Expanding Base Forces

[EricLarsen]

Joel,
Thanks for getting back on this issue so quickly and personally, and pass along my thanks to Gary and any others involved as well. I'm definitely dismayed by your decision to opt to say the manual is wrong and you don't want to fix the code. While this won't have any effect in a very short scenario, and little effect in scenarios up to 60 days, the effect becomes far more pronounced in the very long campaign games. I've gotten past the 6-month point playing daily turns in the Decisive Action scenario as the IJN and it's becoming a rather frustrating big problem. After starting the game spreading out my base forces I've had to yank many away to consolidate at a few bases near Port Moresby. Because of malaria the number of ready avaition support is becoming a problem. Without some sort of additions aviation support is just too inadequate for the flood of plane units I have and that will keep on coming in. Because I'm playing a very long hypothetical scenario where I cranked up ships to 200% for both sides I could care less about historical accuracy, I just want to have fun sinking ships, building bases, bombing bases, and invading bases. Every board and computer wargame overstates combat action because we players are pushing around cardboard and pixel military units, not sending real men and women to their deaths. Part of the problem may be that bases can be built up too quickly and that should be lengthened, maybe your initial delay period between a a base expansion and the time the program releases addional avaition support is too short and needs to be lengthened. But please Joel and Gary don't opt to cop out on this issue and take the easy way out by merely saying oops we forgot to change the manual. Give us a choice. Give us a preference button so we can turn it on or off as suits our pleasure. Put a delay factor in the scenario designer so the scenario designer can set it to his intentions. Please do something to give us a choice rather than taking the easy way out now and bumming some of us out just for the sake of historical accuracy over having fun. We play these games for fun and while I'm a stickler for historical accuracy I also like to sometimes just have fun and not worry about historical accuracy. As for giving the AI a boost I'm all for it. Your current decision has certainly put a damper on my enthusiasm about UV, but I'm hopeful you and Gary will find a way to keep the game historically accurate for historical scenarios while allowing for some fun in hypothetical scenarios where fun is more important than historical accuracy and where we can try other strategies and tactics that weren't used historically to try out the "What If" possibilities these games are supposed to provide us with.
Thanks,

Eric

[mjk428]

Undercover/Not Chicken Salad,
Try reading Ross's comment more carefully and understand what is said and what is inferred. While I know he was trying to be helpful his comment was totally off the mark and inferred that those of us complaining about the base force discrepancy did not know what we were doing. His suggestion would have done nothing to correct the problem being reported. I was just trying to open people's eye's to a bug that has since been confirmed. Obviously Ross's inference went way over your head, rook!

Hi EricLarsen,

I'm not UCS but I believe you're the one that needs to go back and read Ross' comment more carefully. All he did was ask a question. It was one sentence. There was nothing sarcastic and nothing inferred. If you felt that your intelligence was questioned, maybe you're over-sensitive in that area.

It was obvious to me and others that Ross simply misunderstood the problem PaulChen was having. It's easy to do when you read so many posts. While he should have understood he didn't. It was a very small mistake and no harm was done. Your response was way over the top.

MK

[EricLarsen]

Joel,
After my last post I realized what is wrong with how you initially set up base force expansion. You set it so that the program picks a base force at random for the base force expansion check which would allow players to stack a bunch of small base forces in a big level 9 base and have them all grow up far too quickly. This would be a game system gimmick that would allow players to cheat at getting too much aviation support too quickly and I don't want that. The program should pick the biggest base force (or the first biggest in case of a tie) at any base and only expand that one base force, ignoring any others for additional av support. That way players would be able to spread out their base forces as I think you originally intended them to do to mimmick historical usage while slowly gaining more avaition support as the smaller bases grow slowly. Allowing the AI to bunch them up is fine as it needs the help, as does any game's AI. I hope that you and Gary will find this to be an equitable solution that hopefully wouldn't be hard to implement coding-wise.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[Joel Billings]

Ok, let's clear up a few things. I'm not picking "the manual is wrong" option because it is the easy way out. It was actually our intended plan, we just forgot it (this game is big and we deal with hundreds/thousands of changes in development and can't remember all of them). Currently Gary and I are onto other projects with Mike Wood doing patch work on UV. We only occasionally look at UV issues so we've already started to forget some things about UV. Which scenario is the Decisive Action scenario? Is that number 19 or 17. If 19, it is very possible that due to the increased forces in this scenario, Rich should put some reinforcement base forces into the OOB. I'd rather do things that way for selected scenarios as opposed to giving more base forces than should be there in the other scenarios. Of course doing nothing is the easy way, but that's not the only (or even the main) reason for leaving things the way they are.

