Production Convoy Settings Not Impressive

[Omnius]

Numdydar,
A better solution might be for you not to respond to my messages since you seem to totally misunderstand everything I say. I do thank you for telling me that I can use a default set up while selecting the optional rules I want to use. I didn't know that before but will give that a try in the future.

As far as hating the game where did I say that? Don't put false words in my mouth.

Omnius

[Numdydar]

It just seemed that way to me from your writing. As I definately misunderstood, then I certainly appoligize as sometimes things come across on forums in ways that the poster did not intend.

[brian brian]

Generally, a simple "+1" response means someone agrees with you 100%

just an internet shorthand kind of thing, kids today, etc.

[Ingtar]

I had no intention of calling you or implying you are an idiot in that post. In the multiple setups I have tried, both using the load option or doing it manually, if I did not have enough convoy points to meet the resource/production point requirements, there was a pop up message telling me I had it wrong. I was trying to determine what your set up was that it was failing without telling you during unit placement. The only other odd thing I have seen is if you ever click the return unused convoys, it might take them off of sentry. That might meet the requirements for numbers, but would force you to return to base. Pardon me for trying to help.

[markb50k]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

markb50,
I'm having the problem in any phase where I check the production planning for Japan. I couldn't get Japan to send the build point to America either in the preliminary production planning phase just before oil usage or the final production planning phase post oil usage.

I have the requisite unused convoy point in all 5 sea areas. Now one interesting thing I noticed after my second turn's final production for Japan was that I saved one Japanese build point in the Build Phase and when I looked at the production planning screen after that I saw a build point as being reported being sent in trade.

It makes me wonder if I have to save a Japanese build point each turn in order to be able to send it to the USA, perhaps on the following turn? I did try saving a Japanese build point in the preliminary production planning phase during the end of turn phases but I couldn't get any Japanese factory to trade one to the USA. I'm not getting any set up error message and if I hadn't set up the correct convoy points I assume the program would balk at letting me move forward on the USA or Japanese set up.

Omnius

you are seeing the same issue I am. The ONLY BPs I see being sent from France to CW (I have a trade agreement) are the ones that are already saved to the map the previous turn.

One thing I'm curious about: If you read the rules it says that any BP that you are signed up to send via trade agreement, that you can't send for whatever reason, you can't use that BP yourself. I dont think the game enforces this. So the one BP that Japan is supposed to send to the US, is Japan able to use that one? Methinks, given your observations and mine, that the trade BP functionality is just broken unless its railed or its already saved on the map.

[Omnius]

Numdydar,
Sorry you mistook my frustration for being mad. The convoy programming is the most important part of the programming to me since I encountered Marinacci's program so long ago. I'm just trying to understand how to control convoy routing better and so far I'm a tad disappointed that I see only a minimal improvement over Marinacci's convoy routing.


Sorry if I snapped at you but I'm just trying to understand how to control my convoy routing better and yes I'm a tad frustrated, I'll try to be less so in future posts. I do have a new observation so check my upcoming message and if you're a whiz at calculating supply then I'm about to write up a new thread regarding my problem getting supply working properly for the Japanese in China.

Omnius

[Omnius]

brian brian,
Thanks for telling me what +1 means on the internet and this forum. Yes it is hard for an old fart like me to keep up with the latest forum lingo created by the clever kinder.

Omnius

[Omnius]

Warspite1,
I'm deeply sorry that I totally misunderstood your +1 answer to my convoy routing the Japanese build point dilemma. Please disregard my previous arrogant and ignorant rant about your answer that at the time made no sense whatsoever to me.

I do hope that by complaining about the convoy routing I can help get it improved. It really drives me crazy that I get routing done the way I like and the next time I'm in the production planning screen it totally changes.

Omnius

[Centuur]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

My one big beef with Marinacci's first computer version of World in Flames was that the convoying of resources and build points was rather difficult. I read many months ago how Steve was fixing up this problem for MWiF and I was really glad to read that good news.

