euchrejack
Full Member
Don't feed the Trolls. They just get bigger and more numerous.
Posts: 139
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Post by euchrejack on Mar 27, 2020 15:41:40 GMT -6
Might be beating a dead horse here, but the problem is the game doesn't give the player any real, noticeable control over the battle generator. Anything that would fix that in any way would be progress. The real question is how possible is it, without creating a whole new game.
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Post by director on Mar 27, 2020 17:00:26 GMT -6
A degree of relief is possible, if not easily then at least without having to rewrite the game.
Each nation has a set of mission which determine the objective, where the forces begin and head for when it is over, what forces are permitted and the geographical location. I believe a lot can be gained from careful editing or replacement of those missions. I'm not sure if additional missions can be added but I think they can. A determined modder or a group could mitigate some problems.
That said, I think the game had some hardcoded missions that pop every now and then. If so, then you aren't going to change those without rewriting some of the engine. As I say, I'm not sure that's how it works, just my best advice.
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Post by cabusha on Mar 28, 2020 16:49:18 GMT -6
To be honest, the biggest problem with the game is there's no progression of "lessons learned" for the force generator.
For instance, in a recent Japan run I had a very decisive fleet action involving carriers in 1927. I had 3 CVLs, each with 10 TBs + escorts, and while a small strike group, they devastated the enemy German capital ships, sinking or crippling 3 different dreadnoughts, thus going my own BB force an easy time of it cleaning up the scraps. This decisive victory would have been a key moment in history, showing the importance of air power.
And then in 1945 it generated two different fleet engagements without a single CV in sight for my force. The enemy though? Oh yeah, All the Land Air possible.
The reality is we wouldn't have operated our BB fleet without escort, knowing how decisive air craft can be. We had seen the power. I had 2 fleet carriers and 6 escort CVLs. One CVL per BB. But the generator doesn't care, because it's stuck in 1905.
Which is why most of my campaigns stop 1935-1940.
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Post by dia on Mar 30, 2020 17:00:19 GMT -6
To be honest, the biggest problem with the game is there's no progression of "lessons learned" for the force generator. For instance, in a recent Japan run I had a very decisive fleet action involving carriers in 1927. I had 3 CVLs, each with 10 TBs + escorts, and while a small strike group, they devastated the enemy German capital ships, sinking or crippling 3 different dreadnoughts, thus going my own BB force an easy time of it cleaning up the scraps. This decisive victory would have been a key moment in history, showing the importance of air power. And then in 1945 it generated two different fleet engagements without a single CV in sight for my force. The enemy though? Oh yeah, All the Land Air possible. The reality is we wouldn't have operated our BB fleet without escort, knowing how decisive air craft can be. We had seen the power. I had 2 fleet carriers and 6 escort CVLs. One CVL per BB. But the generator doesn't care, because it's stuck in 1905. Which is why most of my campaigns stop 1935-1940. Sounds like something that happened in my Japan game. In 1931, my submarines, aircraft, and battlecruisers launched launched a surprise attack on Vladivostok. The Russian battlecruisers came out of port like a bat out of hell into the guns of my battleships and oxygen torpedoes. In 1934, the exact same thing happened again. After the air and submarine attacks, the Russian BC's just uselessly charged right into my awaiting fleet. Of course I wrote it off as usual Russian naval skill. No, but what's even more frustrating than the battle generator is the strategic move. I'm in a war with France and Germany as Japan. All of us share possessions in southeast Asia, but Germany has a possession in northeast Asia. I'm outnumbered, but locally I can put together a fleet of my best ships that can keep the allied forces in check in SEA while keeping a large enough backline force to protect the homefront. But Germany likes to move their ships in and out of both areas and will often overhelm my backline forces, so every turn involves ctrl+clicking every frontline and backline ship to move them back and forth. It blows my mind that there hasn't been any system implemented to allow grouping of ships for strategic moves. I mean, all it needs to be is an extra column entry in the ship list. Allow the player to assign ships to user-named groups, much like how players can assign statuses to ships. It would have no bearing on the game other than for the purpose of allowing the player to sort ships by grouping. It would be similar to how players add tags to the names of KEs. Except I'm not renaming all my capital ships.
