Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Applicable to everything.  Not to the extent of making it useless.  Enough to keep you on your toes.  Just like real life.

Alfred

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

ORIGINAL: DHRedge

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

Sounds like a good system rewarding synthesis of many points of data that are all slightly off, that individually do not say anything, but when looked at as a whole, information can be gleaned from the entirety.

It is unfortunate that the AI does not have a status script, the capability to determine TOE% or other unit or ship status or availability as a trigger input, without that other then doing what AI expects, AI is weak

ORIGINAL: Alfred

The game does have an AI.

People commonly refer to the scripts as the AI.  This is not correct.  The scripts are just that, scripts.  Strategic scripts.  They are not strategic AI.

The AI deal with the tactical details.  It is why in the Quiet China scenarios, some tactical action can occur as the tactical AI responds to tactical opportunities.  There is tactical AI involved in forming Task Forces.

Alfred

Does anyone know how much those results are randomized? Are they 5%off 20%off or 50 or more percent?

ORIGINAL: DHRedge

The manual says reports of damage are randomized because of Fog of War. It does mention it is partially about detection level.

is the fog of war randomness only in final summary, or does it also occur in plane by plane report of bombing damage or surface to surface ship damage reports during those air to surface or naval to naval battles?

Does anyone know how much those results are randomized? Are they 5%off 20%off or 50 or more percent?

In other words how much of the Fog of War results are usable, when are they so random that they are useless?

ORIGINAL: Dili

Yeah, and there isn't FOW of your own forces, you know right away one of your submarines was sunk and you can give order to other one just in time to replace it

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Ok, but the AI is pretty shallow in regards to modifying script behaviour such as attacking a target that has been made much too hard for the AI allotted forces to take.

When people talk about breaking a game against the AI it is usually because the Allied player can guess the major targets in the scripts and reinforce them early. The AI then decimates its forces trying to take the target over and over again. A more developed AI would analyze the initial failure and make adjustments suited to the situation. That is the kind of AI I was thinking of.

ORIGINAL: Kull

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

ORIGINAL: Gridley380

ORIGINAL: Kull

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

True, but I'd trade that in a heartbeat for the understanding the US actually had + MAGIC/ULTRA/etc on the intel front.

And the Japanese player has the same advantage of hindsight - and yes, that kicks in right away too; they know PacFleet's CVs aren't at Pearl, and if they open the scenario from the Allied side they know what hex they ARE in.

ORIGINAL: Kull

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Ok, but the AI is pretty shallow in regards to modifying script behaviour such as attacking a target that has been made much too hard for the AI allotted forces to take.

When people talk about breaking a game against the AI it is usually because the Allied player can guess the major targets in the scripts and reinforce them early. The AI then decimates its forces trying to take the target over and over again. A more developed AI would analyze the initial failure and make adjustments suited to the situation. That is the kind of AI I was thinking of.

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

Given the fact that a "scripted strategic AI" is the reality of the game, and that it's largely based upon historical Japanese goals and actions, the human player has only themselves to blame if they ruin their game by "breaking the script".

A human player going up against the AI should take historically realistic actions for at least the first 6 months of the war. Among other things, that will allow the AI to complete many of the most complicated scripts - those focused on the historical early war expansion. Once those are done, the script still has tricks up it's sleeve, and now (once the other scripts are complete) it will have the opportunity to use them.