RHS House Rules Concepts and Expectations

[el cid again]

I came to WITP after half a century of simulation and war gaming OUTSIDE this community - which has evolved its own peculiar ideas about how a game should be played. To oversimplify, there are a host of "house rules" meant to address one problem or another, and these boil down to a list of restrictions on what players can do. There is greater or lesser merit case by case - but while the INTENT is always constructive - the EFFECT is to make a game system inherently (by its very structure and nature) too predictable even more so.

RHS has too many house rules - imposed by necessity because we cannot do in code all we would ideally do - and some things simply will not work without player imposed limits. In the main these are related to things that RHS added to WITP - things like ship tracks - or not changing the planning of a supply sink - and it probably is bad insofar as there is a long list of things players should be doing they may not remember to do or may not understand in the first place. I wish to avoid adding to this necessary list - and certainly I wish to avoid adding a lot to this too long list - because at a certain point it becomes impossible to have reasonable compliance. [Who could remember a list of thousands of such limits? The longer the list, the more likely it will not be honored in practice.] To which add that I am philosophically opposed to restricting players - that I trust players - and that I think the GAME should "punish" players who do it "wrong" whenever possible. Make good practice self penalizing as much as possible is my philosophy. Be as "Nemoesque" as you can reaonably (if that is a word - Nemo advocates the standard "if it can be done, it is OK to do it" - and if that is slightly too broad - it is still a good goal: whenever it is not clearly bad, let players do it).

To this end - RHS has a single "primary house rule": IF YOU (as an individual) do not think a real commander would do it in these circumstances, don't do it." This has two variations: if it can not be done physically - you can never do it - because you can not be sane and believe they would order what is impossible; if it is not politically something that would be ordered - you don't do that either. The second is more flexable - a different player may have a different opinion and HIS opinion is what limits HIM - nor YOUR opinion. But it is still a limit - it is just a limit that has some uncertainty inside it - which is a way to increase game uncertainty.

RHS has moved onto development at a code level - not inside the game program but inside utilities - and a principle goal of our volunteer progammer is to permit us to address the problem that players know too much and there is vastly too little uncertainty in a canned game. By making the game change DURING play - this is mitigated. So the FUTURE of RHS is going to be a lot more unpredictability - a lot more options - and a lot less structure forced on players. To this end it needs to be understood that defeating the RHS design intent with house rules is a bad idea. For example, some people do not like using submarines to land small units, nor to permit small landings in non dot hexes: RHS added dozens of small transport submarines, dozens of small units, dozens of hexes not in play (but in the art and on the planet) just so such landings COULD happen - any time any player finds them potentially useful - and the GAME decides if he was wise or foolish. A house rule to forbid this wastes vast amounts of thought, unit design and data entry - all put in on purpose to make the game more historical and more operationally correct. Coming up with a rule that forbids us to use what we deliberately put there to use is contraproductive.

WITP is inherenty complex. RHS sought to make it more complex. Both WITP and RHS were attempting to simulate a complex reality. Just where to draw the line - we are forced to oversimplify by technical and time restrictions - is a matter of design and modding art. There is no perfect or "right" solution - just different attempts to get there using different mixtures of concepts and data. If you are not comfortable with needing to master more complexity RHS is not the right vehicle: it is a vehicle that requires you consider logistics (instead of just considering what you want to do and it is almost always possible). IRL most proposed operations are never approved because it isn't feasible - or it is not feasible in the time available with the lift available. RHS seeks to give you a LITTLE of that - not by any means all of it - and if such restrictions bother you - it is not your cup of tea. On the other hand, RHS seeks to liberate you from a chess like situation - a rule against using non dot hexes on land makes as much sense as not using non dot hexes at sea. Units can move in them - and if they are LOC hexes - units pretty much must move in them. Blocking them ought to be a big priority in operational analysis - and playing in the context "we know they can only land at the few dot hexes" is much more like chess than real life. RHS is not designed for this sort of restriction - it has plenty of restrictions imposed by tenical necessity - and trying to impose more restrictions is in some sense defeating the whole point of having created these scenarios. It is going to work a lot more gracefully to try to use these scenarios if you think in terms of how they were intended and designed to work.

Note in particular that RHS does NOT require or expect the Allies not to asisgn air missions to air units, or not to create task forces, or to move units wherever by land or sea - even on the very first turn. UNLESS the primary rule applies - you don't think the commander would do that - you can do it. If that complicates things for the Japanese - well and good: they had EIGHT DIFFERENT plans for the first day of the war for the Kiddo Butai - and the code "Tora Tora Tora" was only for the unexpected case of "surprise over the target is achieved" - and that meant the order of attack was different than in other cases.