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w2c
Full Member
Posts: 178
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Post by w2c on Mar 31, 2020 11:27:11 GMT -6
Ok so I'm new here and haven't yet started my first game. Just watching youtube playthroughs and such to get a basic handle on how things work and what can be done so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
But why can't we make task forces and then assign those task forces to fleets? Assign our own specified escorts to the capital ships we want them escorting. Create our own cruiser squadrons and such and have them pulled for these random missions. A battleship sent out raiding probably wouldn't have much in the way of screening forces anyway due to their limited range but a battlegroup operating in your own waters should be relatively cohesive.
That opens the door to the player trying to make doomstacks to counter the system of course when they can just create a battlegroup that has everything they want in it but just like you have overseas station requirements you could require a nation to maintain a certain number of cruiser squadrons and quick response fleets as well as main battle formations and smaller or even single raider groups while also throwing in tonnage limits based on their total national tonnage perhaps.
Yeah it creates more micromanagement but the game seems to have a lot of that already and you could just keep the auto station function to allow the AI to sort your squadrons for you. That way if you send a squadron into someone else's waters then they'll likely stay together as long as all the ships have the range and aren't lost to random variables like weather forcing parts of the squadron away from each other. All of that could still be possible while still giving the player more control.
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Post by cabusha on Apr 1, 2020 2:15:57 GMT -6
I definitely agree on task forces. It's the most annoying thing about dealing with multiple sea zones, constantly re-sorting by location, and manually moving ships back and forth. Ughh
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Post by director on Apr 1, 2020 17:07:12 GMT -6
w2c - the game designer could, by random or deliberate selection, determine which elements of a fleet are unavailable: under repair, training, dockyard work and so forth. General estimate would be between 15%-25% down at any one time. But, the game designer has resisted any and all calls to permit us to design fleets or task forces. That, and selecting a flagship instead of having it happen at random, are the two most common requests anyone makes. There is no word they will ever be addressed.
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w2c
Full Member
Posts: 178
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Post by w2c on Apr 1, 2020 17:58:49 GMT -6
w2c - the game designer could, by random or deliberate selection, determine which elements of a fleet are unavailable: under repair, training, dockyard work and so forth. General estimate would be between 15%-25% down at any one time. But, the game designer has resisted any and all calls to permit us to design fleets or task forces. That, and selecting a flagship instead of having it happen at random, are the two most common requests anyone makes. There is no word they will ever be addressed. That's unfortunate. I definitely understand wanting to put the player in the position of having to work with the situations they find themselves in and totally understand keeping the variables that take even large portions of your forces away for all the various reasons listed but like, I have a hard time imagining someone using a heavy battleship to bombard a target for example without providing necessary protection from both naval and air attacks. The big limitation I'm learning is that it really limits the validity of specialized ship types. At the least you should be able to select options for each ship class to identify what mission types they're available for. If you want certain cruisers and capital ships involved in bombardments while the rest are available for fleet engagements then I don't see why the player couldn't decide which classes could be pulled by which scenarios in those kinds of cases. Maybe those old slow cruisers aren't the best option to be sending after enemy squadrons anymore but could still be useful for hitting land based targets. But hey, as I said I'm new so maybe I just don't understand enough about how it's all handled or calculated yet. I just think the player should have some control over roles to ensure their ships are at least being utilized properly.
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Post by holoween on Apr 2, 2020 3:14:24 GMT -6
The issue with player designed task forces is that it makes the game far easier unless the ai gets a similar system in place and i can imagine that would be hell to get to a satisfactory level.
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Post by director on Apr 2, 2020 8:20:59 GMT -6
One of my 'old-time' favorite game companies was SSG. Their approach was to remove the lowest level from player control and require the AI to manage that for both sides; in effect, you gave orders to your computer staff and assistants and they more-or-less carried them out. That led to some surprisingly great play by the AI because the human was not able to 'fly in' and micro-manage at the lowest unit level. It also led to some, um, challenging play for the human as, for example, Civil War brigades would sometimes charge unexpectedly, or a corps might march to a different objective. It felt very 'real'. As for its application to RtW, well - the highest level of the game (ship design) is solid. The lowest level - tactical play on the map - is solid. But the operational level - choosing a mission, selecting and organizing forces for a mission - is, in my opinion, so broken that it threatens the value of the rest of the game.
