Historicized version of RTW2 - a proposal

[vonfriedman]

I wonder if it is possible to develop  a version of RTW2 that leads to WW2 events, or to events that are likely to resemble them. We could call this semi-historical version RTWW2.

In RTW and, I assume, in RTW2, the choices made by the player essentially determine the outbreak of a war against one or more foreign powers. In RTWW2, instead, the political and diplomatic situation should develop following historical events - except for random variations suitable to increase the repeatability of the game.

Thus the war could break out in any year between 1939 and 1948 (date scheduled for completion of the Plan Z of the German admiralty). The US reluctance to get involved in the war could be more or less strong. The alliance with the USSR could manifest itself before 1941 or not manifest at all. France may not be defeated or may not be defeated so quickly. And so on.


The player should not worry about keeping his prestige high and responding to foreign provocations. He should just concentrate on using his budget well, dividing it between shipbuilding, the development of air force and underwater weapons, technological research, intelligence, training. He should focus on making sure that his Navy (or his "naval coalition", if one prefers so) is ready to face the war, which will break out sooner or later. UK, France, USA on one side and Germany, Italy and Japan on the other.

The game should start around 1935, when the naval arms race began. (The BBs Dunquerque, King George V, North Carolina, Scharnhorst, Littorio, Yamato were all laid down between 1932 and 1937).

Every nation should start with a certain legacy fleet and a certain budget. These could be historical ones, or they could be partly hypothetical. For example, assuming that the treaties of Washington and London had not been signed - and that the great economic crisis had not had the consequences that it actually had - the UK could therefore initially own the G3 class BCs, Japan the Amagi class BCs and so on. The same applies to the state of the technology (radar, sonar, etc.)
.
Any variation between the historical legacy fleet and the hypothetical maximum would be possible, thus increasing the repeatability of the game. Furthermore, there should already be some designs, such as the Montana class battleships, which the player could use or modify and which the AI should bring to completion. I do not doubt that the participants in this forum would be able to provide excellent reproductions of those ships, thus lightening the task of the NWS team.

Once the war started, naval battles should take place more or less in the same way as in RTW and, I assume, RTW2. But events should develop in a historically credible way.
So there would be British convoys heading for Malta, raids by German ships in the Atlantic, the Japanese fleet's offensive phase, the US counteroffensive and so on.

Furthermore, the results of naval battles should somehow affect subsequent events. For example, if the Pedestal convoy had been destroyed - as it was possible, with greater aggressiveness on the Italian side - there should no longer be any other similar convoy battle, because Malta would have surrendered. Similarly, the outcome of battles of the type that were fought at Midway or around Guadalcanal would affect the availability of land bases in the Pacific by the USA and Japan.


Any suggestions or criticisms of this proposal will be welcome.

[oldpop2000]

Mar 26, 2019 9:48:40 GMT -6 vonfriedman said:

I wonder if it is possible to develop  a version of RTW2 that leads to WW2 events, or to events that are likely to resemble them. We could call this semi-historical version RTWW2.

In RTW and, I assume, in RTW2, the choices made by the player essentially determine the outbreak of a war against one or more foreign powers. In RTWW2, instead, the political and diplomatic situation should develop following historical events - except for random variations suitable to increase the repeatability of the game.

Thus the war could break out in any year between 1939 and 1948 (date scheduled for completion of the Plan Z of the German admiralty). The US reluctance to get involved in the war could be more or less strong. The alliance with the USSR could manifest itself before 1941 or not manifest at all. France may not be defeated or may not be defeated so quickly. And so on.


The player should not worry about keeping his prestige high and responding to foreign provocations. He should just concentrate on using his budget well, dividing it between shipbuilding, the development of air force and underwater weapons, technological research, intelligence, training. He should focus on making sure that his Navy (or his "naval coalition", if one prefers so) is ready to face the war, which will break out sooner or later. UK, France, USA on one side and Germany, Italy and Japan on the other.

The game should start around 1935, when the naval arms race began. (The BBs Dunquerque, King George V, North Carolina, Scharnhorst, Littorio, Yamato were all laid down between 1932 and 1937).

