Flames and Steel (official thread)
-
Well, it's not that splitting the United States in half is on its own certainly avoids focusing on one ocean only, especially not on the Atlantic. If you go with historical productions at the time (As I said, the western part was a lot more backward, underpopulated and poorer than it is now not only absolutely but also relatively to the eastern part.), on the account that in 1940 Pacific (meaning California + Oregon + Washington) had 9,682,781 inhabitants and Mountain (meaning Montana + Idaho + Wyoming + Colorado + New Mexico + Arizona + Utah + Nevada) had 4,128,042 inhabitants, for a total of Pacific + Mountain equal to 13,810,823 against a total for the entire United States (back then not comprising Hawaii and Alaska) of 131,669,275, your "West USA" will only have about 10% of the production of your "East USA" (and arguably less since Pacific and even more so Mountain was backward), meaning that "East USA" can still do KGF using directly the 90% of the total production power of the United States which it has and use the 10% of West USA just to produce bombers to go make bombing raids on Germany or some other things like that. Moreover, of course, whatever fleet is already present one side or the other can be sent through the Panama canal in either case, and doing so in a split USA scenario might even be worthwhile for can-openers.
All this means that, in order to go both oceans by splitting USA in two, you will not only have to take the historically wrong decision of having two USAs but also likely distributing production between these two made-up polities in a very unhistorical way.
All this said, I see your point, and I agree that seeing usually the United States playing only one ocean is lame, and I'm not able really to point at a game that fixed that at least amongst the ones I know. (I have not yet taken a deep enough look at @thedog's game, did you? Maybe he did.)
-
Also a "West USA" playing Pacific mostly or only on its own is largely unhistorical. Most of what was used in Pacific was produced in the East, especially if we assume that the East comprises anything east of Panama like Texas, but even only the East Coast was really commissioning most of the ships by far. If you seemingly partially fix it by having Texas and Missouri and such as part of the east, that may bring the west up to 25% of total (have not calculated it), but then I wonder if that does not have the risk that a player may decide to place ships in Texas and New Orleans and go full Atlantic with both West and East together.
-
A divided USA would make the game more disjointed.
Like with a single US, Japan could punch above its weight and force the US to commit more in the Pacific, thus indirectly (and historically) helping Germany by diverting American attention away from the Atlantic. But with a divided US, you can't do such a thing because the US's Atlantic commitments will be fixed, and Japan will be able to do nothing against it.
-
Adding to the west (like you did in the image you posted) also West South Central (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas) and West North Central (Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota) adds respectively 13,052,218 and 13,490,492 inhabitants for a total of 26,542,710. That added to the 13,810,823 of Pacific + Mountain would total 40,353,533 for "West USA" as you pictured it. That would be the 31% of the total (without Hawaii and Alaska which were however almost irrelevant). This seems indeed in line with a historical distribution of the effort of around 30% on Pacific and 70% on Atlantic but has the challenge that almost 2/3 of the production is not on the actual Pacific + Mountain and you should have very valuable territories in Texas and Louisiana which can be used to place ships and land units so to use West USA in the Atlantic only. I imagine this would be not too hard to balance: it would be just needed to make Pacific the better choice, so to assure that West USA goes Pacific instead of Atlantic, but not enough of a better choice that East USA would decide to join in (by moving ships through the Panama canal while buying plenty of air units). Still, not quite historical considering that most ships used in Pacific were produced in what would be East USA.
-
On another matter, the new air system seems to be working out well. Four bombers per land territory max, along with four fighters max. I was afraid this would create a GUI problem, but that has not been the case.
The Soviets sent their dive bomber against a German army. Granted, that dive bomber got aborted, so no attack. But I think the real time for the Soviets to push back in the sky will come later in the game. The four plane limit is doing its job of giving both sides a reason to fight for control over the sky. Thanks to @vendetta for pushing me on this.
Clever, I hadn’t thought of that as an option. Glad it seems to be working out.
I think the solution to US min-maxing the two theaters of the war might be to give Germany and Japan both some very powerful national objectives that can pay off big in PU output if they manage to fulfill them and put them on a peer level with the US in economic output.
It strays from strict historical realism, but if it’s calibrated right it does mean the US can’t afford to ignore either theater completely - it has to at least put enough forces in to keep one power contained from filling all its objectives while it’s busy trying to knock out the other one.
-
1941GCD has nearly 800 map locations and was written for the solo player from the start.
@Cernel Bare the above in mind, as the TripleA AI cannot produce ships in the East and transfer them to the West coast without constant scripting, so we gave up and put ship building Industry-Hvy(Carriers Battleships) on the West coast.
