Basic info on War in the West 43-45

[Priapus1]

Agree with everyone here. Lack of economic flexibility for the Germans means I won't be purchasing WITW.

[SigUp]

Economic flexibility, aside from realism issues, is overrated. WITW lasts only for two years, compared to four for WITE. Besides, at this point German economy was already going pretty well, compared to 1941. If the staff makes it possible to change equipment in the TOE's of land units, then the economy issue will be a non-issue.

[Flaviusx]

Not sure why so many people are hellbent on getting in touch with their inner Speer...and it's always the German players who are hung up on this. You never hear anybody kvetching about this who plays the allies or the Soviets. (They built lots and lots of stuff! The rest is just details in a book, not a wargame.)

This kind of game simply is not a good platform for ww2 economics. If you want to run the economy, you need to pull way back from the operational sphere and into the grand strategic where things get heavily abstracted. Otherwise you're setting yourself up for a terrible mismatch between the game's detail of military operations and what is going to almost certainly be a horrible kludge at the economic level.

A game set at the higher level is a kludge all around so like pulling back from a mosaic, a coherent picture can emerge. That's why you can get away with this sort of thing playing Axis and Allies or whatever; it's all very abstracted to begin with. (Grigsby even made an AA clone himself for the computer a number of years ago, and it's pretty good. When I feel like running a WW2 economy that's the game of his play, not WIR.)

[swkuh]

My "inner Speer" yearns for a WWII economy/political game (why? see*,) perhaps beginning sometime in the '30s. Maybe a helpful post could point me to one such.

(*) first readings in WWII were political, economic, and personal reflections. Especially found post-war interviews of defeated leaders quite interesting.

[Flaviusx]

Well, the vibe that I'm getting from all this is that some folks just want moar panthers. (Or jets, or whatever.) Jeeze louise. Not a genuinely complicated economic simulation. For WITE or WITW to do any justice to economics and put it at the same level of depth as operations, it'd have to get way deep into the weeds, and imo bog things down. Better imo to simplify and concentrate on what it does best which is operational level combat. And again it's very weird how this is a German thing; I don't see a huge number of folks agitating to run GOSPLAN or the American war economy (which point in fact was a highly political process lacking any single Czar of war production.)

I do enjoy grand strategy games that mix up the economic and military considerations because they're not slumming and pretending to be anything other than highly abstracted portrayals of both. There's plenty of good games out there doing this alread, I mentioned Grigsby's Axis and Allies clone, but there's also the very fine CEAW (which could stand a brand new version) or even the HOI games if you can deal with RTS. But fiddling around with tank factories to pump out cool stuff isn't "economics." It's a species of weapon fetishism near as I can tell.

[RedLancer]

It's a German thing because many believe that streamlining German production is the silver bullet solution to winning the War as they were the side which never had enough.
 
I think that what people find curious is that on the face of it WitE has this wonderful production system but annoyingly you can't tinker with it in game.  That and the added frustration of seeing stuff stuck in the pools when the frontline is wanting makes people think: if only I could then all would be well.
 
For what it's worth you can commune with your inner Speer using the WitE Editor and I recommend doing so.  It adds a whole new dimension as I showed in my Nemesis scenario.  

[Dili]

I think it is interesting for example to cancel ill fated aircrafts like Me210/410 series, or going fighter bomber much earlier etc... ,same is true for allies btw, more tanks or tank destroyers? more or less artillery. Melt the Tirpitz to get more steel? More submarines?
But that needs a game that could work with that variables and unfortunately there is no such game.

[Flaviusx]

But this is an artifact of inefficiencies in the replacement system, not production per se. Changing all your factory output doesn't do a thing to empty the pools. The replacement system is a real problem I grant you but this isn't what people are griping about.

What they want is to go back to the WIR model and optimize their output in very unrealistic ways, and then micromanage the TOEs of their armored units to use the best possible AFVs. It has nothing to do with actual war economics.

[RedLancer]

I agree entirely and whilst I have suggested a system that allows you to 'pull' stuff out of the pools to address some of the friction in the replacements system I don't support changes in game to production or TOE. 

[hfarrish]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

But this is an artifact of inefficiencies in the replacement system, not production per se. Changing all your factory output doesn't do a thing to empty the pools. The replacement system is a real problem I grant you but this isn't what people are griping about.

What they want is to go back to the WIR model and optimize their output in very unrealistic ways, and then micromanage the TOEs of their armored units to use the best possible AFVs. It has nothing to do with actual war economics.

...and also provides yet another way for quanties / people with too much time on their hands to juice the game one way or another, forcing everyone into the slog of production micromanagement. Hard to believe people want to do more button clicking but I guess to each his own.

[MaraTheFinn]

Hi,

the biggest flaw in WitP and all WitI games is the absence of Allied code breking. German Enigma-cypher machine codes were read by Allies on daily basis. So can I see the movements and plans of Germans automatically in game? Ultra secrets were released in the 70's. There are enough books and info what really heppened in Bletchey Park. The secrets were also leaked to the Russians. Also Japanese codes were broken. For example USN knew were and when the Japanese conwoys really move. It was almost child's game to move subs accordingly. [:-]

Production is an other factor in Westfront games. But about that I have noted before.

[SigUp]

As far as I know WITP has a factor accounting for allied codebreaking. Through signal intelligence there is a chance that massings of Japanese forces can be detected. In WITE or WITW your idea of reading movements would make no sense due to the IGOUGO system. As for signal intelligence in general, I think future WIT games should include some kind of signal intelligence based automatic recon, while significantly lower the capabilities of aerial recon. Even though the Germans never had such a good decyphering department like the Allies, they too managed to read some Soviet transmissions, which aided them in preparing for Soviet offensives. Furthermore, the presence of signal activity by itself can be revealing.

[swkuh]

Politics, economics, world events, etc. are not the grist for WitE, understandably. Thanks for suggestions of other games where these issues might be addressed..

BTW, need a hand up to do "editor" on WitE. Curious to know what others have/are doing.

[SuluSea]

G' Evening Joel, any updates on how WITW is progressing? Thanks!

[mariandavid]

I for one am glad that the whole issue of code-breaking is subsumed. For a start what we learnt from the Bletchley Park releases in the 70's, the data that is always used to describe the importance of Eureka code breaking etc, turns out to be incomplete and biased. Not surprising since GCHQ was still breaking codes using the same datum points when they allowed the information to be released. In addition in the excitement of Eureka breaking it is forgotten that the Axis (especially Germany)was as effective in other ways - convoy codes in particular - while even Russia, lacking all electronic skills was, in terms of operational deception, probably the most effective of all.

And in addition it seems that even in its best known area - the Atlantic - Eureka was not the major player, with HuffDuff, according to many authorities, being considerably more important.

So I am glad not to have to play around with all that stuff, especially since there is a good chance that it is nothing like as accurate as the modeling of other aspects of play.

[krishub1492]

Any news on progress that can be shared?

[rwenstrup]

Yes...very interested...hoping it might be available yet this year...

[Joel Billings]

No real news to report on WitW 43-45, other than that work continues and we are making progress. This game (and game system) is huge and it's taking longer to complete than we had hoped. On the other hand, we are making progress. We're looking at a release sometime in 2014. I expect there will be another call for testers either next week or early in January.

[rwenstrup]

Thanks for the update Joel...

[GARY L]

Joel

Any Updates on WITW?

Gary