Mega New Elk WIP

[Black_Elk]

Looks good!

Random play balance idea, so rather than introducing UK Pacific as a kind of sub faction (with it's own purchasing phase and such) I think it's much simpler to just keep Britain/India as a single faction. That said, because it creates a much higher baseline production/income level for them, we could explore something like a "Commonwealth Defense" or "Lend Lease" "Victory Debts" or whatever we want to call it, but basically where they just get dinged every turn with some added cost in PUs to running the empire.

So say for example that they're bank rolling Anzac, which would be similar to India in Global but just sorta understood to be applied in this case to Anzac. Not actually, but in the abstract justification. Sun never sets and all hehe. Or I mean doesn't have to just be Anzac, it could be sorta all the Allies. To me this could just be an abstraction/catch-all, so sorta building into it there the whole idea of support for France and China or the other Allies which had already been overrun in the Axis advance. The whole team in exile, sorta camped out in London, but on the UK's dime? hehe

Something similar could be done for USSR, where they're somehow understood to be also bankrolling what's happening in China. I don't think it's needed just yet, but it would be a simple way to balance the totals in a more cumulative way. As opposed to just collapsing a ton of tiles or making a bunch of British and Soviet spots worth zero (the usual method) instead it could just be sorta tacked on generically. Not sure there what the actual cost might be, but I think that's a way to rationalize an added burden when the PUs are counted for them. I think any time an asymmetry is included for how factions are handled, it's helpful if this is framed out in advance and made easy to count/calc.

To me this could be something simple like a flat rate cost in PUs per turn, say 10-20-30 PUs, whatever might be needed ultimately and as a balancing mechanism by sides, sort of alternative to bid. Anyhow, just a spitball. I'd table for now, but to me it makes sense. Effectively an inverse war bond for the British or USSR, as a way to keep their totals a bit more manageable when compared with the Axis team, if that's needed. They do get gobbled up on quite a bit though, so their swing on income/production can be pretty extreme in both those cases. Not really sure if it would be needed, but could be held as an option in reserve.

[beelee]

@black_elk

oh I just added "map" not the yml too. That extra folder still there too ? I'll check wc's and see if he was able to get rid of it.

So we need even more Fctry images for it to work as is ? Because when I added "isFactory" back in, my images showed up. Well, I'll check what you have.

Edit
So it looks as if you need the "disabled" fctrys to make it work. That probably means we don't need the "factory_hit" ones then. Also can probably get rid of "factory" and just keep the major and minor ones.

A lot of the tech disabled ones are missing. I'll go ahead and put together another units folder with the missing disabled ones and get rid of the other stuff.

Edit 2
@Black_Elk I don't get the extra folder on dl. Also, the "-master" at the end doesn't need removed anymore. I think that's only if you try and run it in 2.5 but IDK for certain.

Anyway, I just slammed in your units folder for now and added wc's map.yml

We can streamline the units folder somewhere down the line. I'll add the above in next update.

[wc_sumpton]

@beelee

If you take the little emblem of the airfield, remove the flag-buoy for the harbor, then all these units, including the factory_major, factory_minor and factory_upgrade are all the same (with the bunkers, bunker_small, etc..), and can be moved to the units folder and shared by all players. This will cut down on maintaining all these separate icons within each player unit folder. It will also decrease the size of the download file.

Cheers...

[beelee]

@wc_sumpton

right arm. I think I'll defer to Elk and let him fine tune the roster. That's more in his wheelhouse than mine

[Black_Elk]

Right on sounds good!

It's all pouring rain where I'm at, slow day. So I attempted a rematch as the Italians solo vs FastAI. We caught a nice break early on, snapping up Algeria for ourselves, and then another big break in round 7 when computer Americans tried to stomp into Bordeaux but were denied! hehe

I was determined this time to hold the western approaches so we built quite a few battleships and just help position starring down the Allies at Gibraltar. Our Albanian tank made it all the way to New Delhi but couldn't quite hold it. We then put the heat on Baku, to cover the Germans rolling in. I think it might be another one where Gabon is now priority number one for our expansionist aims lol

Here it is in round 10

2025-3-14-UHD-WIP-1940-45_Italy_round_10.tsvg

[Black_Elk]

ps. I'd have to revisit the harbours because there's no generic one for that at the moment, but for the airfields could just use the neutral set.

