Something Matrix needs to change...

[pyrhic]

thanks for the response joel. I appreciate that you're here providing grass-roots support.. [;)]

yes, i can see it now and the current pop/damaged units system has the same net effect as what i suggested. The trick is that it's still unintuitive, particularly for the un-initiated. Maybe it's the 20/2 thing that is confusing people(I know it did me at first). Maybe for the civil war game you can add the line in its place: "Current POP: 20, Change(Next round): +2". Maybe not spelled out, but something that makes it more apparent that "this number is the population i have" and "this number is my rate of change for next round".

Back to the neg Prod points issue. I still don't see a good reason for it apart from allowing damaged units back into the production spiral - and even then it has some problems. Maybe there could be a graphical way of differentiating what is a damaged unit and what is a produced unit? Not that it has an impact on the unit produced, but because damaged units will represent undesired impact to your production queu and the player should know about it upfront. If you have a factory center with little population and use it to churn out supply and resource, it's not good to get saddled with 6 damaged ships because a naval action happened close by. You can't even do anything with them because you don't have a pop. Maybe what's needed is a seperated damaged queu - "Damaged last round" which the player could send the damaged units to particular factory centers? At least then the allocation would be in the player's control. The other option i can see is leaving Damaged units on board until repaired, maybe with one point instead of two - and maybe requiring supply to repair them....hmmm, but that's a pretty major change in game mechanics.

[Joel Billings]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

Also, to reiterate a previous post, I really think that the res/ind/pop pools should be visible on the production screen even during the movement phase. I sometimes find myself saving the game in the movement phase and ending the phase, just so I can see those numbers bottom-lined for me. Then I reload the saved game and continue the movement phase with that new knowledge. It's just something a player shouldn't have to do.

We had a problem with showing the numbers during the movement phase as they were misleading because they change after the movement phase and before production begins (and also because certain values weren't changing on the fly). Maurice and I wrestled with this during development and concluded it was better to just leave them blank.

As for the other comments regarding warning messages if you exit with a negative value, and a better description of what those numbers in the middle stand for, I can see some things we should do differently. At a minimum we should have provided hot text over the numbers that describe what they are along with perhaps additional information in the pop-up. I'll keep this in mind for a future patch and/or for the next game using the system.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

Also, to reiterate a previous post, I really think that the res/ind/pop pools should be visible on the production screen even during the movement phase. I sometimes find myself saving the game in the movement phase and ending the phase, just so I can see those numbers bottom-lined for me. Then I reload the saved game and continue the movement phase with that new knowledge. It's just something a player shouldn't have to do.

We had a problem with showing the numbers during the movement phase as they were misleading because they change after the movement phase and before production begins (and also because certain values weren't changing on the fly). Maurice and I wrestled with this during development and concluded it was better to just leave them blank.

They would change by partisan activity. Anything else?

[5cats]

Just to reply to phyric's post:

ORIGINAL: pyrhic

The game LETS you do this so you can FIX it? OMG that's funny...why not save everyones time and not let you do it in the first place - and i think that's the point the thread's author is trying to make...

Not funny! The way things are, you can over-produce one area, then go to another area to reduce production there to 'fix' things.
The way you suggest would add an extra step! You'd leave the first area (because you've been prevented from over-producing) go to the second area to lower production, then go back to the first area to use the newly freed production. What if there isn't enough freed production? Oops! Still more extra steps!
So all 'banning' over-production does is add another (unneccessary) step, making it more complicated & less fun. And like I say, over-production isn't going to crash the computer or anything, it's easily delt with by the AI.
Just MHO.

Edit: WanderingHead (great name btw!) I think moving transports & capturing territories can also effect the way resources are "connected" to factories. That can change constantly during a turn.
Personally, I find it very hard to figure out what my resource level will be next turn. Not just the free trade variations, but a lot of other factors too.

[pyrhic]

true, only if you have less resources than factories. if you have 10 factories and 8 resources, i can see where this would be easier. if you have 10 factories and 12 resources, you can't produce more than 10 so it shouldn't let you produce negatives...

But in the first case, what you're actually doing is allocating resources by allocating production....hmmm, yes, that's why it might be confusing some people...You're not only saying i want to produce an extra fighter here instead of there, but that you want the resources moved here so you can produce the fighter here....

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: 5cats

Edit: WanderingHead (great name btw!) I think moving transports & capturing territories can also effect the way resources are "connected" to factories. That can change constantly during a turn.
Personally, I find it very hard to figure out what my resource level will be next turn. Not just the free trade variations, but a lot of other factors too.

Yes, this I understand. I was asking about Joel's comment that things can change "after the movement phase and before production begins".

I still firmly believe that the game should show this to you. You can figure it out, by half-cheating by the save-production-reload approach I use, or by going through and checking every territory and counting it yourself. That's ridiculous, it is exactly what the computer is best at. If it changes after you've looked at it, so what? Looking at the production screen would give you a snapshot of what your total production picture would be if you moved to the production phase right now, absent partisan activity (and any other changes, but I'm not aware of what those would be). The player just needs to be aware that it might change.

This is a great game, but some things are very obscure, and some things are also needlessly obscure.

[Joel Billings]

Free trade is the only one that comes to mind that is calculated after the movement phase. I can't remember exactly when resources move around the map to where they are likely to be needed, but that's probably less important. Depending on how the turn plays out, the available resources and population available can change during movement, and I don't remember how well these are being tracked on the fly. Like I said, Maurice and I concluded it was better not to show it since the way it was originally working was much more confusing. Perhaps with work it could be made to be less confusing (if everything updated on the fly), but that would take some time. It think it would be very low on the wish list at this point even if it turns out to be possible.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
Free trade is the only one that comes to mind that is calculated after the movement phase.

I thought all resource movement happened at the beginning of the overall turn, prior to Germany's turn. That would include Free Trade, no? Or am I mistaken?