Please some more mission variety

[stevethecat]

Have been playing as Britain and been at war with Germany for about 13 months, so far about 9 of the months the picture attached has been the mission selected. Always the same bombardment mission, aways the same location, always the same 3 CAs, depsite having 14 B's in the area that have yet to fire a shot in the entire war.

The missions even start at the same time ensuring that it's always night by the time the CA's reach the bombardment site making it a miserable slog to see and kill the target.

I'm going to abandon this campaign as I'm sick of the monotony of this endless mission.

Attachments:

[oldpop2000]

Jan 1, 2021 18:48:38 GMT -6 stevethecat said:

Have been playing as Britain and been at war with Germany for about 13 months, so far about 9 of the months the picture attached has been the mission selected. Always the same bombardment mission, aways the same location, always the same 3 CAs, depsite having 14 B's in the area that have yet to fire a shot in the entire war.

The missions even start at the same time ensuring that it's always night by the time the CA's reach the bombardment site making it a miserable slog to see and kill the target.

I'm going to abandon this campaign as I'm sick of the monotony of this endless mission.

 Here is a famous saying; War is interminable boredom punctuated by moments of terror. My father used to say war was mostly boredom then moments of terror, and he was on Guadalcanal.  But you are right, the game does get into ruts. Why don't we review real history and come up with some really interesting missions. Maybe everyone can come up with some unique missions. 

[cabalamat]

I had a recent game where I was France being blockaded by Germany.

The game wasn't producing fleet battles that would allow me to fight the Germans and beat the blockade.

Personally i think the way the gamer chooses battles is its biggest flaw. The player should have a *lot* more control over offensive operations.

[oldpop2000]

The study of maritime history in the 20th century, which is the game's time period, shows us that fleet battles are rare. Navies in this time period were used for three main reasons: Landing of forces; support of operations ashore; protection of shipping. These are the three most likely employments of any navy. I remind you that almost all the decisive sea battles have been connected with events on land, in almost direct and obvious ways.

Jutland was an attempt to attack British ports by using the Skagerrak as a disguise and draw out the British scouting force under Admiral Beatty. It resulted in the Battle of Jutland because the British were reading the German mail. However, the idea is to attack something the enemy must defend and that is what Sheer did. This was probably the last major fleet battle that was not tied to a major land invasion or operation.

If we move to WW2, we have four major carrier battles in 1942 all tied to land invasions, or attempts to attack land bases and defeat an enemy. Coral Sea was a major battle to defeat an invasion of Port Moresby, Midway was an attempt to take the island and Eastern Solomon's and Santa Cruz were fought to defend our land based troops on Guadalcanal and for the Japanese to support their troops on the island.

The list goes on and on. Malta and Crete along with North Africa for maritime operations in the Med. Java Sea to prevent the land based invasion of the Dutch East Indies.

Now, how should the game proceed? Well, it should allow missions based on strategy to be executed but they should follow the idea of the three most likely reasons for naval engagements. I am not disagreeing with anyone, simply pointing out the general plan that should be followed if we want this game to stay as realistic as possible. I personally don't want the game to become a fantasy game which moves into areas that were never going to happen. We should explore possibilities, virtual history based on national strategies, geography and realistic possibilities.

[dia]

I think OP's complaint isn't just about mission type but the fact that every bombardment mission is the exact same. The reason for this is because the locations of bombardment targets are fixed. The game is incapable of creating randomized battles or objectives, they are all pre-defined in the game files.

You could create your own additional battles for more variety, but it is not easy. There is a program that makes this easier, but it is optimized for RTW1 and the output code it puts out is missing some variables that RTW2 warinfo files use. And that just works for the warinfo files, if you wanted to mess with the MapData.dat file, which also contains missions, you will have to edit them manually. There are also some lines in the mission codes that aren't really clear and you're unlikely to ever get an answer for. Finally you have to make sure all your missions are properly setup so that everyone spawns in the right places and are capable of reaching the objective or the enemy in time. We already have issues with that on some of the missions that the devs made and those went through testing. On top of that, your files will now by modded and you will have to restore them to vanilla game every time you want to update. Once you think about it, you can see why the devs only added so many missions in the first place.

[oldpop2000]

Jan 2, 2021 12:25:16 GMT -6 dia said:

I think OP's complaint isn't just about mission type but the fact that every bombardment mission is the exact same. The reason for this is because the locations of bombardment targets are fixed. The game is incapable of creating randomized battles or objectives, they are all pre-defined in the game files.

You could create your own additional battles for more variety, but it is not easy. There is a program that makes this easier, but it is optimized for RTW1 and the output code it puts out is missing some variables that RTW2 warinfo files use. And that just works for the warinfo files, if you wanted to mess with the MapData.dat file, which also contains missions, you will have to edit them manually. There are also some lines in the mission codes that aren't really clear and you're unlikely to ever get an answer for. Finally you have to make sure all your missions are properly setup so that everyone spawns in the right places and are capable of reaching the objective or the enemy in time. We already have issues with that on some of the missions that the devs made and those went through testing. On top of that, your files will now by modded and you will have to restore them to vanilla game every time you want to update. Once you think about it, you can see why the devs only added so many missions in the first place.

I think the ideas are good and could improve the games variability provided they stay within the geostrategic position that each country is in. Economics and Societal issues are also important but much harder to predict and follow. But I believe that it is possible.

[rimbecano]

Jan 1, 2021 18:48:38 GMT -6 stevethecat said:

Have been playing as Britain and been at war with Germany for about 13 months, so far about 9 of the months the picture attached has been the mission selected. Always the same bombardment mission, aways the same location, always the same 3 CAs, depsite having 14 B's in the area that have yet to fire a shot in the entire war.

It would be great to see more variety among missions of a given type, but battleship engagements shouldn't really be common; in fact, at least in the pre-1925 stage of the game they should probably be *less* common: The entire history of the steel battleship is even more frustrating to us naval geeks when we look back on real life history and see very few battle line actions than when we play RTW and have trouble getting a fleet action.

[JagdFlanker]

unless it's really early war and/or i need the VPs to get ahead i generally turn down all offensive bombardment and coastal raid missions since the enemy ai always accepts them and then you have to carry them out, as opposed to ship battles where the ai may turn them down and give you free VPs

for defensive bombardment and coastal raid missions i'l accept them if i'm not very far ahead in VPs but usually hand over fleet control to the ai since it usually does a passable job of handling defensive battles by itself


overall if you are ahead in VPs that's "money" to turn down the missions you don't like

[landcrab]

Jan 2, 2021 3:38:47 GMT -6 cabalamat said:

I had a recent game where I was France being blockaded by Germany.

The game wasn't producing fleet battles that would allow me to fight the Germans and beat the blockade.

Personally i think the way the gamer chooses battles is its biggest flaw. The player should have a *lot* more control over offensive operations.

I agree wholeheartedly with part of your post I underlined. This is a great gem of game but battle setup leaves much to be desired. One is endlessly repeating missions where same shack is being bombed in each war I have with British but also certain missions do not make sense however you look at it:

Here the German admiral took his entire fleet around British isles and will engage Home Fleet while at same time denying himself possibility to retreat to friendly port and confidently outside the range of his own landbased airforce. He only took 3 smaller CV with him and left 2 other home. The year is 1947 and I played the same scenario in last war with British in 1930 (it was a questionable tactical decision even then but at least air power was not prevalent yet in the campaign).