After man years of work on this mod - incorporating may ideas not my own suggested in the Forum (more than a few times ideas I do not even prefer myself) - and then spending many hours carefully generating a test game - I am in the frustrating situation that the test may not proceed - because my attitude is that we should be testing the mod as it was designed to be - as free as possible from house rules - and in particular free from house rules that for bid us to test what was put there for players to use. I hope to set expectations such that we can actually do the sort of human testing Matrix could not fund - so that we can find out what problems exist with the new mixtures of ideas and data - and address them. This cannot be done if we are not actually doing all that is possible in game terms. Nor is it fun for me to play if I have too much of an idea of what might be done on the other side.

[el cid again]

Somehow the RHS house rules have come to be interpreted as "anything goes." This is not the case.

While many of the RHS rules relate to the movement tracks and operations in the mini maps (which obviously are not in stock or other mods)
these rules are not purely restrictions on the Japanese. Many - most - apply to both sides. For example, an air unit on a naval unit inside a ship track MUST BE range limtied to one (or zero) hex. Or air units on a mini-map may NOT do air ops in the main map - and vice versa (again range limiting is used).

Things not related to the mini maps also are generally similar: rail guns must stay on RR for example - and on both sides.

In addition to the explicit minimum necessary rules, there is a general rule. This rule is not meant to say "anything not on the list is OK"
and it IS meant to generate MORE restrictions than the longest possible list would do. It is a general principle. This rule is

If the real commanders would not do it - don't you do it.

That means if it is physically impossible they would never try it - so don't. [E.g. teleporting - works in code - but also is forbidden - WITHOUT being listed - because it is not something that really would be ordered.]

But it ALSO means that you need to consider politics. Indian State Defense Forces do not belong in Japan. Nor does New Zealand militia. Nor should forward military units be lightly withdrawn with NO action. B-17s MAY leave the Philippines - but they were not assembled there NEVER to be used. Only SURVIVORS would leave - after use of them in squadron strikes had failed (or worked or in between). No rule need say such things - common sense should be sufficient. I like the idea that you decide - without the opposing player - so there is uncertainty about where you draw the line. But that is not an excuse to do things you don't think are realistic. Nor are you free to not think about it - you are required to think about it.

I trust players more than Matrix does - but a liberal system only works if gamers use common sense. Otherwise gameyness will rule the day.

[el cid again]

A player/tester wrote to me that he regards himself as FDR and all the other Allied heads of state. While in technical game terms it is quite true that a single player controls all the Allies - this is NOT the same as head of state - as Andrew Brown pointed out when describing why the Allies have no control over their economy. A player is something like a theater commander - except IRL there was no PTO theater commander - not even for the USA. [It is a historical failing that we failed to achieve Supreme Allied Commander Pacific - and had two bickering rivals - MacArthur and Nimitz - just for US forces. Neither was boss of all other forces - in particular not of Soviet Forces or Chinese forces.]

In game terms many things are what they are for technical reasons, and that does not imply a player has no need to use judgement. Japan has a strange AV called Akitsushima. It has an "air group" of a single flying boat. This has an extended range of 20 hexes. It is perfectly fine to assign it that range for a recon mission or a transport mission. It is outrageously unreasonable to assign it that range for a search mission. Just as RHS active Russian scenarios require circumspect behavior by the Allied player, so all the other minor Allies do. And this is not just an Allied issue: there are minor Axis allies as well - and while for example Thailand did build a little empire for itself out of Burma, Malaya and Cambodia during WWII - it should not be invading New Zealand or other such enterprises.

In the end - the quality of the game you get is proportional to how reasonably you play it. Try to come to terms with the expectation that you will not be sending the Philippine Army to defend New Guinea, or Indian States Defense Force troops to invade Guadalcanal. Both are covered by the general house rule - because neither is reasonable - UNLESS you come up with a rationalization why it IS reasonable in peculiar game circumstances. Thus - while sending Philippine Army troops (note I did NOT say Philippine Scouts - who are US Army regulars) out on the first day is always unreasonable - AFTER a good fight some token unit might be withdrawn to "preserve the sovereignty of the Philippine Commonwealth".

[takacssteve]

I agree with you that a player should play realistically.   On easy way to help this would be to make more units "static units"; including aircraft.  A more involved method would be to change the political points system to nationality specific political points.

just a thought...

[el cid again]

The problem with the latter idea is that it is not up to us - it would require hard code changes.

The first idea - static air units - depends on what that means?

