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Post by hawkeye on Jan 29, 2021 12:23:21 GMT -6
Warning! This is a rant and there will be colorful language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ok, I get that the Battle Generator (BG) has a serious random element to it, to simulate ships not being available when needed, divisions wandering into each other by accident/coincidence and so on, but what I am seeing in my latest game is such a load of BS I'm about to rage-quit the game for good.
Situation: I'm playing Germany, super large fleet, 50% research-rate. I haven't build CL, because, quite frankly, before above-surface TT become available and before I need them to boost my AAA capability, they are simply a waste of money. I have converted the few CA I had left to CVLs when I could do it. This gave me quite a bit of funds to play with, so I now have 17 BB and 11 BC. The intend was to have the BC perform all the missions normally taken on by regular cruisers and, as was the original friggin mission of BCs, to hunt down enemy light and heavy cruisers.
I have been in a war with Communist Russia for 16 months now (1930/31). The Russian Navy is but a shadow of it's former self (Fleet engagement in the first month killed half their BB and 80% of their BC) I have 17 BB, 11 BC, 2 CV, 4 CVL, 175 DD Russia has 6 BB, 6 BC, 1 CVL, 9 CA, 8 CL, 20 DD
For the last 12 months I have gotten 7 cruiser engagements and 3 coastal raids in Northern Europe (the Russians declined every other kind of battle), where my _entire_ fleet is stationed (all foreign station duty is taken care of by KE) Guess what ships I'm given by the BG! Yes, 2 DD (once I got 2 KE) and that's it. I didn't get a _single_ engagement where my BC took part.
Now, I'm supposed to be the head of the navy. If I don't authorize pairs of DDs to go out on raiding missions, then they don't go out on raiding missions, period! If I order a raiding mission and specify that a BC division is to be sent, then there will be a bloody BC division send and not a pair of f-ing DDs!
Could a group of DDs stumble into a Russian cruiser division in the Baltic? Sure, every once in a while, but not every f-ing month!
I do not want the exit from Kronstadt and Peterhof (the only ports into the Baltic Russia still has) patrolled by small DD divisions, I want to send my BBs and BCs to do that, because that's what I tell my Admirals and Commodores to do and anyone who can't comply with those orders will find his a$$ demoted and scrubbing decks faster than he can say: "But, but..."
And before anyone tells me that the head of state might interfere, sure, then he can have my head. But as long as I am the head of the navy, that navy will bloody well do as I tell it to!
So how about you let me tell the BG what ships are to undertake what kind of mission and if the required type of ship isn't available, then that mission will not take place!
I mean, let's assume that all the German BC were occupied with other duties and/or being in the yards in December 1914 and thus not being available for the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on December 16th. Would the Imperial Germany Navy have send a pair of CL or a hand full of DDs instead?
Because that's exactly what the BG is doing and it's beyond ridiculous!
Ok, I'm done and I'm feeling (a little) better now.
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jatzi
Full Member
Posts: 123
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Post by jatzi on Jan 29, 2021 13:36:05 GMT -6
Yeah the battle generator sucks. Probably the weakest part of the game. A fix might be for it to have a narrower focus. Like at the end of every turn during a war we select some options for potential battles. Do we want a small raid or a large fleet engagement? Levels of patrols, capital forces involved in the patrols or just light forces? What is our reaction if the enemy attacks? Send everything or send a proportional response or what?
We make some decisions there and then the battle generator uses those to make some scenarios. With a degree of randomness still involved. Like if you pick a small raid it tries to set up a small raid, but if the enemy has a large response then the size of the raid becomes large. Would give you some control over what happens which would be amazing.