@kurtgodel7
If only TripleA could do the Bureau of Ships
and allocate ships to theatres. Seriously though that would be a step to far, simpler to put ahistorical industries on the west coast to simulate/achieve the same. -
Well, it's not that splitting the United States in half is on its own certainly avoids focusing on one ocean only, especially not on the Atlantic. If you go with historical productions at the time (As I said, the western part was a lot more backward, underpopulated and poorer than it is now not only absolutely but also relatively to the eastern part.), on the account that in 1940 Pacific (meaning California + Oregon + Washington) had 9,682,781 inhabitants and Mountain (meaning Montana + Idaho + Wyoming + Colorado + New Mexico + Arizona + Utah + Nevada) had 4,128,042 inhabitants, for a total of Pacific + Mountain equal to 13,810,823 against a total for the entire United States (back then not comprising Hawaii and Alaska) of 131,669,275, your "West USA" will only have about 10% of the production of your "East USA" (and arguably less since Pacific and even more so Mountain was backward), meaning that "East USA" can still do KGF using directly the 90% of the total production power of the United States which it has and use the 10% of West USA just to produce bombers to go make bombing raids on Germany or some other things like that. Moreover, of course, whatever fleet is already present one side or the other can be sent through the Panama canal in either case, and doing so in a split USA scenario might even be worthwhile for can-openers.
All this means that, in order to go both oceans by splitting USA in two, you will not only have to take the historically wrong decision of having two USAs but also likely distributing production between these two made-up polities in a very unhistorical way.
All this said, I see your point, and I agree that seeing usually the United States playing only one ocean is lame, and I'm not able really to point at a game that fixed that at least amongst the ones I know. (I have not yet taken a deep enough look at @thedog's game, did you? Maybe he did.)
Good info about regional population sizes. There are two different ways to think about realism here. 1) Realism about the distribution of population and industry between America's East Coast and its West Coast. 2) Realism about how America allocated its war spending.
This latter form of realism would be 33 - 40% spending allocated in the Pacific theater, with 60 - 67% allocated to Europe. I'm more focused on this latter form of realism. In my map, America Pacific has an income of 99, which falls to 90 after Japan's initial expansion. America Atlantic has an income of 130. This compares to a starting income for Germany of 130, the Soviet Union of 200, UK of 149, and Japan of 89. Also, the Soviets have the most MP income, and they can gain still more conscripts by researching recruitment techs. I believe I have understated American income by perhaps 40% versus where it should be historically. This may be necessary for game balance.
Both America Pacific and America Atlantic get two research centers. In my example game they were using these research centers to pursue different research strategies. America Pacific was preparing for naval war; America Atlantic for an air and ground war. Things were trending towards America Atlantic getting Pershing tanks as its special unit, while America Pacific would have been getting fleet carriers. Technology was intended to give each nation its own flavor. It was nice to see the two Americas each get their own flavor, even though they were choosing from the exact same list of available technologies.
-
On another matter, the new air system seems to be working out well. Four bombers per land territory max, along with four fighters max. I was afraid this would create a GUI problem, but that has not been the case.
The Soviets sent their dive bomber against a German army. Granted, that dive bomber got aborted, so no attack. But I think the real time for the Soviets to push back in the sky will come later in the game. The four plane limit is doing its job of giving both sides a reason to fight for control over the sky. Thanks to @vendetta for pushing me on this.
Clever, I hadn’t thought of that as an option. Glad it seems to be working out.
I think the solution to US min-maxing the two theaters of the war might be to give Germany and Japan both some very powerful national objectives that can pay off big in PU output if they manage to fulfill them and put them on a peer level with the US in economic output.
It strays from strict historical realism, but if it’s calibrated right it does mean the US can’t afford to ignore either theater completely - it has to at least put enough forces in to keep one power contained from filling all its objectives while it’s busy trying to knock out the other one.
Yeah. Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures really is a good game. The designers of that game came up with the idea of limiting each sea zone to four air per side. So I can't take any credit for coming up with this.
IIRC, Larry Harris came up with the idea of national objectives for Anniversary Edition, using I think logic similar to yours. I could be wrong--I haven't played a lot of Anniversary Edition--but I suspect this might not have been enough to prevent the U.S. from maxing out one theater while ignoring the other. What I do know is that in his next map, Global, he made a stronger push to prevent the U.S. from maxing out on one theater in particular. That stronger push was victory conditions. The Allies can lose the game on the very same round that they conquer Berlin--if they let Japan take enough victory cities.