As for the problem with many base forces at a base, the computer program already picks one base force to be the primary base force for each base (this is totally invisible to the player and not within his control). Only that one base force gets built up, so there is no worry that multiple units get built up. Of course, if we were to make a change to make this a feature for human players, we would ideally indicate which base force was the primary base force for each base (somewhere on one of the interface screens). Again, my take on this now is to not change things, and allow the scenario designers to assign reinforcements that they believe the players should get in each scenario.

I realize that this will no doubt lead to shortages of aviation support in 43 in long campaigns (especially late 43) as players always push more planes to the front and operate forward at higher than historical levels. In the real campaign a lot of planes stayed behind (being rotated in and out of combat) and there were large periods of relative inactivity. Even support personnel were rotated out of malaria zones to allow them to recover (maybe not true for the Japanese, but by late 43 there position with regards to air ops was horrible). There are few things restricting players to more realistic levels of combat operations, supplies and fuel at the front being one and aviation support being the other. I hesitate to take away the restrictive nature of this second item on operations.

By the way, have you ever seen a player rotate significant ground forces out of a forward area? Probably not too often. My guess is that players are usually letting them die in the malaria zones and using every transport to haul supplies and more fresh troops forward. Hopefully at least the double VP cost for Allied troops is costing US players some VPs if they ignore their troops.

What would be most helpful would be if future comments include specific scenario numbers where base force limitations are having an impact on operations, when they are limiting operations, and whether you believe these limitations are greater than would be "historical" given the operations undertaken. Thanks for taking the time to express your views on this subject.

[UndercoverNotChickenSalad]

"I was just trying to open people's eye's "

hehe.

Good luck it ain't easy.

[1089]

Originally posted by EricLarsen
Undercover/Not Chicken Salad,
Try reading Ross's comment more carefully and understand what is said and what is inferred. While I know he was trying to be helpful his comment was totally off the mark and inferred that those of us complaining about the base force discrepancy did not know what we were doing. His suggestion would have done nothing to correct the problem being reported. I was just trying to open people's eye's to a bug that has since been confirmed. Obviously Ross's inference went way over your head, rook!

Eric,
Your comment regarding reading Ross's comment more carefully and understanding what is said and what is inferred is really stupid. You must think we're idiots or something, and now that many posters are complaining about the same **** thing why don't you stop playing these idiotic "let's blame it on reader error" rather than blaming it on poor manners as is the case. Besides, Ross' comment was an attempt to be helpful, so your comment makes me wonder if you have ever read his post. I read the post and made sure to have plenty of expectation of implied (not inferred) meanings, and even with maximum expectation there have been no expansion of implications. I have gotten to 07/19/02 and have not gotten any new implications from his post. The playtester side always gives more product support so there is something wrong on the user side of the posting equation. I was wondering if maybe it has something to do with the upbringing. ..... Please stop wasting time trying to deny these valid poster complaints and just say I apologize for being a hot-headed poster. That's what we want to hear!

Thanks,
kp

[EricLarsen]

Joel,
Excuse me for not using scenario numbers, but merely the scenario title to explain which scenario I was having difficulty with. Every other game with every other game company that I've ever sent bug reports to used the scenario title as the source of reference.
As for how the program selects the base force for expansion the manual says it does this on a random basis, while your last post seems to indicate that isn't quite so. Yet my experience of watching what the AI did supports the manual as I have seen multiple base forces in one hex, Noumea, all grow to the max. I tried to keep a base force and air units in Truk until I either trained them up or until some base I intended them for was ready for them. When I got divisions in I would send the HQ, a regiment, and the engineer unit to a forward base while keeping the rest back in Truk to reduce losses from malaria. What's sadly ironic is that in your desire to maintain historical accuracy by having players keep base forces and air units in rear areas you have actually forced me to have to drag those rear-area units forward and keep nothing back. I still maintain some air units back in Rabaul, Kavieng and Shortland and as they come in at Wewak where I just set them to training at level zero. I no longer have a base force at Truk, nor any air units, thanks to the lack of new avaiation support that should have been forthcoming and now never will.
I guess I should have used "caveat emtor" when considering the purchase of yet another overly-bugged Grigsby product that will never be more than partially fixed. Now I'll have to tell my friends that they were right and I was wrong for trying to push the virtues of UV and 2by3 and Matrix. Time to circular file my copy of the game.
Sayonara forever!