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Post by nimrod on Jan 29, 2021 13:56:32 GMT -6
No argument Hawkeye or Jatzi. I've suggested the following in the past and I think it could be implemented fairly easily on a ship or seazone basis: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/5393/little-operational-choices-war-randomI really enjoy the game, and I agree that some sort of strategic vision or influence on engagements is warranted. Personally, I would appreciate the ability to at least specify an "aggressiveness" level per sea zone, if nothing else. For example, and I'm not pushing this exact setup, just the idea... An aggressive doctrine would increase the chance of fleet battles, shore bombardment and convoy attack battles. Increases the chance of launching a surprise attack, but much higher risk of negative events like ships being torpedoed by submarines / striking mines, etc. A non-aggressive doctrine would increase the chance of DD / cruiser battles and convoy defense battles. A passive doctrine would increase the chance of invasion defense and shore-bombardment defense battles. Increases the chance of ships being attacked in port, but much lower risk to submarine / mine or other negative events. Personally, I think the random battles are fairly true to history - particularly pre-airpower. Once you have airpower and the radios that came along around that time (late 1920's), strategic operations seem to be much more heavily directed from HQ in regards to their setup and cancellation or amended goals. For example in game, an enemy or player focusing on a fleet-in-being and not actively engaging in battle (passive doctrine), would run the risk of a fleet in port battle (what the game is calling a surprise attack) like the battle of Taranto or Mers-el-Kébir. Airpower in those battles allowed the disposition of enemy fleets to be known to a degree of certainty, while radio allowed the ability to cancel the operation if the enemy unexpectedly sortied other elements of their fleet.
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Post by talbot797 on Jan 29, 2021 14:15:45 GMT -6
There are roles for Trade Protection, it would be an idea to be able to define raiding groups as well. Even better, to define a ratio of ship types with a raiding group (e.g. 1xBC, 4xDDs). Then you'd retain some randomness along with a semblance of orders. Raiding groups would not be attached to the main fleet, meaning some balance would be retained, so decisions to make. That kind of reflects the fact that CAs, CLs and DDs would get run into the ground, while BBs and BCs tended to spend a greater percentage of time in dock.
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Post by stevethecat on Jan 29, 2021 15:04:02 GMT -6
I no longer build BBs. I go straight from B's to BCs. I also don't build any CLs.
My entire fleet is BC, CA and DD.
The Battle generator refused to pick BBs for battles so why bother building them, however BCs and CAs get called up all the time. Also CLs are junk until the missile era so it's best to dodge that budget pit. I put all DDs onto trade protection to dodge those awful 'we have given you 1 DD vs the entire enemy fleet' missions.
If the battle generator is going to keep screwing me other I'm going to keep refusing to build the ships it never uses.
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Post by desdinova on Jan 29, 2021 19:24:46 GMT -6
Once air power becomes a thing, it starts generating battles that are absolutely suicidal. WHY do I have one battleship, with no air cover, trying to attack a major enemy airbase, with two enemy battleships to boot. I don't believe in quitting/reloading, but some of these battles are just appallingly, unforgivably stupid.
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Post by director on Jan 30, 2021 0:22:29 GMT -6
Reposted from another thread with a bit more content:
The mission generator is the second-largest problem with the game. Inability to sort your own ships into groups (and select ships for missions) is the largest. I can't tell you how sick I am of starting a scenario with ships scattered here, there and yon, the slow ones guarding carriers and the fast ones carefully placed to fall under the guns of the enemy fleet, while I can't re-organize them or do anything to save them until the enemy is sighted.
I understand that Fredrick is basically a one-man band. And RtW does some amazing things - the AI is if anything too perfect. And I've more-or-less accepted that what I think of as issues he may not see as problems. And RtW works well as a design-and-management tool, with some combat generated so that you can check your designs. But... my blood-pressure will only take so much rage-quitting, my keyboard has hollows on the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys and my neighbors don't like it when I scream curses in the wee hours. Losing by my own stupidity I can take... being forced to deal with dispersed forces that cannot be set to join one another, being forced to accept a mix of fast and slow ships, being forced to accept missions with France in the Baltic or Germany in the Bay of Biscay... this stuff I do not like, and part of the reason I do not like it is because it is unhistorical.
I took a long break from RtW just exactly for these problems. I've just now purchased RtW2, had one game as Germany and a partial game under my Byzantium mod... and already I'm thinking of taking another vacation. RtW2 has all of the issues of its predecessor plus a few more of its own (we all know the escort carriers off Samar steamed upwind into the Japanese battleline while their officers and men were helpless to change course, right?) and to be frank none of the issues on my critical list got fixed. So please, please, please... don't add more chrome to a broken system. Adding air units just highlighted the problems we could ignore in RtW1; adding missiles is just putting on more chrome.
RtW2 does some nice things, but it feels like I'm coaching a baseball team where I drafted the players but, when I coach the game, I have no say over which player is at which position. Do I have to accept some random player as my lead pitcher, with no chance of changing that except to forfeit the game? Wouldn't it be better if I could set up my own pitching roster and batting lineup? Is it fun to have my worst player hitting against the other team's best pitcher, over and over and over? Should I not have some power here? And yet... I don't.
