Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

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Lokasenna
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Lokasenna »

ORIGINAL: Symon

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
So we're all familiar with all of the ship repair threads, especially Alfred's. I have a question that may not have been asked before.
Of course it's possible to "game" it. The game is flexible, so one can "game" just about anything.

Little 12 year olds that just wanna get the computer auto-victory, can do it in a heartbeat. Good on you for finding yet another smelly outhouse that people can go visit and discuss and ruminate over the size, length and girth of the logs they find. Sooner or later the liddle kiddle's acne will clear up, they will get older and acquire a skoosh of wisdom, and figure out what this game is about. Till then, you go, boy ! Computer game "cheats" is what it's all about. It's not the game system, it's getting the "cheats" so one can win. But then winning is what it's all about, even though you cheat, isn't that right?

I am going to be as diplomatic as possible right here:

Are you serious?

Judging from your prior posts, I can only assume that you are. I hate to green button a dev, but......... Come on dude. What would happen if I wrote a post like that? I understand that you helped with AE. You're proud of it. And you should be. Very proud of it. It is one of the most excellent games ever created, going above and beyond what GG created with WITP. But just because I'm finding errors or possibilities for loopholes in the game and posting about it on the game's own forums doesn't mean that I'm a 12-year-old kiddie with acne who's looking for poop and not playing the game in a Gentleman's Agreement fashion. Sheesh. Also, it isn't a "cheat" if it's (now) public knowledge, built into the game engine, and requires no special tool or hacking of the .exe to perform.


I think it's pretty clear from my initial posts, and followups, that I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. I'm gathering more data points from my games, but I'm pretty sure now that (repair accidents notwithstanding) it's possible to abuse the ship repair system in this fashion. I don't think it's a huge deal, possibly not even worthy of Michael M's attention, but it's definitely a deal.
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obvert
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by obvert »

Ever Allied player in the game puts BBs on pier side until they can get system damage fixed and then makes a choice either to repair ten at pearl or send them to the States to put them in a dock there. Pierside repairs certain damage faster and whether the player notices or not, it's happening.

It's great to bring more information about what is actually going on with this to everyone's attention, and shameful you have to take abuse for doing so.

@Symon - Is it really a problem for someone to find inconsistencies in the game and point them out? Do you have to respond this way? Are you going to write a pasta sauce recipe next and start making dog sounds?
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by DD696 »

It is quite refreshing to see others who are personally attacked by "Symon-JWE-along with his numerous other personalities" take a stand against his almost unparallelled attacks on those who enjoy playing this game.

I give him credit in that he does have the knowledge or sources of knowledge to assist in improving this game, however, he is also a Teenage Drama Queen walking hand in hand with Lindsay Lohan thinking the world must obey and heed his every utterance. Frankly, I find that he has mired himself into irrelevancy with his constant and consistent attacks on others who may have a different opinion than those he utters from his self-imagined pedestal that he believes he perches on.

Please, John, set sail for Chile. I'll volunteer to push you away from the dock.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by FeurerKrieg »

Funny, you bring this up Lokasenna. I was just thinking the same thing a couple weeks ago. I had a carrier in pierside for a couple days, and then moved it to shipyard and when that first major float point came off, I was think - "I could probably switch this back and forth every two days and speed things up by about 33%."

However, I micromanage enough other stuff so I just said 'screw it - too much work'. But you are absolutely correct that you can significantly game the repair process for larger ships (CV and BBs). It can be done for cruisers too, but only at smaller yards and I'm not sure you'll see as much of a gain from it.

In any case, maybe michaelm can drop something into a beta one of these days to fix it. If not, I'm not going to worry. It is one of those things that if someone really wants to put that much time into it, I'll live.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by wdolson »

There is no need for personal attacks here. Let's keep this civil people.

There are a number of ways to game the engine to get more out of it than was intended. Some are design flaws, others are things that were examined and it was determined that the loophole was too complicated to fix.

I didn't realize this particular one was there, but I'm glad it is now out in the open.

Bill
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Lokasenna
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Lokasenna »

ORIGINAL: wdolson

There is no need for personal attacks here. Let's keep this civil people.

There are a number of ways to game the engine to get more out of it than was intended. Some are design flaws, others are things that were examined and it was determined that the loophole was too complicated to fix.

I didn't realize this particular one was there, but I'm glad it is now out in the open.

