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Also needless to say - if we do determine that some of the "resource" and supply production in the area are things like "rice" and sufficient de-ductions have not been made for the indigenous populations - then those will need to be considered. Even the Japanese won't be able to 100% starve the locals if they expect them to continue to assist with these "auto-generation" activities !

Also needless to say - if we do determine that some of the "resource" and supply production in the area are things like "rice" and sufficient de-ductions have not been made for the indigenous populations - then those will need to be considered. Even the Japanese won't be able to 100% starve the locals if they expect them to continue to assist with these "auto-generation" activities !

Rice is going to be a problem in our improvised model. Japan does NOT produce anything close to enough food for its population - only less than 2% of the land is tillable - and fishing does not feed everyone. But our model has food as part of supply - and if we want Japan EXPORTING supplies made by industry - by definition we cannot also set things up so it must IMPORT supplies to feed itself! Japan had no intention of ever surrendering Korea or Formosa because to do so would mean starvation - and in fact when we forced it to divest itself of them there WAS starvation.
We are going to have to accept that food is somewhat outside the scope of our model at least with respect to Japan.

In most of the rest of the area, we can factor out rural populations - peasants and subsistence hunter/gatherers feed themselves and have little to share with anyone - want to or not. It is the urban areas we have to deal with - the places where there are lots of people but not much food production - and where there are industries and other support institutions that need goods and workers who are too busy to be food gatherers.

Now if things get bad enough - people will grow food even in cities. When one of our investigating physicists visted the Rikken (a technical institute doing work on atomic physics in Tokyo), he came across the lone remaining Japanese physicist - tending a vegtable garden on the grounds! We have the story of that encounter from both sides, and both tell it the exact same way, so it is likely true, and illistrative of how people survive if they stay in badly damaged cities. If a city changes hands - and each time it does - the industry is cut in half - so are the supplies generated by heavy industry. It may be we can let what supplies are made there afterward not be eaten by a sink.

ORIGINAL: el cid again
I thought repair happens in a short time - days. How do you make it take a longer time?

Only one resource centre will be repaired per base per day, at least in my tests, so if there are 500 damaged centres at a base, they will take at least 500 days to repair completely.

I thought repair happens in a short time - days. How do you make it take a longer time?


Only one resource centre will be repaired per base per day, at least in my tests, so if there are 500 damaged centres at a base, they will take at least 500 days to repair completely.

You just gave me an idea. Thanks.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

This is very frustrating: I begin to wonder if we need to change languages? English and logic appear insiffucient.

Where have I read all this before? [:(]

While it is quite true that the area generates supplies in the sense of food, cement, commercial wood products, and many forms of traditional manufactured goods, it is also perfectly FALSE that it produces modern military materials like torpedoes, mines, aircraft, tanks, naval guns, artillery pieces, electronics and spares (to name a few salient ones). To allow a place with significant rice production to feed a modern military air group, or port with warships, ore any combat unit with ammunition needs, is utter fiction and poor modeling. [I recommended three kinds of supply - fuel, ammo and general - but the model was simplified from that]. Of the many technical problems with WITP this is the BIGGEST and the most serious structural reason it is not a valid simulation - even in a crude sense. Failing to admit this - and opposing forming a consensus that it is the case - means Matrix won't address it - which is where it really needs to be addressed. Mogami is not contributing to a solution - he is dening there is any problem to solve. And I find it very frustrating since he clearly is incorrect in that opinion.

Russ means well, but he is incapable to conceptualize this title as anything other than a game (as opposed to a simulation per se) that he happens to be enthralled with to the point of utter obsession. There is also no little bit of "company loyalty" in there, which, while admirable in a certain light, makes any sort of "intellectual progress" along the lines delineated in the CHS section of the boards all but impossible. You could stand here all day long and spell it out in LARGE BLOCK LETTERS a foot tall and still you would make no headway with this man. He is the classic case of a person who sees only what he wishes to see, hears only what he wishes to hear. "Reality" as you understand the term doesn't enter into it with Russ. His "reality" is the WitP game model as it was so awkwardly published. End of story. And to that simplistic end Russ has committed himself 100%--heart, mind and soul.

