ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
2) The naval model still sucks. How? Just about everywhere and in all ways. There's no difference to the program between a port hex and a sea hex with regard to how it handles engagements--from what I can see. Just one example: I know for a fact that it's possible to raid a port with enemy ships at anchor, protected by a lone DD, and have over half one's force (all crusiers) refuse or neglect to fire a shot, and with 95% of all shots that were fired directed at that poor DD. (The excuse here is that those cruisers didn't have enough night experience, but that doesn't wash. Not in a port, with anchored targets "defended" by just one DD--oh yeah, and an ML. Sorry. No sale. And you could not tell anyone but a child that some of those cruisers "were off at another part of the hex" when we're talking about a port here--but then as I say, the program doesn't make the distinction between ports and sea hexes per se.)
ORIGINAL: Bombur
-What an horror, I didn´t know this could happen
Neither did I until it did. [:D]
Seriously (and tragically), this winds directly back to
UV. Exact same model mechanic, exact same combat bullshit, exact same ridiculous result. In other words, same same.
. . . the strike cooordination rule/penalty/call it what you will is something apparently just dreamed up by someone, the CAP rules make no sense. . . .
-Tell me more about the CAP rule
Simply put, it doesn't work because it
can't work.
I'll give one example, but there are many.
At Midway the USN dive bombers got through when they arrived immediatley after the Japanese CAP went down on the deck to chase (and kill) the USN torpedo bombers. The result of the Japanese CAP thus being caught out of position is well known (especially in Japan [8D]). This cannot happen in
WitP with the way CAP is treated: as a single block of fighters protecting a hex against each and every successive wave of bombers which appears in it. The only "out of position" possibility is the accumulative loss of CAP from combat attrition, plus whatever fatigue its pilots pick up from one round of combat to the next. (By the way, I'm not sure I believe it even so, that these fighters are accumulating fatigue from one combat round to the next. Even if they do, there's still that giant block of CAP always ready to meet each wave of bombers and escorts. Totally unrealistic.)
The submarine/ASW stuff is ca-ca from the get-go, and don't even get me going on the Allied sub doctrine rule--how did that get in there? Yet another bad dream? A nightmare?
-Maybe it´s possible to fix the sub thing in the editor. The guys at CHS seems to be working on it
Yeah, they're working on it. I wish someone else had worked on it a long time ago.
It appears to be the case that the CD routines are still not correct, and if I'm not mistaken these units seem to have greater success at night than in the day--not sure about that, but from my limited play thus far that looks to be the case . . . which of course would not be correct. In any event one can still just plop any number of mobile CDs into some godforsaken hex, say, Lunga, and have all two gazillion of them up and working immediately! How dumb is that?
-I agree with you that CD seems to work better at night
It's just an impression of mine. I haven't collected any data and don't intend to. This one's hopeless.
They probably ought to look at the fixed implacements, though. Reports are that the big guns in the larger ports don't do much. If they don't that's sadder still.
Mines have been toned down to the point where I know for sure Japanese bombardment TFs can (and do) regularly sail into port waters with as many as (now) over 1700 (that's seventeen hundred!) mines without exploding one of them. It's also quite possible for a Japanese cruiser to hit one and sail blithely away at twenty knots or so--one just did right under my nose. Now I'd guess that's just possible in real life, but my point is mines, for whatever the rationale employed, have been rendered impotent by any reasonable standard. I'm not saying Japanese or Allied ships cannot hit mines. They can. Just not very often.
-In my Guadalcanal campaign, mines had a reasonable performance. My enemy is disembarking in Shortland and he lost lots of ships to mines. They seem to be effective vs. slow ships. How was their historical performance?
Variable. I can tell you that USN mine sweepers were known to hit mines during work hours in broad daylight! That's how dangerous those things are. They're
not that dangerous in the game. Simple point. Should be a simple fix. And we probably won't see that change, either.