Bill

I think this is one of those. The 3 obvious solutions to me are:

1) Drop all Repair Points when switching modes. For obvious reasons, this is undesirable.

2) Code in an entirely new, parallel Repair Points system for each type of damage rather than the ship as a whole. Granted, this would largely be cut and paste, but it would also be tedious. I've done this sort of coding work before - it's not all that fun, and it's easy to make a mistake that buggers something somewhere.

3) Leave it as-is.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Lokasenna »

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

Funny, you bring this up Lokasenna. I was just thinking the same thing a couple weeks ago. I had a carrier in pierside for a couple days, and then moved it to shipyard and when that first major float point came off, I was think - "I could probably switch this back and forth every two days and speed things up by about 33%."

However, I micromanage enough other stuff so I just said 'screw it - too much work'. But you are absolutely correct that you can significantly game the repair process for larger ships (CV and BBs). It can be done for cruisers too, but only at smaller yards and I'm not sure you'll see as much of a gain from it.

In any case, maybe michaelm can drop something into a beta one of these days to fix it. If not, I'm not going to worry. It is one of those things that if someone really wants to put that much time into it, I'll live.

It is mostly on the big ships, yeah. The ones with large durabilities and large tonnages, such that Repair Points accumulate slowly (especially when isolated in the yards).

This is something I've noticed for some time, but I haven't really dug into it as usually the damage values have been so high in each category that there wasn't a large difference. Now that I have a handful of ships between two games that have only moderate System damage, it's easier to see the difference.


I'm going to try to keep a running tally to see just how big of a difference this really makes. I suspect it is, in these particular cases, somewhere around 33% to 50% time savings. But it is a lot of micromanaging. For those of us that already check ship repairs daily, that's probably not a big deal.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by LoBaron »

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: wdolson

There is no need for personal attacks here. Let's keep this civil people.

There are a number of ways to game the engine to get more out of it than was intended. Some are design flaws, others are things that were examined and it was determined that the loophole was too complicated to fix.

I didn't realize this particular one was there, but I'm glad it is now out in the open.

Bill

I think this is one of those. The 3 obvious solutions to me are:

1) Drop all Repair Points when switching modes. For obvious reasons, this is undesirable.

2) Code in an entirely new, parallel Repair Points system for each type of damage rather than the ship as a whole. Granted, this would largely be cut and paste, but it would also be tedious. I've done this sort of coding work before - it's not all that fun, and it's easy to make a mistake that buggers something somewhere.

3) Leave it as-is.

How about:
4) Implement a 3 days worth of delay when switching between shipyard repair and pierside, similar to the current switch to readyness. Then it would be difficult bordering impossible to estimate the optimal switchover date.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Lokasenna »

I plan to keep my running tally here. This is going to break some FOW if my opponents can figure out which game this is looking at, but I don't care that much. It's "just" old BBs after all.

California is undergoing refit, with 8 days remaining on the refit. Unsure if she'll lose a day on the refit with the upcoming turn since I put her into Shipyard.

Test cases for this upcoming turn are California and Nevada. Tennessee, previously referenced, probably won't get near to 100% RPs this coming turn. Will be interesting to see how many she accrues, as she's presently at 1 (0%).

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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by FeurerKrieg »

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: wdolson

There is no need for personal attacks here. Let's keep this civil people.

There are a number of ways to game the engine to get more out of it than was intended. Some are design flaws, others are things that were examined and it was determined that the loophole was too complicated to fix.

I didn't realize this particular one was there, but I'm glad it is now out in the open.

Bill

I think this is one of those. The 3 obvious solutions to me are:

1) Drop all Repair Points when switching modes. For obvious reasons, this is undesirable.

2) Code in an entirely new, parallel Repair Points system for each type of damage rather than the ship as a whole. Granted, this would largely be cut and paste, but it would also be tedious. I've done this sort of coding work before - it's not all that fun, and it's easy to make a mistake that buggers something somewhere.

3) Leave it as-is.


I don't think #1 is undesirable at all. If you don't want to lose a day or two of repair time, don't switch things around so much. Seems to me that if you are going to park a ship in drydock, it should take a good half day to move it out of there, that reflects the lost points when switching modes.

It also seems like it would be a really easy add from a code standpoint.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Lokasenna »

My conclusion is that this works.