So: the condensed version is, the mission generator works as designed but the design confines the player in a straitjacket rather than permit him to make his own decisions. RtW was intended to be a strategic building game coupled to a tactical game with some very thin operational connective tissue. It succeeds at that - it succeeds so well, in fact, that we players now want an operational phase equal to the rest. One set of ten missions just won't work from 1900 to the missile age. Having three or four or more penny-packet bits and bobs spread over the map won't work. Getting air-blasted over and over when there's nothing I can do about it won't work. Having a French fleet in the Baltic just won't work.
I have a much longer, more detailed rant that I've written out but not posted, in part because I respect honest effort and think the developers have played fair up to this point... and in part because I do not feel that the people in charge want to hear that changes are necessary, and so I do not think anything will change.
We can like it or leave it.
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Post by director on Jan 30, 2021 0:41:37 GMT -6
OK... I'm going to go off the deep end here.
The game needs some new resources, specifically fuel, command points and wear.
Fuel is expended on a turn-by-turn basis for each ship active in that turn. A new status - Inactive - would designate ships that cannot be used that turn. They would use 1/2 fuel and recover from wear. Fuel can be stored (the max amount stored can be increased but it is expensive and takes time) and the rate of increase moves in-line with budget.
Some activities like TP would give a slow but steady increase in wear; missions would generate more.
Active ships consume fuel and accumulate wear. Ships above a certain wear-point either can't be activated or are highly likely to have serious mechanical issues if activated. This prevents the player from using the same two battlecruisers month after month (as an example).
Command level is increased for building (improving) a naval academy and a naval staff (both of which take command points to build and require a lot of time). Command level determines the 'ceiling' of maximum command points that can be banked; how many you get per turn depends on your nation. A temporary bump in command points can be purchased by selling off prestige. This keeps you from ordering major fleet operations turn after turn. Command level might decrease in peacetime.
Prestige determines how likely it is that the national government will take your opinion into account and/or affects budget (making it hard to spend prestige for command points).
Each turn the human player can pick from one of a group of missions (or select 'none'). He can then spend command points and fuel to select ships for that mission. If successfully completed, victory points and/or prestige can be won. And as a final twist... the higher your naval staff rating, the more likely you can be told which mission the AI is selecting (but not which ships it is using). You will be allowed to decline your own mission and select a force to stop the AI - by expending command points, fuel and accumulating wear.
Periodically there would be missions of overriding importance that you can decline only with extreme penalties, like a convoy run.
I'd entertain the idea that there could thus be two combats per turn, one for your mission and one if you decide to contest the enemy's mission. And I'd entertain the notion that, in contesting the enemy, you have to use ships you didn't assign to your mission - but I wouldn't insist on it.
Implementing all this for the AI would be done, frankly, by fudging it - it isn't necessary for an AI to 'understand' the rules only to give the appearance that it is playing by them. I know that RtW prides itself on having the AI and human play by the same rules, and I think that could be done at the operational level under these terms - but if not, cut the AI some slack and give the human player the limitations and opportunities of meaningful actions.
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Post by hawkeye on Jan 30, 2021 0:51:41 GMT -6
and my neighbors don't like it when I scream curses in the wee hours. Man, I'm soooooo guilty of that!
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Post by williammiller on Jan 30, 2021 9:31:33 GMT -6
Just a FYI - We do read all of these threads/issues and discuss many of them internally - so we do appreciate your feedback, whether negative or positive, as it gives us information as to what works and what could be made better/changed.
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Post by director on Jan 30, 2021 12:45:18 GMT -6
William, I have never doubted your grace and good manners - you are a gentleman in the best sense of the word. I have no doubt that you and Frederik are apprised. And I know that this is a very small team. I have praised RtW and worked to get other people to buy it. The strategic and tactical pieces mostly work well and stand above other naval games.
My frustration isn't caused by the game being bad, it comes from the game being generally terrific, with a few serious lapses. I'd compare it to driving on a freeway with the bridges removed; you can sorta get around but compared to the rest of the road...