However I'm not real impressed with the improvements. I just put in a bug report about Japan not sending the build point to the USA like it should automatically to start the Global War scenario, despite me having the one unused convoy point in the 5 sea areas by Japan and the USA. I'm having trouble trying to force Japan to send a production build point to the USA on the second turn. I now have to try saving a Japanese build point to see if after it's saved on the map I can send it to the USA. I sure hope this problem gets fixed soon so we can start Global War and not have to sweat out getting the Japanese build point to the USA. The good thing is that the program isn't enforcing a penalty. It looks like all the other pre-war trade agreements are working properly.

My other complaint is that the program is using the convoy points from other countries, thus screwing them out of getting to use them. I set up a convoy chain from Hanoi to the south of France and somehow the British are now using several of the convoy points instead of their own. It becomes very difficult to track down which convoy is abusing the French convoy points. A real shame that we don't get asked beforehand if some other country is willing to allow a different country to use their convoy points. It sure would have been nice if as France I could have said no to Britain using convoy points along that line so I could have known how many convoy points I'm really under or over. I had set up the British convoy lines before France if I'm not mistaking and I sure had them dialed in nicely while doing production planning during set up to check how many convoy points over I might be in what sea areas.

Which brings me to another beef I had with Marinacci's convoy programming and that is that it seems like every time I went into the CW Production Screen to set up my convoy lines the damned program would always rethink it the next time I went in. I'd get convoy lines set up the way I wanted then the next time I went in I had to redo it all over again because the stupid program rethought it all out. What's needed is a dumber program that doesn't think every time we go into the production planning screen. It's still not all that stable from preliminary production planning at the end of the turn to the actual production post oil usage. I wish we could tell the program to not think for us, to let us do all the convoy route planning and that way we could set convoy lines the way we want once and not have to sweat out the astupid program changing them every damned time we go into production planning.

Omnius

+1

[Omnius]

ORIGINAL: markb50k

you are seeing the same issue I am. The ONLY BPs I see being sent from France to CW (I have a trade agreement) are the ones that are already saved to the map the previous turn.

One thing I'm curious about: If you read the rules it says that any BP that you are signed up to send via trade agreement, that you can't send for whatever reason, you can't use that BP yourself. I dont think the game enforces this. So the one BP that Japan is supposed to send to the US, is Japan able to use that one? Methinks, given your observations and mine, that the trade BP functionality is just broken unless its railed or its already saved on the map.

markb50k,
Yes we are seeing the same problem. I just went back into my game. I'm on the third turn, Jan/Feb 1940. I'm in the CW naval movement phase but pulled up the production planning screen to see what's up with Japan and the USA.

What I see is that in the USA production planning screen I am now getting 1 BP in trade. In the Japanese production planning screen I see that I have one saved BP and that at the very bottom line it is being traded to the USA. It certainly looks like it's impossible to get a Japanese BP sent while it is being produced. I tried to reroute one from Japan on turn 2 during preliminary production planning then again in the final production planning subphases of the end turn phase but could not do so. I'll have to see if I can Save a Japanese build point before or during final production planning and then send it in trade to the USA, or watch to see if the program does it automatically like it did for my saved Japanese BP.

This really needs to be fixed so the Japanese send a BP to the USA from the first turn after the setup. It looks like Germany is sending it's BP to the USSR, I didn't see anything amiss except for the Japanese to USA BP not being squared away on the first turn, post setup.

As to your question regarding can the Japanese use the build point it's supposed to send to the USA and yes I was able to use every Japanese build point produced, there was no reduction. On the USA side I did not get an extra build point to use, so the USA got shorted the first two turns.

