Basic info on War in the West 43-45

[Denniss]

It all depends on the integrated card, if this is a very old intel integrated VGA then it may be problematic because of their drivers not beeing optimized for games, a decent Intel card should be better. Any ATI/AMD or nvidia integrated card should work if it's not too old.
What you need is a decent amount of RAM and good CPU power as AI calculation is cpu-intensive.

[randallw]

For you paid employees:

Is there some research/consultation with a military think-tank, or some type of historical research organization, on trying to figure out typical casualty results from battles of the game's size, going on for WitW or for that matter did it happen with WitE?

[Joel Billings]

No think tank, just the Gary and Pavel think tank supplemented by lots of input from various people (data gurus, scenario designers and testers).

As for the card, with WitE it says it requires a 128MB video card, but in reality it worked with some integrated cards. Speed does improve with better/bigger cards and better/faster systems. WitW is similar to WitE, but could easily end up slower in some ways so bigger/faster is always better. Denniss probably has it right.

[Wuffer]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke


Germany was a land power with a modern air force.
(...)

You're a Historian as well as a Wargame designer. In 43-45, the equation is simple. Only by bottling the Allies up can the Germans create any kind of operational campaign. When the Germans aren't bottling the Allies up, they will be retreating, plain and simple. They don't have the numbers to create a front line the length of central France (...)

That is my point, and what I suspect the Beta AARs will reveal to you. Before turn 70 (ish) and the retreat to the west wall, there are only two operational moments on Land. The Italian peninsula and the bottling up of the initial landing. If these are a collective 15-20 hexes long and mainly attritional frontal assaults, then the game has a problem (although admittedly, perhaps only one I'm bothered about). As the German player, giving me a new naval model and a new air model is scant comfort in the light of this, because I don't have any ships and only have a handful of planes piloted by average pilots who don't have the fuel to fly very often.

In a nutshell, this is my critique. I apologise if it's taken a few pages to get there.

I wish you, your team and your company all the very best with your endeavours.

Respect and regards,
IronDuke

With all respect, I don't agree.
Your are completly right - a 10 miles square gives no room for tactical skills. But the war wasn't really decided in such a small piece of land... Not matter how skillful the Germans could defend Kasserine, Casino, Normandy and so on, their most important weapon - the Luftwaffe - was grinded.
What is a Panzer-Division without fighter cover? Let's even not think about CAS.
And even if you still have the pilots and the planes, you are beaten if your fuel factories were crushed.
In the end it's all about economy.
The second, maybe most decisive front against Germany was some thousend feet above the ground.
R&D in WitP doesn't really matter, to be honest - all their planes were crap. No comperation to the last generation of german a/c - just imagine Kursk/Normandy etc. with an additional 1,000-2,000 FW 190's/Me26x (and no, I'm not axio-phil, btw).

The Allies must destroy
- the Luftwaffe und the pilots first,
- than the avitation AND/OR the fuel industry
- and the logistics as well before 1944.

And if you are to hasty, the Red Army will be in Amsterdam before you

The Germans were caught cold, they didn't have the hindsight and reacted to late, because drop tanks and long range fighters could not be imagined by Hermann. So, it could be a little bit harder, or?

Greetings

[Wuffer]

Just one little remark for the team: No more Lvov pockets, please. ))

Allow just a little bit more variation - the Allies must search and find the bottleneck. Any asymmetric but fixed setup of forces became vulnerable for 'fixed' (=boring) moves. Allow c2-c4, d2-d4 etc, not only e2-e4.

THX!

[randallw]

In WitE each side of a battle has one HQ ( and commander ) that is in charge of that side, even if a side has units from multiple commands, but the battle report doesn't mention them; perhaps this feature can be put into WitW.

[Joel Billings]

Our plan is for 4 main campaign scenarios:

June start 1943 (players free to set up any invasion targets on turn 1 with some advanced prep)
July start 1943 (invasion of Sicily plotted with full preparation)
May 1944 (players free to set up any invasion targets on turn 1 with some advanced prep)
June 1944 (invasion of Normandy plotted with full preparation)

We currently have versions of the last 3 listed. As you can see, the idea is to allow players that want to have flexibility in strategic choices to have the chance to make a different choice. The Allied player still has to deal with getting air control over the desired target, and the German player has some garrison requirements that tie down some troops, but each has the ability in the "early start" campaigns to make significant changes in their plans.