There have been a number of suggestions since RtW2 came out, almost all from people who really like the parts of the game that work, and there has been no response other than, 'we know'.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Jan 30, 2021 13:14:03 GMT -6
William, I have never doubted your grace and good manners - you are a gentleman in the best sense of the word. I have no doubt that you and Frederik are apprised. And I know that this is a very small team. I have praised RtW and worked to get other people to buy it. The strategic and tactical pieces mostly work well and stand above other naval games. My frustration isn't caused by the game being bad, it comes from the game being generally terrific, with a few serious lapses. I'd compare it to driving on a freeway with the bridges removed; you can sorta get around but compared to the rest of the road... There have been a number of suggestions since RtW2 came out, almost all from people who really like the parts of the game that work, and there has been no response other than, 'we know'. I second your comments.
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jatzi
Full Member
Posts: 123
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Post by jatzi on Jan 30, 2021 13:41:36 GMT -6
I no longer build BBs. I go straight from B's to BCs. I also don't build any CLs. My entire fleet is BC, CA and DD. The Battle generator refused to pick BBs for battles so why bother building them, however BCs and CAs get called up all the time. Also CLs are junk until the missile era so it's best to dodge that budget pit. I put all DDs onto trade protection to dodge those awful 'we have given you 1 DD vs the entire enemy fleet' missions. If the battle generator is going to keep screwing me other I'm going to keep refusing to build the ships it never uses. You do you but I think we've had different experiences. I get into battleship engagements all the time. I think it heavily depends on where you fight though. For example, playing as anyone I find it's hard to get fleet engagements, and thus battleship engagements, in the pacific ocean. The east coast and the Caribbean are easier, depending on who you're playing as, and Northern Europe is even easier than that. Of course the Med is the easiest place to get large engagements. I played as Italy and had so many extremely large battles with France and Britain. It was hard actually lol. I fought them both at the time and had 6 or 7 invasion battles in a row against Corsica. Total I probably faced 12+ invasion battles and 4 or 5 large battles/fleet engagements/carrier battles. Most active, stressful, and bloody war I've ever fought. 400+ enemy aircraft shot down. Would've been more but they toned down those airbases attacking airbases stuff which is nice for some ppl but I miss it. I didn't mind how it slowed down combat in the Med. I have to disagree about the usefulness of CL's. They're great for killing destroyers, torpedo runs when you need some survivability, and in the 30's and 40's CL's start to be able to stand up against CA's. I know CA's can do everything a CL can and probably better since they're larger but they're also more expensive and are more painful to lose. To each their own I guess but I love CL's actually quite a bit. And with the DD stuff yeah we've had different experiences with the generator. It throws me into some bad battles every once in awhile but when that happens I just retreat the best I can. Easy as that. I almost never get DD's vs entire enemy fleet stuff that you're talking about.
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Post by cv10 on Feb 1, 2021 19:01:19 GMT -6
Steam and Iron's Campaign Expansions had an excellent strategic system complete with squadron organization and basing. You couldn't create new squadrons (aside from a minelayer force), but you at least had control over organization and what forces were used for a given mission. I can understand wanting to simulate the reality that ideal force compositions and squadron organizations were not always possible, but I can't believe that this requires the continued use of a system where the player has almost no input in force deployments and allocations aside from moving ships to different sea zones or putting them into RF/MB. Back in 2019, I suggested using the Fleet Exercises force creator to at least allow players to set up their forces for a mission as a compromise option: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/3625/proposal-player-generated-divisionsI'd like more strategic control over forces, primarily the creation of player defined squadrons and task forces and a bit more input into what actually gets deployed (as opposed to none).
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2021 19:56:04 GMT -6
Steam and Iron's Campaign Expansions had an excellent strategic system complete with squadron organization and basing. You couldn't create new squadrons (aside from a minelayer force), but you at least had control over organization and what forces were used for a given mission. I can understand wanting to simulate the reality that ideal force compositions and squadron organizations were not always possible, but I can't believe that this requires the continued use of a system where the player has almost no input in force deployments and allocations aside from moving ships to different sea zones or putting them into RF/MB. Back in 2019, I suggested using the Fleet Exercises force creator to at least allow players to set up their forces for a mission as a compromise option: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/3625/proposal-player-generated-divisionsI'd like more strategic control over forces, primarily the creation of player defined squadrons and task forces and a bit more input into what actually gets deployed (as opposed to none). You can design whether you want 78 or 79 light AA guns on your BB, but you have no say in how the raiding squadron should look like. But Im sure that by using some serious mental gymnastics this may also be twisted as a "realistic feature".
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