Matrix Games Forums

For the newcomer, the manual air war interface is truly frightening. So many variables have to be adjusted and inputted to create an air directive.

My suggestion to make the whole experience much more intuitive and simplified would be to introduce presets for inexperienced players, and for those who want a half way house between AI assist, and full manual.

ie: I want to bomb an airfield. I create the AD, and target the hex as usual. But now - instead of having to manually adjust all the parameters (most of which the new player has no clue about), the player selects a preset from a pull down menu at the top of the AD that might simply just range from 'light/normal/heavy' intensity. The preset would contain good choices for min/max escort values, min number of AC for the raid, etc, etc. Essentially a preset designed by an experienced player/tester/developer that new players can select from to achieve more or less what is intended, only without requiring weeks of experience and manual reading, and days of grappling with a fearsome UI.

Recon as another example - a simple selection of three levels of recon (light/moderate/intense) which would allocate an appropriate level of aircraft relative to the size of the recon area to achieve the desired level of recon. No need to agonise over altitude, number of planes, etc, etc.

Of course all the parameters would still be manually adjustable for the hardcore that want to control every detail.

I can't tell you how much this would improve the experience for me.

Thoughts?

ORIGINAL: squatter

For the newcomer, the manual air war interface is truly frightening. So many variables have to be adjusted and inputted to create an air directive.

My suggestion to make the whole experience much more intuitive and simplified would be to introduce presets for inexperienced players, and for those who want a half way house between AI assist, and full manual.

ie: I want to bomb an airfield. I create the AD, and target the hex as usual. But now - instead of having to manually adjust all the parameters (most of which the new player has no clue about), the player selects a preset from a pull down menu at the top of the AD that might simply just range from 'light/normal/heavy' intensity. The preset would contain good choices for min/max escort values, min number of AC for the raid, etc, etc. Essentially a preset designed by an experienced player/tester/developer that new players can select from to achieve more or less what is intended, only without requiring weeks of experience and manual reading, and days of grappling with a fearsome UI.

Recon as another example - a simple selection of three levels of recon (light/moderate/intense) which would allocate an appropriate level of aircraft relative to the size of the recon area to achieve the desired level of recon. No need to agonise over altitude, number of planes, etc, etc.

Of course all the parameters would still be manually adjustable for the hardcore that want to control every detail.

I can't tell you how much this would improve the experience for me.

Thoughts?

Each time you create a new AD it will as a default use the settings set in your Air Doctrine screen. So if you set these at start you should be able to create ADs in a fairly straightforward 2 step process of set the target and size of the area and then select the AOGs/Air Groups you want to take part. You could even leave out that second step and leave all of the force allocation decisions as 'Auto'.

You can check out Carlkays air doctrine settings in the second post of his AAR - https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4989226

I think that part of the problem is that the more complicated settings are not 'hidden away' and so it is easy for a newcomer to think that they all need to be set correctly in order for the mission to work. I think the reality is that all but the most advanced players don't really need to worry about the more complicated settings. It's a bit of a balance but overall I think it is a better solution to have the settings easily accessible even if this is at the cost of initially worrying new players who will hopefully seek and receive reassurances/advice from resources like this forum.

I think another part of the problem is that many (most?) players will be starting as Axis in the June 41 scenarios/Grand campaign and in that case the first thing they are confronted with is the one turn in the whole game where there is a lot more fiddly stuff to do with the air. Once you are past that turn (and it's worth pointing out that the 'default' ADs set at the start of T1 perform perfectly adequately) you can pretty much leave the AI assist to do its thing - and only intervene occasionally to for example move the recon boxes around a bit, create a naval patrol AD occasionally to isolate a port or possibly set up a Ground Attack AD on a specific crucial hex. I've also found that I've sometimes needed to intervene to keep the air units rebasing forwards but that is pretty straightforward also.

Use the AI Air Assist button, then review and change as needed. This does work well in helping to learn the air game. Besides I spent several months testing its capabilities and I would like to think it mattered!

I think that part of the problem is that the more complicated settings are not 'hidden away' and so it is easy for a newcomer to think that they all need to be set correctly in order for the mission to work.

Thanks for the input - I agree with this strongly. It's completely terrifying for a player who wants a modicum of manual control, but doesn't want to finesse every detail.

I can't see why a pull down menu with presets for new players, and for those who only want sporadic direct input to the air war would be anything other than a good thing.

You mention directives - these should have presets also.