Every nation should start with a certain legacy fleet and a certain budget. These could be historical ones, or they could be partly hypothetical. For example, assuming that the treaties of Washington and London had not been signed - and that the great economic crisis had not had the consequences that it actually had - the UK could therefore initially own the G3 class BCs, Japan the Amagi class BCs and so on. The same applies to the state of the technology (radar, sonar, etc.)
.
Any variation between the historical legacy fleet and the hypothetical maximum would be possible, thus increasing the repeatability of the game. Furthermore, there should already be some designs, such as the Montana class battleships, which the player could use or modify and which the AI should bring to completion. I do not doubt that the participants in this forum would be able to provide excellent reproductions of those ships, thus lightening the task of the NWS team.

Once the war started, naval battles should take place more or less in the same way as in RTW and, I assume, RTW2. But events should develop in a historically credible way.
So there would be British convoys heading for Malta, raids by German ships in the Atlantic, the Japanese fleet's offensive phase, the US counteroffensive and so on.

Furthermore, the results of naval battles should somehow affect subsequent events. For example, if the Pedestal convoy had been destroyed - as it was possible, with greater aggressiveness on the Italian side - there should no longer be any other similar convoy battle, because Malta would have surrendered. Similarly, the outcome of battles of the type that were fought at Midway or around Guadalcanal would affect the availability of land bases in the Pacific by the USA and Japan.


Any suggestions or criticisms of this proposal will be welcome.

I believe that you have a good idea but the problem is that the game is based on counterfactual history. Again, the "path not taken". But it would be interesting to have a setup in the game, that reproduces the economic and military situation in the world and then the player gets to play out the events and develop his own strategy and doctrine. It would be fun. I would support an attempt to develop a scenario that could be loaded to perform that function. However, the computer is not going perform they way the actual nations did, computers generally don't do that. 

[vonfriedman]

Thanks for supporting my idea.
In addition to design ships, participants in this forum could propose a series of credible scenarios, including counterfactual ones.
To transform them into real playable / testable scenarios, a version more advanced than the Steam & Iron tool would be needed, including air power.

[dorn]

I think it would be possible to do something.
Starting ships and ships Under construction.
To play a little with mission.
Aliance too.

But I am not aware that there can be scripting.

[vonfriedman]

Perhaps one could start writing scenarios with the SAI tool and propose to NWS to integrate them with aviation and aircraft carriers.
Easy task if the war begins in 1939 or 1940, because it would be sufficient to rely on the OOBs and starting positions of the historically occurred battles. With variations, of course. For example with the arrival of "Veneto" and "Littorio" in the battle of Calabria.
If, on the other hand, the war begins at a much later date, a considerable effort of fantasy would be required.

[AiryW]

Mar 26, 2019 9:48:40 GMT -6 vonfriedman said:

the UK could therefore initially own the G3 class BCs, Japan the Amagi class BCs and so on

I think it's likely that even in the absence of the treaty they couldn't have afforded those ships.  Half of the great powers had already fallen to revolution and it was an extremely uphill struggle to get the economy back on track after the war.  There was just too much pent up demand for durable goods.  The American efforts to ration had been half hearted and ineffective so the world was already facing severe inflation and most of the world had a huge need for massive capital investments.  It's like the situation with the oil crisis except for instead of there just being a shortfall of a key commodity, it's a general shortfall.  Even for the US I think such ships would have gotten a government voted out of power, in the Britain and Japan it would be even worse.

[dorn]

Mar 26, 2019 14:21:35 GMT -6 AiryW said:

Mar 26, 2019 9:48:40 GMT -6 vonfriedman said:

the UK could therefore initially own the G3 class BCs, Japan the Amagi class BCs and so on

I think it's likely that even in the absence of the treaty they couldn't have afforded those ships.  Half of the great powers had already fallen to revolution and it was an extremely uphill struggle to get the economy back on track after the war.  There was just too much pent up demand for durable goods.  The American efforts to ration had been half hearted and ineffective so the world was already facing severe inflation and most of the world had a huge need for massive capital investments.  It's like the situation with the oil crisis except for instead of there just being a shortfall of a key commodity, it's a general shortfall.  Even for the US I think such ships would have gotten a government voted out of power, in the Britain and Japan it would be even worse.

I thought that ships of G3 class had been already ordered.

