War in the Pacific Day by Day - Imperial Edition

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gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

lol the Kaiserfart

# ¿ Apr 19, 2019 20:26

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 05:46

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I for one am still enjoying the LP. This has basically gone as well as it could for Japan, and it's nice to see an LP not be so involved for once.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2019 16:02

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Leperflesh posted:

warhammer: total war? I know you used to play bloodbowl, so you already know everything you need to know about the different races.
Are the silent hunter games still the definitive submarine games, or has anyone bothered to make something both newer and at least as good?

Uboat is coming out on April 30 and it's going to be good as hell

# ¿ Apr 25, 2019 18:26

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

That's why the DaBabes mod implements stacking limits on every hex that isn't a complete piece of continental land

# ¿ Apr 29, 2019 16:19

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

wedgekree posted:

How do you.. Raid bases with supplies!?

... Or are thsoe your bases?

I think he means "raid" them as in grabbing all the stuff inside for use by the rest of the empire.

# ¿ May 7, 2019 06:38

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

can't sabot the cabot!

# ¿ May 15, 2019 09:14

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

wedgekree posted:

So rather than having all your pilots get killed, dump 'em into training command then and let them sit given you're going to take a couple hundred air losses the next time the carriers go out anyways?

With enough administrative effort, it's entirely possible to juggle Japan's training program in order to produce competitively skilled pilots.

It ... just happens to take a lot of administrative effort, in a game with an abysmal UI for doing so.

It's like trying to shift hundreds and hundreds of lines from one spreadsheet to another, without windows, and while only being able to select one line at a time.

# ¿ May 22, 2019 09:31

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

mercenarynuker posted:

How does plane repair work in the game? Do planes have individual repair times and airfield capacity limits like ships/ports (x number of engines able to be repaired per day per level of airfield), or does the game simply abstract "you have 10 hundred supplies, repairing damage costs 673.4, ok done", or somewhere in between by requiring presence of an engineering unit or something? I'm kind of curious how badly Grey actually hurt the Allies with his raid, or if it's a "nice on paper" kind of thing

Planes have a Reliability stat to determine how often they break down, and how difficult they are to repair

Planes also have a specified number of Engines (because of course a B-17 has four engines), which combines with Reliability to determine how many Aviation Support units are required to service the plane

If you have less than the total required number of Av Support in an airfield, then repairing planes takes longer than usual

If your airfield is damaged, then repairing planes takes longer

If your airfield is "overstacked", meaning there are more planes than a stacking limit as determined by the size of the airfield + Air HQs in the hex, then repairing planes takes longer than usual

Repairing planes also consumes supplies

# ¿ Jun 27, 2019 16:36

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The only reason Moresby didn't get as large as it did in this game is because the "front line" had already moved on by the time large flocks of Liberators came online.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2019 20:59

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Arcturas posted:

How are your points and the AI Japanese points about the same, since you're ahead on what seems like every metric compared to the AI Japan.

if you look, Grey-as-the-Allies also lost a lot more men and materiel than the AI-as-the-Allies, so doing better also came at a much higher cost.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 13:48

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

in the non-Admiral's Edition version of the game it was a legitimate strategy to invade the USSR right off the bat because the land combat model was even more broken at the time to the point where the Japanese would have a good shot at succeeding

# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 14:11

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Comstar posted:

...That's it?? After promising for nearly a decade we'd see August Storm rain down in Manchuria, just two bombing raids?

the Soviets can't "pre-move" out of their starting hexes prior to activation, so it's going to take them days to move across the border and trigger some land combat

# ¿ Aug 3, 2019 09:13

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

the DB-3M is a really old bomber design, having entered service in 1937

its successor, the Il-4, entered service in 1939

a more modern (and perhaps more familiar) Soviet medium bomber would be the Pe-2, which entered service in 1940, or the Tu-2, which entered service in 1941

the fact that Soviet squadrons are still flying it might point to a problem with the game's upgrade paths

# ¿ Aug 4, 2019 16:32

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

to be clear, what I'm referring to is the particular way that the game handles Soviet units: every unit that was historically in-theater on Dec 7 1941 already is there, with their TOE at the time, and then their TOE changes over time, and then they're supposed to draw upgrades from the also-historically-evolving production pool.

