Attention Matrix Staff: Aircraft Upgrades

[ZOOMIE1980]

Why hasn't Matrix chimed in on this one yet? Afterall, this is on pace to become the largest thread in the history of this forum. Could they be as conflicted as we seem to be about it?

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

The point they are making is the game rules are imposing "arbitrary needs" on them, externally defined by the designers,

So what, is that not the choice of every designer? to impose their view on how things work? Just because you happen to not agree with them does not make *their* view and design any less valid.

Then what is the point of allowing R&D without having to research certain models first?

Why make an open ended production system and then limit you on the fruits of optimizing that system?

If the designers are imposing arbitrary needs, then they've done a poor job of it as they've created a situation in which a player can spend literally 10's of hours trying to optimize for zero benefit to the player, thus the player wastes his time and effort.

(a) Moving aircraft into production before their time by acceleration of production through over concentration.

(b) Coverting Japan's air force into something it was not.

(c) Using 20/20 Hindsight to control choice of Aircraft.

(d) Over-simplification of Japan's headache by consolodation.

You don't see *any* of these as being problems?

A) Sort of like moving units in china for concentration like they weren't?

B) Like utilizing the IJA units like they weren't?

C) Using 20/20 hindsight to control the training of pilots knowing full well that the allies will produce planes that will be better than the japanese versions, thus creating some 'artificial' means of training pilots and husbanding them because of this known aircraft information.

D) Oversimplification of Japan's problems by taking the philipines and singapore well before their historic dates?

Do I see a problem with any of this? Nope, just as I don't see a problem with optimizing japans production.

Question for you, how many games have you completed from december 7 to 1946 playing each and every turn without the use of an AI commander for your side as the japanese?

[Spooky]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Why hasn't Matrix chimed in on this one yet? Afterall, this is on pace to become the largest thread in the history of this forum. Could they be as conflicted as we seem to be about it?

AFAIK, most of the Matrix team is at the World Boardgaming Championships 2004 (August 3 - August 8) so they will probably give their input about this issue as soon as they are back ...

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Why hasn't Matrix chimed in on this one yet? Afterall, this is on pace to become the largest thread in the history of this forum. Could they be as conflicted as we seem to be about it?

Probably because they are away at the boardwargamer convention.

[Mr.Frag]

I think the key issue that screws up the player ability to tweak production and upgrades is research. I like the earlier suggestion of undirected research. It removes the ability for the player to power tech their way to the top line fighters, and appears to remove most of the problems with flexible upgrades.

I agree completely ... research is research period. It should not be able to be directed at a specific plane. I think if it was simply removed instead of being targetable, this whole problem goes away. 2BY3 attempted to do this as best as they could without rewriting major parts of the game by making research ineffective against planes too far in the future ...

Where I seem to keep running into the wall here is that people want to use the *loophole* in the code and research aircraft against the grain then complain that because they did what the developers said no to, they should be able to use the fruits of their ill gotten gain.

I would not care about the ability to switch aircraft around at all *if* it was not the product of this *loophole* of skipping over research of planes to get to super plane xyz instead.

Some people are intent on exploiting this loophole then cloaking their intent with the "I have the planes, why can't i use them" defence. Please give a little more credit to people to see through that defense.

Just to set you straight, I am one of those who fought for user selectable aircraft within class limits. What I do not accept is using a weakness in the code to bypass aircraft to get there. I couldn't care less if you refit group with different aircraft within limits. I care about the system being exploited to achieve this due to a way of fooling the code because it doesn't say "has oscar been developed yet? If not, then no frank no matter what"

The alternative is non-directed research where no aircraft type is determined and they are all in one big list of what happens and you just get the next one in the list as available once you have spent enough on R&D. (but again, this requires major code changes so realistically is not going to happen)

Some of you need to grasp the reality that the game has been written, it is done. There will be fixes and some new features but they are not likely to gut major portions of the code because of the large numbers of problems it causes.

[mdiehl]

You all seem to be missing Frag's point. If I understand Frag correctly, he's saying that the Japanese production control exists to: 1. Allow the Japanese player to mitigate the damage caused by bombing and by air combat losses of aircraft, because 2. In this way you can hope to generate enough aircraft of a given type to replace the losses for units that are equipped with aircraft of that type.

