at one base, this can cause the game to crash.

In one of my games, I had hundreds of LCUs at Rabaul and many hundreds of ships. When I would do this, and then click "Reallocate load" it would hang forever. I would need to end-task. So I stopped putting myself in this situation so that I didn't have to redo entire turns.

[ckk]

Worse for me with Amphib tfs is loading it verifying and then being told that I have a surplus of troop and cargo space then finding out the I have left some piece of the units usually motorized support at home. This occurs regularly at Pearl

[Admiral DadMan]

ORIGINAL: ckk

Worse for me with Amphib tfs is loading it verifying and then being told that I have a surplus of troop and cargo space then finding out the I have left some piece of the units usually motorized support at home. This occurs regularly at Pearl

Always allow an extra 25% space when creating an Amphib and that won't happen.

[IJV]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: catwhoorg

Say you have 60 xAK at San Francisco.

You want to add em all, would be nice not to have to add each one individually

And how do you propose to write the selection criteria. Most ports will have more "compatible" ships than can fit into the task force.

A surface combat TF has a maximum of 25 ships. Do you want one comprised of 10 battleships and 15 heavy cruisers. Where is your ASW protection.

Do you want your ASW TF to have the first 4 destroyers, leaving out other ships with better ASW weapons ro higher day/night experience levels.

Would be a very strange Transport TF with 60 destroyers and 40 destroyer escorts, but no cargo ships. Or a transport/amphibious TF which lacks the ships with the appropriate cargo holds to load properly the LCU you want to move.

Then how do you reconcile normal and combat loading.

Let us not forget port size. Do you want a TF which is too large to dock either at the origin port or the destination port.

So I repeat, define compatible.

Alfred

All those things would be perfectly fine, though - if I want to move [everything that floats in port A] from one place to another I do not give the tiniest little bit of a mouse crap about the details because just by the fact of doing that I'm saying "hey, I want to pass over the details in favour of just getting stuff done as quickly as possible here" - all it needs to be is [add all the ships that can possibly be added to this TF up to the point where something would cause the addition to fail].

I mean, restrict it to escort TFs so you can't do anything much with them, have criteria (no docking, no loaded ships, whatever) if it makes the coding part easier, just somehow allow players to short-circuit the psychotic side of micromanagement - probably the most irritating part of WITP etc at least for me is looking at a situation that demands 1000 or so mouse clicks to solve and thinking "you know, I could do this in 10 if I had a button that did [X thing], or alternatively I could go suck-start a shotgun instead of spending 20 minutes moving a bunch of ships from the same place to the same place"...

[ckk]

OK Thanks

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Admiral DadMan

ORIGINAL: ckk

Worse for me with Amphib tfs is loading it verifying and then being told that I have a surplus of troop and cargo space then finding out the I have left some piece of the units usually motorized support at home. This occurs regularly at Pearl

Always allow an extra 25% space when creating an Amphib and that won't happen.

I think what throws off the usual calculation is that it does NOT include the unit's intrinsic supply, and the unit will not go anywhere without a minimum amount of supply, even if you click "Load Troops Only". So they take some of the troops and the minimum supply they need and leave a few troops behind. I was loading a USA BF the other day and it only had an equipment requirement of 92( which I allowed for X3 in my calculations), but I had to add a cargo ship to take the supply of 254.

[m10bob]

Suggestion: Would it be possible to add an option where a submarine might know to return to base when it reaches a "selected" amount of damage?
I would like to think a good skipper would know not to risk his pressure hull with damage over 30% or so???
Maybe his judgement could be tied in with either his or the crews experience level?

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Suggestion: Would it be possible to add an option where a submarine might know to return to base when it reaches a "selected" amount of damage?
I would like to think a good skipper would know not to risk his pressure hull with damage over 30% or so???
Maybe his judgement could be tied in with either his or the crews experience level?

This does already happen, but the damage level is a bit higher than that. It might depend on the CO ratings (as in there's probably a die roll).

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Suggestion: Would it be possible to add an option where a submarine might know to return to base when it reaches a "selected" amount of damage?
I would like to think a good skipper would know not to risk his pressure hull with damage over 30% or so???
Maybe his judgement could be tied in with either his or the crews experience level?

This does already happen, but the damage level is a bit higher than that. It might depend on the CO ratings (as in there's probably a die roll).

Yes, and I am asking if this might be a "player choice" option.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Suggestion: Would it be possible to add an option where a submarine might know to return to base when it reaches a "selected" amount of damage?
I would like to think a good skipper would know not to risk his pressure hull with damage over 30% or so???
Maybe his judgement could be tied in with either his or the crews experience level?

This does already happen, but the damage level is a bit higher than that. It might depend on the CO ratings (as in there's probably a die roll).

Yes, and I am asking if this might be a "player choice" option.

You can always manually return the submarine to base.

Open the ships screen ("S") and filter for SS, then click the "damage" text at the top. It will sort the subs by damage. You can then click on their TF in the Location column and it will take you to that hex, you can click on the TF, and then return the sub to base.

[blueatoll]

Can we make a Sub mission called 'Recon'. Many USN subs spent a fair amount of time recon'ing ports, islands, and atolls. It might be able to use the same recon scripts Recon aircraft. I have some long-range behind-the-lines raiding that really could use some intel that a sub would normally provide.

[Lokasenna]

I'd love that, but since there is no current TF recon function of a base (air only), that's an entirely new segment of code and therefore unlikely.