[governato]

One feature I would really like to see implemented in WITW is the possibility to give the AI more time to think, similar to what is often done for chess programs. This of course might depend on the way the WITW/E AI 'thinks', but basically what I am saying is that I'd like an option where I get a stronger AI if I am willing to wait longer for it to complete a move. Is that a possibility?

[swkuh]

The scenarios that allow player intervention in the starting set-up are attractive. Hope this aproach could be worked out in WitE at some point.

[mevstedt]

ORIGINAL: Wuffer

With all respect, I don't agree.
Your are completly right - a 10 miles square gives no room for tactical skills. But the war wasn't really decided in such a small piece of land... Not matter how skillful the Germans could defend Kasserine, Casino, Normandy and so on, their most important weapon - the Luftwaffe - was grinded.
What is a Panzer-Division without fighter cover? Let's even not think about CAS.
And even if you still have the pilots and the planes, you are beaten if your fuel factories were crushed.
In the end it's all about economy.
The second, maybe most decisive front against Germany was some thousend feet above the ground.
R&D in WitP doesn't really matter, to be honest - all their planes were crap. No comperation to the last generation of german a/c - just imagine Kursk/Normandy etc. with an additional 1,000-2,000 FW 190's/Me26x (and no, I'm not axio-phil, btw).

The Allies must destroy
- the Luftwaffe und the pilots first,
- than the avitation AND/OR the fuel industry
- and the logistics as well before 1944.

And if you are to hasty, the Red Army will be in Amsterdam before you

The Germans were caught cold, they didn't have the hindsight and reacted to late, because drop tanks and long range fighters could not be imagined by Hermann. So, it could be a little bit harder, or?

Greetings

Well, from where I am sitting you are only confirming what IronDuke has already said. That the war in the west was won in the air, not on the ground. The problem then being that it would have taken some insane brilliance or miracle for the germans to pull out a win.

The reason WitE is such a living game is not because it has a great ai but because the game is challenging for both sides. If it takes a miracle to win as the germans then why on earth would anyone want to play them? No amount of polish on a navy model where the german navy can't really do anything and an air model that, while it may be fun and excellent, still won't really make a german player especially happy when it all just comes down to chosing which factories to attempt to protect.

I'm not judging the game until it is done but I can sure understand IronDuke's concern. For the game to be fun as a german player there needs to be some way to make a difference and that is not going to be with the Kriegsmarine or the Luftwaffe. In the end, if the game isn't fun and exciting for axis players then the multiplayer part of the game will end up with a bunch of Allies looking for opponents rather than actually playing multiplayer games.

[Joel Billings]

Our website was hacked several months ago and we had to delete all of the material in it. Since it had been built 12 years ago using html and was very cumbersome to update, we decided to stick with a very basic website that would allow us to easily post new items when we had something we wanted to share. It's nothing special, but thanks in part to my 15 year old son's help, our new website has finally been put together and you can see it at www.2by3games.com. The what's new section has a very short video showing the weather screen in WitW, and it fast forwards through a year of weather. Notice the map covers the entire area of our War in Europe map, but the playable area for WitW 43-45 is the boxed area in the lower right. The weather system is much more sophisticated than the weather system in WitE.

[GreyJoy]

Can't wait for this game.
 
I'm a bit suprised, however, that these new games (WITW series) will be using more the WITE system than the WITPAE one. Considering the success it had and the level of appreciation that still gets by the gallery, i don't understand why WITPAE hasn't been used as the "core" from where to develop this new game.
Some of the BTR ideas and a more detailed land combat system (even if i believe the recent "field" modifications - say the DaBabes mods + Michealm's patches - have greatly improved the landwarfare), along with the naval-locistic witpae system, could "easily" make a great game.
 
However i know you guys know your job, so i'm really looking forward to it!
 
Thanks!!

