Game Killed by Dissapearing Aircraft Bug

[Tom Hunter]

Well its official, we did some diging into the our game and Blackwatch is short by something in the neighborhood of 1,000 Zeros in September 1942.

He is also missing some number of Vals and Kates, maybe even hundreds.

The Americans are probabley missing some 4F4s and Dauntlesses, but not enough to matter. The bug may also be draining Devastators, but if that is true I don't care.

So if you have been following the AAR its over. Thanks to all who read and especially those who added comments.

[Mr.Frag]

Timing is everything (notice the top right corner?)

[ltfightr]

TEASE[:-][&o]

[harrer]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Timing is everything (notice the top right corner?)

So it is ready ? [X(]

Harrer [;)]

[PeteG662]

Its not ready on my computer......

[Tom Hunter]

QA is everything, timing is accident.

Any bug that removes thousands of aircraft from the game should have been squashed before 1.5

[freeboy]

WE did n't see nearly that many go away... and we each have suffered major corruption/bugs.. Z lost lots of fighters, remember its the pilots Japan cannot afford to lose, I lost SWpac and have very odd, orders being made to units under my control
I am wiping witp from my machine and doing a fresh install with 1.5.. as long as this doesn't kill my one remaining pbem game

[Tom Hunter]

I agree that pilots are the really big problem for Japan, and that if we had not been hit by this bug Blackwatch would have had a real quality problem.

However pilots are usually the problem for Japan because they make enough planes, but not enough pilots. In this case they were not even making enough aircraft so the pilot issue was moot.

Blackwatch would lose a Zero and it would never come back. In March 42 he had 498 Zeros flying. In September he was down to 188.

During that time he built 1600 to 1800 Zeros, lost 900+ and had 600 to 800 simply dissapear.

[MadDawg]

1000 missing aircraft!?! Bugs like this are unacceptable in my opinion, it makes me wonder why I bought this game near a year ago if its only just becoming playable in a patch not yet even released. It will certainly be something I will remember before making future purchases.

[Grotius]

This one is indeed a game-stopper; I'm glad it's being fixed.

In fairness, though, WITP is so huge and time-consuming that there was no way to test it thoroughly during development. Even now, it has a limited playing community, and only a handful of us have played the campaign game to 1944 or 1945. I don't know if any tester made it that far in beta. It doesn't shock me that some "long-term" bugs are only being fixed now. If it had World of Warcraft's player base (1.5 million and counting), the disappearing-plane bug would've been identified much earlier.

[crsutton]

Yes, I think that is the key. This is indeed a monster game. Even Gary seems to be consumed by this one. There is really no way you could fully playtest this one. I myself have not even thought of embarking on a campaign. I just have too much of a life to try that.

That said, I have three games going of the South Pacific Scenario and they are working well and a heck of a lot of fun.

The biggest defect in the game that I can see is that there are not near enough small to medium size scenarios. Just a bunch of monster campaigns that I can't hope to play (or really want to for that matter).

[Blackwatch_it]

ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

I agree that pilots are the really big problem for Japan, and that if we had not been hit by this bug Blackwatch would have had a real quality problem.

However pilots are usually the problem for Japan because they make enough planes, but not enough pilots. In this case they were not even making enough aircraft so the pilot issue was moot.

Blackwatch would lose a Zero and it would never come back. In March 42 he had 498 Zeros flying. In September he was down to 188.

During that time he built 1600 to 1800 Zeros, lost 900+ and had 600 to 800 simply dissapear.

At the moment I have more pilots then planes available and four out of five Claude sendais are over 70 experience.

[tsimmonds]

That's really a shame, that was a great AAR (the only one that I really found interesting, once PzB took Karachi). I hope you will start a new one under 1.5.

[Blackwatch_it]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

That's really a shame, that was a great AAR (the only one that I really found interesting, once PzB took Karachi). I hope you will start a new one under 1.5.

me too[:)]

[Tom Hunter]

I accept that you have more pilots than planes, and that the Claudes (which Blackwatch would have upgraded to Zeros if they had existed) have 70+ experience.

But I doubt you have 600-800 extra pilots. If the planes had come in we would have experienced increased attrition on both sides. Since we were already destroying hundreds of planes per month its likely you would have run out of experienced pilots.