[Erik Rutins]

Eric,

I'm sad to read your response here. First, let me say that there is no scenario called "Decisive Action", therefore Joel is well within reason in asking for the scenario number. I'm guessing you mean "Decision in the Pacific" but that's a guess. I would hope that before you climb all over Joel for asking for the number, you'd check to make sure you're using a real name.

To put things in perspective, I'm e-mailing back and forth with Joel and others every day discussing issues raised on this board as well as in our own testing circles. We are continuing to do a balancing act with everyone's resources to provide patches and improvements to UV as quickly as possible while continuing development on other projects as well (Battlefields! for me, War in the Pacific for Joel, Gary and Keith). Most game companies do not even bother to respond to every bug report or feature request. In this thread, you received multiple responses which, while not to your taste, were honest and open. We're neither omniscient nor infallible, but UV is a pretty darn good wargame out of the box and we've been listening, testing and making it better.

Right now, we have a long list of possible features to add and possible bugs to investigate. We have been and continue to work long hours meeting our obligation to our customers. No complaints there, but realize that this is hardly what I'd call a lack of support. In that overall context is the question regarding base forces. The fact is that the game works whether base forces expand or not. Joel's point of view is that the lack of base force expansion is more historical. Yours is that it is not. My view is that I'd like to see it back in, but it's not anywhere near the top of the list considering we have bugs to fix. However you look at it, it's a design decision.

If the manual didn't state that base forces expand, this would likely be a non-issue because it is not a game-breaker by any stretch of the imagination. I saw base forces expand (apparently now during an earlier build in testing) and while it was nice, I've played full campaigns since then without that feature. Base force rotation works and the Japanese are supposed to be stretched for support in '43. It is definitely difficult as Japan to keep everything supported and supplied, but this was the historical situation as well.

I recall your input in the TOAW days on testing and scenario design as well reasoned, but what I see here is that you appear to have quite a short fuse. All other things aside, I can't imagine personally as a wargamer chucking UV because I didn't agree with the base force expansion decision. Surely, you didn't agree with every design decision in TOAW or other wargames you've played?

In my opinion, Joel's within reason in making this a design decision and you're within reason in saying "If it's in the manual, it ought to happen". Those things can coexist without a matter/anti-matter reaction.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mark W Carver]

Originally posted by EricLarsen
Sayonara forever!

Thank You!:rolleyes:

[Joel Billings]

Thanks Erik.

If Eric Larsen ever comes back I'd still be interested in knowing what scenario he was talking about.

Joel

[Drongo]

Has anyone at matrix thought of turning some of these threads into a wargame. From the number of hits to this one, I think you would have a winner.

As a suggestion for those who wish to concentrate more on the action and less on the logistics, perhaps they could simply make use of the handy-dandy editor that comes free with every copy purchased of UV (personally, I would prefer something useful like a genuine samuraii sword for when one suffers an embaressing loss to the AI). The editor could be used to turn some of the existing base force reinforcements in the much discussed scenario X into a size that meets their needs. For example, if the JAPanese (must be PC) player's expansion plans include the intended use of 4 extra major air bases beyond Truk/Rabaul, simply edit scenario X to change four of the 30/40/30 base force LCU reinforcements into four 30/150/90 units. This at least avoids any need to change the code.

And if you don't agree with me then you're a MORON and this game SUCKS and I wouldn't even use the STUPID CD as a beermat and the playtester's must have had their heads up their **** and the other players are full of **** and I had any friends I would tell them the game SUCKS and don't buy it and I would also leave this forum and never return except its the only place anyone ever talks to me and why don't people like me and.......

[Drongo]

and...........apologies to Eric (if you ever come back), it was not the intention of this post to insult you, just a little attempt at levity. I too have suffered under the weight of the logistics demands in long scenarios:mad: .

[Sven Nyqvist]

I do not understand the exitement about this. I was curious as how it did work. I thought that I might have misunderstood something. Personally I woundn't mind Base Force expansion, but as someone pointed out, you can alwals use the editor. (Change Japanese Base Forces from 30/40/30 to 90/300/300 or something like that). I have actually made an ahistorical scenarion based on 19, where I added an extra carrier of the Shokaku class, some extra transports and and Sallys and Lilys in Lae. (I know this is unrealistic but I wanted to make some tests)

However because it is not No. 19 anymore I dont get the additional Air reinforcements and the better Pilots. Is this hardcoded or can I make some adjustments myself??

I have a suggestion on the fuel and supply question. At the moment it is impossible to run out of these things. I think the method used in "Great Naval Battles" from SSI that you receive a certain amount (please editable!) in Truk and Noumea each day a better solution. Now you may tank a hundred ships and load fuel and supplies on dozens of transports and still have 90000 of each.