The factories and airflields have the most tech variants anyway, so that'd be the majority right there. I don't think I'd miss the air roundels too much hehe. Same deal for an extra graphics that aren't actually being used but which are probably duplicated just to follow whatever was in the UHD initially copying over from how stuff was labelled in g40, since I just copied over the bung graphics for that and mimicked it when throwing this one together. GCD thedog has the factories and bunkers and such from a shared unit folder which seems like the way to go for those to save space and make em easier to get at.

For the Harbours I just followed frostion's convention for that when drafting them, since he had those little flags that changed by control, which looked kinda cool. I guess we could always crop the flag off, although for harbours only a couple in each set, so it might not be too bad keeping those around for national flare.
Anyhow here are the airbases with the tech and disabled variants

[wc_sumpton]

@black_elk

As to the units, if I'm reading the rules right, the factory_minor starts out with 6 hit points and can produce 3 units. For every point of damage, the factory_minor should lose 1 production value (TripleA does not model the type of production lose). Also the unit cannot be destroyed.
No damage = factory_minor
1-3 damage = factory_minor_hit
4 and 5 damage = factory_minor_disabled
6 damage = factory_minor_damage (is used only because the factory_minor cannot be removed)

Cheers...

[beelee]

@wc_sumpton

That's an excellent explanation. Too bad it's not in POS2 to summarize how all that works It's probably all in there but for layman like me, it'd be helpful

[wc_sumpton]

@beelee

There is no mention of "_damage" icon or why it might be needed. But 2.5 use to call for it all the time, "Missing Unit Icon xxx_damaged". So that is how I put it together.

PoS2 lacking in many places...

Cheers...

[Black_Elk]

@wc_sumpton

If it makes sense to do so, we could call this Pact of Steel 3 PoS3 and explain whatever newer incidentals in the docs that way. That'd be above my pay grade though hehe. I'm sorta terrible at that stuff, no gift for brevity on this end hehe, but one thing PoS2 is sorta missing is the explanations about how the map folder itself might be organized with an eye towards modularity or for the relief, like explaining some of the map.props type customizations in more detail, or just like to have whatever basics say HEX colors, and then maybe I could do actual variant unit tints, which would probably be a better use of unit folder space than the endless damaged factories heheh. I mean you know we could have the Green Chinese, or Blue Germans, Lime Green Brits, Red Japanese (basically cover all the old school sculpts from the old boxes with those tints) and then provided some suggested Hexes, or whatever and probably still be at the same overall space if we get all the factories and airbases to be generico. Of course tripleA can also tint the units directly once the player has a hex, the visual there is a little different because all units then become monotone but does work. I don't think we ever got unit flips to work. There's also stuff with how to change how the blends/relief mixes for things like making the ocean lighter, passing it through grays instead of white, but that's all stuff I'm not really sure how to phrase conveniently. Also some stuff referred to I think is a little older probably. I also like the idea of having a general repository for random graphics and map making elements, which I otherwise don't really have a singular place to heap em all together in one spot. Might as well be this one

[RogerCooper]

@black_elk The Pact of Steel mod uses its own distinct map and the name should not be used for another mod. As for using this mod to explain stuff, go right ahead.

[Black_Elk]

I just meant if one wanted to use this map as some sort of documentation/ref type tool that's totally chill with me. I just don't know how to set that all up, or where to even begin for that. Veq and the gang used my other map Pact of Steel map to layer on the stuff that serves to document all manner of tripleA things well beyond my paygrade hehe, but the map itself is pretty old and modelled on Revised. I just edited Logan's for that. I think it was used mainly because it was just the first tripleA mod, but then there are maybe newer features that could get put into something similar? To create a pact of steel scale board from this or the UHD global would basically just be like collapsing the polys down to match whatever sized game makes sense for a more tutorial type thing. Another option would just be to make an upscale for Pact of Steel, but I don' think it's really played these days, like as an actual game, more just like a depo for the tools and code type stuff. Or I don't know I guess I meant, one could think of it like that, not necessarily name it that hehe.