I don't mean that to be a bash. Russ is a good guy at heart, and if I had a complicated game project that I wanted to see through to the bitter end then I could easily imagine a good place for him within its development scheme, for I know full well he'd give me all he had, and then some. But just mention any fundamental change to the WitP engine, no matter how meticulously researched this proposed change is, no matter how categorically fundamental the change is needed at face value in order to affect any further good progress of the game, and Russ automatically digs in his three-inch cowboy heels and posts the same (and I'm talking word for word here) stonewall objections that he has resorted to since I first visited this board in a serious manner after the publication of Uncommon Valor. That's just the way Russ is, and neither time nor good reason will alter that.

I would urge you (as far as words would allow) to simply ignore Russ (and other gainsayers like him--these people are legion, especially on the Japanese side of the board, but there are few bad Allied wrenches in the works, too, if memory serves) and pay strict attention to at least the principles of design theory which Ron Saueracker continues to harp on (he has learned the hard way that only repetition works--sometimes works), most especially with regard to his driving determination to "break the model." If I may say so, you are apparently digging in your own heels a little bit hard on that basic truth yourself. After all, how could anyone make heads or tails of this cockeyed excuse for a military model if one did not first break it in order to discover that fissure line where one might begin to conceive of useful correction?

Isn't it patently obvious that the cause of such a bad game design flows directly from the lack of effort to "break it" in the first place? Isn't that what a reasonable person would try to do with any statistical model. Break it? And if it breaks, then it must be a bad model. Except of course in the case before us it isn't just a bad model that's a little out of whack, but an almost completely dysfunctional model which hardly works at any level in any area of the game for more than a turn or two, at which juncture play degenerates into something . . . silly. Which is fine, if that's what you want. Silliness. But if you're looking for anything that even smacks of historicity, then a more serious and thoughtful approach is the order of the day.

As we don't even understand how the game works inwardly in many respects (thanks to little support from Matrix--everything around here is a state secret, you know), and as far as I know nobody has the resources to rewrite the game code (or even have the code itself in hand--and should that change, fine, but I'm not holding my breath), then it seems logical to me that there is then only way to approach the overall problem, and that is to do exactly what Ron suggests: break the model every place you can, both by overloading it and by starving it (in other words, subject its dynamics to the extremities of its own poor logic), take a gander through those results, then tinker with it some more.

This is, of course, an ape-like, hugely inefficient way to proceed. Dumb all the way around. But. It it is the only intelligent way to proceed that I am aware of given what we actually have to work with. Various "tweaks" suggested along the way might have some value, and might not, that's to tell, but when it comes to the logistics model this game is saddled with only a good old-fashioned breaking will do.

I don't plan on blowing a gasket again trying to move the proverbial Matrix mountain, so the final solution (assuming there is one, and I doubt this side of a serious code rewrite there is a final good solution) will be left up to you people. And I wish you will. But please try to stop thinking in terms of "tweaks" when it comes to supply. You can tweak port levels, but supply needs to be entirely rethought. From scratch. This game system's supply model will not respond productively to tweaks. That is for the reason that it never made any good sense (as in zero) to begin with.

I wish you well and I applaud your effort. [:)]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

I don't plan on blowing a gasket again trying to move the proverbial Matrix mountain

<yawn>

Executive summary please?

O.

Tristjohn,
It's been awhile since we've seen/heard from you. How are things going ?
From your post, can see some things haven't changed.

Oleg,
Let try to get along [:'(]. Your two haven't traded barbs in quite some time.

Hey Oleg. Care to do something other than blow roses up the devs asses?

Hi, Scout. Good to see you again, too. I guess you could say I've been "taking a break" from the game.

Apparently some never take a break. Oh, well. [;)]

Hi, Welcome back TJ and thanks for sticking up for me but please get my point of view correctly.

Ron states the problem with the game is it is too fast and this is because of over supply in SRA.

My position is supply in SRA has nothing to do with pace of game.
As Japan if I was required to move and stock every sort of item from mg ammo to 16inch ammo I would do it on turn 1 and you would see no change in pace of my games. Because I don't use SRA supply. Most games as Japan in fact I have to ship 500,000 supply points from Japan to repair SRA production.

Ships require size 8,9,10 ports to reload mines or torpedos or tenders. There are no size 8,9,10 ports in SRA not controled by Allies at start. (So it is the Allied player who can rearm not the Japanese)

Ron also objected to supply being used for land combat and I pointed out there were a great many ammo producing factories already in SRA. I don't think making more types of supply fixes any problems but would make the game more time consuming for little other effect. That is my point of view. In most games SRA costs Japan more supply then it produces during the period Dec 41 to July 42.