As far as I know - RHS is the only mod WITH static air units. But only the GROUND element of these units is static.
The planes - of course - can fly - and I don't see how to change that - even if we controlled code. In RHS there are
a few militarized civil air units - including a Pan Am squadron in India - two Pan Am flights of Boeing 314 clippers (USAAF
and USN) in the USA - a BOAC flight of Empire Flying boats in India - a QANTAS flight of Empire Flying boats in Australia -
a DNKKK (All Japan Air Lines) unit of flying boats - several DNKKK flying units (one per aircraft type) - and a MNKKK
(Mansyu or Manchurian Air Line) unit: All of these have air support in static units that will not move.

[Bogo Mil]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
To which add that I am philosophically opposed to restricting players - that I trust players - and that I think the GAME should "punish" players who do it "wrong" whenever possible. Make good practice self penalizing as much as possible is my philosophy.

Do you know how the game calculates the cost in political points needed to "release" a restricted unit? I didn't take notes, but I've seen some very strange PP costs in RHS (in CHS, too). There were some extremely cheap tank units, for example.

Maybe a very high PP cost can be used to "punish wrong behavior". If you manage to increase the cost the evacuation of the SRA very much, this would make the nonhistorical "run away" much less attractive or even impossible.

[Mistmatz]

ORIGINAL: Bogo Mil

ORIGINAL: el cid again
To which add that I am philosophically opposed to restricting players - that I trust players - and that I think the GAME should "punish" players who do it "wrong" whenever possible. Make good practice self penalizing as much as possible is my philosophy.

Do you know how the game calculates the cost in political points needed to "release" a restricted unit? I didn't take notes, but I've seen some very strange PP costs in RHS (in CHS, too). There were some extremely cheap tank units, for example.

Maybe a very high PP cost can be used to "punish wrong behavior". If you manage to increase the cost the evacuation of the SRA very much, this would make the nonhistorical "run away" much less attractive or even impossible.

I believe PP cost is calculated on the basis of the usable equipment of a unit. So disabled stuff doesn't count for the calculation which may explain why you have seen some extremly cheap units as this happens usually after they have been beaten up (=lots of disabled equipment).

I don't think you can increase PP cost of a certain groups of units unless they use some specific devices that have a very high PP cost associated while being hard to disable.

[Bogo Mil]

I don't have the game available here, I can check it within 2 days or so. IIRC I was very surprised by the cost of those ARM units on the Phillipines, it was much less than 100, and these units didn't see combat before and were in quite good shape.

A special device with very high PP cost sounds like a great idea. Imho it should not to be too hard to disable. It is perfectly ok to have the cost reduced if a unit was beaten up in combat -- this would decrease political opposition against a withdrawal, wouldn't it?

[el cid again]

PP costs are - with respect to land units - related to the composition of the unit - which devices are part of it. RHS uses entirely the nearest possible squad count - without regard to pp impacts.

In many cases ground units - particularly Allied ones - have vast numbers of machine guns and medium mortars added. This does increast pp cost for them.

RHS uses twice as many pp per day in CVO and BBO families - and I am getting complaints it is too tight. It has 1000 pp per day in EOS family - ten times the CVO/BBO level - but that is deceptive: more than was taken back by making all units possible assigned to home commands - about twice that many - but we found 2000 and even 1500 was too liberal - and pp lost meaning. So we reduced it a bit to the point it is a problem in many situations - but not a severe one. I like this solution - because players should not be forced to send things where they went years into a long war (which won't be following a historical course) - but it does permit a Sir Robin more easily in EOS family - and I regretfully have one of those running. After intense negotiations about how I would not be "gamey" and would use real units to cut LOC - it ended up with gamey play on the other side. In spite of this - I do not wish to make everything static. I have put critical things in static units - including the garrison at Wake which I read is evacuated in CHS games by gamey players. [It was not sent there to run so in RHS it cannot run - it would violate the primary RHS house rule - and this instance is important enough to enforce the rule; it is a composite unit too - including some construction contractors and a PANAM air support element - and civilians in RHS are static]

[Bogo Mil]

I agree that making too many things static is not desirable. I think evacuation should usually be possible, but expensive.

I think there is a flaw in the game system: Every HQ change has the same cost. It would be much better, if you could make a change from one nonrestricted HQ to another a lot cheaper than the change of something like West Coast to a nonrestricted HQ. Changing HQ for the defending units of ABDA and USAFFE should be even more expensive.

It is impossible to "repair" this flaw completely in a mod. But maybe you can at least "boost" the cost of the defending units - e.g. by adding expensive but otherwise weak or useless devices to them.

Another - quite ugly - way would be an additional house rule: If you want to "free" ABDA and USAFFE units, you have to change to West coast first, then to another HQ. This would double the cost immediately - but RHS wants to reduce the number of explicit house rules...