Matrix Games Forums

I’ve been reading through the patch update pdf file that covers 1.10 to 2.30, all 18 pages of it!

What else could possibly remain to be fixed or improved?

Keep up the good work, what’s left of it!

I think the night bombarment to port are to strong. It's to easy to hit the ships at long range at port.

mv

What else could possibly remain to be fixed or improved?

Some support for the Editor !!!!;)

or at lease some guide for the Editor.

I'd take the minelaying capability off Argonaut (ducking

But that seems to be a futile quest.......

Really, overall, it's now a pretty amazing simulation of the decisionmaking going into the Solomons campaign. I think players really face similar decisions to what the real commanders did.

It took that many patches because, beyond simple bug-fixing, the Solomons campaign was both VERY complicated and 3-dimensional, but also VERY sensitive to ANY errors in depicting ANY weapons system. Underrate or overrate any particular weapon, even by not that much, and it causes the realism of the whole game to basically blow up in your face. I'ts not Matrix's fault, it's the nature of the campaign.

I'd get rid of intel on mine hits at bases you don't own, I'd SERIOUSLY increase the time to go from Airbase 0 to Airbase 1 (in terms of hurting realism I think this is the biggie still out there), I'd GREATLY reduce even more the chances of ships NOT landing troops in a hex hitting a mine, level bombers are still probably too accurate....

The delicate balance that has to be achieved between pilot experience and aircraft quality in order to model air combat outcomes was broken at the start, has been modified several times to be further broken, and is now so far divorced from reality as to make the game an excursion into fantasy instead of a historical simulation.

In particular, the whole "F4F-A6M" debate that led to positive developments and hope for future refinement has now, as of v. 2.30, been ignored in favor of ridiculous mechanics intended solely for the purpose of keeping the Japanese in the game late into 1943.

Originally posted by pad152
What else could possibly remain to be fixed or improved?

Some support for the Editor !!!!;)

or at lease some guide for the Editor.

-Agree with you. And a reevaluation of fatigue factor would be welcomed too!

Originally posted by pasternakski
The delicate balance that has to be achieved between pilot experience and aircraft quality in order to model air combat outcomes was broken at the start, has been modified several times to be further broken, and is now so far divorced from reality as to make the game an excursion into fantasy instead of a historical simulation.

In particular, the whole "F4F-A6M" debate that led to positive developments and hope for future refinement has now, as of v. 2.30, been ignored in favor of ridiculous mechanics intended solely for the purpose of keeping the Japanese in the game late into 1943.

I hear you, but I will put this to you: do you like, when playing the Allies, to have your opponent drop from the game?

The reason I say this is the age old "simulation game" problem of history and reality versus game mechanics, playability and fun.

You have to have found a good and capable Jap opponent, with very good temerity in regard to sticking to his guns when the chips are down, even as the game sits in it's unhistorical japanese leniency.

Fortunately we are not fighting the real war. Japan had to continue fighting after Midway, when the writing must really have been on the wall for their die-hards. Some players may relish the challenge of fighting the impossible odds, but the vast majority hate loosing, or getting the @ss flogged and will give up.

This tendency does lead me to wonder how many grand campaigns in WiTP will be completed!

I think UV does not have to match exactly the historical path of war. Many of us are playing this game to have fun but not to replay the WWII. It is boring to see IJN at the receiving end after 1943, 'cause they have nothing to throw against allied second generation aircraft, no matter of aircraft or pilot experience. Althought IJN player enjoys advantage in beginning, but most American player could survive the first 7 months of war, if they play right. Then it becomes the begin of the end. As a IJN player, it really needs a lot of patients to keep playing a hopeless war. I dont know about the statistics. But I got the feeling that in PEBM games Allie win more than IJN. (Not talking about those elite player, talking about average) Correct me if I am wrong.

I think the one thing that needs to be fixed is adding destroyer escorts to the USN OOB. They are in the game, they were in the Pacific in late 1943, so why don't we have them? Just my $0.02.

Level bombers still need some adjustment. Make them more harder to repair and easier to get damaged (to simulate REAL working conditions in the south Pacific) and as a trade off reduce the morale hits that the crew takes.

Originally posted by wobbly
I hear you, but I will put this to you: do you like, when playing the Allies, to have your opponent drop from the game?

The reason I say this is the age old "simulation game" problem of history and reality versus game mechanics, playability and fun.

I agree completely. Regardless of how high you put "historical accuracy" on the list, the highest you can put it without destroying a game is right below "Play Balance" and the other things you mention.

You could go on tweaking the "historical accuracy" of UV forever. I think for the most part the game is now fine as is. What I would like to see is improvements to the interface (I am of course not living in reality).

It still bothers me that I cannot visually tell on the gamemap the size of a taskforce and whether it is heading home or to its mission destination (simply color coding would be one way to alleviate this.. somewhat like bases and land forces are darker by strength) I HATE the clutter of all the single ship TF of damaged ships headed back to port.

