Frustrated with tech

[Scott_WAR]

Too many times I have seen combat results that defy logic. The last straw was in a PBEM game I just quit. Germany had 6 subs in a seazone with my WA fleet, at the start of my turn. By the time I attack I have- 5 heavy fleets, 8 light fleets (asw-2), 3 C.A.G. (asw-2), 2 heavy bombers (asw-2), 3 tactical bombers, and 8 fighters..... All attacking these 6 german subs.

Combat result- 2 heavy fleets destroyed, 2 light fleets damaged,--- 1 german sub damaged. Unbelievable. Unrealistic, and the straw that broke the camels back. The german subs had an evasion of 4, but i dont care if they had an evasion of 10, 6 subs would not survive such an attack.

Too bad. The rest of the game is perfect, and with IP/TCP coming soon, its a real shame that things such as this, which defy logic and realism, make it all pointless.

[SeaMonkey]

Come on Scott, you didn't realize the Axis had researched to 4 ev?

Seems to me you should have been researching ASW to at least a level 3 on at least two unit types. What an oversight, you deserve to get a beating.

Don't blame the game mechanics for your inattentiveness. Behind two research levels is a death sentence.

[HercMighty]

1. Never give up on a Matrix Game.

2. Use good sound reasoning

3. Use a nice post (I always tell my kids that honey works better than vinegar)

The developers usually always do the best they can to fix it, especially as others will post similar problems.

Send save games, use screenshots. Post like this do nothing to help when put in a form that turns off the developer. No one likes a person who sounds like they are threatning or whining (spelling?)

[Fazman]

I can just see it ...

Heavy Fleets lined up like a football frontline, Destroyers in the backfield lookin over at the wide out bombers and the tight seaplane ends... Then the QuarterCarrier yells hike!...oh wait a minute , you had two carriers on the field...now theres' yer problem.

Lol, the BB's don't attack subs even if the subs are out of torpedoes and diesel....and its dice...wacky dice at that. If your down 2 levels of research you need to call a timeout and get "Gus" the sub kickin mule out to that seazone !!

[Scott_WAR]

Yes I knew the axis has evasion to 4. Unfortunatey the amount of research to take ANYTHING to ASW 3 is obscene. But thats is NOT the point. The point is, besdies the battle calculator being wrong when it said I should get 6 casualties, when in reality I got 1 damage. Thats still isnt the point. The point is, with the amount of ordinance I dropped in the water, there shouldnt have been any fish still alive there, much less a sardine can of a sub. Tech is WAY TOO OVERPOWERED. Sheer numbers will overpower tech in the real world, but not in this game. In this game 2 teched up tanks, can be bombed by 8 heavy bombers, and not even get damaged ( yep that hapened in the same game.) I guess they had titanium armor in ww2?


Yeah, the game defys logic and realism in this department. Its a great game everywhere else, but sadly, tech being way too strong, ruins the entire thing.


In fairness the devs have tried to fix a little of the tech problems, but they still dont seem to understand. As long as tech is so strong, its going to be the MAIN strategy in every game. They lowered the world standard of a couple of things to prevetnt people from loading up on just those 2 units (tanks and hvy bombers), but they need to understand, the game shouldnt be completely focused on tech and only tech. Yet it is. If you fall behind just 1 tech level you are as good as dead. Thats not realistic at all.


And I am not the only one to have pointed this out. Its been pointed out by several people.

[JanSorensen]

There is a point here I suppose.

With large enough numbers even peasants with pitch forks will ruin a King Tiger.

Maybe the -1 evasion for being fired upon should somehow be expanded.
- 1 evasion if fired upon 1-3 times prior
- 2 evasion if fired upen 4-7 times prior
- 3 evasion if fired open 8-15 times prior
- 4 evasion if fired open 16+ times prior

The actual numbers could probably do with a bit more careful consideration but the principle remains. Also, this should not apply to bombing infrastructure.

[Joel Billings]

I can appreciate your frustration. The analyzer saying you'd get 6 damaged is an issue. With 13 units that can hit a sub (1st attack will have a 3% chance, follow on attacks against the same unit will have a 30% chance), if the subs didn't fire first you'd get:

6 attacks @ 3% + 7 attacks at 30% = 2.28 subs damaged

IIRC the subs will get first stikes off on some of the enemy ships and may reduce the estimated losses on the subs because of this. So the analyzer should not have reported more than 1-2 losses (which is what you saw). If you have a save, I'd like to see it as Keith might be able to ultimately improve the analyzer.

