What's the main flaw of WitP you think?

[GaryChildress]

I definitely go with the dissappearing unit bug as the worst with a close second being Japanese commanders showing up in command of my Allied TFs. It used to drive me crazy, when the game first came out, to see 20 out of 10 planes shot down in combat results but I think they've fixed that one. I haven't noticed it lately. Other than that I think WitP is an amazingly solid game given the complexity. I don't have any problems with the interface. Occasionally I come accross something I wish I could do but can't, other than that everything seems to be there that I want to do.

Gary

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

I don't know where to start ...

If I had to pick one it's probably that ships can move without fuel.

I don't mind that too much. I think it must have come down to either have ships automatically return to the nearest port when fuel gets low or else have them able to putt along at 1 hex per turn as they do now. The alternative would be to have ships sitting around dead in the water because players were so overwhelmed by the complexity that they forgot to check if task force X has enough fuel to make it to destination Y. Now that would be an unrealistic flaw--ships all over the place sitting around dead in the water! Normally a ship's commander and the people at HQ making the decisions take all those factors into consideration, but since its usually up to just one or a few players to make all the decisions and the scale is so huge and micromanagement necessary in WitP, it makes it almost impossible to always avoid leaving a ship dead in the water somewhere. Therefore I think it's a little more realistic to have ships move, albeit at only 1 hex per turn when they run out of fuel. Unless of course there is another way to ensure that the ocean doesn't become littered with oversize floating bouys...

[:)]

Gary

[walkerd]

ORIGINAL: jay102

I think the unfriendly interface. So many different data crowded together, without a well-designed classification to guide player to acquire the most important information quickly, plus the tiny fonts combo. Secondly, some micromanagement is really annoying, such as LCUs must be loaded one by one.

By flaw I thought you ment game design.

Game design flaw for me is (with the use of player hind sight) the ability to concentrate more assets then should be possible.

In this game if a Div will work, 4 Div's are clearly better etc

Some in game limiting factor such as port size affecting unload rates or whatever would be nice.

Otherwise this is the best computer war game I have ever seen in PBEM mode.

[TulliusDetritus]

Walkerd, as for port unload rates, you may use Ron Saueracker's house rule. They are excellent, in my opinion. And convoys = 10 cargo ships maximum, etc.

[Rob Brennan UK]

Personally its the resource/oil/HI thing .. its a mess. I'd like to see a screen saying how much of what is needed and where. Also if HI and or factories are working or not. While im at it some transparency over the ground combat system, maybe an 'estimated casualties' button based on all the dice rolls being average ( whatever these rolls are )

59 mile but i hate . never had units disapear before so no probs yet ( fingers crossed) [:D]

I'd also like to see a 'month end' Prodcution and Research summary screen .. e.g what % chance of reducing the deployment date of a certain a/c or ship for the next month.

and probably many more , but none are game breakers for me. There isnt a game out there that compares to this one [&o][&o][&o]

Me Loveses WitP ( now where did i put that ring ? )

[Feinder]

Pace of the game. Too fast (due to various reasons).

-F-

[scout1]

The main flaw for WitP is that its code is based on 20 year old re-use code and was updated only in an evolutionary fashion. They basically kept re-using previous code though place more and more demands on it. I've seen this in hardware design as well and usually results in a product that far too many limitations based on age old decisions.

Having said that, my hat is off to Mike Wood who has managed to keep this house of cards up at all. [&o]

[Titanwarrior89]

I think just about all of it has been covered. I wish they had put more into the land combat - but I can live with it.[:D][8|]

[patrickl]

Hi,

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

Lack of stacking limits.

I think this is my No 1 concern. Other things, I can live with them. Not possible to accommodate 20 infantry divisions on Kwajalien - where are they going to sleep? [:@]

[FeurerKrieg]

Houseboats. [:D]

I agree though, stacking limits would be nice.