[wc_sumpton]

@black_elk, @beelee

UHD WIP 1940-45-1.36.1.zip

(No gameplay changes)
name changed "UHD WIP 1940-45" for 2.5 display
More comments added

Cheers...

[Black_Elk]

@wc_sumpton Looks good!

I think at this point we are well on our way to having something pretty serviceable! Great work gang! It will mostly be working things up at the margins and to handle whatever of my goofs and gripes might remain I think, but overall feels pretty clean to me.

More thoughts, some random... So basic goal for the scenario for me would be a game that can resolve somewhere between a dozen and two dozen rounds typically, just depending on whether the player is playing PvP or solo vs the computer. I think whether in a PvP or Solo the endgame would be somewhat similar, in that it takes maybe 10 rounds for players to work themselves into an end rush, or some kind of stalemate (dividing the world in 2 along endgame lines) - and then if a failed rush or stalemate, maybe another 10 rounds to break out of that stalemate or work back into closing positions. In either sort of game the board might reset at any point, on account of a major TUV swing, failed press, that sort of thing, but I think it can be tough if this then resets the game's sense of internal timeline by several rounds. This is why I like an overall timeline or narrative sweep which is very flexible and allows for the player to sort of re-imagine, compress or extend the sense of time based on the board state at any point. So not being too terribly strict with a game round = yearly calendar, or at some set interval of time, and rather allowing this one to be a bit more nebulous in that regard.

I just like the idea that we have these sorta bookended at 1940-45, to cover the broad scope, and give it more of a sense of range over some specific date. Also because doing that reminds me of The World at War or The Century of Warfare or any of those old docs where they'd refer to the conflicts with that sort of date range, depending on the episode and what it was covering hehe.

I think it's good if the game can become a bit like an accordion and extend when that makes sense, without breaking the internal sense of pacing. It often happens where 2 players of comparable skill may play games that are much much longer sometimes, or perhaps much shorter sometimes, but I think that if a game goes 20 rounds when it's more designed to go 10, that needn't necessarily be thought of as like going on well into the 1950s. Just about establishing a narrative conceit for winding down the clock, or an interpretation that's more of an overall gloss there, or where the endgame does that Zeno's paradox thing and kick the can endlessly for the last mile if needs be hehe. Similar to the way production is somewhat abstracted and units are heavily abstracted based on location/region relative to elsewhere on the board, so also the sense of time per game round I think can be made slightly more abstract in that way. I don't know like as if it was some sort of WW2 black hole interstellar event horizon, where we stretch across the line more in that way hehe. That's sorta more broad strokes and player interpretation, for the nitty gritty more just like clean up work and noodling it till it feels satisfying and produces a fun pattern that seems engaging.

I think it could reinforce the sort of standard A&A gameplay we see in global, and allow the user to see how units/forces work at scale, but in a slightly less pressure cooker environment than standard. You know since the economy is relatively higher, production placement TUV etc all relatively higher, hopefully higher unit attrition over time, that all this would coalesce into a situation where the player feels like they have a bit more room to experiment or try and fail - but with a chance at recovery. I think the last part is sorta critical to making it work, and having a bit more cash makes recovery more likely. Also mitigates somewhat the pitfalls of any one given tactical error in isolation. I mean sure, the game can always turn on one sub doing a kickass opening strike, but just generally that it wouldn't have to hinge as hard on an opening script. Or at least, that it would be more unknown compared to the standard boards, so at least the promise of recovery might be enough to keep it going. Honey Moon period for that I guess. I mean by the player's sense of balance by sides, or overall play pace being on target, whether the war is going well or poorly, to concede or fight on etc. based more on the board state than the number of rounds.