Thanks for the link to Carlkay's doctrine settings, which are very useful. But again, these should basically be in the game as presets that players can select if they don't want to have to become experts in the air war system. For example: 'night bomber railyard attack' preset, or 'high intensity air superiority' or whatever.

I can see no good reason not to have these, other than potential coding issues.

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

Use the AI Air Assist button, then review and change as needed. This does work well in helping to learn the air game. Besides I spent several months testing its capabilities and I would like to think it mattered!

Yes, what I would like is a little more hand holding for the player who wants to generally depend on the AI assist, but wants to throw in some occasional night bombing raids on a particular railyard, some high intensity recon on certain areas, some port interdiction over there, and some massive raids on that stack of defenders here, etc.

I don't know how many strike numbers per day is considered a lot? I have no idea of the difference various altitudes will make. I have do idea how many days on which to fly the mission is a lot, or how many is little. I have no idea what a typical min AC esc number would be, or what would represent a large raid in terms of 'req AC', etc etc etc.

If instead I was able to select "large scale ground attack raid - unit" from a pull down menu and have all those setting filled out for me, wow, that's exactly what a lot of players would prefer.

Part of the issue for me here is that playing the campaign PBEM, if your opponent is a hard-core air-head, whereas you are generally an AI man, you're gonna be disadvantaged. Having some more tools to easily influence the air war - such as presets - will help non air-heads compete better with the air-heads!

Most of what you are asking for is already in [:)]

like Sammy5IsAlive mentioned...Start by adjusting the air directive screen (or use the default...It works well enough to start with i belive).

After that many of the settings already have an AUTO setting that could be left untouched and most of the settings are set according to the air directive screen. The player really does not need to mess with all of them at to start with...I belive that one of the most important to check is the DAYs TO FLY i belive...most of the others can pretty much be left alone and will do a decent jobb if set to auto...

Moving forward...try to tweak one (or two) of them manually at a time and leave the rest on auto for the time being...

It really isn't all that difficult ones you mess with it for a short while. It's a very good system imo [:)]

ORIGINAL: Repsol

Most of what you are asking for is already in [:)]

like Sammy5IsAlive mentioned...Start by adjusting the air directive screen (or use the default...It works well enough to start with i belive).

After that many of the settings already have an AUTO setting that could be left untouched and most of the settings are set according to the air directive screen. The player really does not need to mess with all of them at to start with...I belive that one of the most important to check is the DAYs TO FLY i belive...most of the others can pretty much be left alone and will do a decent jobb if set to auto...

Moving forward...try to tweak one (or two) of them manually at a time and leave the rest on auto for the time being...

It really isn't all that difficult ones you mess with it for a short while. It's a very good system imo [:)]

...

Fair enough - I'm sure that once you've got your head around it, it is a good system.

But there's no getting away from the fact it's mind boggling at first to the new player, and only a substantial amount of not just reading the manual, but also trawling the forums for advice will get you to a point of understanding not just how it works, but more importantly, what settings are good settings.

And also, while the AI does a decent job, an experienced player using manual control will always win out.

Take the day 1 Axis air offensive. The AI will get you around 2400 Russian kills, to 300 Axis. Whereas in Bobo's AAR he scores 3800 kills for 200 Axis.

In-built presets with clear descriptions of their purpose would give new/less hardcore players much better and less intimidating tools to control their air force, it seems to me.

I agree. In a way the WiTW interface was easier as it had a firm distinction between 'stuff you need to make a decision about' and 'stuff you can fiddle with if you want'.

not sure there is a solution (since programming the UI is a long way beyond my competence) but I can understand the feeling that you have these choices so you really should be making them, rather than understanding intuitively that most of them can be left as they fill out.

More generally, the WiTE2 (and WiTW) air war routines are less rewarding to the player most willing to click their way to RSI than #1, it remains the case that someone taking full manual control, with a degree of patience will do so much better.

edit: I remember with the classic AGEOD games with their two stances that you set for units this came up quite often.

So we wrote a small guide as to which combination was probably the best fit to what you were trying to do in a particular situation. Wasn't perfect (not least you could get caught out), but it was very useful to reduce a 4*2 choice matrix to a grid that said 'x+y best for ...'

Coming from you Loki, I take that as a significant endorsement of my point!

At the very least the manual should have a list of directive templates for players to copy so they know which settings produce preferable effects in different situations ('twin engine bomber night-time factory attack' or 'tac air ground unit attack' or 'routine quiet sector recon' for example). At least you could be confident you were using sensible settings.

Obviously more preferable would be to have these as presets for selection in the game.