Matrix Games Forums

As for WitE, it is what it is. We feel the game is reaching stasis (with large amounts of air transport,

Sadly. For my part this refuelingfest kinda ruins the feeling of it. Both because of its completely irrealistic effectiveness and because (and probably mainly because) the Luftwaffe would never have acepted to relinquish its primary role and subordinate itself completely to the Heer. LW leaders were extremely independent vis à vis their ground forces counterparts and very jealous of their prerogatives.
I understand major fixes are not adquate as it is, what would be left for WitE 2.0, but simple fixes could help, an ADMIN cost of putting bombers to resupplying as proposed earlier, for example

Thanks for your honesty Joel, and I understand perfectly what you are saying.

Iota, my current opponent and I are restarting. The house rule we are using re this issue is:

Only transport aircraft can transport supplies to motorised and tank formations, unless the formation begins the turn isolated, when bombers can be used. Otherwise bombers can be used to transport supplies to non motorised formations only.

janh -

Just based on reviewing air combat reports - air to air, air to ground, even air to ship - air results were over stated though out the war by everybody.

Air to air combat seemed to be consistently overstated by about 3 to 4 to 1.

Ground kills by the 10 to 15 to 1 for AFVs and 5 to 10 to 1 for soft vehicles.

Ship kills by about 2 to 1.

And this was highly consistent among all the major combatants. No one has determined why, but the reports really do so this consistent pattern on all fronts - Western, Desert, East, and Pacific.

What is extremely difficult to determine is the impact of CAS on the ground. While the kills are not that high, the suppression of fire and movement was high. How did this impact the ground combat? and how much? Don't know, but it did have a big impact in some large battles based on the losing sides reports.

The other thing that is always under estimated is the number of AFV destroyed or abandoned on the battlefield by their own side. Here it runs anywhere from 10 to 30% depending on the time, place and front. Even the Allies estimated that they abandon nearly 400 to 500 Shermans on the Western front due to tactical reason during the France campaign (many of these were recovered/reallocated before the Germans destroyed them). Just one of those things that I don't usually thing about. And a lot of those early BT tanks in Russian never even started or only moved a few miles then stopped - and were abandoned.

Joel -

Just one last point. Thank you for a great game. While the warts get pointed out here, at the end of the day, it has provided a highly cost effective entertainment value for the dollar to me. And I suspect that true for everyone that participates in the forum.

I also appreciate the comments and feedback from you and others on the design team. You don't get that on most other forums. Look forward to WitW.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

We actually account for leader casualties in the rear, as seen by many posts over the past 2 years of people losing leaders in the rear far from visible combat. In fact, people found that bombing HQs could be too effective killing leaders, IIRC. There are so many ways that players push a game system. We cannot account for every factor, nor should we, although a game like WitP or WitE makes people think we can. But that's all philosophy (something my mother actually taught in school but I could never quite deal with). So practically speaking, yes, interdiction is not handled well in WitE, but in WitW it is a major component of the air/ground game. Absolutely now that we have airbases in WtiW we should make it much more efficient to fly supplies to airbases where they can then be disseminated, as opposed to flying cargo directly to units. I expect this will happen in WitW and WitE 2.0. As for WitE, it is what it is. We feel the game is reaching stasis (with large amounts of air transport, although I think you are minimizing the value of ground support). Wish we could do more, but further efforts are really going to have little return, and will only delay WitW and WitE 2.0. We feel that anyone coming into WitE now can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment from it, and those playing it have hopefully already had hundreds of hours of enjoyment and there have been many changes over the past 1-2 years to learn and absorb. As we've always said, the game is not perfect, but we feel it is pretty darn good and we've tried to support it as best we could (and probably more than we could afford to). Those wanting to see the next evolution of WitE will have to wait for WitE 2.0 which has to wait for WitW. We do appreciate your support as we move forward.

As I stated a simple fix is bombers cant drop fuel only supplies.

Making airbases disseminate supplies better is not going to stop poeple from fling supplies to airbases and units. Looks like it makes the exploit even better.

I dont see why only letting bombers drop supplies to fix a broken part of a game is a big deal.

I know we can simply put in plase a house rule saying only transports can drop fuel to nerf the exploit.

I hope this exploit is completely nerfed for witw or a Flaviusx said Patton will be in Berlin in Dec 1944.

I am not suree how 2by3 is going to address the logistic issue for witw, but its one area wite has completely failed at.

Its been the number one issue patch after patch, hopefully the new system finally fixes it.

ORIGINAL: Klydon

One thing I would caution is not to just focus on the Germans (some mention of the Allies for WitW has happen, which is good). I am finishing up a Russian game and once again, GS is off for the most part and every available plane is flying gas to mostly tank corps (Mech corps are the biggest gas hogs I have ever seen). This helps give them some extra mobility to advance more.

This issue makes for a better then normal blizzard. 40+ Mp tank units is normal even when they get cut off. There is more then enough bombers to keep a bunch of units with high MP's. Why I kinda laugh when I see GHC players using regiments to defend front. TDV is a master of SHC blizzards.