[Halsey]

The ability to do too many impossible things.[:D]

[gottagofish]

For the Japanese player, I would like to see what was produced by location. Maybe a toggle. Just to know for sure that there was enough oil to get HI to work, etc.

It is very frustraiting when loading transports to leave a fractional unit behind because I picked one less ship than the comuter decided was needed to load the full unit, and there are 50 unused APs in port!

How about road upgrades? Many roads were built during the war, we have all sorts of engineer units, why can't we upgrade roads?

Carrier training. The war lasts 4+ years and we can't train one air wing to be carier capable. There are more ships than capable air units.

Most definately, a better decision tree for carrier plane attacks! Maybe something you can set up yourself as is done for missions. Rank order them like CVs, BBs, CAs, etc.

The VERY MOST IMPROTANT ITEM to add would be 10 hours to each day just so I can play this game and there be no other distractions!! [:D][:D][:D][&o][&o][&o]

[Caltone]

ORIGINAL: mapr
In my eyes main flaw is this combat report/animation change in 1.60... Almost game breaker.

What changed?


Only real problem I'm having at the moment is where a unit crosses a river an automatically launches a shock attack. Makes sense in some cases, but still kills me when I have 2 divisions laying siege and I bring an ENG unit up for support. Instead on falling into the line they rush through and shock attack.

Banzai!

[tabpub]

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

I have to be a weirdo, but I like the land combat mechanics.

As for bugs, no game is perfect so I try to live with this fact [:)]

And house rules may prevent weird things, so I use them.

I agree in that land combat requires some forethought and I don't worry about "stacking".
But where do you use house rules TD? In a different thread, you said this:

Nah, no PBEM game for me. That or social life





and I choose... ahem... social life

So, you play against the AI and follow house rules? How did you and the AI agree on the terms?[;)]

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: jay102

I think the unfriendly interface. So many different data crowded together, without a well-designed classification to guide player to acquire the most important information quickly, plus the tiny fonts combo. Secondly, some micromanagement is really annoying, such as LCUs must be loaded one by one.

I guess what one thinks is the main flaw in WITP is how you look at it: if you are looking at it as a game that simulates WW2, there are MULTIPLE big problems - worst (i guess) being the logistics model (too much supply, and those supplies/fuel, etc. moving too fast allowing all kinds of weirdness).

If you just look at it as a game, i would guess units disappearing would head the top of my list (which can be due to multiple causes).

[Nikademus]

The biggest flaw in the game IMO is the same flaw that marred it's predesessor; Pacific War.

The Amphibious landing routine. Its too simplified and too easy to do. It's better than it was in Pacwar thanks to the introduction of preperation points. Landing an unprepared division can result in as much as 1/3 of it's assault power being disabled, but I always wanted to see more. But underneath that...its still basically the same as in PacWar...you want to invade? tether together a bunch of AK's or better, some AP's and will travel.

As i read about the big campaigns more and more in WWII, Burma....Sicily, Italy....France a central bottleneck kept coming up. The biggest factor that forced the Allies to fight the war the way they did. Italy (followed by Burma) represented the greatest example...a mountanous country just begging for flanking seaward attacks given the slogging match that a forward attack presented. Yet it was'nt done to the degree one might expect why?

landing craft....landing craft....and more landing craft. There were never enough available....and another theater seemed to always have a priority on them...first D-day...then the continuing Pacific War. The British sceamed for years on conducting amphibious landings to outflank the jungles of Northern Burma or even bypass Burma in favor of a landing in Malaya....never materialized till 45. why.....in Witp, just load up a few AK's or AP's! the long vulnerable coastline just begs for it. In real life....nope, not enough landing craft. They couldnt' lay hands on em.

