Ideas for the future

Warplan is a World War 2 simulation engine. It is a balance of realism and playability incorporating the best from 50 years of World War 2 board wargaming.

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MagicMissile
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Ideas for the future

Post by MagicMissile »

Hello,

So I have now finished playing 3 games as the allies in the 1.19 patch. All 3 games was very fun to play. In one the axis fell apart completely in 42 and the allies won in 43. The two other games the axis had different playstyles. One with a pretty small German army it never went above 1900 but with a large proportion of mech units and a large air force and these units were used to counterattack as much as possible targeting allied mech units. The other style was bigger army less mech units more infantry and less aggressive counterattacking. Both games went all the way to the summer of 45 and ended finally with allied victory.

While playing these games I have tried to think about what I would like to add or maybe change to make the game even more fun. Most of you who read this know I have been a big fan from the beginning. I really like Warplan and I think with some development it could be the best WW2 grand strategy game there is. There is always World in Flames to contend with. I really like WiF as well but the game has a lot more of interaction between the players and so it is less suitable for PBEM play which is the main reason why I prefer Warplan.

These ideas are mostly to make the game more fun they might not be balanced but balance can always be achieved by tweaking some numbers or something like it. Also they are not really meant for Warplan. The Warplan development is probably done now the game is some years old after all. They might not even be for WP2 I am looking to WP3 that will be the Magnus Opus of the series in something like 2029 or so 😊.

In the end it will be Alvaros decision what to put in the game but since he works alone on these games maybe some ideas from someone who has played the game a lot might be of some use. I will play the game in 1.20 as well want to see how it plays with the buff to the Soviets but this will be my last big post on these issues unless I can think of something else.

Ok lets start small 😊.

• I have noticed but I haven’t checked it properly but it seems to me that when a unit disembarks in a port that already has a unit in it the unit tends to disembark to the hex to the north of the port if there is no north hex it will go to the south hex and so on. I would recommend that a unit that disembarks into a occupied port as first priority looks to disembark on a railhex if there is such a hex.

• I saw the thread on coastal defense that they are supposed to only give protection to units being attacked from the beach but as it is right now they get protection from all attacks. That made me think that maybe it would be ok to add a fortification support build. Like coastal defense you can build a fortification that can be put on any hex or maybe just urban hexes. They will increase defense by maybe 20% or so and should be pretty expensive so one can not spam them too much.

• I think they will be included in WP2 but building sub pens to protect subs in port from air attacks.

• I think that mech units cut off from supply should not have 4 OP I think they should have 2 just like infantry. Since they run on fuel they should be more susceptible to movement loss. This is mostly to rein in those deep penetrations when a mech unit rushes 8-9 hexes into your rear area and they can be quite hard to catch and since they have a lot of strength they take a long time to die while running around cutting rail lines and stuff. Unrealistic and if they only had 2 op they would be easier to capture and they would make less of a nuisance.

• Snow weather. I know I have written about this a lot before. I really think snow condition should be eased up a bit. Maybe remove movement penalty or the combat penalty. I think more action is more fun and I think it is almost impossible to recreate the fighting in the winters on the eastern front as it is. It is a little bit boring that in the game all action is between May and September and October to April basically nothing happens. Of course with the whole world as a map in WP2 there will probably be something going on somewhere on the map but still more action on the eastern front is more fun. Of course we can not have Germany roll into France in the winter 39/40 so I would increase chance of rain in the temperate zone and possibly increase combat penalty in rain.

• HQS and leaders. If nothing else change I think HQs should change to xxxxx since they are more army groups then armies. On the other hand maybe it would be more fun if we lowered command radius to maybe 3 hexes there was more HQs so we don’t always have a few HQs commanded by the best leaders as it is now. Also the assignment of leaders is a bit boring. Everyone saves up points and then build the best leaders. Only if they die will they be replaced by someone worse. So the Soviets for example always starts with the best leaders already on the board as Barbarossa begins. What could be more fun maybe would be either leaders start with lower values but have a higher chance to improve so the stats of leaders are different in each game or lets make the the cost of replacing the leader the same each time but the assignment could be random. If you are not happy with what you get you have to save up new points and draw a new leader and possibly if you buy a new leader maybe there should be a guarantee that it will be an upgrade so that eventually you will get to the good leaders. It would make the game a bit more random which maybe could be a bit more fun.

• FOW/Intelligence. I must say I have always disliked the way you have to especially as the Allies invade into unknown enemy units. Invasion of France pretty close to the British Isles and you have absolutely no clue what you are facing. Since we have intelligence points in WPP I would like it to be transported to Europe as well. It could work something like this. You accrue points and if you have a unit or airplane within x number of hexes you could spend a point click on the unit and learn the size of it. If one want to make it even more complicated one could maybe spend more than one point and reveal the unit its strength and so on. I understand that Warplan is basically a board game on a computer and boardgames rarely on this scale tried to use fog of war and I am not going to lie I think they would be used pretty rarely but it would be cool if one could buy fake units. Put them on the map and be able to move them normally. Using the intelligence system above if you click one of these units or move a unit next to them they would disappear. Boardgames are fine but since we have computer power some FOW could be fun.