even if it's a unit that arrives at any time before Aug 1945, a tank brigade is going to show up with, say, T-34s in it, and it's only supposed to slowly transition to IS-2s in 1945

and the reason why the game does this, is so that if ever the Japanese player ever wants to (or unintentionally manages to) activate the Soviets early, then the Soviets are going to have a "realistic" pre-August Storm force composition

but if their squadrons are still flying such old planes, then it begs the question of whether that's historically correct, or if there was a problem with the squadrons going through their upgrade paths

# ¿ Aug 4, 2019 17:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I do wonder if the US would have trusted the USSR enough to fly the Enola Gay out of Vladivostok or Khabarovsk or whatever just to get an airfield in range of Japan

# ¿ Aug 5, 2019 13:53

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Dunno-Lars posted:

I'm curious about those super long-range bombers. Wouldn't flying from Australia to Japan enable the Japanese to intercept the bombers at several points? Or just navigational errors, engine failures, so many points of failure. Or am I underestimating the competence of 1945 aircrews and airplanes?

This would have been more of a concern if Japan had any kind of interception or air defense capability left in 1945.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2019 13:40

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

the Soviets brought one gun for every 12 meters of frontage

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 15:40

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Grey Hunter posted:

Three Romes - The Triumvirate of strategy gaming.

do the games intersect in their time periods closely enough?

# ¿ Aug 12, 2019 09:27

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

benzine posted:

Grey what is the IJA's defence plan for Manchuria?

hole up everyone in Chungking and dare the Soviets to enter

# ¿ Aug 14, 2019 07:50

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

lol at anyone describing the WITE/WITW ground combat engine as reasonable, someone had a really good post on that poo poo in an earlier LP thread

quote:

In a hex-and-chit wargame, you might have a Panzer Division counter with a Strength of, say 15, as opposed to a Soviet Rifle Division counter with a strength of, say 3.

If the Panzer Division attacks the Soviet Rifle Division, that's a 3:1 strength ratio. You roll a six-sided die, and then the higher the die roll the better the result. If your strength ratio is higher, such as 4:1 or 5:1, then the worst possible die result is improved, and the best possible die result goes even farther.

Now, if the Panzer Division loses a battle, you might flip the chit over to its "reduced strength" side, which would have a Strength of, say, 7.
If it loses yet another battle, the Panzer Division might be destroyed altogether.

WITE's claim-to-fame is that by modelling every single tank, rifle squad, half-track, and anti-tank gun inside the Panzer Division, and by also modeling the experience level, fatigue level, and morale level of the every single "device" inside the formation, then you can get gradations finer than 15 -> 7 -> 0. You could project a strength number that's "accurate" up to two decimal points, even!

___

Similarly, in our same hypothetical hex-and-chit wargame, that Panzer Division might have a Movement Point allocation of, say, 40, as opposed to an Infanterie Division with an MP allocation of only 10.

That wargame might have rules for how this figure of 40 will get adjusted: maybe it gets cut in half if you're so-and-so hexes away from the nearest supply source, or maybe it gets cut in half during winter, and so on.

Maybe there's an absolute minimum of 5 MPs that you can always use no matter what.

WITE's claim-to-fame is that by modelling the precise fuel percentage number, you can get gradations finer than 40 -> 20 -> 5.

Further, by modelling the entire logistical chain from the oil extraction, to the fuel production, to the fuel shipment to the front by train, to the fuel shipment from the HQ to the division by truck, that that fuel percentage number is can be finely adjusted anywhere from 0% to 150%.

___

This is all well and good, and there's maybe some value in letting the Strength value be "extracted" from a formation's component parts so that you don't have to think about whether the Grossdeutschland Division should have 17 or 16 strength relative to the 1st Panzer Division's 15 strength - just plug in the GDR's OOB and it'll all wash out, right?

Except the combat value that you're assigning to the component parts are themselves arguably arbitrary, and assuming that the GDR has slightly higher morale / experience than a regular Heer formation is also arbitrary, and so on. Just because the 16 strength was derived from a summation of smaller bits doesn't make the 16 strength an objective metric, if the smaller bits themselves were assigned subjectively.