I also wish that the program would do less rethinking of convoy routing whenever we go into the production planning screen. I found that the 4 resources I idled for the USA to hopefully send to Japan didn't go, the program has certain ones it sends preprogrammed and we can't change that. I was frustrated that the four resources that I idled during set up didn't get recalculated for production on the first turn. I manually set them to produce the first turn but then on turn two I had to reset them yet again. Why won't the program remember my manual resource pathing? This was what really irked me about Marinacci's version and I thought for sure Steven was going to rectify this annoying problem in MWiF. If we set manual resource paths and convoy routes the program should remember them and never change them, the program really needs to be dumbed down as regards constantly rethinking convoy and resource pathing.

Omnius

[Omnius]

Centaur,
Ten Four! Thanks for the support. I do hope that the convoy routing gets improved so we can set our own convoy pathing and not have the program recalculate it worse any time we go into production planning!

We should be able to set up our convoys after the game starts and not have to redo it every time we're in the production planning screen.

+1!

Omnius

[michaelbaldur]

remember that after us entry option 13. Embargo on strategic materials have been chosen

Japan no longer have to send the BP. so make sure that option have not been picked

[markb50k]

One final thing to try (I am asking you to try this since I am at work and cannot confirm this myself):

Try to go back to the turn when you didnt have the saved BP on the map, since that distracts us from getting to the root of the problem.

So, I was trying to figure out how you even tell the computer to send a BP to another country, and I couldnt, and I figured it was impossible and the computer just did it automatically. Now I think I may know how...

Select any resource, although in Japan's case, I would recommend selecting one on the main islands. Also make sure it is currently being used in Production and isnt Idle.
With the resource selected in the summary list, Click the COMPUTED --> arrow button, until you get to DEFAULTS
Click CLEAR DEFAULTS
Click the DEFAULTS --> arrow button, until you get to OVERRIDE
Click CLEAR OVERRIDE
Click in the empty listbox below the CLEAR OVERRIDE button, and a little dialog will popup with a list of countries you can send to.. USA should pop up. Select it. Hit OK or whatever.
Now hit the RECOMPUTE button on the bottom of the screen, and hopefully it will now show it going to Production then sent to USA.

The thing is, you can't specify a FACTORY to send its build point to another country, but i bet you CAN specify a particular resource to get built and THEN sent to USA.
Heck, we know it IS possible to send a BP to USA, since saved BPs on map can be sent there.

Anyway, i dont know if you tried all that already but its worth a shot. I will when i get home as well.

[Omnius]

michaelbaldur,
Since it's very early in the Global War scenario that option has most definitely not been chosen. I'm not a total idiot and know that when that option is chosen that Japan no longer sends the BP to the USA.

Obviously you need to improve your reading comprehension, you should try working smart not harder so you don't make ignorant assumptions that someone is totally stupid. Go back and read my recent comments regarding this problem with markb50k, we seem to have figured out there is a problem regarding Japan sending a BP to the USA.

I used to do beta testing a long time ago and I was damned good at it, most likely better than you ever were or are. I appreciate your trying to help but you really insulted me that I hadn't thought of option 13 stopping the BP trade.

Omnius

[markb50k]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

michaelbaldur,
Since it's very early in the Global War scenario that option has most definitely not been chosen. I'm not a total idiot and know that when that option is chosen that Japan no longer sends the BP to the USA.

Obviously you need to improve your reading comprehension, you should try working smart not harder so you don't make ignorant assumptions that someone is totally stupid. Go back and read my recent comments regarding this problem with markb50k, we seem to have figured out there is a problem regarding Japan sending a BP to the USA.

I used to do beta testing a long time ago and I was damned good at it, most likely better than you ever were or are. I appreciate your trying to help but you really insulted me that I hadn't thought of option 13 stopping the BP trade.

Omnius

Omnius, it is very possible, in fact has happened to me every time I started a GW scenario, that you could choose that US option on the FIRST TURN. So, "very early" doesnt preclude this from happening.

[Centuur]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

michaelbaldur,
Since it's very early in the Global War scenario that option has most definitely not been chosen. I'm not a total idiot and know that when that option is chosen that Japan no longer sends the BP to the USA.