• Bad weather and loss of effectiveness. I have been thinking a little bit about bad weather and loss of effectiveness. I don’t like the fact that a unit doing absolutely nothing maybe sitting in its homeland on a rail line 9 supply hex lose effectiveness just because it snows a little. It doesn’t make much sense to me and I think it should be changed how it works. One good example is you are preparing D-day the next summer. In England sitting snuggly in their base drinking tea a couple of paratrooper corps prepare for combat. Come June you realize the winter was so bad the paratroopers are not at 100% effectiveness and cannot participate in the invasion. Happened to me in the games mentioned above. I think there are 2 solutions. 1) Units in their home country or in a country to which you are allied and not next to an enemy unit should get a bonus to its effectiveness recovery. Alternatively maybe the bad weather in itself should not cause loss of effectiveness or a lower loss (except blizzard) but if you attack, are attacked or move the effectiveness loss is greater than it is now maybe double the normal loss or something like that. And by the way maybe the 100% effectiveness to paradrop requirement is a bit harsh. I don’t remember what it used to be but couldn’t 90% or so be enough?

• Combat in North Africa/supply trucks/offensive chits. One could wish that there was a minigame on divisional level for the battle of Africa inside the main game but I don’t think that will ever happen 😊. The battle for North Africa is boring. Generally the Axis will not move from Tobruk and the UK are at such a huge supply disadvantage trying to attack Tobruk so not much happens until possibly the British can build up enough to maybe push through even with the supply problems. Supply trucks with them being nerfed and the UK wont be able to afford to build any anyway are not the answer. So I was thinking about WiF with the offensive chits that game uses. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to remove supply trucks as they are now and maybe introduce some kind of supply truck chit. You buy them and can play them on a HQ and all or x number of units within HQ range gets a big increase in their effectiveness maybe like +20-30 so a unit can start an offensive with lets say 130 effectiveness then they can fight for some turns despite the bad supply situation. Eventually effectiveness will be low again and you have to retreat and build up again like the real North Africa campaign. These chits should maybe only be playable in Africa or maybe everywhere and obviously need to be pretty expensive so they are not spammed too much.

• Air/sea interdiction. One drawback with the way Warplan plays is the fact that intercepts are automatic. Compared to WiF where you give the opponent a choice to intercept or not in Warplan the process is automatic and that can be abused in a bit of a gamey way. You all know how it works you want to invade somewhere but there is land based air in the area so you launch these soaking moves sending out a destroyer to soak the interceptions and then you can sail to the beach with your transports unmolested by the opposition. I have some ideas how to possibly make the system work a little bit better. 1) What about giving air units unlimited interceptions? I am now mostly thinking air vs sea targets but maybe they could have unlimited vs air and ground support as well. There is a potential to lose a lot of effectiveness in one turn so maybe not the best idea I don’t know. 2) Each air unit is a big strategic asset and would not be launched against any target. Maybe it could be done so that they won’t fly against fleets with less than 3 ships unless one of those 2 ships are a transport? Or finally maybe air units only have 2 intercepts but there is not a 100% chance that they will intercept. It will make it a bit random and the attacker cannot plan so exactly what is needed to soak off the intercepts. So lets say an air unit only has a 70% chance to intercept but if they fly they have a greater chance to inflict damage. Some ideas to think about at least.

• Western allies/air power/port supply. Ok the final point and the largest one. The Italians are the Italians and are never very exciting but Germany gets to kick bum for a couple of years and if they have not won they will fight a desperate defense to try to survive to the end of the game. All exciting stuff. The Soviets are the same in reverse nail biting defense of the motherland and if you survive you can build a huge mech army with which to take the war to Germany also very exciting and satisfactory. But the western allies hmm where to start. You think you will have a small but plucky army supported by a huge air force with which to liberate western Europe while your mighty strategic bombers force level the German cities. Sounds nice in theory but it is not that fun in practice. I think there are 4 things that make the western allies kind of boring to play. 1) Land units way inferior compared to German ones 2) Air force not powerful enough 3) Fighting with too limited supply and 4) UK economy. For starters your land units are way weaker than the German counterpart look at the screen shot a 39 German corps is 11 Strong in 39 and 17 in 44 whereas a western unit is 8 in 39 and goes to 12 in 44. The German unit actually gets proportionally even better over time. Also look at my latest AAR vs Nirosi you can see how weak the allied units are even with very little fighting.
Airforce.png
Airforce.png (1.96 MiB) Viewed 857 times
Also you as the allied generally fight with limited supply in Africa and Italy and France whereas as the defender the Germans lose less effectiveness and at least on the continent have perfect supply from Germany. So since your units are worse you need to have more units than the axis which makes the limited supply even worse and also means even if you have a big air force you cant base it in Africa or France because they drain too much supply which is needed for more land units. I do understand that increasing supply there is a risk of course that the western allies will be too strong and I know WP2 will have mulberries to help out. But in WP I think maybe at least air units should not cost any supply. A simplification for sure but I think it would be good.