The fact that you have good pilots in the pool is just more proof of how badly this bug screwed Japan over.


One other thing people should be aware of, I was conciously trying to keep the attrition rate high. This made the effects of the bug even worse. If I had played a Fabian strategy Blackwatch would have more Zeros right now.

One of the things I found interesting about our game is that we did not have too fast movement of forces, Allied 4 engine bomber attacks did not magically shut down airfields and even our shore bombardments did not score the spectacular results some other people have posted though they are plenty dangerous.

That is what lead me to write about player variation in Tristanjohn's recent thread on the game and its why I don't (yet, my mind is open on the question) agree with him.

If we run another game and do AARs I want to do seperate threads. This one was a lot of work though and I am not sure I want to commit that kind of time, we will see.

[tsimmonds]

One of the things I found interesting about our game is that we did not have too fast movement of forces, Allied 4 engine bomber attacks did not magically shut down airfields and even our shore bombardments did not score the spectacular results some other people have posted though they are plenty dangerous.

Could you attribute this difference to something definite? House rules? Admirable self-restraint? Laziness?[;)]

[Blackwatch_it]

ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

I accept that you have more pilots than planes, and that the Claudes (which Blackwatch would have upgraded to Zeros if they had existed) have 70+ experience.

But I doubt you have 600-800 extra pilots. If the planes had come in we would have experienced increased attrition on both sides. Since we were already destroying hundreds of planes per month its likely you would have run out of experienced pilots.

The fact that you have good pilots in the pool is just more proof of how badly this bug screwed Japan over.


One other thing people should be aware of, I was conciously trying to keep the attrition rate high. This made the effects of the bug even worse. If I had played a Fabian strategy Blackwatch would have more Zeros right now.

One of the things I found interesting about our game is that we did not have too fast movement of forces, Allied 4 engine bomber attacks did not magically shut down airfields and even our shore bombardments did not score the spectacular results some other people have posted though they are plenty dangerous.

That is what lead me to write about player variation in Tristanjohn's recent thread on the game and its why I don't (yet, my mind is open on the question) agree with him.

If we run another game and do AARs I want to do seperate threads. This one was a lot of work though and I am not sure I want to commit that kind of time, we will see.

Of course I don't have 600 pilots in pool, I would have been aware much earlier that something was wrong.
True, destroyed hundreds of planes each month, but many were destroyed on the groud and this saved some pilot.
The air attrition was very high all along the game and we had high losses on both sides
The movement of forces in the game was realistic: no continuos action, but long periods of refitting and preparation between the main efforts.
Separate treads can make it easier to give explanation of the planned moves.

[Blackwatch_it]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Could you attribute this difference to something definite? House rules? Admirable self-restraint? Laziness?[;)]

I think that continuos actions without refit and preparation would not be a realistic simulation.
I noticed when the game was going on that both sides ships were spending a lot of time in port and I htink that ths is correct.

[Tom Hunter]

Irrelevant,

I think Blackwatch is right about the continous action slowing things down. By continous action he means there were always several active fronts, and we both had to be careful all the time. In the real war both sides were afraid that if they went too deep into enemy territory they would get their heads chopped off. This actually happened to both of us within the first 3 months of the war so we both started to be careful.

Each of us would have forces resting, repairing or organizing somewhere else. But we were both fighting constantly. This made it harder to concentrate truely overwhelming forces. For example I had my 4 engine bombers at 3 different fronts. I felt I needed them in Malaya, Timor and NE Oz for various reasons so I could not concentrate enough to really wipe out Blackwatch's airbases they way some people do. On the other hand if I did not have them in all 3 places I would have lost some important battles.

Because we were fighting everywhere there was more strain on our ability to manage the war. This is important especially in a huge game where inability to figure out what is really important can really hurt you. For example I did not really understand the power of Japanese LBA until mid 42 and lost a lot Cruisers because of this. Blackwatch missed the importance of the airbase upgrade messages that were coming out of North Sumatra from time to time. Those messages were the first clue that the British were up to something.

Turning China into a swamp was also important. It keeps Japanese air and land units busy and eats up Japanese supply and replacements. Its not decisive, but having it go away can be very good for Japan.

We both tried to keep our ships in good shape, that may have slowed things a bit.

We had very high attrition, so we may have been slower on territorial conquest but faster on racking up losses.