3) The land-combat model didn't impress me in UV; it totally disenchants me when applied to the larger areas of terra firma which exist in WitP. (Actually, I find the conflict in China to be ingrossing. I don't know much about the history of that theater, just casual reads from time to time. It does depress to discover from all accounts from players who are more experienced with this than I am in the game that the Japanese can pretty much sweep the board there, though. That alone would tell me the land-combat model isn't worth squat, though I figured that out for myself for other reasons.)
-Maybe it is possible to fix that China trouble
How?
How about logistics? I guess the problem here is: how detailed does one want to be? Well, as it drives everything else then how un-detailed can one afford to be? Detailed or no, the generic nature of "supply" certainly exacerbates (actually outright allows) abuses in all other areas, such as bombardment TFs getting resupplied so easily, for instance, and B-17s ruling everything within their flight radius, for instance2, etc.
-Correct, the generic nature of supply is a trouble. Furthermore, I see a pass backward in relation to the old PacWar. In that game, replacements were only sent to LCU´s, LBA sqadrons when a ship disembarked supplies. Now, if you stock enough supplies in a given Island, you can go on receiving replacements even if you´re completely isolated. Seems pretty unrealistic to me. Maybe WiTP have some robt soldiers that are activated when necessary? I also cannot understand why aircraft don´t use fuel instead of supplies?????
It would make more sense if both airplanes and ships required
both fuel and supplies. But even if they changed that, in the larger sense nothing would have been fixed. This is a huge problem, and no way Jose does it get fixed by Wood. Gary wouldn't appproach it with a ten-foot pole, as he's said to be burned out on what he's accomplished so far, and so for all I can see that only leaves some third-party programmer, down the road someplace sometime
if the source code is ever one day released and
if this guy gets it right himself and
if I should live so long. I'm not holding my breath.
Re Japanese supply: I don't know this for a fact, that's merely what I've read, but from so many players who do seem to have their acts together that I'm sure it's true. Just for example, wherever you find resources you find supplies being generated. What's that? What is the point of having "resources" in the first place if they do not need to be first transported to "factories" in order to be of any use?
-But resources must be transported in the game, I´m missing something?
I'm talking about the supply produced in those hexes in the middle of nowhere.
Also, from a study of the IJN OOB it would seem as if all Japanese shipping might be dedicated to the needs of the military, with no thought at all having to import large amounts of food and other things in order to keep the civilians not just happy but alive! If that's not right, please correct me, but that's what it looks like to me. Someone will say, "But yes, the Americans don't have to be "fed" either." Well yes, but for a good reason. America was self-suffiicient except for luxury items, which were in short supply during the war but hardly affected the issue in any critical sense. Meanwhile, Japan was anything but self-sufficient. Japan needed to import all sorts of basic stuff. Like even rice.
-The logistics model is too abstract to include that food stuff. It would be very complex to include a separate food resource in the game.
There's no special need to include a separate logistics model for civilians. This can be handled mainly with the editor. Estimates need to be drawn on just how much shipping Japan should be restricted to, and the "magical" supply production needs to be curtailed. It is currently produced 1:1 and someone suggested earlier a reduction there of 1:4 might work. I'd rather suggest 1:100 or something like that.
What do you think? I'd like to hear your ideas.
-Most of my experience was with small scenario. I´m still studying the game, but I have the strange impression that some aspects worsened in relation to UV and, to some extent, Pacwar (there were much more restriction to heavies in Pacwar, because you couldn´t build a size 9 airfield unless max allowed was 9, no airfields bigger than allowed size-and a 4 size AF could operate only 4 squadrons and so on). On the other hand, the game is very good and there is potential for improvement. The big trouble is that game creators seem to be tired of this (not withouth reason). I think that a more flexible scenario editor would have allowed us to fix more aspects, but I still think some tweaking is possible, including the logistics question). Heavy bombers and night bombers are, from my POV the first things to be corrected.
It would have been best to 1) hard code areas of the simulation where "options" might reasonably exist as little as possible and 2) then leave it up third-party developers to make what changes they want with 3) a more powerful/intuitive editor. And maybe the editor as is is just fine, though I didn't find the one for
UV to be especially easy to work with, and the editor for
WitP appears to be about the same, though I haven't used it myself yet.