If you look at the rules changes from Classic to Revised, I'd say pretty much all of those were good rules changes. Going from Revised to Anniversary Edition there were some potentially good ideas as well. No more transports as cannon fodder, changes to strategic bombing. But the game also became more technical due to having to constantly worry about your own National Objectives, as well as those of your opponents. "My opponent needs to do X to gain an extra 5 PUs. I must not let that happen." I would say Global became more technical due to scrambling, naval bases, air bases, diplomacy, etc. NWO uses the Revised rules and Domination 1914 NML uses Anniversary Edition rules--but without any of the National Objectives.
-
This latter form of realism would be 33 - 40% spending allocated in the Pacific theater, with 60 - 67% allocated to Europe. I'm more focused on this latter form of realism. In my map, America Pacific has an income of 99, which falls to 90 after Japan's initial expansion. America Atlantic has an income of 130.
Not an expert, but I've strong doubts about those percentages. I'm thinking that Europe should be much higher and Pacific much lower (something like 3/4 versus 1/4 respectively) for the times when it mattered, which means until the fall of Berlin. I'm wondering if this is accounting the entire war, so the data being invalidated by summing up the spending against Japan going on after Germany surrendered, or maybe accounting all the lend-lease going to Vladivostok as Pacific spending (whereas it is obviously European at least until the fall of Berlin). Also, if anything related to the Athomic bomb (costing quite a bit) was accounted for Pacific, that is wrong too: it should be accounted for Europe: it was made only or primarily against Germany.
-
Okay. Claude is making a major change to this map now. It involves air combat.
What I like about air combat currently: it gives different roles to different aircraft types. Instead of "attack on a 4, defend on a 2" it is like this.
Dogfight stage: both sides' fighters fight each other, using their dogfight values.
Interception stage: surviving fighters attack enemy bombers. Fighters fire at their interception value, bombers fire at their air defense value.
AA guns fire
Bombers attack their targets. That could be strafing an army, attacking a naval target, or a strategic bombing raid.
To give an example of all this, a fighter has a dogfight value of 3 and an interception value of also 3. Whereas a heavy fighter has a dogfight value of 2 but an interception value of 4. Neither can fire at surface targets. A fighter is a good all-purpose air superiority aircraft, while a heavy fighter is more of a bomber killer.
Among its strategic bombing techs, Britain has something which is called "Window." This adds -1 to the rolls of all enemy aircraft for their interception rolls. (Cannot be reduced below 1.) The Germans have something called Lichtenstein, which adds +1 to the interception value of their heavy fighters. (Some other nations have this same tech too, each with their own nation-specific names.)
After designing an air system like this, going back to "attack 4, defend 2" would feel too much like checkers. That said, I was not fully pleased with air as an abstraction. The engine is currently making a change to have air units actually on the map. Earlier in this thread someone mentioned that he was displeased at seeing 6 apparently blank Japanese carriers heading to Pearl, and being told that despite appearances those carriers were fully loaded with air. A casual glance at the map should let you see what your own side is doing and what the enemy is doing. The engine change Claude is doing now will allow air units back on the map, while keeping everything I liked about the old system. Planes will still have their specialized roles. You'll still want to use dive bombers against land targets and torpedo bombers against naval targets.
Sadly I'm only halfway through my Claude week, and have consumed 75% of my weekly usage.
-
Okay. Claude is making a major change to this map now. It involves air combat.
What I like about air combat currently: it gives different roles to different aircraft types. Instead of "attack on a 4, defend on a 2" it is like this.
Dogfight stage: both sides' fighters fight each other, using their dogfight values.
Interception stage: surviving fighters attack enemy bombers. Fighters fire at their interception value, bombers fire at their air defense value.
AA guns fire
Bombers attack their targets. That could be strafing an army, attacking a naval target, or a strategic bombing raid.
Interesting, but I don't think it was actually quite working this way. If I understand correctly that dogfight (which was really more of a WW1 thing and much less of a WW2 thing) is something preliminary which involves every fighter, so the fighters surviving the dogfight are the only ones then also intercepting the bombers (Is there a limited combat round or can only the fighters of one side survive?), I think this is not much simulating WW2 aerial warfare. WW2 aerial warfare was much more linear and mostly consisted in intercepting fighters attacking the bombers while bomber-escorting fighters were attacking the fighters attacking the bombers (often in a punishing role rather than a pre-emptive one) and interceptor-escorting fighters were attacking the fighters attacking the fighters attacking the bombers, this going on then having fighters attacking the fighters attacking the fighters attacking the fighters attacking the bombers, and so on.