Finally we seem to be pretty well matched and I think that matters most of all. That is my fundamental disagreement with Tristanjohn about the game allowing players to do things that were historically impossible. We don't really know what was historically impossible. Historical people have often done things that were "impossible" from the point of view of the other side. It was impossible that myopic little copycat monkeys (or so the white racist Anglo-Saxon's thought) could develop a top quality fighter plane. Then Zeros started shooting them out of the sky. Americans at Pearl Harbor were so conviced of this that they reported Germans flying German fighters on December 7th, it was the only explaination that made sense to them.

I don't know if the Japanese could have conquered India. I know they did not, but conquest can develop momentum of its own. I don't know if the Japanese could really conquer China though I am pretty sure garrisoning it would be a nightmare, because that was true of the part they did conquer.

I do think the game has very deep flaws, but its still a fun game. I hesitate to speak authoritatively about alternative histories because they are all speculative by nature.

I also think we have to look at play balance. The game Blackwatch and I just played between to well matched players with decades of wargaming experience seemed pretty well balanced and got a result that was interesting and within the limits of historical probability.

I am very confident that I can hold India and China with the resources available within the game as it is. I will also admit that I could lose them if I screwed up my defense. Some of the "fixes" proposed to the problem of a (relatively) weak India and China would create very strong Indias and Chinas. One of the reasons the Allies need to be careful in the early part of the game is to avoid losing these places, make them strong and foolish allied players can play on after losing large forces to Japan. But give those same strong forces to smart Allied players and you will see them go on the offensive big and early.

Even the logistics system may be producing cockeyed results because of player style. I was committed to fighting as many places as possible so I had to supply all those places. I had shipping shortages in the Indian Ocean and though I was able to supply my other bases I never had 2 million supply in Oz. Outside of the map edge supply hubs I never had more than 350,000 supply at any one location and that was at Pearl Harbor. I did have many bases with 50,000 to 100,000 supply. I needed that because I could not be sure where the next fight would be. Historically the Allies did the same thing, they supplied Dutch Harbor, Canton Island, Fiji, and countless other places with lots of supplies, just as I did.

But I read comments from other Allied players saying that they let a number of bases run out of supplies, presumabley to focus their efforts on the point of contact with the Japanese. If you play that way its going to mess up the logistics system because you are using resources designed to supply bases all over the Pacific to supply bases in a small part of the Pacific.

This is the interaction between player ability/style and game mechanics that I was talking about.

Blackwatch and I successfully ambushed eachother in the early game. After that we slowed our operation tempo to avoid being tactically suprised -player ability and reaction to it changed the pace of the game.

The PzB and Wobbly AAR pointed out the vunerablity of India if you put too much stuff in Burma so I defended India in depth. It was a good defense that was never tested but again player decisions made a strong India. Wobbly lacked the example and his decisions left India critically vunerable. Blackwatch can comment on why he did not go for India but its possible that he realized I was planning a strong defense in depth when he found Burma weakly defended.

In China we both stumbled around trying to figure out how to fight there. Japan took a handful of cities early, China won some defensive battles later but basically we have a bloody stalemate. Again player ability/decision making was the key factor not the strength or weaknesses of the two armies.

As I mentioned above even on logistics the players were key. Logistics may be broken, I am concerned about what will happen in the later part of the war and also I lost over 440 ships most of them merchants and that may have slowed me down. But even so it shows the power of player decision making to change the game. I made decisions that cost me a lot of shipping (and some of them were really stupid decisions, let me tell you) and that changed the game.

I hope this helps explain why our game ran in a way that looks historically possible. It should also show why I am a little bit sceptical when people say change the system it does not encourage "realism". Not to say that it could not be better but we need to really understand what is going on first, and why we get crazy results.

If crazy results are caused by the people playing the game then the only way to stop them is to constrain what players can do. Some constrait is good, but too much constraint is bad. A game that forces us to abandon our flights of fancy is not going to be much fun, even if they are crazy or historically innacurate.

[tsimmonds]

Thanks for taking the time to write this analysis. I really would like my next PBEM to be more like your game was, but it is difficult not to shift into overdrive and overconcentrate. One question that I have is, did you and Blackwatch have any house rules , formal or informal? Did you discuss beforehand what kind of game you were interested in, and ways to make it that way?