I find UV one of the best Wargames I have ever encountered. Of course there are bugs (you can actually prove that a bug free program is mathematically impossible if the program is complex enough). This game is about:

1. Logistics
2. Logistics
3. Logistics
4. Organizing your transports
5. Battles

(just like the real thing)

I think there are so many "shoot them down" available anyhow that not everyone has to be about that.

[dgaad]

Originally posted by Joel Billings

By the way, have you ever seen a player rotate significant ground forces out of a forward area? Probably not too often. My guess is that players are usually letting them die in the malaria zones and using every transport to haul supplies and more fresh troops forward. Hopefully at least the double VP cost for Allied troops is costing US players some VPs if they ignore their troops.

I *would* do troop rotation in significant number *if* I could get transport released. I can't. See my thread comments in "transport poverty" et. al., which show more than half of available troop transports of the AP variety remained unreleased. Almost 80 AK ships remained unreleased by the end of the game.

I rotate back smaller forces such as raider bns, combat engineers, AA units, and so forth, to build them back up to strength. I would do this with larger forces but for the lack of transport.

As for base forces, I don't have a problem with the rule, now that its been stated. I do rotation of base support forces religiously, using Dakotas to ferry them back to a "rest" hex in a non-malaria zone. They build back to their original strength pretty well in about 3 weeks.

[EricLarsen]

Joel and all the rest of the gang,
After turning off my computer Friday and watching Farscape to lessen my frustrations I finally thought through the base force expansion connundrum and discovered the correct answer that surprisingly justifies your decision to drop the expansion of aviation support for human players (hopefully you still intend to let the AI have the boost). I'm sorry I didn't get the scenario title correct, it was scenario #17 - "Decision in the South Pacific". Your assertion that the decision would improve historical accuracy without giving any valid reason as to why was frustrating to me. Putting all your eggs in one basket (unlimited planes at a base with 250 av support) isn't a sound tactic and I doubt that there is any historical precedents to support such usage save for it being due to having no other options. I had to ask myself what is a base force, and most importantly what size unit does a base force represent. The answer is a base force can represent different sized units by having different TO&E's to represent battalion, regiment, brigade, or division sized units. Battalions don't grow to become regiments, and regiments don't grow to become brigades, and brigades don't grow to become divisions. So that is the simple and historically-backed answer that supports your decision and once I realized that I was able to have lots of fun this weekend running through about 45 daily turns to get my long-planned Port Moresby invasion accomplished.
I apologize for allowing Ross's honest attempt at helping to ignite the gasbag of years of frustration with software developers that put out defective products and who never ever bother to fix their defects to make the software work properly. I do accounting and tax work for my clients and they pay me to get the job done right the first time every time. I am human and I make mistakes just like everybody else, but I hedge my bets by having a proper set of checks and balances to ensure proper quality control. While once in a while something slips through my qc efforts I always fix my mistakes on my time and my dime. If I cause my clients penalty and interest I pay them for the client not only because it's the right thing to do but to give myself a good, swift kick in the rear to be more vigilant. Luckily that happens about once a decade so I'm comfortable with the quality of my work. I do not have a worthless warranty that's nothing but a piece of legal toilet paper (thanks Greedy Gates) to hide behind like the software industry does that absolves me of any responsibility to produce a proper product in the first place and absolves me of any legal responsibility to fix the defects later. What's most frustrating is when a really great game concept, like all of Gary's games have been, does not get properly executed and a gem of a game is marred by defects that cause frustrations that cuase the game to just end up collecting dust. Instead of telling me you've got too many other projects going to have time to finish the last game properly, try saying that you will finish the game properly eventually. I don't expect the game to go out perfect because I've been in the official beta test circuit and could see for myself the problems you have in trying to find all the bugs before releasing the game. What I do ask from 2by3 and Matrix is to be different from the rest of the software industry and to promise us, your customers, that regardless of the worthless warranty you'll be dedicated to putting out games that will always be fixed to work properly in the long run.
So in closing I apologize to Ross for allowing his honest attempt at help to cause me to blow a gasket, I apologize to you for not taking my chill pills before reading your replies and letting them further enrage me, and I apologize to all the other players and commenters for getting them all riled up in this process. I would like to thank and compliment Erik Rutins for maintaining his calm and actually trying to help me in a constructive manner, he actually took the time to e-mail me personally to ask for some saved-game files to help root out the problems I reported. After all the only thing I'm really interested in is seeing UV become the product it deserves to be so I can enjoy this gem of a game for years and years to come and not just toss it on the dust pile after a few weeks because I'm frustrated that there will be no further attempts to fix bugs that have caused me to lose interest.
Sincerely,

