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Post by director on Jul 9, 2017 19:11:44 GMT -6
Coming out with that level of detail is just beyond me. I do try to take notes but tend to get so involved in the battle I forget. Those are fascinating but I couldn't do a game of RtW that way, the work would kill me. Might be fun to do one battle...
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Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 9, 2017 19:53:02 GMT -6
Coming out with that level of detail is just beyond me. I do try to take notes but tend to get so involved in the battle I forget. Those are fascinating but I couldn't do a game of RtW that way, the work would kill me. Might be fun to do one battle... I totally agree, but the one I submitted was a combat operation AAR, not just a battle. Battle AAR by a ship or command are usually much simpler. I just play the game and enjoy. I spent too many years writing reports, memorandum and project plans for the government, I am not getting back into that mode.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Jul 9, 2017 21:41:15 GMT -6
I spent too many years writing reports, memorandum and project plans for the government, I am not getting back into that mode. *hears X-Files music in the distance...* I knew it. *starts emptying his drawers to skip town by the end of this post-*
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Dec 9, 2017 15:55:11 GMT -6
Just giving this thread a "currently relevant" bump for ease of finding. I do not deem it un-warranted.
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Post by bramborough on Dec 9, 2017 16:49:36 GMT -6
Just giving this thread a "currently relevant" bump for ease of finding. I do not deem it un-warranted. I'm glad you did. Reading the Murray/Halsey Doolittle AAR was fascinating; I wouldn't have seen that had you not resurrected from a few months ago. New people come to forums all the time; for that reason alone it's sometimes good to "necro" quality-content threads occasionally, even if for no particular reason. Thanks to pops for unearthing that gem.
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Post by Capsized on Sept 21, 2018 6:50:17 GMT -6
I'm not completely done with my previous project but at least now I have some time to actually play the game instead of reverse-engineering it, so I was thinking of *maybe* doing an AAR. The aim is to give me a good reason not to save-scum my way throught a campaign (56 copies of the save game folder before 1912 in the last run), and actually move forward instead of always restarting. So I was reading the advices in the first post, especially the first one: 1) As my good friend director advised, "play ahead." Many times in this story I got to a point where I had to pause and think, "well wait a minute, how am I going to make this work now?" If you play your game at least 18 months out from your writing then you can narrate events so-as to take advantage of opportunities which you might not expect- for instance, my fortuitous realization that Alex's harsh deriding of England for re-seizing New Zealand had occurred exactly 12 months before England pulled out of the alliance; instant cause and affect. You also avoid a pace-killing flashback piece to retroactively explain something; i.e. the colonial addition of the Dominican Republic. My problem is that if I wait some time before writing everything down, I'll have forgotten all the useful bits. So how to manage that? I have not sen any "complete log" of battles, is there one well-hidden somewhere? Same question for the strategic events, is there a log of all events that happen? Or should I writes notes all the time?
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Post by bcoopactual on Sept 21, 2018 8:23:03 GMT -6
My problem is that if I wait some time before writing everything down, I'll have forgotten all the useful bits. So how to manage that? I have not sen any "complete log" of battles, is there one well-hidden somewhere? Same question for the strategic events, is there a log of all events that happen? Or should I writes notes all the time? No, right now you would have to recreate it. I've done it for my large battles in my current game. It takes about 10-15 minutes per battle (more for large fleet actions). The way I do it looks like this: It's a combination of all of the individual ship's logs arranged by time. It doesn't include the General log at the top of the scenario screen so it doesn't have things like ship sightings and torpedoes and flash fires aren't color highlighted automatically but the ship's logs have most of the information in the general log and it's all 100% accurate. For example some of the hits listed in the General log are actually near misses and are listed as such in the individual ship's logs. It also tells you the exact range and firing ship of every shell that lands so you can figure out which ship launched the 1 torpedo that managed to hit out of the school of fish that were fired all at the same time. I do copy the general log as well, I just don't include it in the above compilation. That and I take a screen shot of the ship tracks post scenario and take a screen shot of the results page. It's all the information I need to recreate a battle later. It takes some space and slows the pace of play down but I also use the data to answer questions from the forum or go back and look for evidence for a discussion online as well so I find it to be worth it. Most players might not be willing to slow the pace down that much (it takes me a month or more to get through a game depending on how many days a week I can play) but I'm willing to describe how I made the logs for those that aren't Excel savvy (not that I am but I did some google-fu to figure out how to make it work) if someone wishes.
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Post by Capsized on Sept 21, 2018 9:21:30 GMT -6
I take a screen shot of the ship tracks post scenario I'm really glad I asked, because I missed that. I don't remember reading about it in the manual. I'll have to look for the way to show it!