I understand why its the way it is in WitP. I'm not bashing this game. Hell, i love this game and it is a quality product and i'm proud to have been associated with it. But as the thread asks (even if jokingly) if i had to pick an area of weakness that most sticks out, one i'd like to see improved in a future game or successor product...it would be that.

how to fix? not totally sure. its a thorny issue. Such a game has to allow the amphibious landing type of operation which can range anywhere from a transport dropping anchor and the troops wadding ashore in rafts or infaltables to a slightly more dedicated (but still crude) Watchtower type landing that did involve some dedicated landing craft (but inefficiently loaded transports...fortunately there was no resistance or fortifications on the shore that day)

Such a game would have to take into account that fact that the larger the landing force, the greater the need for organization (prep) and specialized craft or else risk increasingly disrupted and disabled units that come ashore in no condition to fight. Most of all the presence of landing craft of which no true Amphibious Assault can be done must be represented in the specific.

How to simulate in WitP within the current framework? Only ideas i came up with back in Alpha were to make lack of prep points 2 to 3 times as severe as they are now. Try to land an unprepped division on any base Atoll or not....and it should be so disrupted and disabled as to be combat ineffective.....the impact should be preportional to the size of the unit, that way small raider type actions could be simulated. so for example, a small battalion sized unit would not suffer as much unprepared as say a Division which is far more complex an operation.

Another idea was to divorce invader unloading rates from the port size which should only apply to a friendly force. AK's and AP's without landing craft should have a super-small unloading rate allowing the defender a chance to push em back into the sea. Such a penalty would especially apply to arty and AFV type equipment....you cant just use the port facilities to unload such beasts. Such as restriction would make Atoll combat without landing craft impossible and suicidal.

Any future Pacific game should un-abstract landing craft. I'd rather see that than un-abstracting supply which while an intriguing idea on the surface also strikes me as a "be careful what you wish for" item. This game already requires a serious amount of micro-management. I love detail, and i'm willing to tackle the challenge of dealing with landing craft and a more detailed amphibious model, but i'm not sure i want to track what islands are getting their bullets, which their allotment of torpedoes, which their allotment of bombs and food etc etc......yikes. This game is long enough to play as it is.
[:D]

[stretch]

The thing I hate the most.... how can a game crash so often just because you click the exit button on the save screen? That's the stupidest thing I have ever had to deal with in a PC game, and it's been kicking my butt on different computers and on all versions. I wasn't going to complain but it has done it to me 4 times just tonight. ARGH.

Edited to add: I do wait a few seconds before exiting the screen, still happens a lot.

[Stwa]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

True, which is why they dropped their original plans for using the WitP engine for a Mediterranean and East Front game.

Terminus, I hate to disagree a little, but I think the WitP engine could be used to sim most any theatre for WWI and WWII, and of course the years in between. I think the main reason there won't be a Med game or East Front game using this system can be found in an interview with Gary, Joel, and the Wargamer..


WG: Computers have changed a lot. How has that affected how you develop and create games?

GG: Well, more powerful computers allow you to put a lot more features into a game. By the same token a lot more are expected of you by the people buying the games. Mostly I think they're expecting more visuals, more bells and whistles, animations and whatnot. With Uncommon Valor and especially with War in the Pacific I'm realizing that these things are hitting a level of complexity that…

JB: …human people aren't supposed to deal with.

GG: I can't keep it in my head anymore. That's it. I hit the wall. I am never ever, ever, ever doing a game like that again.

[BlackVoid]

Flaws:
Land combat
Submarine combat
Lack of mid-ocean intercepts (depriving the player of a viable strategy of surface convoy raiding by ships).
AC squadron management (we should be able to transfer pilot/planes between units)
Stock map is flawed

All the others, I can live with.

Stacking limits would mean that places are impossible to take (because only units in the same hex can fight). Any kind of stacking limit would BREAK the game because of this.

I do not blame the developers for not wanting to build on the engine. The design was over-ambitious. Too much detail in too many places, eg: commanders for every little unit, japanese industry, altitude mgmt for AC, etc.

[ilovestrategy]

I haven't played enough to make a list of flaws. It's pretty hard to find flaws when you are incompetent [:D][:D][:D]