Nevada went down 1 Float as shown in the screencap. Note that the SY repair estimate is 5 days less than it was before.

California was on Low, so only made it to 90%. Actual estimate is 413 now (due to moving BB Maryland to the SY after making the graphic).

Tennessee back into the Shipyard this turn, if this works then her float should drop to 27.
Maryland at 87% with 450 SY.

Arizona, refitting, gained no repair points. Just a tangent, but I wanted to confirm that no repairs occurred during refits.

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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by oldman45 »

To answer the question about moving a ship from drydock. I spent a couple of tours at a support facility and it was an all day evolution moving a sub INTO drydock. It would involve the drydock crew preparing the dock for that particular sub. If you can imagine a giant jig saw puzzle that is what the bottom of the dock looked like right before it started flooding. The crew would preposition railroad ties cut to rather exact lengths and put in precise order to allow the sub to sit upright in the dock. Getting the sub out was pretty easy since it was a matter of flooding the dock and pulling the sub out.

I did take one ship into a dock and they spent two or three days preparing the dock for us, it was one built into the shore of the river at Charleston ship yard. The actual movement was most of the day flooding the dock and then pulling us in.

The point I am making, I think it is gamey to swap back and forth without penalty, if for no other reason I will tell you that we were in dock when Hurricane Hugo hit, we had three days to get out but we also had holes all in the hull and parts missing, like pumps etc. So they threw on some patches over the holes, over flooded the dock and tied us in with large steel cables. Think about a warship with battle damage, you have hull armor missing, major components removed for repair/replacement. You just can't move these ships in and out at will.

I know the game engine allows us to move our ships back and forth at will but it just really is not realistic to do. In my games I tend to keep the ships pier side to eliminate most if not all of the system damage then move them to another port or put them in drydock.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by obvert »

ORIGINAL: oldman45

To answer the question about moving a ship from drydock. I spent a couple of tours at a support facility and it was an all day evolution moving a sub INTO drydock. It would involve the drydock crew preparing the dock for that particular sub. If you can imagine a giant jig saw puzzle that is what the bottom of the dock looked like right before it started flooding. The crew would preposition railroad ties cut to rather exact lengths and put in precise order to allow the sub to sit upright in the dock. Getting the sub out was pretty easy since it was a matter of flooding the dock and pulling the sub out.

I did take one ship into a dock and they spent two or three days preparing the dock for us, it was one built into the shore of the river at Charleston ship yard. The actual movement was most of the day flooding the dock and then pulling us in.

The point I am making, I think it is gamey to swap back and forth without penalty, if for no other reason I will tell you that we were in dock when Hurricane Hugo hit, we had three days to get out but we also had holes all in the hull and parts missing, like pumps etc. So they threw on some patches over the holes, over flooded the dock and tied us in with large steel cables. Think about a warship with battle damage, you have hull armor missing, major components removed for repair/replacement. You just can't move these ships in and out at will.

I know the game engine allows us to move our ships back and forth at will but it just really is not realistic to do. In my games I tend to keep the ships pier side to eliminate most if not all of the system damage then move them to another port or put them in drydock.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I knew someone here must have first hand knowledge of this stuff. [:)]
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by JuanG »

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
I think this is one of those. The 3 obvious solutions to me are:

1) Drop all Repair Points when switching modes. For obvious reasons, this is undesirable.

2) Code in an entirely new, parallel Repair Points system for each type of damage rather than the ship as a whole. Granted, this would largely be cut and paste, but it would also be tedious. I've done this sort of coding work before - it's not all that fun, and it's easy to make a mistake that buggers something somewhere.

3) Leave it as-is.

I really can't see any 'obvious reasons' as to why #1 would be undesirable.

Finding this is nice work, as its definitely not obvious and clearly the result of a fair bit of testing and attention to detail.

However, as for the 'trick' itself I don't think it amounts to anything but an exploit that allows one to cut down ship repair times on the larger vessels (ie. the ones that actually take a notable amount of time to repair) to almost half. Can't really see any justification for leaving this 'intact', as it very clearly breaks a fairly significant part of the games model.

Solution #1 is probably also likely the easiest way to actually fix it from a programming perspective - other proposals like #2 or a delay like proposed by someone else are likely considerably more work.

As has also been said, it makes sense from a realism/capability stand point - a delay would make even more sense, but this is certainly the next best thing.

