ETA release & info update

[macgregor]

There's no way to vary of the speed of individual naval units in TOAW. Get a naval simulation.

Thanks for the info. Get a naval simulation? I take it you don't want to see my idea manifested in TOAW. I've given it considerable thought and am thoroughly convinced it would work brilliantly. That's not to say I could get you to like it. We'll see how prevalent the resistance to this idea is. Perhaps one of us will need to find another game.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lava

Well, people sometimes forget to do things, and want to repeat their move. However, saying that, the best I've seen is a system where after the first go through the save, combat results start degrading against the player.

I'm really against such a hard-coded system against cheating anyway, since it makes the game less functional for everything except ladder play. If people are going to cheat they're going to bloody cheat. If you make the save decay, you have to make sure the player can only ever have one copy of the save anyway.

Personally, I found the Massive Assault Network gaming system the best I've experienced, and at least for me, PBEM to be quite cumbersome.

It really depends on your e-mail habits, I would think. PBM works fine for me.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Chuck2
Well, I think he is looking for a kind of standardization of all these modified exes. It would make it easier for the casual player to know what they are getting into. We saw something like this initially with the 19th century database and later the modern JMS database.

Well;
a) a good designer will have complete documentation with his scenarios, especially any modified equipment.
b) if a modified database was incorporated into the .sce (and .sav) files, then it would be fairly straightforward to pull up a list of all scenario-specific equipment rather than having to trawl through two thousand items for it.

It's unfortunate, but a lot of players aren't interested in this concept.

Most players have very different ideas about what makes a good scenario than do designers. Naturally I feel the players should change- and they feel I should change. Neither is going to happen.

[Chuck2]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Chuck2
Well, I think he is looking for a kind of standardization of all these modified exes. It would make it easier for the casual player to know what they are getting into. We saw something like this initially with the 19th century database and later the modern JMS database.

Well;
a) a good designer will have complete documentation with his scenarios, especially any modified equipment.
b) if a modified database was incorporated into the .sce (and .sav) files, then it would be fairly straightforward to pull up a list of all scenario-specific equipment rather than having to trawl through two thousand items for it.

I suppose most players don't want much more in the way of documentation to read. The existing documents are fairly comprehensive. Ultimately, it's what the players want that counts as they are the people who buy the games and play scenarios.

[macgregor]

There's no way to vary of the speed of individual naval units in TOAW. Get a naval simulation.

I think I may have misinterpreted you. You actually misinterpreted what I said. I don't want the ability to vary the speed of an individual ship. You're assuming the ridiculous. My idea is to have a multi-hit naval unit where the speed could be a potential casualty. Thus one ship would have several hulls of vaying speeds and, depending on damage sustained, could only utilize the highest avaiable one. Not one hull with an adjustable speed. What sense does that make? TOAW does't occur in realtime.

[DanNeely]

I think you're trying to make it too complicated. Toaw's land movement already provides all the needed base functionality, units with heavy equiptment have thier speed based on the ammount of transport (horses/trucks/apcs) relative to the ammount of heavy equiptment (towed guns, etc) they have. Replace the existing naval movement rules with the existing land ones (just with a different max speed), and componentize naval vessels with everything except the engines as heavy equipment and the engines as transport units with a capacity/speed of X/Y and you'll have a basic version of what you want.

[macgregor]

Perhaps I am. Well, thank you for not trying to dissuade me from attempting to imagine a better TOAW. You apparently undestand more about the game mechanics than I. As long as the naval combat can produce realistic results while maintaining some degree of operational control, I should be happy.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

Thanks for the info. Get a naval simulation? I take it you don't want to see my idea manifested in TOAW. I've given it considerable thought and am thoroughly convinced it would work brilliantly. That's not to say I could get you to like it. We'll see how prevalent the resistance to this idea is. Perhaps one of us will need to find another game.

Two points that deserve making again;
a) programming the kind of in-depth naval simulation that some players want would take a lot of time and effort, and this takes away from features I would rather see.
b) I play TOAW because I am interesting in land warfare in the 20th century. Naval warfare is OK- but only really in broad strokes. I don't want to have to worry about the movements of individual ships in the same way as I worry about the movements of individual battalions. If this could be automated, fine- but then this is still more programming effort and a further detraction from other features.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Chuck2

I suppose most players don't want much more in the way of documentation to read. The existing documents are fairly comprehensive. Ultimately, it's what the players want that counts as they are the people who buy the games and play scenarios.

Well, you said the players would want to know what's different about the .exe. If so, they can read the documentation. If not, then what's the problem?

Of course, there is the point that a lot of designers are excessively verbose. Looking at a few of the briefings I have on my computer, one is 22,000 words, another 27,000 and one 38,000 words. This is all very well if it's well-organised, but very often historical detail is mixed in with the important information on the mechanics of the scenario. This results in players having to read the equivalent of a short novel before they can even begin to play competently.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

I think I may have misinterpreted you. You actually misinterpreted what I said. I don't want the ability to vary the speed of an individual ship. You're assuming the ridiculous. My idea is to have a multi-hit naval unit where the speed could be a potential casualty. Thus one ship would have several hulls of vaying speeds and, depending on damage sustained, could only utilize the highest avaiable one. Not one hull with an adjustable speed. What sense does that make? TOAW does't occur in realtime.

I didn't misunderstand you. You can't do that either. In TOAW as it stands, all naval units in a single force will have the same move. It will only change if supply or readiness decreases.

Dan's approach would get you what you want- but I'm not sure what that achieves. The speed of a ship means more than just how far it can travel in a turn, it also affects interception, etc. You'd need a complicated chunk of programming to handle all that. There are other things I'd rather see done first.

