Fog of War question

[DHRedge]

The manual says reports of damage are randomized because of Fog of War. It does mention it is partially about detection level.

is the fog of war randomness only in final summary, or does it also occur in plane by plane report of bombing damage or surface to surface ship damage reports during those air to surface or naval to naval battles?

Does anyone know how much those results are randomized? Are they 5%off 20%off or 50 or more percent?

In other words how much of the Fog of War results are usable, when are they so random that they are useless?

[Alfred]

Applicable to everything.  Not to the extent of making it useless.  Enough to keep you on your toes.  Just like real life.
 
Alfred

[DHRedge]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Applicable to everything.  Not to the extent of making it useless.  Enough to keep you on your toes.  Just like real life.

Alfred

of coarse, a Fog of war styled response, lol

[RangerJoe]

Caused by your brain fog.

[BBfanboy]

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

[DHRedge]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

Sounds like a good system rewarding synthesis of many points of data that are all slightly off, that individually do not say anything, but when looked at as a whole, information can be gleaned from the entirety.

It is unfortunate that the AI does not have a status script, the capability to determine TOE% or other unit or ship status or availability as a trigger input, without that other then doing what AI expects, AI is weak

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: DHRedge

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

Sounds like a good system rewarding synthesis of many points of data that are all slightly off, that individually do not say anything, but when looked at as a whole, information can be gleaned from the entirety.

It is unfortunate that the AI does not have a status script, the capability to determine TOE% or other unit or ship status or availability as a trigger input, without that other then doing what AI expects, AI is weak

People use the term AI but the game does not have one - it cannot respond intelligently to situations it does not have a script for.
It should be called the game engine if you are referring to the handling of movements and calculations for detection/combat, etc. , and scripts if you are referring to objectives of the Computer Player.
The game engine itself is much too old to be modified to incorporate true AI logic. This has been thoroughly discussed in various threads about trying to get a "WITP-AE 2" game developed. It would have to be almost a "start from scratch" affair and could never be commercially profitable relative to development costs.

[Dili]

Scripted Opponent

[Alfred]

The game does have an AI.
 
People commonly refer to the scripts as the AI.  This is not correct.  The scripts are just that, scripts.  Strategic scripts.  They are not strategic AI.
 
The AI deal with the tactical details.  It is why in the Quiet China scenarios, some tactical action can occur as the tactical AI responds to tactical opportunities.  There is tactical AI involved in forming Task Forces.
 
Alfred

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

The game does have an AI.

People commonly refer to the scripts as the AI.  This is not correct.  The scripts are just that, scripts.  Strategic scripts.  They are not strategic AI.

The AI deal with the tactical details.  It is why in the Quiet China scenarios, some tactical action can occur as the tactical AI responds to tactical opportunities.  There is tactical AI involved in forming Task Forces.

Alfred

Ok, but the AI is pretty shallow in regards to modifying script behaviour such as attacking a target that has been made much too hard for the AI allotted forces to take.

When people talk about breaking a game against the AI it is usually because the Allied player can guess the major targets in the scripts and reinforce them early. The AI then decimates its forces trying to take the target over and over again. A more developed AI would analyze the initial failure and make adjustments suited to the situation. That is the kind of AI I was thinking of.

[rustysi]

Does anyone know how much those results are randomized? Are they 5%off 20%off or 50 or more percent?

This is one thing you should avoid looking for in this game. Absolutes. The design, is as far as possible, such that these won't exist.

At any rate, suffice it to know that, while there's FOW, you will still have far more concise information than any RL leader would likely have at his/her disposal.

[jagsdomain]

ORIGINAL: DHRedge

The manual says reports of damage are randomized because of Fog of War. It does mention it is partially about detection level.

is the fog of war randomness only in final summary, or does it also occur in plane by plane report of bombing damage or surface to surface ship damage reports during those air to surface or naval to naval battles?

Does anyone know how much those results are randomized? Are they 5%off 20%off or 50 or more percent?

In other words how much of the Fog of War results are usable, when are they so random that they are useless?

Often it will be you damage a ship and it will tell you sunk.
During the way Intel would take the amount of kills the pull It says subtract 50 percent then question that number as well.

[Dili]

Yeah, and there isn't FOW of your own forces, you know right away one of your submarines was sunk and you can give order to other one just in time to replace it

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Dili

Yeah, and there isn't FOW of your own forces, you know right away one of your submarines was sunk and you can give order to other one just in time to replace it

My own peeve is that you know the "ground losses" for aircraft lost during sinking of enemy ships as soon as it happens. There should at least be a period of uncertainty during which you have no information about whether the enemy ship survived or not. I usually have a fairly good idea of the ship's chances of survival from the damage observed during the animation and in the combat report, but occasionally it is nice to be surprised to keep the tension of uncertainty going!