As for the research issue, yes, tech is very important in WaW, especially where low numbers of dice and evasion are involved (naval combat being the area where this happens the most). As stated above, you can't let yourself get 2 behind the research curve in a critical area like ASW. The only hope of the German navy was that it could sever the WA shipping lifeline with U-boat warfare. If the Germans devote the tons of material to build subs and research them to very large levels, my attitude as a WA player is, "great". With the US as the arsenal of ASW research, I'll just make sure I have lots of ways to kill subs and that'll be less German production to go after Russia. The WA player must research at least some of it's weapons platforms to level 3 if there is any chance that the German is going for level 4 with a large number of avaible subs. I can understand your dismay if you aren't engaged by the research war part of WaW, because it is every bit as important in a game between good players as the war taking place on the map or the one taking place on the production tracks. It's lower visibility in the game is something that can make it more difficult to keep up with, but as you've seen, if you don't, you'll pay a heavy price. I wish we could have made it more obvious to players as to what's happening. Maybe warnings to players that they are falling behind in certain areas, but I'm not sure what we could have done even if we had the time and resources to do it.

Anyway, if you can, send a save to 2by3@2by3games.com with the combat where the analyzer was off and maybe we can at least improve that to give a better prediction of the outcome of the battle.

[Joel Billings]

A postscript. We've talked about adding an optional rule that would give units a chance of hitting other units even when the tech difficiency would normally prevent it. However, this would be a major change and would likely change game balance tremendously (thus an optional rule). It's something we've considered for a future patch, but given our current workload isn't going to happen in the near future.

[Scott_WAR]

Ran the battle again to get a save to send in.

Clarifications.-

Units are actually- 7 german subs. 11 heavy fleets, 8 light fleets(asw2), 3 C.A.G (asw2), 1 heavy bobmer(asw2) 3 tac bombers, 8 fighters.


Predictions- Attacker- 2.9 casualties- Defender- 5.9 casualties (those are close but not exact numbers. I must have looked at it backawards, but that isnt the point).


Results- 1 german sub damaged. 1 carrier, 2 hvy fleets, and 1 light fleet damaged.
1 C.A.G. destroyed (how the hell does a sub kill a carrier air group?) 1 carrier destoyed, and 2 heavt fleets destroyed.

SO I hit less than half of what I was suppose to, and they hit nearly double what they were supposed to.


This is all really irrelevant though. As much ordinance was dumped into the water, there is NO WAY only 1 sub should have been damaged,.... at least not in the real world.

[Scott_WAR]

Joel, the tech is too strong for a 1 level difference, much less 2 or 3. Why cant you guys understand that? No matter how technological advanced a unit is it is not invulnerable, yet in GGWaW thats is exactly what is happening. THAT is the problem. Until it gets brought back into the realm of reality, the game is going to suffer for it. I have played wargames for a long time(20+ years) and I can tell you, this is by far the WORST model of tech( CORRECTION- I mean the strength, not the way tech is researched. I LIKE the mechanics of the game...research, production etc, its just that one tech level gives an absurd advantage) I have ever witnessed in any game. It is supposed to be a war game, not a who can tech the most game.

I know I am not the only one to tell you this. Please listen to the several of us that have said, this HAS to be fixed.


About the german subs and their disrupting shipping. You see there is a good point. SHIPPING. Fleets were not attacked very often by subs becasue the fleets would destroy them...... now please tell me why that isnt the case here............................................................

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: Scott_WAR

1 C.A.G. destroyed (how the hell does a sub kill a carrier air group?) 1 carrier destoyed, and 2 heavt fleets destroyed.

SO I hit less than half of what I was suppose to, and they hit nearly double what they were supposed to.

Killing the CAG comes from killing the CV.

I will try to setup a similar fight - to see what the Combat Analyzer says and what actually happens. I will report back what I find.

[Scott_WAR]

Yeah I screwed up and saved after I did the battle again. Now I cant redo it, and dont have a save showing the odds. But the odds were correct according to what Joel said. So there isnt a problem there, aside from me looking at it backwards [8|]

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

I can appreciate your frustration. The analyzer saying you'd get 6 damaged is an issue. With 13 units that can hit a sub (1st attack will have a 3% chance, follow on attacks against the same unit will have a 30% chance), if the subs didn't fire first you'd get:

6 attacks @ 3% + 7 attacks at 30% = 2.28 subs damaged

Wont some of the subs be fired at by the ineffective fighters before the CAG and bombers drop their loads - thus raising the odds? (setting up test myself - but I would assume so).

[Big Lou]

I would like to make one suggestion - although I feel your pain. It sounds like you sent the entire attacking force in at once, if so that was a mistake. The proper way to conduct that battle should have been in 3 phases:

1. Send in the 8 fighters alone. They will each shot at a different sub and miss all of them. The subs can't fire back. Now each of the subs evasion is reduced by one - for a defense of 9.

2. Send in the CAGs, tac, and bombers. With an ASW of 2 they will likely get between 1 and 3 hits on the subs, whose defense is now only 9; again the subs can't fire back at the planes. Most importantly, any subs destroyed during this round will never have a chance to fire at your ships.

