💥 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread

JohnnyCat

@beelee I’m from Chicago but now residing in California!

How do we do DMs on this thing? I’d like to follow up on these topics but don’t think this is quite the right place lol

beelee

hit me up in chat

JohnnyCat

That’s PERFECT !!! Love the little Nazi icon at the top. You totally captured the idea I was trying to convey. Let me know if you need my photoshop work. I’m rather skilled with it.

And yea Panzer General 2 is one of my favs. But as a young kid I played those old Avalon hill games and long to play Panzerbkitz again lol.

TheDog

@johnnycat
USA 1-3 Rounds for TripleA benefit so USA can add Gulf States &
should of said
USA 1-3 Rounds for TripleA benefit so USA can add Gulf States & Brazil

It means that I could not do what I wanted, so I had set USA to Open-Border so that the USA could gain Gulf States & Brazil as USAs own territory.
Then on Round 4, USA changes to Closed-Border like other allies.

So as a USA player if you want to be aggressive do it in rounds 1-3, but this not the intended action for the USA.

.
I know its a lot time/effort to produce a manual, even a terse one like mine. If you want to produce one please do so and I will add it to the download.

Black_Elk

Here is another Iachino

It's from that HOI Italy mod for the Italian generals by SteveHarrison2001 that you sent me from reddit.

I just cropped it into a circle and adjusted the color temperature so it would look a bit more like the others. Since it's relatively simple to make adjustments to the graphics in tripleA I'd just say consider these things placeholders. Or to make new ones basically you just want to fit in that 68px circle to match the ones that are already there.

A simple solution to differentiate between Air Land and Sea HQs would be to just choose a color gradient for the background and make them all the same. So for example maybe Air HQs have a blue tinted background gradient, whereas ground might be Red or Green tinted, and have that consistent across factions. For the national designation a roundel in the corner would probably be the simplest to ensure visibility. To me though I think that could be an option on similar to flags for the units.

Here's a quick example using Bock

beelee

@black_elk

Brock is Badass !!!

Air, Sea and Land

Edit
Not to be confused with Sea Air and Land

JohnnyCat

@black_elk I’ve been pondering that air/land/sea differential myself and always come up with wanting to overcome the actual graphics limitations of 58 pix or whatever it is….
But in lieu of that , your background color idea is best!!!

And I personally feel very drawn to thing having a the thin gold border and nation symbol as shown earlier. Great work mate !

wc_sumpton

@TheDog

I noticed that "isStrategicBomber" was removed for Artillery. May I ask why? Are you planning to add it back?

If so, what would you like to happen to those Artillery after the SBR round?

Inquisitive minds want to know...

Cheers...

TheDog

@wc_sumpton said

Inquisitive minds want to know...

I always knew you were in two minds

Wow a set of leading questions, you obviously have a cunning plan. (Not sure which one of us is Baldrick or Blackadder)

isStrategicBomber might have been for Artillery-Hvy which got removed, many versions ago.

If you have an army capable of taking a territory why would you want to destroy the Industry you are about to take over, unless it is form of suicide attack to destroy the Industry and then in turn your army is wiped out.

I have to admit I do a variant of the above on the eastern front, win a territory, auto damages an industry, then the Russian counter attack, auto damage and destroy the industry by them taking it off me.

What were you thinking?

JohnnyCat

The quest for game Mechanics and Unit INTUITION:

Dear Devs,

I’m getting deep into the play testing of this game and now have some questions about how various units and game mechanics were/are intended by the devs.

The first is the bomber unit. In the basic A&A game the bomber is a sort of super unit. You roll for tech like heavy bombers and you likely win the game. And, inexplicably, the bomber can be used to significantly mess things up like enemy fleets.

This game is much more refined and I certainly appreciate that but I’ve yet to find any good purpose for this unit.

Sometimes 5-6 bombers can destroy a factory and that’s a great way to use them….. except that more often than not, and without any defending fighters (and there are no explicit AA units on this game), the bombers are decimated and the factory is barely touched. Hence this is not a viable use as I found they cannot be reliably used for destroying factories.

And apparently they cannot target sea vessels.

And there is no way they are cost effective in causing repair damage.

So what good are these things? Could you please provide some examples of how these units were intended to be used ?

THANK YOU

wc_sumpton

@thedog said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

What were you thinking?

I was thinking along the lines of what happens to these non-air-SBR units after the SBR attack. Basically, they disappear from the battle.

I've created a map property that would allow these units to patriciate in the territory battle.

Just was wondering if this was the reason for the removal of "isStrategicBomber". If I remember correctly, I seen it in 1.170, but when I went to check and test with 1.175, it was no longer there.

Just Ideas.

Cheers...

wc_sumpton

@johnnycat

The bomber, along with the tac-bomber, are the only 2 air units that can attack all ground units.

The bomber does between 0 and 2 SBR damage, while the tac-bomber does between 0 and 1. So even though they may survive the industry's built in AA fire, they may still miss their targets.

All units have built-in AA capabilities, so the AA gun was removed.

Cheers...

beelee

@wc_sumpton said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

I've created a map property that would allow these units to patriciate in the territory battle.

sweet Is this new java code that needs a prerelease or a custom property that you made with existing triplea ?

wc_sumpton

@beelee said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

sweet Is this new java code that needs a prerelease or a custom property that you made with existing triplea ?

Yep :grinning_squinting_face:

While redoing my support code, I found a way to let SBR unit be included in the main battle. So yes I created a new property, and some code, but have not as of yet submitted it for prerelease.