Would be interesting to hear michaelm's thoughts on how difficult a fix would be.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Don Bowen »


This process was discussed at some length during development. Indeed the repair process involved input from more people and consumed large amounts of development and testing time.

There was considerable argument about the very items being discussed in this thread. The old adage that every problem has a solution and every solution has a problem applied. One possible solution, not then adapted, was to "difficultize" the process of putting a ship into the yards. More difficult, in fact, than the current enforced delays in prematurely removing a ship from the yard.

Items them considered were:
1. Enforce a de-fueling and de-arming of the ship - including consumption of ship ops points and base load/unload capability. Fuel and "ammo" (i.e. supply) to be added to the base totals. But, of course, it would not be possible to hold or reserve this fuel/supply and the ship's ammo might end up being "issued" to some army outfit as replacement equipment. Just no way to prevent that with the current supply model.
2. Require an additional "pre-preparation" delay before putting the ship into the yards. Historical, but it was deemed too complex. Like several other realistic options, it could be detrimental to game flow. Bitches about the repair process already abound.
3. Increase "accidents" during the actual entry to the yards (on the first day or two). I like this idea but it also did not make the cut.

Except for #2, coding these now would be somewhat difficult. However, if you-all find a way to break the process - I'll fix the cheat and send the code to Michael. He can do what he thinks is right.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by FeurerKrieg »

Thanks for the input, Don.

I think dropping accumulated repair points when switching repair modes will fix this exploit in the easiest fashion. I don't see why anyone would object to that really, since it would apply to both sides.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Lokasenna »

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

Thanks for the input, Don.

I think dropping accumulated repair points when switching repair modes will fix this exploit in the easiest fashion. I don't see why anyone would object to that really, since it would apply to both sides.

+1. Thanks for expounding upon this.

I do think that dropping accumulated repair points fixes it most easily. Or a one-way drop when entering Shipyard.

My obvious reason for it to be an undesirable fix, though, is that I was considering that all progress towards fixing some superstructure would be lost, or all progress towards fixing some Minor Floatation damage (which can be fixed at both Pier Side and Shipyard.


Or we could all just not do it.
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by FeurerKrieg »

Or we could all just not do it.

[:D]

That's funny....
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

Thanks for the input, Don.

I think dropping accumulated repair points when switching repair modes will fix this exploit in the easiest fashion. I don't see why anyone would object to that really, since it would apply to both sides.

An issue there might be on upgrades. We all know that many of the even small, AA-type upgrades auto-start in the shipyard with all damage at 0 across the board. I think all players with any experience immediately shift the ship to pierside to do the upgrade. The upgrade routines seem to the observer to operate outside the normal repair process: they can't be accelerated with priorities, they can't be early terminated, and they don't seem to eat on the repair point pool every day.

I don't know how many upgrades Japan has to do, but when merchant AA upgrades are included on the Allied side it's a thousand to maybe low-thousands of ships.

With upgrades there's no report of accumulated points, but OTOH if a mode-shift penalty were inserted into the yard code I don't know what would happen with upgrades.

I'm torn on this. I too have some real-life experience with ARDs: going in, working in, and coming out. It IS too easy to flip ships in and out of dock in the game. OTOH, there is only crude control over the repair process in the game versus RL (but orders of mag more than in any other game) so the ability to balance assets with needs works very, very well now.

Until Lokasenna ratted out the model that is. [:)]
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RE: Ship Repairs - is it possible to "game" them?

Post by rustysi »

OK, I don't want to step on toes or offend anyone here, 'cuase I'm the 'nug'. So we have a discovery of a way around something. The gentelman who discovers it posts it, the dev comes in and says its not what was intended. The gentleman then says, OK we could all just not do it. Is that not enough? The support of this game is amazing, the fact that the devs are even here astounds me. I wonder if you can find that with any other game? Especially one that's how old now? Five I believe. ITS A GAME! ITS FUN! PLEASE DON"T GAME THE GAME. I'm doing my best to learn the game with the intent of PBEM. I see how invloved and how long an e-mail game will be. I know that a PBEM partner needs to be selected based on similiar game styles. Some of this just reminds me of the board game 'rules lawyers', lost a lot of opponents for that reason too. There I said my piece, hammer away. I can take it.[:D]
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