Consider the possibilities. Since you can deploy units as you see fit and are not contrained to historical locations for units, Kido Butai might see very light losses in 1942. The Allies may not be counterattacking robustly, but you've been taking a pounding from the AVG. So you decide that since you are short on Ki-43s, you get to try to make a few more.

The question as to what sorts of aircraft a unit may fly is answered in advance. You do not get to wholesale rewrite history and deploy advanced aircraft to lots of units that never had them. In effect, you get to optimize, to a certain degree, production in a way that allows you to get the right kinds of replacements for depleted units. It's a good way to allow you to fix "ahistorical" problems in equipping units that might come about as a consequence of "ahistorical" choices as regards which units are deployed where, and losses that differ from historical ones.

It does not seem ever to have been intended as a way for the Japanese to crank out lots of advanced aircraft in greater numbers earlier than usual. The people complaining about it seem to fall into two camps: 1. Those who thought the system could be used in that way and lack a means to correct the production mistakes they've made. Maybe you can edit your game-in-progress to restore some balance to your production. 2. Those who seem to think that this capability to address some balancing problems caused by ahistoric losses should be morphed into some sort of Starship Troopers type time-warp that has the Japanese knowing in 1941 which of their 1944 designs will be the best at countering the as-yet-unseen 1943-44 Allied designs.

IMO the problem requires no "fix" and is not an error. For those who understand how to use it and what the production system allows it should work fine. For those who want a "phased plasma rifle in the 40 GW range" for every Japanese squad, play Pacific General and you can have all the 'Axis-X-Plane-Fantasy-Realized' thrill-bytes you want.

[vonmoltke]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

I agree completely ... research is research period. It should not be able to be directed at a specific plane. I think if it was simply removed instead of being targetable, this whole problem goes away. 2BY3 attempted to do this as best as they could without rewriting major parts of the game by making research ineffective against planes too far in the future ...

Where I seem to keep running into the wall here is that people want to use the *loophole* in the code and research aircraft against the grain then complain that because they did what the developers said no to, they should be able to use the fruits of their ill gotten gain.

I would not care about the ability to switch aircraft around at all *if* it was not the product of this *loophole* of skipping over research of planes to get to super plane xyz instead.

Some people are intent on exploiting this loophole then cloaking their intent with the "I have the planes, why can't i use them" defence. Please give a little more credit to people to see through that defense.

Just to set you straight, I am one of those who fought for user selectable aircraft within class limits. What I do not accept is using a weakness in the code to bypass aircraft to get there. I couldn't care less if you refit group with different aircraft within limits. I care about the system being exploited to achieve this due to a way of fooling the code because it doesn't say "has oscar been developed yet? If not, then no frank no matter what"

The alternative is non-directed research where no aircraft type is determined and they are all in one big list of what happens and you just get the next one in the list as available once you have spent enough on R&D. (but again, this requires major code changes so realistically is not going to happen)

Some of you need to grasp the reality that the game has been written, it is done. There will be fixes and some new features but they are not likely to gut major portions of the code because of the large numbers of problems it causes.

I think the best alternative for this particular case is to deactivate research and lock aircraft to their historical availability date. I'm assuming, of course, that such a change isn't that difficult.

The non-directed research is a great idea for future games, though. I liked the research systems in PTOII and especially PTO IV (about the only thing I really liked about that game [8|]). So, if 2by3 ever decides to do a grand strategy game more detailed than World at War, there's my contribution to the wish list. [:D]

[strawbuk]

Ok I find the industry/upgardes stuff er.. tricky but:

Don't forget downgrades too - I want to use up any rubbish in the pool have in Kamikazes not use Franks.

And who mentioned Albert Speer? Surely point of this wonderful game is to allow me to play God - ish. If Japan had an Albert Speer with the right authority (ie lots of PP) I sense we might have seen more streamlined production. And yes charge me HUGE PP costs to bin some production ie irritate a manufacturer whose brother in law is Tojo's aide de camp. Happily force me to do right research of all types at huge cost but when the thing arrives and my test pilots tell me it is a turkey, let me bin it may be after a minimum run of 10-20 'prototypes' (or after it has flown combat with one grp?) at PP cost as above.