Eric Larsen

[EricLarsen]

Sven,
I too have thought it a bit much to have lots of transports and tankers loading up at Truk, Noumea, or Brisbane and the base always having maxed-out fuel and supplies the next turn. I think there should be some limiting factor, such as a daily allotment of fuel and supply that each of these bases can recover each day. That way each side won't have unlimited supply and fuel which is certainly not what they enjoyed historically.
Eric Larsen

[1089]

Originally posted by EricLarsen
So in closing I apologize to Ross for allowing his honest attempt at help to cause me to blow a gasket, I apologize to you for not taking my chill pills before reading your replies and letting them further enrage me, and I apologize to all the other players and commenters for getting them all riled up in this process.

Hi Eric--

Welcome to the forums. I'm glad you calmed down, and I'm sure you will contribute constructively to the forums in the future. Erik, Joel, Mike, Ross, and everyone from Matrix and 2x3 have been working overtime to make the changes that help improve the game, and so your initial post was somewhat off-the-wall, as you seem to have realized. I, for one, was not all riled up, I just cut and pasted your message to Ross, and then substituted some words to make it look like I was talking to you. I figured you might read it at first and get upset with the way I was treating you, and then realize it was just a paraphrase of your own post to Ross, and maybe think twice. That's why I put the smilie at the end. It seems you have for whatever reason, and I'm glad. We can use all the informed ideas we can get here.

kp

[mjk428]

Hi Eric Larsen,

I'm glad you're back

Bravo!!!

Regards,
Marty K

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by 1089


Hi Eric--

Welcome to the forums. I'm glad you calmed down, and I'm sure you will contribute constructively to the forums in the future. Erik, Joel, Mike, Ross, and everyone from Matrix and 2x3 have been working overtime to make the changes that help improve the game, and so your initial post was somewhat off-the-wall, as you seem to have realized. I, for one, was not all riled up, I just cut and pasted your message to Ross, and then substituted some words to make it look like I was talking to you. I figured you might read it at first and get upset with the way I was treating you, and then realize it was just a paraphrase of your own post to Ross, and maybe think twice. That's why I put the smilie at the end. It seems you have for whatever reason, and I'm glad. We can use all the informed ideas we can get here.

kp

1089,
Thanks for the reply. I finally figured out how to make a reply on this forum thanks to trying to figure out how you guys have been doing it to mine. I know how hard the guys work and that they're not in a get-rich-quick line of work since we're a specialty fringe of the software market. That's why I don't mind submitting bug reports when I find bugs in a game as I find it hard to break the bug-testing habit when I play and I try to contribute a little help back to them besides just the monetary help. Actually I have to take some time away from playing and write up my laundry list of bugs and other observations about the game. It's really a fun game to play and while most suggestions to tweak the game system will be a bit late to implement in UV hopefully they'll be in time for their bigger Pac War remake.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[Drongo]

By the way, have you ever seen a player rotate significant ground forces out of a forward area? Probably not too often. My guess is that players are usually letting them die in the malaria zones and using every transport to haul supplies and more fresh troops forward.

Like dgaad, I have been attempting to rotate my ground forces, especially between offensives. I have no strong opinion on whether the game should change to match the manual or the manual should match the game. However, given the efforts currently involved in finding and matching existing ground units with their replacement components, reintroducing base force replacements may be more trouble than its worth (at least until the interface allows an easier way of identifying where in the green hell the replacement should be sent!). I do agree with the concept of the Japanese player feeling the logistics pinch in 43.

This leads to a question for the Matrix staff (or anyone wandering through). I have played the Japanese side in S 17 and, being aware of what is coming, I have paid close attention to base force rotation whenever possible. What I have noticed is that, over time, base and other units suffer permanent losses. That is, their maximum (starting) unit strengths decrease and that decrease is not reflected in the bracketed figure (ie a base unit that started with (0) x 40 aviation engineers, drops to (3) x 32 through attrition, then becomes only (0) x 35 when rebuilt, even though any bracketed losses are regained. 5 aviation engineers appear to be permanently lost. I have never seen the missing 5 turn up as reinforcements).

My question is whether this was supposed to happen and, if so, why? I would have thought any unit could regain its original "paper" strength given time and reinforcements.

I did attempt to search the forum to see whether this had been asked and/or answered elsewhere but after seeing the size of the search results using "base" as a keyword, I thought bugger this for a joke!