Right-Clickable menus would be nice too and perhaps they could finally fix that "back" button on many screens or let sub mining tf's auto replenish without first having to disband them or..

You get the idea. Id put a halt to all historical accuracy tweaking for the above type of "interface" improvements but before you bash that I give-in already.

I know thats not what most of you want and either way I know thats not what Matrix will want to do (hopefully much of that will make it into WITP however).

At that point UV will be more of an introductory version of the game anyhow...

Hi all,

Originally posted by pasternakski
The delicate balance that has to be achieved between pilot experience and aircraft quality in order to model air combat outcomes was broken at the start, has been modified several times to be further broken, and is now so far divorced from reality as to make the game an excursion into fantasy instead of a historical simulation.

In particular, the whole "F4F-A6M" debate that led to positive developments and hope for future refinement has now, as of v. 2.30, been ignored in favor of ridiculous mechanics intended solely for the purpose of keeping the Japanese in the game late into 1943.

Can you please elaborate on this further?


The reason is that I, and many others (including my PBEM opponents), feel that
UV v2.30 is really the best UV ever in all aspects and that it is absolutely
great game (especially for tug-of-war PBEMs)...


BTW, I play Japanese for most part and I would also like to sometimes see some
more "historic" results (like my Zero fighters destroying P-39's and B-25 in
dozens as it really happened in WWII when US did daily futile attacks on
Japanese airfields in New Guinea) but current system is, IMHO, most
balanced...


Leo "Apollo11"

Well I also feel that the air to air is the most balanced that we have yet seen.

I would like to see the "bug' about transports flying into a friendly base with CAP and still getting hit by enemy fighters flying LRCAP over the same base !

A general "heading" tail from the TF icons would be good...at a glance you could see where a TF is going...both friendly and hostile.

This thread was slow starting but once it got started it sure developed momentum. For my part, I would just like to see morale modeled better. It moves down too quickly and is subject to drops for no apparrent reason.

I'm with Leo/Apollo 11 and Veldor on this one (and Leo is one of my PBEM opponents mind you )

I'm very pleased with "equations" part of the game under 2.30 and think it is by far the best so far.

Some of my opponents complain re CV airgroups reluctance to attack against the super-heavy CAP or sending unescorted strikes, but it all falls under "**** happens" part of war IMO, and is realistic (if frustrating) to at least some degree. No complaints from me there (although I did lose some CVs under 2.30 as well).

I'd love to see improvements in the interface issues, if possible, and to get rid of "disappearing ground unit" bug (it happens when the transport ship/plane with last part of the unit gets destroyed - whole unit disappears).

Other than that game is as near to being perfect as humanely possible.

PS. Oh and I'd love to see better scenario editor, and more "official scenarios" to the tune of "slightly hypothetical" (like #19).

O.

Hi!

As far as I can tell, the game is still easily confused when loading multiple transport TFs.

For example, if you disband Transport TF "5" in one base, and then create a new Transport TF "5" in a different base, the game carries some of the attributes of the old TF (like the units being transported, load status, etc.) to the new TF. I've had U.S. 1st Marine Division units popping up in the oddest places....

I've been hoping this would be relatively easy to fix (re-initialize and zero all TF information buffers when creating a TF), but it's still an issue - especially for those of us who think the AI loadmasters aren't very good so we feel compelled to assign transport loads ourselves.

Paul

Hi all,

Yes, the game does keep getting better & better..... a vast improvement over Ver. 1.00 . (Tied with Century of Warfare as my favourite) Still, it would be extremely nice to have some added features such as a chance for mid-move intercepts with surface task forces (we got it for subs) & waypoints. I also remember that these have already been threaded to near ad nauseum levels already yet if IIRC the eventual consensus was that they would be worthwhile improvements. For what's extant now....... tone down B17/B24 ability to go shipbusting, slight readjustment upwards of IJN ASW (somewhere between current & last pegged capability), and maybe a couple of new "official" scenarios - howabout something like Warplan Orange from the early 30's just for something different?? A functional editor goes without saying.......
Just my highly subjective 2 bits worth.


Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Well, I am pretty happy with it but would like to see greater penalties for CVs operating together as uber TFs. Really just did not happen and air coordination and fighter direction was just not sophisticated enough. The best design would reward CVs that operated in TFs of two and three.

More critical hit stuff would be nice: Planes exploding on deck. Rudder disabled, magazine explosion, torpedoes running in circles, ships in shallow water running aground or hitting a reef. All of these should be very rare but would be fun to see.

Any interface improvments would be nice as well.

AI Upgrade

So the computer AI will provide air escort for invasion TF's going in harms way. I think this is the most unrealistic thing in UV.

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Well, I am pretty happy with it but would like to see greater penalties for CVs operating together as uber TFs.
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This has been a problem is all of Gary's PacWar games, I've never seen the computer AI operate two or more carrier groups on the map without it grouping them all together. I really hope this get's fixed in WITP.