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: mevstedt

ORIGINAL: jaw
The reason you can manually change aircraft and not AFVs in WitE is that aircraft do not have fixed TOEs like ground units. The TOEs are designed to keep upgrading AFVs to the latest models so manual change would provide little benefit and AFV production is so much lower than aircraft production that surpluses are less of an issue. Actually to implement manual change for AFVs would require a system even more restrictive than the current one to prevent the kind of abuses seen in SECOND FRONT and WAR IN RUSSIA.

I will agree that manual production could be abused but that is something that should be taken into consideration in how it is implemented, not to mention it is fairly easy to add a game option like "Manual Production ON/OFF" much like Fog of War etc.

So how would adding an option like manual production be easy? And just how would it work? The system already handles the TOEs, which are out of the players hand. With manual production, I, for one, would build nothing but T-34s, Il-2s, whatever the best artillery is. Which would make a mockery of TOEs. And if one has to follow TOEs, then there isn't any point in manual production as the program already takes care of it.

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

Can't wait for this game.

I'm a bit suprised, however, that these new games (WITW series) will be using more the WITE system than the WITPAE one. Considering the success it had and the level of appreciation that still gets by the gallery, i don't understand why WITPAE hasn't been used as the "core" from where to develop this new game.
Some of the BTR ideas and a more detailed land combat system (even if i believe the recent "field" modifications - say the DaBabes mods + Michealm's patches - have greatly improved the landwarfare), along with the naval-locistic witpae system, could "easily" make a great game.

However i know you guys know your job, so i'm really looking forward to it!

Thanks!!

I can only take a guess, my my idea would be:

1) The WITE engine is newer
2) As far as I understood the long-term idea is to unify WITW and WITE2 into a WIE, thus a unified engine has to be used
3) If the developer want to utilize the IGOUGO system, then the WITPAE engine drops out automatically
4) Perhaps the developers do not see the land combat engine of WITPAE as sufficient enough to model the war in Europe

[JamesM]

ORIGINAL: SigUp

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

Can't wait for this game.

I'm a bit suprised, however, that these new games (WITW series) will be using more the WITE system than the WITPAE one. Considering the success it had and the level of appreciation that still gets by the gallery, i don't understand why WITPAE hasn't been used as the "core" from where to develop this new game.
Some of the BTR ideas and a more detailed land combat system (even if i believe the recent "field" modifications - say the DaBabes mods + Michealm's patches - have greatly improved the landwarfare), along with the naval-locistic witpae system, could "easily" make a great game.

However i know you guys know your job, so i'm really looking forward to it!

Thanks!!

I can only take a guess, my my idea would be:

1) The WITE engine is newer
2) As far as I understood the long-term idea is to unify WITW and WITE2 into a WIE, thus a unified engine has to be used
3) If the developer want to utilize the IGOUGO system, then the WITPAE engine drops out automatically
4) Perhaps the developers do not see the land combat engine of WITPAE as sufficient enough to model the war in Europe

The main difference is that the land combat system in WitE is very different from WitPAE.

[Cavalry Corp]

I love the sound of this game but for me if there is no replay I do not know if i will take it up WITE still has no magic without the replay, like say AE...

[Numdydar]

Why do you need a reply for WitE? Does not make a whole lot of sense in weekly turns. Plus there are no naval actions that require the detail that AE does.

In SP, you can watch the AI do things anyway. Then you also can show combats if you want more details about what went on. I actually perfer it this way. As a long time AE player, 90% of the replay in AE is boring and does not provide much information. Oh look, another one squadren sweep where nothing is there or an ASW attack that could not find the sub [:)]

I would much rather be able to chose where to look at things versus having to look at everything whether I cared about it or not. So I am certainly not going to like a game simply because a replay is missing. Other things matter much more than that to me [:)]. But that is want makes everyone unigue lol, You care deeply about the replay, and I could care less [:)]

[Cavalry Corp]

I replay you get to see your opponesnts style of play and there could be many combats etc to see.
A weeks turn or a day is still a lot of stuff going on.
watching the reply in AE again is critical if you think its boring I accept that.

[Dili]

Plus there are no naval actions that require the detail that AE does.

What? Husky was just the biggest naval invasion ever.

[heyhellowhatsnew]

Is WitW 40 going to be an expansion or another full game?