Concerning airpower. I do think a nerf was necessary as in the beginning of this games lifecycle the air units were way too good but I would say they are now way too bad. Its not that they are not occasionally useful but since they are very expensive I don’t think they are worth their cost compared to buying a land unit. For example a ground attack ground support unit will have a GA strength of 8 in 39 9 in 40 10 in 43 and 11 in 45. Compare that with the advancement of land unit strength per above and you see that air units get proportionally weaker as time goes. Not what you want to see as the Western Allies. They also lose effectiveness faster as they can sometimes fly many times per turn so usually after just a couple of turns of action you need to rest them a long time and they will be even weaker proportionally to the land unit. Land units of course also lose effectiveness but you got far more of those so it is not as noticeable. I think air units should be cheaper so one can build more or they need to inflict much more damage per mission possibly also lose less effectiveness per mission. One option maybe could be limiting the amount of air units that can fly against one hex per turn. As it is now it is not rare that I use the whole air force to pound a single hex to try to weaken the defender enough. But how realistic is that that a HQ would allocate 100% of resources on one target. I don’t think it happened often in the real war. So maybe only one or two units per turn so maximum 2 or 4 attacks but those attacks will hurt more than the attacks do as it is now.

Air superiority. I think that bombing the other sides airbases should be a viable strategy to achieve air superiority in an area. As it is now no one ever uses airbase bombing it is meaningless. I think if you bomb an airbase, you should be able to inflict serious damage. If you don’t want to defend your airbases with your own fighters or AA just withdraw them out of range of the enemy air force. One example is Italian naval air units on Sicily and there is absolutely nothing the allies can do to hurt them except trying to make them intercept your fleet and your fighters in their turn intercept the bombers. That is not how it would have been done in the real war the allies would have gone for the airbases to make the Italian air force retreat from Sicily.

Finally the UK economy. I don’t think we can buff the UK economy because of balance reasons and it is possible that with the Soviets getting a buff in 1.20 maybe 100% of the lend lease doesn’t have to go to the Soviets but possibly the US economy could be buffed as well as given some more shipyards so they can send more help to the UK. The UK cannot afford BoA, repair its stratbombers and build and upgrade new units they feel way more restricted than the other major powers. This is not such a big thing but still it adds to the feeling of the Western Allies not being very exciting to play. Also probably UK manpower is too high. Since they can barely afford to build any new units and in general they don’t take that much losses they don’t lose much MP. I don’t think I have ever seen UK manpower under 90% but look at the real war they were pretty low on MP 44 onwards. Also the number on its own feels a bit high compared with for example the Soviets.

Ok that’s it. This was a long post and it is just a bit of thoughts and ideas good and bad but hopefully might give some food for thought. I am excited fot the future of this game and I am really looking forward to WP2, 3 4 and 5 :) !

Happy gaming everyone!

/MM
CHINCHIN
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by CHINCHIN »

1) Landing in ports: You can choose the unload hexagon with click+Ctrl or click+ALt, I don't remember.

2) Fortifications: I agree, it would be fun to fortify any hex, like straits or for example hexes near Moscow.

3) Fortified ports. I think build 6 AA defends enough, but a plus would not be bad, perhaps the same fortification that we talked about in point 2, could be valid for ports, and that they had a plus of air defense in addition to land defense.

4) Mechanized out of supply. I don't see this, if you close their path with ZOCs, they won't be able to move much with 4 OPs.

5) Snow weather.: I agree that there are almost 6 months in which you practically spend turns and little else, there are hardly any fights, very boring. It must be added that the terrain is not taken into account, there may be sun, but intense cold, snow on the ground, or mud. So there is no other to take into account with the kind of meteorology that we have these two concepts. I would make the fine rain have no penalty in combat, but in movement. And that this fine rain was the best possible weather in certain areas and months to simulate terrain with snow or mud, although with high possibilities of clear weather.

6) HQS and leaders. I agree that you have to give them a spin, apart from what MagicMissile says, I also see that there are very few leaders, there comes a time when the difference in attributes between having no leader and the best leader you have left is minimal. If there were a bigger difference they would have more importance.

7) FOW/Intelligence. It wouldn't be bad, but it doesn't seem important to me.