What speeds up Japanese progress is lack of enemy air units in contested areas and
Movement of Allied LCU out of SRA. Altering supply present or produced inside SRA has no effect on this.

Ron is free to change levels all he wants my point is simply In my games it would have no effect.
I have several AAR running currently and none of them have Japan ahead of schedule. Brady is way ahead of schedule as Allies but supply in or out of SRA has nothing to do with this. (He does not control the bases that generate supply and I am unable to transport supply from them or base units on them)

I think we always go back to a fundamental issue.
Does WITP have to be scripted (hardcoded) to force players down certain paths or should we simply let the players decide by their in game choices what kind of game they get.

Everything in WITP already exists as unique items as far as production and transport and cost. In order to replace a mortar lost from TOE of LCU in Burma as Japan I must have
1. A factory in Japan producing them
2. Line of supply to unit
3. Supply equal to load cost
4. Supply above a certain level (part of which must be imported)
5. Line from HQ to unit.

In the end supply equal to load cost of item has to have transited from Japan to hex item issued from. (No matter how much supply is in a hex only in Home Islands can items be produced using 100 percent of supply in excess of what base requires.)
In other hexes it is while supply is being unloaded that it is expended to replace items. Since the supply had to be loaded and moved no matter what form it was represented in game the player would have formed a TF of the correct type of ships and sent it to port where it is unloaded and expended. A lot of book work added for no change in end result.

On most other issues Ron S. wants hardcoded changes and I say "change the way you play and you don't need them" (If they were there you'd have to change to my style anyway)


Concerning number or types of Japanese transports it is more lack of Allied air then number of transports that decides pace. If Allies maintain air units then no amount of Japanese transports can speed up game because they can't sail. Without Allied air then a smaller number of transports would still proceed. Players wanting Japan to account for civilian needs don't need hardcode changes just send the amout of shipping you think correct to a Port and don't use them. (However once again is is more Allied efforts to impede movement then number of Japanese transports that effect game)
Brady has isolated Japan in Sept 1943.

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Hey Oleg. Care to do something other than blow roses up the devs asses?

LOL Ron this is a good one [:D]

O.

Any way about Resource Centers i DEI... why did Japan Conquered them undamaged??
-the Answer is Simple Japs told the Dutch that if they Blow up those places they all will be killed so is there any way to simulate this??[:D]

Hi, The Dutch did damage many of the centers. In 1943 the Japanese had repaired the SRA to produce 70 percent of the pre war output.

Now in some games Japan gets the SRA 100 percent working and so has a much higher resource/oil total compared to history.
In others Japan gets the SRA 100 percent damaged and as a result has a much lower total output. (Palembang 100 percent damaged requires 1,600,000 supply to repair and 1600 turns to get back to 100 percent.)

Personally I've never captured the SRA where it was not going to cost over 1,000,000 supply to repair it back to 100 percent.

Thats part of my debate with Ron. He claims there is too much supply. I say you don't know that because there may be no supply at all.

Any way about Resource Centers i DEI... why did Japan Conquered them undamaged??
-the Answer is Simple Japs told the Dutch that if they Blow up those places they all will be killed so is there any way to simulate this??

This must be a joke. Anyway, it isn't history. Japan TRIED to get Palembang with its refineries by surprise - committing the airborne of the Army for the first time (the Navy had used airborne already at Menado).
It failed. Then Japan sent its oil team by ship to fix the mess - and they ALL were lost when the ship was sunk! But Japan got lucky - the natives fixed things better than either Japan or the Europeans thought possible.

Hi, The Dutch did damage many of the centers. In 1943 the Japanese had repaired the SRA to produce 70 percent of the pre war output.

You must have found the official Japanese plan - because that is about right. Japan estimated it would take three years to get to 100% output - but it only took two years.

I am not having any significant damage taking these centers - and I think it is awful I get so much supply I need to run NONE to my troops!
Also, I can send 2 or 3 times as many troops as were sent - and they STILL eat off the land.

I have got supply sinks working now - and I am going to put them in RHS.
Does not look like they will get in CHS for the next release - because to do it right requires a lot of study. But any time you want to
a) eat supplies and
b) guarantee damaged resource centers
I can do it - WITHOUT using a slot mostly.