All that said, I think the coolest would be if we could somehow make like a local High Score, that works beyond TKO or concession, or perhaps as a replay type feature. For a solo say, where players can try to beat their own best score, or up against the clock, and have a type of tally on that. I have no idea if such a thing is possible, I just think it would be cool. You know with extra stats like Battles won/lost, TUV purchased, Enemy TUV destroyed, Cities captured, factions destroyed, Connected Empire etc. probably pipe dreaming that it might somehow produce a Stats Graph that displays at the very end of the game, but I don't know maybe we just start small there and do the sort of classic by VCs or some total conquest mode where it's more about trying to hit a high score type goal. Examples would be things like invasion USA for Axis, which we know takes forever to even get to that point, but sometimes could be fun for the last hour. Or similarly if it was like KJF, but now player has to turn around and also take Berlin by round whatever, for a sense of completion hehe. I could easily go off the rails there, so we can dial it back down, but I just liked that idea so thought I'd float it as a goal potentially achievable.

TripleA local high scores for Solo vs the machine, like the old local arcade game, just seem like something that would be fun. That's probably a bit overly ambitious though for now.

For now more little things...

I saw when playing as Brits trial that Madras was at 1 PU, but it has that starting_factory minor, so probably need to bump that one to 2 for parity with the other spots.

Could take the PU from Malaya to keep it even. I'd thought about shifting that factory and all the units to Bombay, but this felt a bit more global-ish somehow. Also what Victory had laid down initially so I kept that. Basically where Brits can stack in a bit easier to E. India Sea zone, W. India is minor capable but doesn't have one, and serves more like a fallback or secondary build option, which would be like Bombay, New Delhi, perhaps Baghdad in this treatment. It's a bit of a balancing act there because Japan has a lot of production/placement nearby, and India is further away from direct support from other teammates via say air skipping around compared to say standard global. I mean that still works, just takes a bit longer to get there. In any case, it's working pretty well right now so I think I'd just raise Madras rather than moving the factory and all the stuff to Bombay, though I was considering the merits of either.

Oh also, for capital capture, I think this probably needs to be a one time occurrence in order not to be too overpronounced. What happens sometimes in actual play is that, after a capital is liberated the first time, if it is then immediately contested again it can create awkwardness where the conservative player avoids liberation for fear of risking another purse steal back to back. Or where the player might avoid conquering a spot initially just to prevent it's being taken over later on by a more dangerous nation. Say wanting a territory to go to France as opposed to USA, because the former has less cash, whereas the later might build more fiercely out of the same spot. Anyhow, just something to keep an eye, right now I think it actually works out alright, except that sometimes China would be strange. It may be necessary to just use the more standard China rules, and I table my idea of somehow getting them all to harmonize together in one sweep for now. Certain things will go down otherwise, like where Factories are auto-removed if on the chinese spots, just from the global type treatment tripleA has going on for the default behavior there.

Ramble on haha

[beelee]

@black_elk

No git just the xml and the other stuff.

Elk 1.36.2 2-16-25.zip

Name changes
Krakow
N. Italy
Rome
S. Italy

Can make rome just Italy if you want. They're almost same charachter length.

Moved the notification to fire after tech for working purposes. Switch it back when we're done.

@wc_sumpton here's just xml it's in the above as well. This is off of 1.36.1

mega_new_elk_1940.xml

[wc_sumpton]

@beelee

Why not Milan (N. Italy) or Naples (S. Italy). There are approximately 150 hyphenated territory names. If you want, I can provide you with a list. Or I can "select" just the first/second part (I would use Excell to do it automatically).

Just curious about how you would handle this.

Cheers...

[Black_Elk]

That'd probably be the way to go. Also might catch the sp errors in review tab if any left over. I don't have it on this rig, I cheaped out on Office when I got the new laptop hehe. But the auto wizardry would probably work to at least knock em down to just the one name, and then maybe can see that way if any others had a typo in like a one fell swoop.

[wc_sumpton]

@black_elk said in Mega New Elk WIP:

I don't have it on this rig, I cheaped out on Office when I got the new laptop hehe.

Same, but there are online port of office that can be used for free. This is what I use.

Please note that he formular bar at the top show the formular used to only take the left most portion of the name, Aleppo-Deir ez Zor, is just Aleppo. This is setup to be able to change all x,y quadrantes with single entries in column I1 and J1.

I've been using this to change name_place and pu_place uniformly.

Just wastin' time and having fun.

Cheers...

[beelee]

@wc_sumpton

If someone wants to change all the names, that'd be great. The long hyphenated ones don't work imo.