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Post by aeson on Sept 21, 2018 9:22:17 GMT -6
My problem is that if I wait some time before writing everything down, I'll have forgotten all the useful bits. So how to manage that? I have not sen any "complete log" of battles, is there one well-hidden somewhere? Same question for the strategic events, is there a log of all events that happen? Or should I writes notes all the time? The only log that the game keeps for a battle is the record of ships lost; you can find the date of a battle and against which power it was fought if you lost a ship in the engagement, and if you want to poke around in the *.bcs file I believe you can do the same for the computer's ships, but none of the detailed information available immediately after the battle will be available after the next engagement unless you take the time to record it - and if you don't take the time to record it before exiting the battle scenario, you'll have to dig through the *.sac files before you start the next engagement in order to access them. Also, I am not certain that the information in the *.sac files is necessarily complete; I don't believe that the game writes anything to Autosave.sac between autosaves or anything at all to the other *.sac file (including creating the file itself) unless you manually save the game, so information between the last autosave and the end of the battle can be lost if you do not record it before exiting the battle scenario. Note that the date of sinking recorded for ships is the date in Time Zone 0, not necessarily the local date, so a ship recorded as having sunk on 4/24/1910 may actually have sunk on the 23rd or the 25th depending on what time zone it was in.
The only log of strategic-turn events of which I am aware is the 'Turn Messages' button. Note that this is an incomplete log - it does not include the messages related to antisubmarine warfare or submarine commerce raiding, nor, if I recall correctly, does it include mention of ships which struck mines or were torpedoed by submarines during the preceding interturn. Furthermore, this information is not preserved in the save state; the Turn Messages log will be empty regardless of what happened after the end of the preceding turn if you save, exit, and reload the game. Once the battle ends, there should be a button at the top where the range circle buttons are which has a pair of red lines on it; click that and it should display the tracks of ships involved in the engagement. If I recall correctly, you can display the tracks of flag ships only, large ships only, or all ships.
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Post by Capsized on Sept 21, 2018 11:44:14 GMT -6
Thanks a lot to both of you. Reading your answers, I just realized that there are tools that already do everything we need. - We can save at the end of a battle - All the files in the saves folder, except the ships' side pictures, are text files. Annnnd... source control software are designed to record changes of text files and allow to go back and forward in time, restoring or cancelling changes as needed. I'll create a thread to explain how to do it; I just tested it right now and it is perfect. I'm a complete idiot. I was messing around with stupid game folder copies when I already have everything I need installed and I am using it every day. EDIT: explanation done. nws-online.proboards.com/thread/1559/complete-system-exists-source-controlHow on earth was I unable to see it before?
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Sept 21, 2018 16:00:50 GMT -6
Frankly I just took notes, and examined relevant ship's logs after a battle when I wrote mine, but a comprehensive persistent log has been high on the "ask" list here for a long time, especially for AAR writers. It would be so cool to pull up a ship and see;
Laid Down date Commisioned [date] Working-up [date] Transit to station [movement from zone A to zone B] On Service at [sea-zone of residence for a period without movement] Battle of XYZ [Foe, Date, Hits Scored, Received] In Dock [date] for Repair Transit to Station [movement from zone A to zone B] Return to Port [movement from zone B to Home waters] Refitting [date]
Something like that. For my AAR I simply filled a notebook, and thankfully I had the zeal for the project to carry on, because it was exceedingly tedious.
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Post by bcoopactual on Sept 21, 2018 17:32:35 GMT -6
Frankly I just took notes, and examined relevant ship's logs after a battle when I wrote mine, but a comprehensive persistent log has been high on the "ask" list here for a long time, especially for AAR writers. It would be so cool to pull up a ship and see; Laid Down date Commisioned [date] Working-up [date] Transit to station [movement from zone A to zone B] On Service at [sea-zone of residence for a period without movement] Battle of XYZ [Foe, Date, Hits Scored, Received] In Dock [date] for Repair Transit to Station [movement from zone A to zone B] Return to Port [movement from zone B to Home waters] Refitting [date] Something like that. For my AAR I simply filled a notebook, and thankfully I had the zeal for the project to carry on, because it was exceedingly tedious. You're right it is tedious but it's very satisfying to be able to look back at it later.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Sept 21, 2018 17:34:15 GMT -6
Oh that's beautiful Bcoop. I can't wait until you are ready to publish your full work!
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Post by archelaos on Sept 22, 2018 9:06:26 GMT -6
You're right it is tedious but it's very satisfying to be able to look back at it later. I agree, it is super tedious, but satisfying.
I played one game where I took detailed notes (for my AAR that I had not finished) - being able to write histories of my ships is great. At some point I stopped taking notes and now I'm not happy I did it - there were so many stories as it included a victorious 1930-33 war with Germany, a terrifying thing for PLKCN due to budget difference
In my case, I was overwhelmed as I tried to make detailed pictures for all my ships and it costed awful amount of time (esp as I was always trying to find a similar, real ship).
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