If stopping production of a model is 'expensive' in PP and you still have to do the tech research, and there is still a fixed earliest possible dates for some models, and I still have to out fight the allies big time to actually get all the resource to do this, and with the retraining expe penalty, why do you care who I get to fly the damn things? Frankly you should let me give air defence fighters to bomber units but set experience to 1; they all get lost with a navigator in back and crash into a mountain....

And why not apply same to US, and even more so to Brit air production? Just as many vested interests there. And didn't some later 'great' aircraft almost get chop at protoype or first production model stage - P-47(?).

One last point; research/forced research of all models should be there as proxy for fact that both sides ran design competions for aircraft - plenty of turkeys/great ones never got past model/first proto stage but took up lots of design effort.

[mdiehl]

And why not apply same to US, and even more so to Brit air production? Just as many vested interests there. And didn't some later 'great' aircraft almost get chop at protoype or first production model stage - P-47(?).

Because the Allies and in particular the US did not have nearly the resistence to rationalization as the Axis powers. There may have been as many "vested interests" but there was enough cash flwoing through the pipe and enough dedication to the task on hand to grease the points of friction. And when war industries managers were too fubar to see the point the Fed simply stepped in and threw the rascals out, replacing them with new management. Case in point: Brewster Aircraft.

[Warspite**]

The argument that to change it would make it unhistorical is wrong because its not historical now. Here is a list of fighters and the Sentais that used them. Bold are sentais that upgraded from Nates and Red from Hayabusas.

Nate equipped Sentais = 1, 4, 9, 11, 13, 18, 21, 24, 33, 50, 54, 59, 63, 64, 70, 77, 78, 85, 87, 144, 246.
Hayabusa equipped Sentais = 1, 11, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33, 48, 50, 54, 59, 63, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73, 77, 101, 102, 103, 104, 112, 203, 204, 248.

Shoki equipped Sentais = 9, 22, 29, 47, 85, 87, 246.
Hien equipped Sentais = 17, 18, 19, 23, 26, 28, 37, 55, 56, 59, 65, 68, 78, 105, 244
Hayate equipped Sentais = 1, 11, 13, 14, 20, 22, 25, 29, 47, 50, 51, 52, 64, 71, 72, 73, 85, 101, 102, 103, 104, 111, 112, 200, 246.
Only 2 Sentais operated the Randy

Okay it didn't keep my colours or bold face from my word document I created, nor allow me to attach it, so here is what you have left over after the upgrades:

Nate equipped Sentais = 4, 70, 78, 144.
Hayabusa equipped Sentais = 21, 24, 30, 31, 33, 48, 54, 63, 77, 203, 204.

We can see that the upgrade paths in the game are meaningless anyway, as there are no where near 34 groups of Hayabusas in WW2 nor anything like 12 Ki-102, and as we can see most surviving Sentais were equiped with the Frank. Its wrong now so whats the deal with letting us use what we build.

[tsimmonds]

Very interesting Warspite; I was hoping to see something like this here. What is your source?

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

I think the key issue that screws up the player ability to tweak production and upgrades is research. I like the earlier suggestion of undirected research. It removes the ability for the player to power tech their way to the top line fighters, and appears to remove most of the problems with flexible upgrades.

I agree completely ... research is research period. It should not be able to be directed at a specific plane. I think if it was simply removed instead of being targetable, this whole problem goes away. 2BY3 attempted to do this as best as they could without rewriting major parts of the game by making research ineffective against planes too far in the future ...

Where I seem to keep running into the wall here is that people want to use the *loophole* in the code and research aircraft against the grain then complain that because they did what the developers said no to, they should be able to use the fruits of their ill gotten gain.

I would not care about the ability to switch aircraft around at all *if* it was not the product of this *loophole* of skipping over research of planes to get to super plane xyz instead.

Some people are intent on exploiting this loophole then cloaking their intent with the "I have the planes, why can't i use them" defence. Please give a little more credit to people to see through that defense.