And if it's all going to end up subjective anyway, then you might as well construct a game where you don't have to account for the precise number of motorcyclists in a division in 1942 while the moon is gibbous waxing.

And if you do want to break the limitations imposed by your hex-and-chit predecessors and have a game where the Panzer division can "flip" between all 15 integers between 0 and 16, you can also do that, but also you don't need to be so anal-retentive about it.

___

A good counter-example is the Decisive Battles series (not the Decisive Campaigns series).

In this game, each unit is assigned a number of "bullets" representing their ammo level, and a number of "barrels" representing their fuel level. A unit might have anywhere from six to eight bullets, and they might get two to four bullets back during the inter-turn resupply, but it's all abstracted. You don't need to know how many tons of ammunition each bullet translates to - all you need to know is that as long as you still have bullets, you can still fight, and if you run out, you're in trouble.

Similarly, a panzer battalion might be able to travel 15 hexes total - it'll lose one barrel for every 5 hexes you make it move, and it'll get anywhere from 1 to 2 barrels back during the inter-turn resupply, but you don't need to know how many liters of gas that translates to, because it's not important.

Strengths are also handled in a similar way - a unit is assigned a strength value, and that value goes up and down in multiple "steps" as the unit takes casualties, but it's just "steps" - you don't get to see what that actually represents. Hell, the game even supports a mode where base strengths are randomized, to keep battles interesting, which wouldn't be possible in WITE's model.

___

Finally, the reason why you would want to do this in the first place, to "reduce" the complexity of a game down to this level, is so that it's easier for the player to understand exactly what it is they're doing.

In Decisive Battles, you can count-up the total strength you're committing to an attack, you can account for the terrain modifier, you can count how much artillery, air-power, and "generalship" points you're committing (each of which improves your odds by one more "column shift" per), and then you can check the combat tables for the possible results across the six die rolls.

Now, you CAN guarantee a victory by doing a 10:1 combat, but you'll never have enough forces to always do that, and if you're playing with a 3:1 attack and half the time it's going to fail to cause a retreat because the d6 came up as a 1, 2, or 3, then you still can't predict exactly how the battle is going to go, even if you know what the odds are, and that still keeps the game interesting.

In WITE, you're generally aiming for your offensive CV to be twice that of the defender's defensive CV. A lot of the computation is done for you - the displayed defensive CV already includes the terrain modifier, the offensive CV already reflects potential artillery support, and so on, but when you commit that combat, there's still a bunch of die rolls going in the background as far as whether the general will mess up, whether the air support will arrive, whether the engineers will be committed, etc.

Now, if the player is still just looking for strength odds, and if the outcome of the battle is still unpredictable because of the die rolls in the back, but it's even more unpredictable because the player is deliberately kept from knowing how those odds and die rolls and percentages are going to shake out ... that's not necessarily a better experience.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2019 11:36

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Omobono posted:

Define reasonable. WITE models down to single tanks and 20 men squads if I remember correctly and we can all agree that's incredibly stupid, but the outcomes were somewhat sensible from the numbers displayed.
Here the model seem to mistake tanks for invincible mobile fortresses even in situations and on terrain where infantry should be king.

WITP also counts land formations as being composed of hundreds of infantry squads and dozens of individual tanks and guns.

The problem is that you don't even get the kind of Attack Value vs Defense Value dichotomy in WITP that you do in WITE - you have your Assault Value, but you won't know what the AV of the enemy is until you fight them in the same hex, and while you can recon enemy troops to get an estimate on the number of troops in a hex, how that translates into AV is still a mystery since support squads and specialty squads still count as men.

That said, I do think it's worth noting that WITP works on a daily scale, while WITE works on a weekly scale, so what might seem like a reasonable "Soviet tank division rolls over a Hungarian infantry brigade in a single combat-right-click", might stretch out to be a three-to-four-turn affair in WITP, which might change how we perceive it to be as far as whether it's happening "fast enough"

# ¿ Aug 23, 2019 12:06

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 05:46

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Congratulations on another successful run, Grey!

For your next LP, may I recommend Crusader Kings Day by Day

# ¿ Sep 4, 2019 08:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > War in the Pacific Day by Day - Imperial Edition

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