[axe99]

I'm pretty sure at least a couple of the G3s had been ordered, but from what I've read it's not entirely clear that they were expecting to go through with the orders, and that in part they were to help Britain's position at the Washington Treaty negotiations. All based on hazy memory though. Had there been a serious threat to the British naval position, then I imagine the G3s would have been funded, and the expense could have been sold to the public, but otherwise I imagine that at the very least they would have been built very slowly.

[bcoopactual]

Assuming the game's file structure is similar to RTW1, it would be some work but the best chance might be to make a saved game folder in RTW2 when it comes out and then modify the ship files and the gamesave# file to meet the initial conditions you want.

First the initial conditions as far as fleets and budgets would have to be figured out.

Then, since I'm assuming that the game will create designs based off of but not identical to the actual ship designs available you would have to create each historical design and then replace the game generated ships with the historical ones.
For that you would need to adjust the tech levels in the game to what they were when the ship was designed.  E.g. for a ship laid down in 1916, mark all the 1915 and earlier techs as completed and all of the 1916 and later techs as not completed.  Design the ship and save the ship file.  Then go into the gamesave# file and rename the game generated ship name with the one you created.  You also have to fix the maintenance costs and other data in the gamesave# file as well.  You might also need to add ships to have enough for that class.  Repeat this for every ship and every nation. 
Once all of the ships are done you would need to adjust base capacities, home ports, etc for a 1920 start to a 1935 start.  You would possibly need to adjust national budgets as well.  


Lots of complications there.  Not the least of which is the economy of the game might not support historical fleet sizes.  I'm pretty sure that in RTW1, we don't build as many ships as were built historically, particularly in the runup to WW1 because the budget won't support it.  Sometimes the RN was laying down 4-5+ battleships in a year plus smaller vessels.  Repeated over multiple consecutive years.  Good luck trying to pay for all of that in RTW1.  (For the record, that's not a criticism of the game, the game isn't trying to be a direct historical simulator).  But anyway we might have to settle for Historical-Lite fleet lists.

Using a game save folder locks it into one player country as well although once the majority of the ship files and such are created you could make additional game save folders around other player nations in significantly less time.    


And then the final thing to remember that even if all of that is accomplished the game still won't (to my knowledge) have AI nation vs. AI nation conflicts without direct player nation involvement.  Again, not a criticism, that kind of game is beyond the scope of what I believe the developers are shooting for (or realistically have the resources to create).   

[akosjaccik]

Mar 26, 2019 17:12:17 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

(...)Again, not a criticism, that kind of game is beyond the scope of what I believe the developers are shooting for (or realistically have the resources to create).   

I agree. The idea for me just sits oddly in the limbo; it's historical, but not really, real wars, but not really, real designs, but not really, and it holds the player's hands, but not really. It operates with very specific constrains from the "historical" part, but at the same time it assumes an AI that handles the changing circumstances (due to the "freedom"-part) fairly smartly to adapt well and in a complex way (convoy-example).

Personally, and it's purely up to my own taste, but I'd either push the lever to one side (which is basically RtW2), or the other (fully historical scenarios, so - SaI?) - which is not to say that I do not hope that vonfriedman gets what his heart desires, it's just I can't really see it happen - and, this is the far smaller issue, my priorities would lie elsewhere.

[MateDow]

This sounds like the basis for a new game using the RTW engine as its core. Maybe even an SAI-type game.

I love the idea and would be willing to script events if needed.

[rimbecano]

The OP's suggestion might actually be better implemented as a forum roleplay to create several alternate interwar scenarios, followed by the creation of several SAI campaigns for the resulting wars.

[dorn]

Mar 26, 2019 17:12:17 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

Assuming the game's file structure is similar to RTW1, it would be some work but the best chance might be to make a saved game folder in RTW2 when it comes out and then modify the ship files and the gamesave# file to meet the initial conditions you want.

First the initial conditions as far as fleets and budgets would have to be figured out.