Just to set you straight, I am one of those who fought for user selectable aircraft within class limits. What I do not accept is using a weakness in the code to bypass aircraft to get there. I couldn't care less if you refit group with different aircraft within limits. I care about the system being exploited to achieve this due to a way of fooling the code because it doesn't say "has oscar been developed yet? If not, then no frank no matter what"

The alternative is non-directed research where no aircraft type is determined and they are all in one big list of what happens and you just get the next one in the list as available once you have spent enough on R&D. (but again, this requires major code changes so realistically is not going to happen)

Some of you need to grasp the reality that the game has been written, it is done. There will be fixes and some new features but they are not likely to gut major portions of the code because of the large numbers of problems it causes.

Yes, now I can agree with almost ALL of this. The notion I could go directly from an A6M2 to an A7M is ludicrous. Aircraft, like anything else, result from a building block approach. Each successive model depends lessons learned from prior models. Kind of like Civilization-style tech-trees. To get to C you MUST go through B, first.

Also, the war lasted less than four years for the US. That is a good deal SHORTER than the development life-cycle of almost any aircraft we used. Most of what we used in August 1945, at the conclusion of WWII, was in the design room BEFORE the war ever started. Same with Japan. Hell, the P-80 shooting star was well on its initial design phase in 1941 and never saw action in WWII at all. The B-29 hit the board in 1939 and was rushed into action in mid 1944 long before it was really even ready! So the whole notion of research as it exists in the game is a bit misguided.

But even if you take research away (or just make it generic), but still allow tweeking of production that results in those Franks, even if delivered on schedule we still should be able to use them to replace those Oscars still flying around in late 1944/early 1945....IF they are available in quantity in the pool. And open up the Allies, too....to be consistant...

[Oznoyng]

What I want to fix is this:

It is late '44 and I am losing badly, Saipan just fell and B-29's have begun destroying Japan. A couple of CV battles in 42 sent the pre-war American CV's to the bottom. I reached PM and was able to capture and damage Auckland, though I had to retreat. I held Guadalcanal til early March 43. Oz was cut off for almost 6 months. Oil and resources from the SRA have sustained the economy, but those supplies no longer come. Steel sharks of the US navy tear apart our merchants and litter the seabed with the oil and ores that would otherwise feed the economy. All is lost and there is nothing left to fight to the bitter end.

The juggernaut that is the United States has produced and produced and produced and is simply grinding us to dust. In the 6 month reprieve that I have gotten, I managed to produce an extra 1800 aircraft, mostly late model fighters. Over 1000 Oscar's are still in service, despite the fact that I have better aircraft to replace them.

Why? Cuz someone thinks that Saipan fell 6 months ago.

[Captain Cruft]

I do believe Lemurs!'s modded scenario 15 addresses this particular point about the Oscars. All Army fighter groups end up with either Franks or Tonys.

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: Oznoyng

What I want to fix is this:

It is late '44 and I am losing badly, Saipan just fell and B-29's have begun destroying Japan. A couple of CV battles in 42 sent the pre-war American CV's to the bottom. I reached PM and was able to capture and damage Auckland, though I had to retreat. I held Guadalcanal til early March 43. Oz was cut off for almost 6 months. Oil and resources from the SRA have sustained the economy, but those supplies no longer come. Steel sharks of the US navy tear apart our merchants and litter the seabed with the oil and ores that would otherwise feed the economy. All is lost and there is nothing left to fight to the bitter end.

The juggernaut that is the United States has produced and produced and produced and is simply grinding us to dust. In the 6 month reprieve that I have gotten, I managed to produce an extra 1800 aircraft, mostly late model fighters. Over 1000 Oscar's are still in service, despite the fact that I have better aircraft to replace them.

Why? Cuz someone thinks that Saipan fell 6 months ago.

Excellent post. I agree 100%. But we can already do this; just take the info from Warspites last post and open up the editor....

[Mr.Frag]

But even if you take research away (or just make it generic), but still allow tweeking of production that results in those Franks, even if delivered on schedule we still should be able to use them to replace those Oscars still flying around in late 1944/early 1945....IF they are available in quantity in the pool. And open up the Allies, too....to be consistant...

And once again, that is where I can agree 100% with everyone ...

If you don't exploit the research model, go ahead and do what you want.