Hi, Where are you finding these centers where it is any help to send 2 or 3 times as many Japanese (I mean you've already captured the supply centers so you don't need more troops)
Palembang is in air range of Singapore and Batavia so before you can use that supply you have to capture those bases.
Tarakan and Balikpapan can provide supply for Java. (Kendari is in air range of Darwin and Timor)

In order for any SRA center to help with supply for capturing more SRA bases the Allied player has to withdraw airgroups. Take Palembang before Singapore or Batavia and they will simply damage any undamaged portions.


In any event production of supply/resource/oil does not cause me any concern. The largest issues in my games are the number of Allied heavy bomber units.
And players who ignore stacking limits at airfields. Players who bomb Chinese resources
Players who treat PT boats like ocean going combat ships. (Use them to attack Japanese ports rather then defend Allied ports or choke points near Allied ports becasue they are so cheap in VP and get lucky once in a while)

The basic problem is not abundance of supply but players who simply accept high loss among their transports, airgroups, surface ships and land units because they know they will get more.

If we got rid of VP for bases altogether and simply used VP for kills the game would slow down. Award VP for kills of AC based on crew and number of engines.
Make it so if a parent LCU is destroyed all the fragments are disbanded (would fix a slew of bugs)

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Hey Oleg. Care to do something other than blow roses up the devs asses?

LOL Ron this is a good one [:D]

O.

Yeah...I thought so! Mind you it was beer and poor dart play fueled.[;)]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, Welcome back TJ and thanks for sticking up for me but please get my point of view correctly.

Ron states the problem with the game is it is too fast and this is because of over supply in SRA.

My position is supply in SRA has nothing to do with pace of game.
As Japan if I was required to move and stock every sort of item from mg ammo to 16inch ammo I would do it on turn 1 and you would see no change in pace of my games. Because I don't use SRA supply. Most games as Japan in fact I have to ship 500,000 supply points from Japan to repair SRA production.

Ships require size 8,9,10 ports to reload mines or torpedos or tenders. There are no size 8,9,10 ports in SRA not controled by Allies at start. (So it is the Allied player who can rearm not the Japanese)

Ron also objected to supply being used for land combat and I pointed out there were a great many ammo producing factories already in SRA. I don't think making more types of supply fixes any problems but would make the game more time consuming for little other effect. That is my point of view. In most games SRA costs Japan more supply then it produces during the period Dec 41 to July 42.

What speeds up Japanese progress is lack of enemy air units in contested areas and
Movement of Allied LCU out of SRA. Altering supply present or produced inside SRA has no effect on this.

Ron is free to change levels all he wants my point is simply In my games it would have no effect.
I have several AAR running currently and none of them have Japan ahead of schedule. Brady is way ahead of schedule as Allies but supply in or out of SRA has nothing to do with this. (He does not control the bases that generate supply and I am unable to transport supply from them or base units on them)

I think we always go back to a fundamental issue.
Does WITP have to be scripted (hardcoded) to force players down certain paths or should we simply let the players decide by their in game choices what kind of game they get.

Everything in WITP already exists as unique items as far as production and transport and cost. In order to replace a mortar lost from TOE of LCU in Burma as Japan I must have
1. A factory in Japan producing them
2. Line of supply to unit
3. Supply equal to load cost
4. Supply above a certain level (part of which must be imported)
5. Line from HQ to unit.

In the end supply equal to load cost of item has to have transited from Japan to hex item issued from. (No matter how much supply is in a hex only in Home Islands can items be produced using 100 percent of supply in excess of what base requires.)
In other hexes it is while supply is being unloaded that it is expended to replace items. Since the supply had to be loaded and moved no matter what form it was represented in game the player would have formed a TF of the correct type of ships and sent it to port where it is unloaded and expended. A lot of book work added for no change in end result.

On most other issues Ron S. wants hardcoded changes and I say "change the way you play and you don't need them" (If they were there you'd have to change to my style anyway)

Concerning number or types of Japanese transports it is more lack of Allied air then number of transports that decides pace. If Allies maintain air units then no amount of Japanese transports can speed up game because they can't sail. Without Allied air then a smaller number of transports would still proceed. Players wanting Japan to account for civilian needs don't need hardcode changes just send the amout of shipping you think correct to a Port and don't use them. (However once again is is more Allied efforts to impede movement then number of Japanese transports that effect game)
Brady has isolated Japan in Sept 1943.

