John DiFool the 2nd

One more thought about the Panama problem on P.4-would just having one set of arrows be sufficient? Now Rambo would have to send his carriers into the Atlantic one at a time. That way you can still swap a few ships here or there, but not entire fleets en masse.

Alright, 2 years into an Axis vs. Allied AI game (thus I won't comment on the AI which I know is being worked on), here goes... 0) This is obviously a very ambitious scenario, and kudos for what must have been a crapload of work to get it to function halfway correctly. Trading a seamless map for larger scales (which is what Big Al did with his) is a worthwhile swap, even if it leaves travel arrows all over the place, and cramps the Atlantic a bit. To try to balance the two main theatres would challenge King Solomon. 1) I'm not sure the alternating 14 day turns works well at this scale. Barbarossa was over almost before it began (early June being the first completely clear day)-it's August 29 and I'm quite a bit behind the historical pace despite tepid AI opposition. The distances are just too great and supply lags behind the spearheads at the default vanilla pace, which is a big problem. While I haven't done anything in the Pacific yet, of course, I also fear for what may happen there, as ship movement greatly outstrips sighting distances. If you cut it back to 10 day alternating turns, and drop ship movement accordingly, I think we shall get something a bit more playable and historical. 14 day simultaneous might be even better, even tho it would double email file swapping and playing time. Seasonal length turns would be too Eurocentric, naturally. 2) How the Axis minors get triggered is problematic. Yes, they all come in by June '41 (not sure how the many diplomatic chits I invested helped that-none got to the magical 90% level before June), but the late entries make taking the Yugos/Greece out before Barbarossa almost impossible. I think having the half-strength units is a good balancing feature, so keep that, just move the dates back some, and instead of chits invested at start, have some popups where the game offers to activate the minors, for a fee and perhaps some Russian/US activation points (warning message the turn before can't hurt). 3) Likewise I'm not sure why the Japanese don't have any toeholds on the continent, which they historically did. Yeah, I get the Manchurian MPPs, no problem there, just there's nowhere to get a foothold (well, parts of SE Asia get activated) and get my troops in position before I make my move (vs. Russians or Chinese). 4) I think the Japanese get too many MPPs; I was able to buy out the entire IJN force pool (except for some DDs) by June '41. Al had many of the on-map units starting off at half-strength. Then again Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet and I may be short on land units (was going to take a lot of islands and eschew the continent). 5) Not sure why DDs move at 10, CVs at 14, subs at a whopping 18 (Pacific side). Troop transports likewise can outrun their escorts. 6) I know research was hammered out upthread, but the one chit limit really porks intensively focused research, esp. given how capricious the random number generator can be. I much prefer how vanilla handles it-even 3 chits at a time would be fine. That way I can keep one chit on minor areas (like Intel) and crank up like Amphib or Heavy Tanks as the need arises. I think the historical record clearly shows that the major powers could get the tech in a reasonable time frame when they really needed and wanted it (drop tanks for US escorts, Type XXI subs for the Germans (absent the bombing campaign there would have been dozens out in the convoy lanes by late '44), the various British electronic gadgets, etc.), while still benefiting from lower level priorities here and there. 7) I don't like where Rommel starts (I do like free units don't get me wrong)-I have to waste MPPs to transport him to the Med front. Just put him in southern Italy, and then I have choices, like amphibing Greece with him. For any and all of the above, I bow to the MP crowd. Just my 2 pence. I really do hope Hubert is going to add true multiplayer, because there literally is far too much going on here for one person to handle (it can be done, and I have a hotseat buddy who will coop with me). Not a criticism, just an observation.

Got the latest off the depository, going to reserve judgement until I play it some more. Only real quibble is the relative lack of Japanese convoy routes for the American subs to raid-historical results for the Silent Service will be rather hard to come by. Of course a lot of that is due to supply convoys not having to run the gauntlet at all (vs. MPP convoys)...

Alas, the depository is acting up. Any alternate DL sites? [CMMods is history]

That would require a serious overhaul of the entire system. A long waypoint path is basically what SAS has, but I'm too old-fashioned to relinquish direct command and control and depend on my AI inferiors (pun intended) to fulfill my general battle orders. Glad to see that you don't think seazones are any good tho. DLing game as I speak...

I actually haven't booted up SAS in months now. The interface is horrendous, the action is too abstracted, the AI (both the computer's and "yours") rather hopeless. I had some fun designing ships and such, but overall it was a very unsatisfying game. If anyone remembers SimCan and how assiduously they would try to model fog of war, limited command and control, well that's kind of what SAS is. The economy has pretty much prevented me from splurging on new games since then. Like I said once I have a nice long open time period I'll get PT.

Am I reading this right-to sink anything you also need the IJN CVs there to kill the damaged ships? I also assume there's a recurring event upping Japanese readiness if the US moves all Pearl ships to the West Coast? I'll likely, finally, spring for PT this week.

Until they scouted it out with a sub or other naval (or perhaps air) unit.

Gameplay decision to represent how logistics lags behind offensive spearheads. Tho since HQs need a nearby high-supply city to get above supply level 5 themselves, that (movement of 2) really may not make that much of a difference. I remember Clash of Steel gave Rommel an extra move point.

Well so far the Wings are seeing '08 Osgood and not '09 Osgood. If that keeps up they certainly have a good chance to repeat.

I haven't bought the game (yet-money issues mainly); from reading all the AARs I keep hearing about partisans popping up here and there (which when they do they inflict supply hits on nearby Japanese cities)-I did not know there were separate supply hit events as well.

