Matrix Games Forums

I have died and am now walking towards the light [&o][&o]

Is it true that national security and defense agencies will carefully monitor the WitP/AE forum to identify any savants that might be able to digest this manual and play a game of such infinite complexity?  I mean, if you excel at a game of this magnitude, shouldn't you pretty much exempt War College and Annapolis/West Point?

For those of us who have seen "Toy Story" and "Toy Story II," unforgettable are the little green space aliens that speak thusly:  "You have saved our lives; we are eternally grateful."
 
In the same spirit:  "Waypoints; I am eternally grateful."

That manual looks absolutely fantastic! I can foresee myself carrying it everywhere and reading snippets at every opportunity.. I might even start to understand the game! [:)]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I figured it would take about 5 minutes before someone posted a correction. It actually took 15, which is mildly disappointing, but then two people posted it at once, so my faith was restored. [;)]

I'm sure you'll find a few more odds and ends, it's almost inevitable. We had about 20 people review and correct the final draft and about a dozen go over the final layout version, but that's still far fewer eyes than will see it now and let's face it, you guys are very "motivated". Anything that should be corrected (hopefully there won't be much!) we'll correct in the PDF version that comes in the gold master.

I'm confident that it's a good quality manual though, one of the best we've done and I think once you've got all 330 pages you'll find it to be far superior to what came with the original WITP.

Regards,

- Erik

there wasn't a manual with the origional........... [:'(]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Is it true that national security and defense agencies will carefully monitor the WitP/AE forum to identify any savants that might be able to digest this manual and play a game of such infinite complexity?  I mean, if you excel at a game of this magnitude, shouldn't you pretty much exempt War College and Annapolis/West Point?

For "will", read "have been"...[:'(]

Damn....there goes what little "life" I have left.

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

For those of us who have seen "Toy Story" and "Toy Story II," unforgettable are the little green space aliens that speak thusly:  "You have saved our lives; we are eternally grateful."

In the same spirit:  "Waypoints; I am eternally grateful."

Does that mean your vow of celibacy has been broken, then?[:'(]

Well, I can't break my vow of celibacy until AE is actually availalbe to play (my vow covers only "playing" WitP or AE).  Since AE probably won't be available until late July, I'm safe for at least another month.  At that point, I'll have honored my vow for approximately 90 of the 180 days pledged.  Isn't that good enough?

Quickly did an updated economics chart (would have loved to have seen one in the manual), but otherwise looks great! ... please let me know if I have made any mistakes.

Also Repair points are no longer accumulated ? If they are unused each turn, it reverts to 0 for the next ? Or is it the same as Witp, accumulating local points up to 4x the repair capacity iirc ?

Thanks to Apollo (for the original iirc)

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
I'm confident that it's a good quality manual though,

Trouble - I say we got trouble - right here in River City. That starts with T, which rhymes with P, and that stands for poor writing.

Could we get this in something other than an obscure Ethiopian dialect? Also, it tends to ramble on (apologies to Led Zeppelin). A good editor, I am sure, could reduce this by one third and make it far more understandable, as well.

A brief example:

Looking at the manual I really wish the enconomy and production was explained in more detail! The manual just tells you what something does and not how something really works (cause and effect). I didn't see any of the screens of information explained in the manual.

Just like WITP, you only see the total amount of Heavy Industry with no way of knowing how much is being used by aircraft production, ship production, armaments, etc. There no way to know the cost of increasing (doubling) an aircraft factory until you already increased it!

If you build more naval Shipyards it speeds up ship arrival but by how much, what does it cost and is it worth it, you don't know until you do it (that's too late)?

If you turn off a factory is there any way to know or see the cost savings?

There is no way to see costs or savings when you do something with production that was my biggest issue with production in WITP and it looks like that hasn't changed in AE. [:(]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Here you go, have a look at the front page:
Enjoy!

I'm enjoying, but, man, all those TF type icons are gonna be hard to distinguish from each other when displayed in teeny tiny size on the map. What do you think about an overlay acronym in a contrasting color that would make clearer what the TF is (the following suggestion is only that).

Thanks for the sneak peek at the manual! It just increased my apetite, sorry to say, but it hints at a much better game, so will be waiting for release with anticipation. Great work, AE team

ORIGINAL: pad152

Looking at the manual I really wish the economy and production was explained in more detail! The manual just tells you what something does and not how something really works (cause and effect). I didn't see any of the screens of information explained in the manual.

Fair call, but we aren't seeing the whole manual.

Just like WITP, you only see the total amount of Heavy Industry with no way of knowing how much is being used by aircraft production, ship production, armaments, etc. There no way to know the cost of increasing (doubling) an aircraft factory until you already increased it!