[Rob322]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

Perhaps I am. Well, thank you for not trying to dissuade me from attempting to imagine a better TOAW. You apparently undestand more about the game mechanics than I. As long as the naval combat can produce realistic results while maintaining some degree of operational control, I should be happy.

I'm glad to see Matrix is attempting to resurrect my favorite game. I never played with naval in the old game except for the rare shore bombardment. The lack of naval's ability to intercept (although it was fun sailing German troop convoys around British BB's in Sealion) amongst other things made it such that I tended to edit navies out of games and convert them into event engine chances.

I personally have no problem seeing the naval aspects of the game improved unless it detracts from other areas that are IMO more critical. I'm keen to see issues such as airbases resolved since airpower tends to have a greater conssitent effect on land operations than naval warfare does.

[Chuck2]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Chuck2

I suppose most players don't want much more in the way of documentation to read. The existing documents are fairly comprehensive. Ultimately, it's what the players want that counts as they are the people who buy the games and play scenarios.

Well, you said the players would want to know what's different about the .exe. If so, they can read the documentation. If not, then what's the problem?

Sort of. Players want "standardization" so they don't have to try to understand what each modified .exe is made up of.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Chuck2

Sort of. Players want "standardization" so they don't have to try to understand what each modified .exe is made up of.

Well, if the scenario is well-made, the effect should be appropriate and not require much thought from the player. For example, in EA2 I've created a great many duplicate equipment types. The players don't need to know how many copies I've made of each type or how each item is used- just that each nation uses a separate replacement pool for most of its equipment.

[macgregor]

Dan's approach would get you what you want- but I'm not sure what that achieves. The speed of a ship means more than just how far it can travel in a turn, it also affects interception, etc. You'd need a complicated chunk of programming to handle all that. There are other things I'd rather see done first.

You'd have to read more of my posts in order to understand what I want to do (I hope Ralph does). This is a game with millions of potenetial scenarios. How can you be so selfish as to want to close it off to all but land warfare. Please don't respond GD. I'm done with you.

[DanNeely]

Broadly speaking my views are closer to GD's than MG's. While I'd like a significantly improved naval model, it's not a top priority for me; which is why I'm trying to come up with improvements that wouldn't require major engine changes requiring extensive development and testing efforts. Depending on how much the land model's improved in the initial matrix release, and the level of effort they're willing to put into updating it afterwards my priorities are subject to change. But even if, I'm more interested in a good beer and pretzels level simulation, rather than adding harpoon into toaw.

[Chuck2]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Chuck2

Sort of. Players want "standardization" so they don't have to try to understand what each modified .exe is made up of.

Well, if the scenario is well-made, the effect should be appropriate and not require much thought from the player. For example, in EA2 I've created a great many duplicate equipment types. The players don't need to know how many copies I've made of each type or how each item is used- just that each nation uses a separate replacement pool for most of its equipment.

I think this is a good example. While your modified EA variant fixes some problems of the orginial non-modified EA scenario, most people still play the latter.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: macgregor
You'd have to read more of my posts in order to understand what I want to do (I hope Ralph does). This is a game with millions of potenetial scenarios. How can you be so selfish as to want to close it off to all but land warfare. Please don't respond GD. I'm done with you.

In an ideal world, TOAW would be able to deal with all these millions of scenarios.

However, as I'm sure you're aware, we don't live in an ideal world. Someone is going to have to make a cost-benefit analysis. I feel that a vigorous naval simulation is too much cost for not enough benefit. If Matrix had infinite resources to devote to this project, I'd welcome such a development. As they do not, I find posts such as yours above both unrealistic and unhelpful.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Chuck2

I think this is a good example. While your modified EA variant fixes some problems of the orginial non-modified EA scenario, most people still play the latter.

This is because I was banned from WHQ just before EA2 was released, because people like the nuances of the original even where they have nothing to do with reality, and because EA2 is unquestionably unbalanced and is more likely to contain bugs (though I am fairly sure I have ironed out all the significant ones).

[Chuck2]

ORIGINAL: DanNeely

Broadly speaking my views are closer to GD's than MG's. While I'd like a significantly improved naval model, it's not a top priority for me; which is why I'm trying to come up with improvements that wouldn't require major engine changes requiring extensive development and testing efforts. Depending on how much the land model's improved in the initial matrix release, and the level of effort they're willing to put into updating it afterwards my priorities are subject to change. But even if, I'm more interested in a good beer and pretzels level simulation, rather than adding harpoon into toaw.

I'd like to see some basic upgrades:

1. Air interdiction of naval ships.
2. Coastal gun interdiction of naval ships.
3. Different values for ship transport and amphibious operations.
4. Simplified mines and subs (could even be the same feature).
5. More realistic results when ships engage each other.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Chuck2
I'd like to see some basic upgrades:

1. Air interdiction of naval ships.
2. Coastal gun interdiction of naval ships.
3. Different values for ship transport and amphibious operations.
4. Simplified mines and subs (could even be the same feature).
5. More realistic results when ships engage each other.

Yeah. Besides 4) and 5) this is all fairly straightforward.

We brainstormed 4) at TDG. The general idea as I recall was to have an area which would have a chance of damaging or destroying ships moving through it (an effect which would also perhaps be attenuated at the same time). The area and its strength could either be fixed or adjustable depending on the situation. Naturally, the larger the area, the weaker the effect.

So long as all this could be managed without an in-depth appreciation of the ins-and-outs of naval warfare, it would be all to the good. Of course, there are other priorities.