No need to thank me, Russ, for giving credit where credit is deserved. In my eyes you have earned that respect.

As for the game system: as I've stated many times the game does move too fast, especially for the Japanese (though the irony is that in the long run it's even worse on the Allied side of the board, once they get rolling), and an overabundance of supply and shipping is the main reason players are able to move this fast. There are other problems, of course, for instance, the truly sad modeling of ports. Also, as many have pointed out, you included, there's a certain "gaminess" in players of these types of games which was absent in their historical counterparts, but that's fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. With discipline, and assuming desire, players could slow things down, but then again that would hardly make the model "right," now would it?

The fact is the model itself is the primary culprit. How could it be otherwise? Imagine a Waterloo campaign game where a knowledgable French player were able, according to the movement rules somehow, to maneuver L'Armée du Nord ahead of its historical schedule to the tune of a couple of days, and thus completely confound Allied attempts to affect a coordinated defense? Or a Russian 1941 scenario where it was possible for the Germans to consistently present their army at the gates of Moscow come the end of August, say, no matter how competently the Soviet player handled his forces?

In any event, some players wish to make this game better, indeed, some are still pissed off to whatever degree that it turned out so poorly in the first place. Hence the efforts of the CHS crew and others. The former isn't an organization with the sole purpose to put Matrix to shame. After all, these people donate their time and energy in order to improve a game system they find wanting to a degree sufficient enough to warrant such expenditure of personal effort.

Overall, and for me, at least, any attempt on your part or anyone else's to seriously rationalize Gary's supply scheme is wasted out of the chute. I have found his supply model to be wholly inadequate in all possible respects. At no juncture of play does it operate even "successfully," except perhaps by coincidence, much less in an historical manner--witness your own efforts to curb the Japanese at least to some extent by mothballing scads of shipping assets for the duration. So it seems that even you must admit that something not very small is radically amiss.

As for you and Ron: for some reason you two seem mutually delighted to bang your respective heads, talk past each other, ridicule the other one and all that, for no good purpose I think. Ron has made excellent suggestions along the way since he was dropped from the team, and I have no doubt he made excellent suggestions when he was still part of the team. If he wasn't diplomatic enough to "get along" with the rest of you people, then I'd say you merely sacrificed an otherwise able man on some altar of correctness. (Yes, I remember the story about how he did something against the rules, but don't tell me his personality or loyalty didn't come into play.)

For Ron's own part, I wish he'd show you more respect, especially for some of your thoughts on the game system, which I do not find always wanting. I've given you credit along the way for those aspects of play which I feel you do have a good pulse for (an example here being your rock-solid argument that there ought to be no trained pilots at all for the Japanese), and I will continue to do so no matter how strongly we should disagree in other areas.

Anyway, on balance the game system doesn't work so well. For me. But then my standards are generally higher then most, or, should you prefer, more "demanding" than most; also, my knowledge of this history is greater than most. Not everyone, mind you, but greater than most. And I believe it's the case that not a few people can't see what I see. And for those people I guess the game is swell. Some want it better, some want it the same, some apparently don't care either way. I'm greatly disappointed, the next man jumps for joy, and so on and so forth.

If I was in your neighborhood I'd be happy to buy the beer and let you brew the coffee afterward, but unfortunately that's not on the cards. So with only the forum to work with, we must agree to disagree on most game issues, allowing our votes to cancel themselves out as it were, and let the rest husband the loose ends.

I don't think I show any disrespect for Mogami or anyone else, I just don't happen to agree with alot of their views regarding the game's issues. I'm also guilty for not being politically correct. If that appears to be a lack of respect then I apologize.

Hi, There is no one on these forums I dislike. I'd drink beer with everyone here. I just don't see any point to fighting over what can't or won't be changed.

I don't harp on the shortcomings of my friends. I once told my ex-wife she had no tits and she told me to get off her back.

I don't moth ball AK because I think they are an error I do it to show they are not the problem because without them I do just fine.

If you let the enemy sail without fear then you speed up his progress. It is that simple.
If you don't mind losing ships because you don't provide CAP you can sail almost anywhere and if when you get there the enemy has no defense.....

Anything that could be hard coded to prevent can be prevented without hardcoding.

The game works for me. I enjoy playing it. It is not going to have a major overhaul so I don't waste my time posting everything I would change there is no point.