Economics on a national level, is certainly not an exact science, and neither is it in WITP. I disagree here mostly cause there is a direct causal relationship between some of these (Arm and VEH). On a micro level (turn by turn) Aircraft and engine factories can't exactly be defined for HI use, cause different numbers can be produced each turn because there is a random element. On a Macro level (monthly), there is a better ability to define this HI use.
So if you double a one engine fighter factory (and it becomes fully repaired) from say 60 to 120. Monthly this will increase the HI USE by:
60*18 = 1080 /mth or 1080/30 = 36/day (ON AVERAGE) PLUS ADDED ENGINE HI

If you build more naval Shipyards it speeds up ship arrival but by how much, what does it cost and is it worth it, you don't know until you do it (that's too late)?

Well it is not really true, you need to accelerate ships, not build more Shipyards, unless you are over budget. Sure there is no interface to show this exactly, and would have been a nice inclusion, but it is not impossible to calculate / play with (utils).

If you turn off a factory is there any way to know or see the cost savings?

Calculating it is pretty easy, turning off a 100 Arm factory will save 100*6 =600 HI/day

There is no way to see costs or savings ...

Overall I'd say use a util or as YH says take a note of what each is doing and adjust accordingly. At least what we do here takes a day to change, in RL, economic policies take months (or never) to see the effects thereof.
[/quote]

Not poo - pooing your thoughts, just saying it isn't impossible to learn or to adjust to. And GG, was never really good at implementing great user interface information, and I never thought they were going to tackle this area anyway ... (maybe WITPII). For one, I'm happy that there are more levels economically, and would have liked to have seen even more [;)]

--Damian--
[edit] still, this forum is being hijacked by me, so I'll stop talking economics here.

Looks great, even better than WITP. I got a headache just reading it.

Looking forward to doing the review.

ORIGINAL: pasternakski
Trouble - I say we got trouble - right here in River City.

Sorry Pasti, obviously English Professors were in short supply during manual editing time!
[:D]

Economics on a national level, is certainly not an exact science, and neither is it in WITP.

Good saying.

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: pasternakski
Trouble - I say we got trouble - right here in River City.

Sorry Pasti, obviously English Professors were in short supply during manual editing time!
[:D]

Here I was.

ORIGINAL: n01487477

ORIGINAL: pad152

Looking at the manual I really wish the economy and production was explained in more detail! The manual just tells you what something does and not how something really works (cause and effect). I didn't see any of the screens of information explained in the manual.

Fair call, but we aren't seeing the whole manual.

Just like WITP, you only see the total amount of Heavy Industry with no way of knowing how much is being used by aircraft production, ship production, armaments, etc. There no way to know the cost of increasing (doubling) an aircraft factory until you already increased it!

Economics on a national level, is certainly not an exact science, and neither is it in WITP. I disagree here mostly cause there is a direct causal relationship between some of these (Arm and VEH). On a micro level (turn by turn) Aircraft and engine factories can't exactly be defined for HI use, cause different numbers can be produced each turn because there is a random element. On a Macro level (monthly), there is a better ability to define this HI use.
So if you double a one engine fighter factory (and it becomes fully repaired) from say 60 to 120. Monthly this will increase the HI USE by:
60*18 = 1080 /mth or 1080/30 = 36/day (ON AVERAGE) PLUS ADDED ENGINE HI

If you build more naval Shipyards it speeds up ship arrival but by how much, what does it cost and is it worth it, you don't know until you do it (that's too late)?

Well it is not really true, you need to accelerate ships, not build more Shipyards, unless you are over budget. Sure there is no interface to show this exactly, and would have been a nice inclusion, but it is not impossible to calculate / play with (utils).

If you turn off a factory is there any way to know or see the cost savings?

Calculating it is pretty easy, turning off a 100 Arm factory will save 100*6 =600 HI/day

There is no way to see costs or savings ...

Overall I'd say use a util or as YH says take a note of what each is doing and adjust accordingly. At least what we do here takes a day to change, in RL, economic policies take months (or never) to see the effects thereof.

Not poo - pooing your thoughts, just saying it isn't impossible to learn or to adjust to. And GG, was never really good at implementing great user interface information, and I never thought they were going to tackle this area anyway ... (maybe WITPII). For one, I'm happy that there are more levels economically, and would have liked to have seen even more [;)]

--Damian--
[edit] still, this forum is being hijacked by me, so I'll stop talking economics here.
[/quote]


I think you just made my point - AE a game for tax accountants! [8|]