8) Bad weather and loss of effectiveness. I understand that this loss of effectiveness in snow and blizzard is to give advantage to the Russian units. I agree with what you say, perhaps the penalties for blizzard should be increased and those for snow should be lowered, or give other advantages to the Russian units, for example less penalties when attacking with snow or blizzard. This must be looked at carefully as it can create an imbalance on the Russian front.

9) Combat in North Africa/supply trucks/offensive chits. I see what you are saying as complicated, and I don't see it as bad as this, we already know that it is a minor and difficult front.

10) Air/sea interdiction. I think that this issue was partly fixed with the last patch, what I would do is that there would be no limit on interceptions, so the enemy would do the right thing, group their units to suffer less in attacks, and not send baits to exhaust interceptions .

11) Western allies/air power/port supply. I agree that it is difficult for the allies to break into the European fortress, if Russia does not do its job well almost impossible. It is very easy for the axis player to stop them in North Africa, or Italy, and in France too. But I think it's realistic the way it is.

12) Concerning airpower. They may not be as decisive as they were in reality, but I don't see them as bad as they are either. If anything, what I would do is make them lose less effectiveness by fighting, or moving. And that they would recover faster than ground units.

13) Air superiority. Yes, the attack on airfields is totally useless, the one who attacks loses more efficiency than the one who suffers the attack. If the air units lose less efficiency for attacking, and the ones that suffer the attack lose more efficiency, or even 1Ops, it would be more interesting.

14) The UK economy. I see it well as it is.
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AlvaroSousa
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by AlvaroSousa »

I put these on my WP2 list. Read them later. A lot to read and I am off to relax today.
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MagicMissile
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by MagicMissile »

AlvaroSousa wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 3:22 pm I put these on my WP2 list. Read them later. A lot to read and I am off to relax today.
Haha no problem no rush just some ramblings some which might be good some less so :) Have a nice relaxing day!

/MM
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MagicMissile
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by MagicMissile »

CHINCHIN wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 9:17 am 1) Landing in ports: You can choose the unload hexagon with click+Ctrl or click+ALt, I don't remember.
Thanks Chinchin for your input. 1 I really did not know about. I have to try it out. After all this time still something to learn :).

The other points seems you agree with me on quite a number of them so thats good :). In the end this is just what I feel about the game and there is no right and wrong. The whole point is to try and make the game even more fun thats all.

/MM
generalfdog
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by generalfdog »

Very well thought out points I agree with almost all of them, I think increasing air power effectiveness would be very helpful and making NA more interesting would be great, one way to do that in my opinion would be to decrease Italian experience which I have been harping on for a bit. I think UK production is fine I do think USSR or USA should be increased or Germany decreased alternatively just make strategic bombing more effective, which would be my preference
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by ncc1701e »

MagicMissile wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 4:29 am
• HQS and leaders. If nothing else change I think HQs should change to xxxxx since they are more army groups then armies. On the other hand maybe it would be more fun if we lowered command radius to maybe 3 hexes there was more HQs so we don’t always have a few HQs commanded by the best leaders as it is now. Also the assignment of leaders is a bit boring. Everyone saves up points and then build the best leaders. Only if they die will they be replaced by someone worse. So the Soviets for example always starts with the best leaders already on the board as Barbarossa begins. What could be more fun maybe would be either leaders start with lower values but have a higher chance to improve so the stats of leaders are different in each game or lets make the the cost of replacing the leader the same each time but the assignment could be random. If you are not happy with what you get you have to save up new points and draw a new leader and possibly if you buy a new leader maybe there should be a guarantee that it will be an upgrade so that eventually you will get to the good leaders. It would make the game a bit more random which maybe could be a bit more fun.

/MM
I agree with you HQs are more Front or Army Group (XXXXX) than Army (XXXX). But, regarding command radius, this is causing a problem in Warplan Pacific since HQs are almost never in range during island hoping.

Where are the COMPACFLT and the COMSUBPAC for example?
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by AlvaroSousa »

HQs on fleets have their command radius from the ship.
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by ncc1701e »

AlvaroSousa wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 2:01 pm HQs on fleets have their command radius from the ship.
Yes but super vulnerable due to that.
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Re: Ideas for the future

Post by battlevonwar »

Weather was a hinderance and a help at times. It was great to have Summer weather for Air Power. Winterized Troops were much more common when armies realized they would also have to fight in that weather. The Desert had it's own difficulties in this regard. Hard ground with good snow is better than Mud or Blizzards. Mud didn't always come with rain. As Magic mentioned we could have more fight year round but I do think this would require more resources as in the Current WarPlan 1 you are pretty exhausted and rest in the off weather turns to rebuild for clear weather. It may be hard to replace this hiatus period without more MPPs/Manpower/Oil?
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