Question is thus begged: why did Japan go to all that trouble and expense in the real war to take and garrison all these islands? Control of convoy lanes is certainly part of it, but the game doesn't model many historic convoy routes (such as US to Australia Lend-Lease), and doesn't model supply convoys at all. The other problem is needing to waste at least a corps-level unit as a garrison when many islands were only held by brigade-sized forces. Air units same thing-you might have 1-4 squadrons of fighters/bombers on an island, but in SC again you really can't spare all the air units needed to base most of these islands. So you lose the recon value that an air unit would give you as well as the contribution it may provide to any nearby naval battles. I guess what we need is a huge map (eliminating armies while upgrading corps to the army slot, leaving division/brigade-sized units in the corps slot). Combine that with more (read: cheaper) air units, and perhaps you might get something more historical. The real issue is that the game poorly models the crappy logistics situation in China (absent partisans of course), the real reason why Japan didn't penetrate too deeply inland in most cases. Maybe change partisans to events which damage cities, a la the "Malta" event in earlier SC2 titles?

We can only hope that the upcoming "secret" SC2 expansion will introduce true multiplayer.

Hubert has put in a ton of "balance" scripting which basically favors the AI side. Free units, MPP bonuses, etc.

Next version of SC series? What the hey is that supposed to mean I wonder...

Back on topic-the game likely needs a sort of cheap recon/naval bomber unit. Just about every Pacific Island had air assets of one sort of another, but can you afford to buy a whole bunch of SC2 air units and do the same?

Big Al made France a minor in his mod, while Nupremal made what is potentially an equally good choice in making China a minor. No idea why it is neutral tho.

http://www.wargamer.com/article/2650/strategic-command-world-war-ii-pacific-theater Fairly good review. Not having sprung for it (yet), I didn't know that ship movement was so relatively slow.

Big Al, you converting yours over too?

There's always been problems with the sub routines/convoy lane raiding. A system which works "okay" in the Atlantic may not work so well in the Pacific. The biggest problem is that while raw material convoys are modeled, albeit from just one main port, in Borneo or Sumatra, supply convoys running the other way (towards island outposts) are not, and a sub can't do much damage to a port without giving itself away. So the Japs likely can sit on that one convoy route and kill everything they see. Adding a few more routes might help, a bit. Hubert made his design decision and I respect it, even if I don't agree with it. Sadly the game I got as an alternative, which I won't name here, is riddled with tons of bugs right now (tho they are being patched, slowly but surely).

The various nth-generation Empire knockoffs certainly took complexity to new levels-you can always pile features upon features until the entire edifice comes crashing down. All I want is a reasonably playable facsimile of 1900-1950 style warfare, and that should be doable here. Civ's ultimate problem combat-wise is that the combat system had to be able to handle all eras, but its generic blandness meant that it depicted none of them well.

I've been hesitant to toss in this comparison, for various reasons, but after seeing the above posts I'll do so anyway. The convoy routes thing depicted above is very similar to how SC2 does it. Sadly, SC2 almost completely lacks any flexibility (esp. with respect to the AI) if you just want to toss together a quick scenario-you can't, because of all the scripting you must do to even make it remotely playable. But that's an argument for a different BF sub-forum.

Just something I noticed, which likely applies to all SC versions. Both help sections have the following comment: "Research type [unit type purchase] lines are read one line at a time so there is no need to set a total sum of research purchase percentages equal to 100%, i.e. each line is read and the % chance of purchasing the research type is based on the % chance assigned to the particular research type." Since MPPs are typically limited, wouldn't this mean that the top units/research types would still have a greater chance of getting bought than ones at the bottom, even if the % was the same (or even higher)? Say the AI has 180 MPPs, and during his turn it goes through the appropriate research lines one at a time, rolling for each percentage. Say it gets a hit on "Jets" (third from the top), and spends the 150 MPPs for the chit. Well the rest of the lines no longer matter, even if Jets was set at 20% and something like Production Tech was at 30%, because there's no way to buy the remaining chits without sufficient MPPs, right? Which means that if Production Tech is always at the bottom (as it seems to be in the several scenarios I've checked) then it will very rarely be bought, unless most everything else has been zeroed out. Which means that techs must be prioritized not only in terms of the %, but also by its position in the list. Thus if you want to make sure that a given country must make PT its #1 priority, you had better put that first, not last (or zero everything else out). If Hubert or Blashy or someone wants to chime in and confirm or refute my analysis, please do. Or do all of them get rolled, and only then are chits assigned, with the one with the highest percentage getting the first chit, and so on down the line until all MPPs are gone?

Yeah, Colin, that is a consequence of Hubert's design philosophies, for good or bad. Then again a very recently released naval wargame which attempted to model such things so far hasn't quite done it for me. Sure, I'd love sea supply/sea reinforcement to be modeled accurately-in general I very much dislike "teleporting" goods & troops (if not whole units) which magically appear in an island 3,000 miles away from the home country, but it does make for a rather streamlined gaming experience. The playability vs. realism debate may never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction.

I would almost urge you to reconsider. I have always disliked teleporting resources, be they raw goods/ores or finished supply materials. I fully understand that this kind of thing can be a royal pain to implement in a way which will not bog the game down, but the alternative may take away too much of the "flavor" of early-mid 20th century combat, from subs attacking ocean commerce to cutting off enemy land units from supply, that it would be a simulation of such warfare in name only. Your game likely would be very lively and enjoyable anyway, and these are certainly virtues to shoot for, but it wouldn't really resemble the combat of the period much at all without the player having to consider and plan out his shipping & logistics needs. There are likely ways to do it which wouldn't involve a huge amount of micromanagement, perhaps by instituting automatic "shipping" orders which will send a convoy (sea or land) on its way every so often without repeated player input.