I can't see that assigning ships to a fleet or task force is any different from assigning ships to a mission. The AI could continue to move ships around the strategic map as it does now, and could continue to pick ships from the force pool for missions as it does now. Forming a fleet/task force/squadron would enable the PLAYER to move his ships as a single unit and to select which forces are AVAILABLE for a mission. The AI could then pick fewer ships from that pool, or use all, as needed.
And I WANT MY OWN FLAGSHIP. I love this game and think it is the best naval game for a computer I've ever seen, but I am sick to death of finding my commander leading the battle-line from the oldest and weakest ship. At the very least, make 'Command Suite' part of the design process and use one of those ships before sticking the admiral somewhere else.
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w2c
Full Member
Posts: 178
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Post by w2c on Apr 2, 2020 9:47:26 GMT -6
Hugely agree. The battle generator can continue to pull smaller elements from the fleets and task forces we assign to simulate what it does so we may not get every element of our task force we want, but at least we know the ships selected for the job are the ones we've designed to do those jobs. Plus if you're able to select your own cruiser/destroyer/battleship formations within greater fleets or just general special purpose task forces you should also be able to easily mark which ship leads each individual formation solving the problem director is talking about here. I really do get that we don't want to make it too easy on the player and simulating how events rarely played out under ideal circumstances is one I can support but commanders still had the ability to dictate what ships were used on what missions. They wouldn't include their old pre-dreadnaughts now relegated to coastal batteries into their main battleline formations mixed with battlecruisers. They wouldn't send one of those ships to try to intercept a raider trying to break blockade because they'd be useless at the job. Those ships would effectively only be good for local coastal battery defense or the gravest of emergencies. You'd never use them for any other job as long as other ships were available to do it.
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Post by brucesim2003 on Apr 2, 2020 18:19:13 GMT -6
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The designer of this game has a great show of listening to players - until an issue (task forces etc, or certain tactical behaviors) goes against his desires. Then you are basically wrong, regardless of real world examples.
I've been arguing for SOME sort of fleet organisation since before RTW1 launched. I (and others) said the scenario generator would bring in miss-matched ships. Was told that wouldn't happen. Years later it STILL happens.
I haven't played this game since release, because every time I've gone to do so, threads like this one have caused me not to, because critical problems still haven't been fixed. And until they are fixed, NWS won't be getting a single cent from me when they release further games.
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Post by dia on Apr 2, 2020 22:41:42 GMT -6
But, the game designer has resisted any and all calls to permit us to design fleets or task forces. That, and selecting a flagship instead of having it happen at random, are the two most common requests anyone makes. There is no word they will ever be addressed. This is why I fear my suggestion for grouping ships for the purpose of strategic moving only will never get implemented simply because people may have become accustomed to outright ignoring calls for player created fleets and taskforces - even though my suggestion has absolutely nothing to do with battle generation. I made a less detailed suggestion about task forces in the past where fleet/task forces would serve to make strategic moving easier and would influence battle generation. Though I still advocate some kind of player influence on the battle generation system (or at least some consistency with ship assignments and Division names for the purpose of those who like to record the achievements of various units and their ships), I am actually quite content with the current system as long we get some kind of way to make moving ships easier. Here's my current suggestion on that.
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Post by wknehring on Apr 3, 2020 3:29:59 GMT -6
Another annyoing thing:
You get 3 CAs into a battle. 1 old design assigned to your BBs and 2 set into your scout force- of course one old one with 22 knots and 1 middle aged one with 24 knots. That makes absolutely no sense in my opinion. The fastest ship with best firepower is scout- always. The slower ones with lesser firepower do other duties. I would fire any admiral that would group his forces in that way, in case he could chose between those designs. Absolutely nonsense. You slow down your hunting and scout force by 2 knots, what is so important in the "historical" interwar period, were old and new designs serve side by side.
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Post by williammiller on Apr 4, 2020 10:51:26 GMT -6
Task force organization and other player 'wish list' items are things we have and are looking at...more info to come as soon as the plans are finalized.
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