Practically, the typical fighter would not engage in dogfight but rather go directly for attacking the bomber (with a number of other fighters behind him and behind one another in a sort of a train) while hoping not to be shot down by the escorting fighters while doing so. After attacking the bomber, the fighter would dive (and make evasive manoeuvrers but mostly just relying on speeding up and getting the hell out in a mostly straight trajectory rather than going in circles like in WW1 dogfights) to try to survive the fighters attacking him while expecting friendly fighters following (escorting) him to attack from behind the fighters which are attacking him from behind.
(I'm not an expert, and this is just based on my general knowledge of WW2, so do not ask me to provide references to prove what I'm saying. Also, if an expert of WW2 aerial warfare comes here and says otherwise, I'm not going to say that I'm necessarily right.)
I would have it working more like this:
Let's assume a normal battle with the attacker having fighters and bombers and the defender also having fighters and bombers. To keep it simple, let's assume for now that there are fighters and bombers and no aircraft which can operate as either.
- The attacker decides how many attacking fighters are intercepting (non-modifiable auto-selection to none of them or all of them respectively if the defender has only fighters or if the defender has only bombers). (The non-selected ones are escorting/dogfighting.)
- The defender decides how many defending fighters are intercepting (non-modifiable auto-selection to none of them or all of them respectively if the attacker has only fighters or if the defender has only bombers). (The non-selected ones are escorting/dogfighting.)
- The attacking intercepting fighters roll dice and one defending bomber is taken as casualty (not removed) for every hit.
- The defending intercepting fighters roll dice and one attacking bomber is taken as casualty (not removed) for every hit.
- The attacking bombers (comprising the ones taken as casualties) roll dice and one defending intercepting fighter is removed for every hit. Then the attacking bombers taken as casualties are removed.
- The defending bombers (comprising the ones taken as casualties) roll dice and one attacking intercepting fighter is removed for every hit. Then the defending bombers taken as casualties are removed.
- The attacking non-intercepting fighters roll dice and one defending fighter (either intercepting or not: it does not matter) is removed if it is an intercepting one or taken as casualty (not removed) if it is not an intercepting one for every hit.
- The defending non-intercepting fighters (comprising the ones taken as casualties) roll dice and one attacking fighter (either intercepting or not: it does not matter) is removed for every hit. Then the defending fighters taken as casualties are removed.
Every fighter has an "anti-bomber" and "anti-fighter" strength. The former is used for fighters chosen or auto-selected as intercepting and the latter for the rest.
Of course, this is ignoring the jabos, and this is quite unacceptable, but I'm trying to keep it simple. Let's just not forget that rules for allowing fighters to load some bombs or rockets on their wings and/or belly are quite a necessary addition to what I just detailed. The added complexity about that is that such a fighter is able to go back being a fighter any time it wants by just dropping the bombs (though there are limits to this: it will not be as good as a pure fighter) and will most likely do so as soon as it is about to be attacked by other fighters or even as soon as it can see them coming. To some extent, also bombers can get rid of their bombs to defend themselves better and/or avoid going down after being damaged. Of course, you cannot add rules for everything: it will always be a trade-off between complexity and coverage.
This system is completely removing from the table the ability of fighters to prevent interceptors from attacking bombers, and I believe this is fine as such ability is minor. If wanted also to cover cases in which the air superiority of a side is so overwhelming that the other side cannot even get to attack the bombers because its fighters are shot down before reaching them, it would be possible to add an other layer by which you can select fighters as either intercepting or sweeping (The non-selected ones are escorting/dogfighting.). Sweeping fighters attack or defend before any other aircraft and their casualties are removed before starting the interception steps (so that they do not get to fire at bombers at all) but do so at "sweep" strength (which should be set lower - arguably much lower - than the "anti-fighter" strength and the "anti-fighter" strength renamed to "escort" because both "sweep" and "escort" is "anti-fighter").
The other even more minor element is that one may want the bomber fire not to be merely punishing but to have a pre-emptive element, meaning an ability to shot down the fighter before the fighter can have a chance to shot down the bomber or an ability to disrupt the fighter fire so that its chances to shot down the bomber are lower the more effectively the bomber can shot at it. I did not provide for this, and I don't think it's too important to do so. This can be partially done by having the air combat going on for multiple rounds, so that the fighters shot down a round before will not be able to fire at the bomber again or more consistently by splitting the bomber fire between pre-emptive and non-pre-emptive or having a negative support from bomber to fighter, the higher the support the more the bomber is powerful at firing. However, this would also open all the matter that some bombers are much more vulnerable than others because of passive (armour) defence too (for example, a British Avro Lancaster being enormously inferior to a B-17 both as a matter of fire-power and as a matter of armour so much so that having the Avro Lancaster doing the bombers-only day-time bombings which the B-17 performed would have been suicidal).
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login