Total World War: December 1941 (BETA) 2.8.0.5

Hepps

@redrum I knew if I threw the right slant on this you'd want to prove me wrong.

wirkey

@hepps @redrum I knew being lazy for 5 minutes spares me work for 10 minutes

wirkey

British trains in Eastern Szechwan don't change ownership to China

zlefin

subs are kinda too strong now. they could use some nerf-ing; there's simply very very few things that can beat them at a tuv-equivalent cost, and those have to be setup just right to do so.
it's not good for something to have so few counters, and for those counters to be very select in application as well.

redrum

@zlefin They were actually nerfed a bit in 2.8 as they used to have 3 AA vs destroyers and now only have 2 AA vs destroyers. I actually think they are relatively balanced now. They do well in TUV trades when attacking but pretty poorly on defense. I think keeping them pretty strong is fairly important to force most naval nations to want to get improved destroyers fairly early.

@wirkey @Hepps There is a bug with L&L trains in Eastern Szechwan. The add/remove triggers point the the wrong condition "conditionAttachmentLLbTRAESC" instead it should be "conditionAttachmentLLbTNAESC".

    <attachment name="triggerAttachmentLLbTNAESC" attachTo="China" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.TriggerAttachment" type="player">
      <option name="conditions" value="conditionAttachmentLLbTRAESC"/>
      <option name="placement" value="Eastern Szechwan:Train"/>
      <option name="when" value="before:britainEndTurn"/>
    </attachment>
    <attachment name="triggerAttachmentLLbTNAESC" attachTo="Britain" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.TriggerAttachment" type="player">
      <option name="conditions" value="conditionAttachmentLLbTRAESC"/>
      <option name="removeUnits" value="Eastern Szechwan:Train"/>
      <option name="when" value="before:britainEndTurn"/>
    </attachment>

    <attachment name="conditionAttachmentLLbTNAESC" attachTo="Britain" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.RulesAttachment" type="player">
      <option name="directPresenceTerritories" value="Eastern Szechwan" count="1"/>
      <option name="unitPresence" value="Train" count="1"/>
    </attachment>

zlefin

their AA vs destroyers may be 2 instead of 3, but it's now EVERY round remember, so it's not a nerf, and more of a buff really. they do well in tuv trades on defense as well, and the only cases where they don't are one where there are no enemy destroyers so they can simply submerge and avoid all damage (but fail to protect other ships). straight destroyers WITH the imp destroyer tech attacking subs lose.
20 dd with imp dest attack 20 subs, run it in the battle calc: the subs win.
and 20 dd's cost MORE than 20 subs.

and remember - you can't jus tattack with 1 dd and a bunch of air: the subs first strike shot kills the dd and they get to submerge immediately after without taking a round of shots.

Hepps

@zlefin Yah, I will re-examine. The DD defense each round is problematic. The "is Destroyer" mechanic is such a limiting factor. I have already made an entirely new system but it is not being included in TWW for the time being.

I will re-engineer the sub behavior for the next release.

redrum

@hepps @zlefin Oh, I thought we had decided to leave sub AA attack to be only on the first round. If its every round then I'd agree they are probably too strong now.

Hepps

@redrum Did you fix it Red? Or had you just found the issue?

Just want to know whether I still need to address it.

Hepps

@redrum Yes I had intended to leave it for one round only. But it appears in my zeal to add the infinite rolls to everything else I must have changed the subs at the same time.

redrum

@hepps I didn't fix anything yet as wasn't sure if you had many any changes locally that you hadn't pushed to github and didn't want to conflict with you. I'd say at a minimum here are probably the needed changes for 2.8.0.4:

Fix L&L trains in Eastern Szechwan (probably good to double check the rest of train L&L)
Change subs AA back to just 1 round
Reduce BB bombard a bit to probably 2x4 or 2x5

I can make those changes if you want. Didn't want to change/fix anything without at least getting your thoughts.

zlefin

that reminds me of a technical question I was wondering: is it possible to have bombard damage be affected by the terrain? much like how the terrain support attachments affect combat values? it seems weird at times that bombardment is equally effective vs an open coast as it is vs a mountain jungle island.

'twas fun getting to play a game again.

redrum

@zlefin Not currently. Right now there are only 4 territoryEffect options:

combatOffenseEffect	values: the name of the unit, and the count of how much offense you want to give this unit
combatDefenseEffect	values: the name of the unit, and the count of how much defense you want to give this unit
noBlitz				values: the names of the units that can't blitz through this territoryEffect, can be multiple units (separated by a colon ":")
unitsNotAllowed 		values: the names of the units that are not allowed into or through this territoryEffect, can be multiple units (separated by a colon ":")

But its probably a good feature request and would probably be rather easy to add if a map maker was interested in using it.

CrazyG

@redrum
I'm interested in it, and I'm 99% sure Hepps would be as well

Hepps

@crazyg and @zlefin Yes this would be a neat little addition. It would allow for more flexibility in both unit and map design and makes perfectly logical sense.

Hepps

@redrum It would also be really cool if a territoryEffect could consume additional movement of specific units rather than simply block blitz. The block blitz has always been of limited usefulness and produces curious behaviors since multi move units are not always necessarily blitzing when a territory effect should be slowing the units movement or limiting its range.

Moving through a forest or Jungle with a tank should slow its movement or potential range whether you own the territory or not and regardless of whether you are doing it in combat or non combat moves.

zlefin

as a reminder on the list of changes to make it'd be helpful if you could set the TUV value for the damaged battleship to something, maybe 11-ish. right now a damaged battleship counts as 0 TUV, compared to the full battleships 22-ish tuv. that, combined with the engine default to take hits first on 2hp units (which is a bad default rule here, first time we have a multi-hp unit that gets worse when damaged), throws off the tuv estimates in the battle calc. which is annoying, and would really screw over the ai if it could play the map, since it relies on those numbers.

mostly though it's just handy for the rest of us if the battlecalc numbers are more accurate.

Hepps

@zlefin Tell you what... the day the AI can play this... I'll be your huckleberry.

zlefin

what si the list of missing ai capabilities that prevent it from playing tww properly? I can think of quite a few offhand, but it's always nice to see a complete list.

Hepps

The gracious and glorious @redrum has offered to help with the changes so they should be up-loaded to GIT Hub today.

ALL HAIL RED!

I will be changing the name of the thread to 2.8.0.4 as soon as all the changes are done. Once you see the thread name change you know you can re-download the game.