[Dili]

Yes, but i keep seeing overall enemy aircraft model - were P-39 - losses going up and down, but i just know if it showed it did happened.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Ok, but the AI is pretty shallow in regards to modifying script behaviour such as attacking a target that has been made much too hard for the AI allotted forces to take.

When people talk about breaking a game against the AI it is usually because the Allied player can guess the major targets in the scripts and reinforce them early. The AI then decimates its forces trying to take the target over and over again. A more developed AI would analyze the initial failure and make adjustments suited to the situation. That is the kind of AI I was thinking of.

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

Given the fact that a "scripted strategic AI" is the reality of the game, and that it's largely based upon historical Japanese goals and actions, the human player has only themselves to blame if they ruin their game by "breaking the script".

A human player going up against the AI should take historically realistic actions for at least the first 6 months of the war. Among other things, that will allow the AI to complete many of the most complicated scripts - those focused on the historical early war expansion. Once those are done, the script still has tricks up it's sleeve, and now (once the other scripts are complete) it will have the opportunity to use them.

[Gridley380]

ORIGINAL: Kull

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

True, but I'd trade that in a heartbeat for the understanding the US actually had + MAGIC/ULTRA/etc on the intel front.

And the Japanese player has the same advantage of hindsight - and yes, that kicks in right away too; they know PacFleet's CVs aren't at Pearl, and if they open the scenario from the Allied side they know what hex they ARE in.

[Macclan5]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Losses stated in the combat reports are just one indicator with an approximate value. The Intel Report can provide another indicator. Watching the combat animation carefully and making notes of the action is another indicator. Doing cursor rollover of enemy ACTFs and air bases gives another indicator of aircraft levels, to be compared with what they were before the battle. Loss of ships that carry aircraft can be inferred by looking at the aircraft losses and what the causes of the losses were.

IOW, the game is designed to let you do you Intel analysis by gathering all the info you can and coming up with a "best approximation". It is one of the things that makes the game feel so real when you are playing.

+1

Not to overemphasize - but the AirCraft losses - sorted by "today's" result seems to be a really strong indicator in my humble opinion.

Just an opinion mind you - or preference.

Whether Airplanes on a ship - Airplanes in a port just bombarded - flight attacks on my base.

Operational Losses - the number there in - seems to provide a strong if imperfect picture of damaged units lost and tell the tale of (1) carrier sinking (2) effectiveness of all those damaged units from bombardment (3) all those damaged units that attacked by base were hit by CAP or AA and never made it home.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Gridley380

ORIGINAL: Kull

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

True, but I'd trade that in a heartbeat for the understanding the US actually had + MAGIC/ULTRA/etc on the intel front.

I know! The real-life Allied intel (especially mid-to-late war) was amazingly detailed and immediately useful. To gain that level of information, you'd almost have to allow your opponent to open up the game (as you) and randomly examine an increasing number of bases and task forces. In game terms, the Allies were "cheating" for most of the war!

And the Japanese player has the same advantage of hindsight - and yes, that kicks in right away too; they know PacFleet's CVs aren't at Pearl, and if they open the scenario from the Allied side they know what hex they ARE in.

No doubt, but I was talking about this knowledge in the context of using it to "break" an AI that is conducting a largely historical expansion. Can the human Japanese player do the same thing against the Allied AI? To some extent, but it takes longer to break an AI that is mostly focused on retreat and fighting in place with what it has.

That said, the Allied AI script has always been the weaker of the two, simply because by the time the retreat phase is over and the Allied AI launches into expansion, the Japanese position could be vastly different from the historical - and the Allied script can't know that.

[rustysi]

ORIGINAL: Kull

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Ok, but the AI is pretty shallow in regards to modifying script behaviour such as attacking a target that has been made much too hard for the AI allotted forces to take.

When people talk about breaking a game against the AI it is usually because the Allied player can guess the major targets in the scripts and reinforce them early. The AI then decimates its forces trying to take the target over and over again. A more developed AI would analyze the initial failure and make adjustments suited to the situation. That is the kind of AI I was thinking of.

To be fair here, the Allied human player has a MASSIVE advantage since he has perfect 20-20 hindsight as to the true capabilities of the early war Japanese military AND a certain knowledge of their real-life targets AND the pace of those operations. To say nothing of the ability to ignore all the political realities that delayed responses and caused the Allies to take chances that no human player would ever consider.

Given the fact that a "scripted strategic AI" is the reality of the game, and that it's largely based upon historical Japanese goals and actions, the human player has only themselves to blame if they ruin their game by "breaking the script".

A human player going up against the AI should take historically realistic actions for at least the first 6 months of the war. Among other things, that will allow the AI to complete many of the most complicated scripts - those focused on the historical early war expansion. Once those are done, the script still has tricks up it's sleeve, and now (once the other scripts are complete) it will have the opportunity to use them.

Very well said.[&o]