The problem is when people want to exploit the research model *then* use the justification of "I have these aircraft" ... that's when I start ranting. Bringing in the "I just want to downgrade" does not break these two apart, it is still one and the same "I have these aircraft" ...

If people can get together and agree on the fact that these to are linked together, perhaps we can come up with a solution that (a) makes people happy and (b) can be sold to 2BY3

[Oznoyng]

ORIGINAL: Culiacan Mexico

ORIGINAL: Oznoyng

ORIGINAL: Culiacan Mexico
It distorts the game historically.

History goes out the window as soon as I enter orders and the random number generator gets involved in resolving the first turn. We can adhere closely to the realities of WW2, but we can't reproduce it. And why would we want to? I can go read books if I want that. The problem with this rule is that it crosses the line between adhering to the realities and enforcing history on a situation that differs from history.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think most of us want certain limits. We want the game to maintain some kind of historical flavor as I believe the developers do also. While allowing every Japanese army unit to fly Franks might be great in the game, was it likely to happen historically… I don’t believe so.

That is why I distinguish between "adhering closely to the realities of WW2" and reproducing it. Frag views the amount of resources that Japan has, and the state of her economy as being fixed to historical results. In a game that models shipments from the SRA to Japan, more shipments to Japan means a healthier economy for longer. A healthier economy means more planes built, and more time means more time to deploy a pool of Tony's, Franks, or whatever, to more operational squadrons. If Japan enjoys more resources because more emphasis on ASW, delays to the historical timetable of conquests, depriving the Allies of forward bases for their subs, etc. then she can and should see the results in her economy. That in turn affects what is available to deploy to active squadrons. None of that is unreasonable.

Unfortunately, Frag is muddying the waters. He is using research as a reason not to do this. I have already expressed, numerous times, that I don't think research in it's current form should be in the game at all. I think it should be gone from the game or rewritten. I agree with Frag completely on that point. But to me, they are seperate issues.

The problem is, research can be dealt with as a seperate thread and ultimately can be handled by a house rule: "No research of aircraft other than those at start, and no reassignment of research factories to anything else." Fixing aircraft upgrades, at the very least, requires an OOB change. To be truly effective, it requires code changes.

[mdiehl]

I do not agree that Frag is arguing for exactly tracking the historical model nor that yours closely adheres to what the Japanese might have done. In WW2, Japan did not suffer substantial losses from bombing until late 1944 and substantial shipping losses to submarines until mid-1943. They were still incapable, for a variety of reasons, of introducing even a strong second place contender aircraft like the Ki-84 or Ki-100 until rather late in the war. Pretending that these designs might have arrived much earlier or in greater numbers is as serious a deviation as, for example, allowing all US factories to build F4Us in 1942 and all new US CV, CVL and CVE construction to be equipped with units flying same.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

As far as I can remember this debate here is the most "heated" one we ever saw in WitP forum (and I think UV as well - don't remember any topic that produced such heated discussion in past 2+ years)... [8D]


IMHO, there should be alteration in official WitP scenarios and more options for upgrade should be present for both sides.


Leo "Apollo11"

[Oznoyng]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag
If people can get together and agree on the fact that these to are linked together, perhaps we can come up with a solution that (a) makes people happy and (b) can be sold to 2BY3

I can't because they aren't. The use of one rule should not imply you can't use another also. When it comes to PBEM games, players can set house rules to play by which can include how production and upgrades will be handled. For some, research is something that they want. For others, they don't want to be anywhere near it. Let the players that are playing make the choice.

My problem is that the upgrade paths editable in the scenario and db editors are not flexible enough and will actually cause more focus than a player may want. If I make Oscars upgrade to Tony's, and then to Tojo's then all production of Oscar's ceases when the Tony is available and all Tony's when the Tojo appears. The factories autoconvert. When an upgraded model is available, I can then produce it and only it. On the other hand, I may want to have all 3 around. I keep the Oscars as long range escorts for my bombers, I keep the Tony around because of it's better guns, but later want all Tojo's for it's rate of climb to intercept bombers. A linear upgrade path per Lemurs Scen 26 locks me in again. A few game option toggles take care of it. Dis/Allow production, Auto convert factories, and Allow upgrades within types. None of them, singly, or taken together, is all that hard to do.