Hopefully answered not answered.

Cheers...

beelee

@wc_sumpton said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

Hopefully answered not answered.

I'm thinking I'm gonna go with answered One of the big guns got approve it first I'm guessing

Well that's way cool ! I can see it being very useful.

If you can find a way for the AA hits to be able to fire back instead of death only or Have AirBattle able to use a different sided die would be super Cool too lol

Then I can have my Bmbr defend at 1 in 12 in a six sided game. Wanna do it for infrastructure aaGuns too ha ha ha

Black_Elk

@johnnycat

I think the bomber unit is problematic for a couple reasons, but mostly because the computer doesn't seem to know what to do with them.

In general I don't think units should be un-targetable and still able to hold a tile as a defensive unit, if that makes sense. I favor bonuses over maluses for all combat units, and a situation where nothing would ever be a hit 0 unit and still able to take or hold ground. The battle round limit allows a unit which cannot be targeted by enemy ground to lock a tile out of play and to me this feels a bit strange. I think there is a precedent in A&A for a unit which has a hitpoint but no defense value (the v5 AAgun) and a unit with no defense value and no hitpoint (the post v3 Transport). We tried a Strategic Bomber with no Hitpoint in the G40 HRs, which I feel might make sense, like where undefended strat bombers are basically destroyed the same way undefended transports would be destroyed in the modern A&A games. In A&A I think the bomber's most useful role is actually as a defensive unit that can move 1 hitpoint across 6 tiles. Everything else it does beyond that is a bonus in A&A. I'm not a huge fan of the way the standard rules work, but they do work. There is for sure a reason to purchase strat bombers in v5, since it's the most OP unit in all of A&A, and the Computer opponent uses them pretty effectively.

The difference in this scenario is that there are also Bunkers (which can be very hard to clear without bombers), and factories which can be completely destroyed via SBR which is extremely potent. I imagine the optimal use for the unit would be to spam enough that you can reliably destroy any given factory within one round of play, eg say x8 bombers for both UK and USA targeting a single Axis power until they are just nerfed off the front line or off the board entirely. If you can destroy a factory and prevent the opponent from placing units I think that's often worth whatever the cost in TUV from bomber attrition, because the enemy can't do anything to stop it, aside from pray to the dice gods. USA and UK can afford to do this. Germany and Japan can also pull it off. The smaller factions not so much, but even there having a 3rd power get in the mix for a triple team could be pretty deadly. The computer will never really use the bomber unit this way that I've seen, so to me it feels like a bit of an exploit doing it as the solo player. I think Air transports are the same, in that the computer doesn't know how to use them so I feel like I'm taking cheap shots against the machine if using them myself.

Current best use for bombers would seem to be bunker clearing or for SBR to kill the factories outright. Damage alone doesn't seem terribly useful, unless it's to set up a ground invasion that will then kill the factory on a teammates turn. I think right now the unit is somewhere between OP (the mass bomber factory killer) and borked (the bunker/defending bomber combo vs an enemy that attacks without Aircraft or after losing fighter aircraft to AAfire).

I've been playing vs Fast AI exclusively ever since that note was added to the launch infographic. I've noticed when doing this that the Computer will frequently airblitz into a tile with insufficient ground to ever take the tile, but where because air units can hard/impossible to target it allows for heavy TUV exchanges with much higher air attrition. The computer occasionally retreats but more often I see them press the attack, wipe a tile of units but then fail to take the TT. Or they'll go in with low or no fodder basically, is what I'm trying to say. Not sure what approach would be ideal for these things.

I think it's problematic though if a unit has a low attack value to begin with and can then be nerfed down to a 1 on d6 or d10 say or if it can be nerfed to 0. I think bonuses bringing the unit up to attack 3 or 4 would be better, like as a way to handle special targeting or terrain. Example would be instead of reducing the attack value of an attackers unit, to give a bonus to the defender or vice versa. Just all bonuses for the pips, +1 rather than -1, across the board. Whether that's a bonus from terrain or some form of combined arms targeting.

wc_sumpton

@beelee said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

If you can find a way for the AA hits to be able to fire back instead of death only or Have AirBattle able to use a different sided die would be super Cool too lol

Treat battle AA hits as not firstStrike may take some doing. As to different sided dice, just about everything makes a diceSides call, so just about everything could have a different diceSides.

@beelee said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

Wanna do it for infrastructure aaGuns too ha ha ha

AA attackes (aaGuns) already use different diceSides for both offence and defense.

You could add these to the Feature Request & Ideas section.

Don't know what would happen after that. Maybe get lucky and someone would look into it.

Cheers...

beelee

@wc_sumpton said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

just about everything makes a diceSides call, so just about everything could have a different diceSides.

this looks promising

beelee

@wc_sumpton said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

Don't know what would happen after that. Maybe get lucky and someone would look into it.

hee hee

wc_sumpton

@beelee said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

If you can find a way for the AA hits to be able to fire back instead of death only

This is really a tangled knot. TripleA was designed with aaGuns in mind, and they were only defensive fire at air units, and only during the first round of combat. This was a defensive use only.

When AA attacks were changed, the only thing that was changed for the order of battle was an offensive attack for AA was placed at the top of the order of battle, in effect taking away the defensive players chance at eliminating attacking units moving into the territory.

So, there it is a good idea badly implemented, like giving isStrategicBomber to non-air units, or bonus stacking for supportAttachments. But hay...

Cheers...