Obviously you need to improve your reading comprehension, you should try working smart not harder so you don't make ignorant assumptions that someone is totally stupid. Go back and read my recent comments regarding this problem with

Now, you might not have noticed, but Michaelbaldur isn't a native English speaker (and I'm also one of those). So it is entirely possible that he made an error while reading your post.
Not everybody here is a fluent English reader or writer and you should take this into account when answering as you thus did. [:-]
Of course he made a mistake, but hey: don't you make them? [8|]

Be polite and get helped. If not, well...

[Omnius]

markb50k,
I'll give that a try but I don't see how changing a Japanese resource to send to USA is going to work. There is no trade agreement for Japan sending the USA a resource point so I bet that before you could try that resource trick you'd have to first have a trade agreement for Japan to send a resource to the USA. Then all you've accomplished is sending a Japanese resource to the USA without actually fixing the problem of Japan not automatically sending the BP to the USDA as per the trade agreement. Considering how all the other build point pre-war agreements are working fine I'm certain that what we've got here is a bug that needs fixing. I think that the only scenario with this problem is the Global War one, I can't remember if the USA has picked option 13 in the Missed the Bus scenario to cancel that Japanese BP trade to see if that scenario also has the same problem.

Still we shouldn't have to resort to pulling in the Japanese default set up just to get the Japanese BP trade working. Since I now know for certain that I do have a valid convoy route from Japan to the USA that looks like it will trade the saved Japanese build point once I get to the final production phase of turn 3.

Omnius

[Omnius]

Centaur,
Sorry about being testy but I'm rather frustrated that people tend to offer advice without really understanding the problem. It's rather disconcerting to be taken as a complete idiot, so pardon me for being a tad testy that some people are not being helpful even if they do have good intentions.

While there is a small possibility of having the tension level up enough to select option 13 I didn't get there yet and it should be obvious I know a little about the game to know that if I had selected that option I wouldn't realize the consequence? Obviously option 13 can't be chosen early in game turn 1 and I complained about this problem from the very beginning of the game long before I hit the USA Entry phase.

Omnius

[Ingtar]

I have found the alternate map in the production planning form to be a great help with convoy routing. If you turn on the option to show unused convoys, you can see where a missing link might be breaking the route. Do not hit the option to return unused convoys to port, however, as this seems a bit flakey and returns everyone to port. Another option from the production planning form will show the route used by a delivered resource or point. I know this will not help in your case, but wanted to mention it for completeness' sake.

[markb50k]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

markb50k,
I'll give that a try but I don't see how changing a Japanese resource to send to USA is going to work. There is no trade agreement for Japan sending the USA a resource point so I bet that before you could try that resource trick you'd have to first have a trade agreement for Japan to send a resource to the USA. Then all you've accomplished is sending a Japanese resource to the USA without actually fixing the problem of Japan not automatically sending the BP to the USDA as per the trade agreement. Considering how all the other build point pre-war agreements are working fine I'm certain that what we've got here is a bug that needs fixing. I think that the only scenario with this problem is the Global War one, I can't remember if the USA has picked option 13 in the Missed the Bus scenario to cancel that Japanese BP trade to see if that scenario also has the same problem.

Still we shouldn't have to resort to pulling in the Japanese default set up just to get the Japanese BP trade working. Since I now know for certain that I do have a valid convoy route from Japan to the USA that looks like it will trade the saved Japanese build point once I get to the final production phase of turn 3.

Omnius

Yeah, its just a shot in the dark to see if it works. The thing is that the code may know that you only have a BP agreement so when you select a resource, it knows you arent trying to send the resource to the other country, but the BP that is produced from that resource. From a coding standpoint, I can see why you would want to allow for a single place to specify trade partner at an atomic level. It seems logical that all trade specifications (resource OR build point) should start from the initiating element (e.g. the resource)