Ideally the names are done first then PU then place.

No point in doing any place if the names are just gonna keep changing.

You guys let me know when they're done and I'll do the place then

[Black_Elk]

I'm super content to pass the buck on this one as well

I mean when I keyed it out initially I wasn't sure of the conventions to be used, mainly on account of wanting it to harmonize somehow with G40 and those labelling peculiarities.

So for example, in Global you might have a name like say "Western Germany" then another simply called "Germany" and then yet another called "Greater Southern Germany" etc.

Or similarly "Poland" right next to an "Eastern Poland." Then elsewhere you might have a spot called say "Libya" and then "Tobruk" or "Egypt" and then "Alexandria" when the latter is a much smaller locality within the larger region but they're treated separately. To me this all seemed not particularly consistent, frequently conflating a smaller region with a larger region, lacking in specificity and often redundant.

I mean it works I suppose, or seems less jarring when the territories are fewer in number, but you get into this situation we're in now. When dividing tiles again, I think different naming conventions might have suggested themselves. Whereas now it's not Poland and Eastern Poland anymore, instead we have what would be Poland divided into 7 or 8 tiles, to the point where it starts making less sense to call any one of those tiles just "Poland" even if its the regional capital around Warsaw because it makes a much larger region seem like a much smaller metro. Hence the use of hyphenated redundancies there to clarify. I assumed one name would probably get subsumed into the other after feedback. Or like the Highlander approach of "there can be only one!" heheh

Then we also have other conventions where instead of dividing tiles I added them together from the Dom map. So if I had Italy divided into 20 some odd provinces, I probably picked the two names that were farthest apart geographically within a given tile, and added a hyphen between them when collapsing.

Using the G40 comparison with Germany, Eastern Germany, it might make sense to divide Italy into N. Italy, Italy, S. Italy, but then I also feel like that's not doing a lot of heavy lifting in the geography department for adding to the memorization index. I mean it's a bit like Northwestern Europe of 1942.2, which is replaced with Holland Belgium, and also Denmark, and a sliver of what would be Western Germany on the G40 board. Northwestern Europe while an ok technical description for the tile, didn't do us much good when going up to the more divided out thing. So sorta a similar issue here, where the older remains might not make as much sense when adding in a bunch of new tiles, and so the search for maybe better names as we go down. The larger regional names cease to make sense. I mean we used to be able to get away with Eastern Europe and Western Europe, now it's more legwork.

Other times there was probably some thematic reason for choosing names initially based on the earlier period. So for example maybe it made more sense to say Istria or Zagreb, as opposed to say Slovenia or Croatia, because of the way that G40 (or Hepps) sometimes used a metro name rather than a larger region for reasons that might have made sense for the period/board. For example on the G40 board we get Tobruk instead of Cyrenaica. These are locations in Libya, or Eastern Libya, but Larry didn't name it Western Libya and Eastern Libya. He used Libya, and then Tobruk, which can be a little confusing I think, although that was the convention we got handed there.

When I see Tobruk, I don't have many associations there outside of a WW2 context. Whereas Cyrenaica I can go back like a couple thousand years in time all the way to the Roman empire, and everyone still calls it that. But then there is probably not some famous WW2 Hollywood movie featuring Cyrenaica, and so everyone scratches their head on that one, whereas Tobruk everyone says 'oh ok I guess WW2 then, I remember that movie.' hehe I mean not to go for the lowest common denominator here, but it's a bit of a cliche that American highschoolers are terrible at geography. So guilty as charged here, although I'd probably dispute the characterization. Part of the point would be, if someone doesn't know or recognize something immediately, maybe they just need a more detailed Axis and Allies or Risk map to help fix that spot in mind, and to help get us over the hump here. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know where say Novosibirsk was, if not for A&A. Just like I probably wouldn't know where Kamchatka was, were it not for Risk - that sort of thing. I mean there's that whole Seinfeld Newman joke about Ukraine on the Risk board, so we know that this is all a bit fraught right. You can sorta see the dilemma here, particularly for somebody like me, who is also somewhat indecisive about these things. So yeah, I'm all for just strongarming it across the finish lines.