Then, since I'm assuming that the game will create designs based off of but not identical to the actual ship designs available you would have to create each historical design and then replace the game generated ships with the historical ones.
For that you would need to adjust the tech levels in the game to what they were when the ship was designed.  E.g. for a ship laid down in 1916, mark all the 1915 and earlier techs as completed and all of the 1916 and later techs as not completed.  Design the ship and save the ship file.  Then go into the gamesave# file and rename the game generated ship name with the one you created.  You also have to fix the maintenance costs and other data in the gamesave# file as well.  You might also need to add ships to have enough for that class.  Repeat this for every ship and every nation. 
Once all of the ships are done you would need to adjust base capacities, home ports, etc for a 1920 start to a 1935 start.  You would possibly need to adjust national budgets as well.  


Lots of complications there.  Not the least of which is the economy of the game might not support historical fleet sizes.  I'm pretty sure that in RTW1, we don't build as many ships as were built historically, particularly in the runup to WW1 because the budget won't support it.  Sometimes the RN was laying down 4-5+ battleships in a year plus smaller vessels.  Repeated over multiple consecutive years.  Good luck trying to pay for all of that in RTW1.  (For the record, that's not a criticism of the game, the game isn't trying to be a direct historical simulator).  But anyway we might have to settle for Historical-Lite fleet lists.

Using a game save folder locks it into one player country as well although once the majority of the ship files and such are created you could make additional game save folders around other player nations in significantly less time.    


And then the final thing to remember that even if all of that is accomplished the game still won't (to my knowledge) have AI nation vs. AI nation conflicts without direct player nation involvement.  Again, not a criticism, that kind of game is beyond the scope of what I believe the developers are shooting for (or realistically have the resources to create).   

I have tried to repeat UK building program of capital ships in 20th century starting with Lord Nelson class (as starting ships you cannot have historical fleet).

I was able to build dreadnoughts, battlecruisers and (I did not try destroyers) about time as it was build in history. I was able to laid down Dreadnought, Bellerophon class, St Vincent class, Neptune, Colossus class, Invincible and Identifigable classes and still make it in line with budget. However I was hit in 9/1909 by disarmement treaty. Neverless at that time it was clear that I can probably make 1910 program but I was in no situation to continue without completely sacrificing light cruises and destroyers.

What is possible to make USA program or some smaller nations as A-H. But smaller nations building program is not efficient in RTW.

[vonfriedman]

Mar 26, 2019 17:47:59 GMT -6 akosjaccik said:

Mar 26, 2019 17:12:17 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

(...)Again, not a criticism, that kind of game is beyond the scope of what I believe the developers are shooting for (or realistically have the resources to create).   

I agree. The idea for me just sits oddly in the limbo; it's historical, but not really, real wars, but not really, real designs, but not really, and it holds the player's hands, but not really. It operates with very specific constrains from the "historical" part, but at the same time it assumes an AI that handles the changing circumstances (due to the "freedom"-part) fairly smartly to adapt well and in a complex way (convoy-example).

Personally, and it's purely up to my own taste, but I'd either push the lever to one side (which is basically RtW2), or the other (fully historical scenarios, so - SaI?) - which is not to say that I do not hope that vonfriedman gets what his heart desires, it's just I can't really see it happen - and, this is the far smaller issue, my priorities would lie elsewhere.

You are both right, at least in part.
My desire, which I expressed several times on this forum, is to be able to play a SAI2 game, similar but also improved compared to the old Thunder At Sea. But even a counterfactual history has its charm: the famous "what ifs". And this counterfactual history can be even more fun if one can build a fleet at least partly counterfactual, thanks to the RTW game mechanism.

Perhaps the version that I called RTWW2 could actually come true by limiting the field of variables. In the first place: the period in which the war may take place. Secondly, not deviating too much from the method with which RTW decides the outcome of its wars.

[dorn]

I will suggest to to do something else. I will have no time to do it alone but we can do some community project.

I expect that AI designs in RTW will be similar to historical ones. However we know that these designs were not best as we have knowledge what worked and what did not. On top of it, it is game with some limitation making some decisions better than historical (oil powered engines tunes for speed for battleships has not siginificant disadvantages but save a lot of weight). You can easily see it on our building programs. As players we usually apply principle all or nothing at start of dreadnought race saving costs on some of these elements: protection of extended parts, conning tower and secondary battery and use this saving to enhance main belt, deck and turret armour making our designs much better than AI designs.

So I would sugggest to make a mod with a-historical designs but more competitive withouth changing anything else in game.