3. Send in the light fleets. With an ASW of 2 and now only facing 5 or so subs with a defense of 9 you will hit another 1 -3 and will likely lose 4 or so light fleets.

The end result of the battle conducted this way will likely be 4 or 5 dead subs and 4 dead light fleets (with no casualties to your heavy fleets or carriers). There is no reason to send in your capital ships. Against a sub's torpedo attack, IIRC the defense of a hvy flt, lt flt, and carrier are all the same - so you are just risking the loss of more expensive ships. And in the event that a carrier is hit, its CAG may have no place to land and cost you the plane as well. You may still think that doing it this way isn't decisive enough, but with the German tech lead I think it would be a fair exchange

[Joel Billings]

You may be right about the attacks by units that can't hit. I think that was something that changed in one of the later patches so I think you are right. You'd have to look at the die rolls to see if it was just bad luck or if the 2.9 was overstated due to not accounting for something (like sub first shot).

As for tech, I realize there are some that don't like the power that tech levels have in the game. I think you represent a small minority that sees it as so much of an issue that it destroys the fun of the game. I think there is a larger group that would prefer some tweaking of research so it wasn't quite as powerful, but otherwise enjoy the research/tech aspect of the game. Then there are those that are ok with it as is. I can only guess the breakdown of the 3 groups. Keep in mind that the game works as Gary designed it, and we obviously disagree that this is the worst tech implementation in a wargame. On the contrary, we think that strategic games on WWII that don't account for tech changes other than an occasional bonus that is so expensive to buy that it renders it undesirable, are missing a big part of the big picture. Changing the system at this time would not be easy (either in designing a good system or coding it without causing other problems). Again, down the road we'll consider the optional rule I mentioned above, but beyond that I don't see any reasonable way to satisfy what you want with what we think a majority of WaW players enjoy. There are a lot of moving pieces in the design of this game intended to keep things fairly simple and yet recreate a lot of different aspects of the war in a reasonably historical manner. I do wish I had an answer that would be more satisfying to you, but I want to give you the straight story.

[Joel Billings]

Big Lou, you gave an excellent example of how knowing the tactics of the game can overcome a seemingly overwhelming tech advantage. That's a great battle plan.

[JanSorensen]

@Big Lou
The Germans appear to have been the attacking force in this case though - making your otherwise wise plan inadmissable. A few nitpicking details if I may.
1) Only send in 7 Ftr as there are only 7 Subs.
2) Dont send in the Tac (they still cannot hit at all).
3) If you want to trade hits on subs for taking HS hits rather than LS hits you should send in the HS too. That way fewer LS get the penalty from being prior hit when firing on the LS. If Subs are your major concern it might be well worth it.

@Joel
I just setup a similar fight. The Fighters most definitely did mix in with the other planes despite having no chance of hitting - meaning some more of the Cags etc had an improved shot (-1 evasion). Predictions ran 3.34 Germans 5.25 Wa for me - which seem perfectly fine. Actual result was 1 damage Sub and 4 damage WA units.



With such low number of dice the varience is just so much higher than when dealing with 6+ dice and as such the combat analyzer is of less help. Maybe it should show the variance as well as the mean but then again that would be probably just confuse many players. As someone that dabbles in statistics a 95% confidence interval would ofcource be optimal

[Daykeras]

There should be a built in rule (not optional) of a max roll = auto hit and min roll = auto miss... so that no matter what the tech there is always a chance of a hit or a miss. This might mean the dice need to be changed from 1d6 to 1d10 or more but I think it would well be worth it.

Perhaps in WaW2?

[haruntaiwan]

Subs at EV 4 are hard to kill indeed and it seems really hard to get to ASW 3.

Especially as Japan.

[Scott_WAR]

I was putting as much into ASW as I could EVERY turn for my WA light fleets, I needed around 12 more points to attain asw tech 3. My opponenet also e-mailed me correcting me--- His subs were evasion tech level 5. So please, dont tell me sonething isnt wrong here. The fact that he can get his subs that high before I can even reach level 3 in ASW easily proves there is a problem. Not to mention the basic fact that a 1 level difference in tech is WAY OVERPOWERED.

Well, I have decided that I am indeed going to quit playing this game.

Joel, please do a search on "tech" in the GGWAW forum to see just how many people have said that tech is too strong. I did, too many posts to go through and list. Most are willing to play anyyway, but quite a few of us still say its a problem. Whether its the fact that tech is too strong for a 1 level advantage or if its the fact that 10 units cant damage a higher teched unit. Its wrong.... and its as simple as that.

I'll check back in from time to time to see if you ever realize and fix it.


Edit- I really like the rest of the game. Sadly becasue of the tech problem, you are FORCED to rely on tech. Somewhere along the way, somone forgot that numbers can match tech. 5 to 1 odds should win, regardless of the tech level of that 1.