Beta testing?

[larryfulkerson]

You can put some dedicated air units on them (in garrison). Then they will be visible so long as the recon level is >0. I use this in my Soviet Union 1941 scenario.

That's great......I'll do that. Thanks.

EDIT: Okay.........I used the aircraft icon instead of the CIV icon and the game engine wouldn't let me place it on a city, I had to put
it at an airport. So then I tried using the CIV icon with a secondary icon of an aircraft with the theater recon value of 20 and they
STILL weren't visible. So I'm still stuck using 100% theater recon unless somebody has an idea what I'm doing wrong.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

You can put some dedicated air units on them (in garrison). Then they will be visible so long as the recon level is >0. I use this in my Soviet Union 1941 scenario.

That's great......I'll do that. Thanks.

EDIT: Okay.........I used the aircraft icon instead of the CIV icon and the game engine wouldn't let me place it on a city, I had to put
it at an airport. So then I tried using the CIV icon with a secondary icon of an aircraft with the theater recon value of 20 and they
STILL weren't visible. So I'm still stuck using 100% theater recon unless somebody has an idea what I'm doing wrong.

You have to put an airfield in the hex.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

You can put some dedicated air units on them (in garrison). Then they will be visible so long as the recon level is >0. I use this in my Soviet Union 1941 scenario.

That's great......I'll do that. Thanks.

EDIT: Okay.........I used the aircraft icon instead of the CIV icon and the game engine wouldn't let me place it on a city, I had to put
it at an airport. So then I tried using the CIV icon with a secondary icon of an aircraft with the theater recon value of 20 and they
STILL weren't visible. So I'm still stuck using 100% theater recon unless somebody has an idea what I'm doing wrong.

You have to put an airfield in the hex.

That's an easy fix. Why didn't I think of that? You're a gold mine, Bob. Thanks a heap.

[larryfulkerson]

Time for another update in the developers diary. Thomas Harvey and I are still playing Korea '50-'51 and the Chinese
have interviened and the UN forces have pulled south to better supply areas into the mountains and behind a river and it's
looking like they will hold for a while. This game is on T30 and there's like 53 turns and it'll probably going to be a draw.
No invalid parent errors found yet. Still searching.

Thomas reports to me via email that he's added the strategic targets to his Pacific at War scenario already and it now
has some subchasers to escort the LCU's when they embark on a ship. They weren't getting intercepted nearly enough and
it turns out it was a bug that will be fixed. So the subchasers won't be needed in the future and the home rule about
floaters needing escorts won't need to be followed but for now we will do so.

Our Barbarosa '41 v.49 game is re-started and we're on T4 already and the strategic targets are already in range
so I'm going to do some "city" attacks to see what results ensue. If they work in this scenario they probably will in others.

We heard from Tamas and we're still on track, working day and night and progress is being made. Sorry, that's the best
I can do.

EDIT: OH, and I forgot to mention that Tom Porto and I are playing PBEM a game of WITP-AE and I'm the Allies. It's T4
and I'm reeling from the Jap onslaught. He's overrunning Malaya and already has working ports and airfields on the east
coast of Malaya so Singapore is threatened. The Repulse was sunk and the Prince of Wales was chased down and killed.
Multiple places in China were bombed and there was a handful of casualties at each place. My carriers near Midway got
lucky and sank one of the two Jap DD's bombarding Midway's tiny runway. I have loaded up some P-40's, B-26's, B-17's and
something else I can't remember now, on ships at SFO and they are headed for Pearl. There's only three Engineer units
at SFO right now and I feel like I need them where they are because of all the ship traffic through there. And the incredible
crowd of planes parked at SFO. I just shipped out a bunch and there's still over a 100 planes there. I need to get busy and
collect all the spare INF and ENG units in the continental US at SFO so I can ship them out into the "field". The Operation
to get the sub base at Dutch Harbor set up correctly is called Shiny Chevy. I need to put in some more mines and get
an ACM to park there for mine maint. and maybe 4 or so ASW ships like some YP's and maybe a minesweeper, an AM, to
periodically sweep the port for enemy mines. The AVG ( American Volunteer Group ) has three squadrons of P-40's in
south Burma and I'm thinking of moving them closer to the fighting but I'd have to move the Chinese planes out of there first.
The airfields are primative and tiny for the most part. Some of the bigger cities have a level 3 airfield but that's the biggest
I have found so far. I got Tracker up and running and I'm collecting all the Intell that occurs each turn so I can do some
forecasting. I predict that Tom will go for the more important targets first: Balikpapan, Miri, Brunei, etc.

[larryfulkerson]

Time for another update on the developers diary.
Thomas Harvey and I had a B41 game going but he discovered about turn 12 that his replacement rates are all zero. For
every kind of equipment. D'oh. I've been hit by a bug. So I'm going to make a fix, verify that it IS indeed fixed and Thomas and
I will do a re-start. I've noticed that trying to kill Civilians isn't working all that well. I can get maybe two per attack if the attack
works at all and if there's 100 in the target it's going to take a lot of raids to kill each target. That's not quite the way I wanted it.
I needed it to die after about 10 sorties max. I'll have to change the composition of the target. Make it aircraft instead. And just
5 of them or so.

Thomas has already made these kinds of changes to his Europe at War scenario so I started a game of that so I could be
the Axis and we're playtesting his changes to see if they work and how well. I'll keep you posted.

I made some changes to the Barbarosa '41 version 10 and it's ready to playtest but I thought we'd let the Korea game
peter out first. No sense having 5 PBEM games going at the same time. Unless I can keep up with it. Have so far. So when I
get all my moves done for Thomas I'll start another B41 game to test my changes. That's where we are right now. The
Korea game is on turn 43 or so and there's only 10 turns left and there's a stalemate happening just above the 38th
parallel and there's no points to be gained in 10 turns so we've decided to break down as many units as possible and even
disband some to see if we can flush out the invalid parent error we've seen before. Should be interesting. We'll let you know.

[larryfulkerson]

Time for another Developer Diary update. That Korea '50-'51 game that Thomas and I were playing
finally came to an end. I won on points but actually I think it was a draw. So we started a Pacific at War
game to test the changes Thomas has made to his scenario. He added some subchasers to escort the
floaters. They are needed because the floaters weren't getting intercepted properly so there's now a house
rule that floaters must be escorted by some kind of ship, at least a subchaser. This is only necessary because
of the rareity of interceptions on LCU floaters. As soon as the intercept bug is fixed this house rule won't be
necessary.

The changes Thomas Harvey made to his Europe At War scenario are being playtested also and we're
finding that if you use an aircraft icon to represent the unit then attacks on that unit won't suffer any losses to
non-aircraft equipment. I was using 6 AAA guns as the equipment of my Soviet Industry unit using the aircraft
icon and the AAA guns never took a hit. In any of my many raids. Thomas figured it out. So we're just testing
the airfield strikes alone, no ground movement etc. Thomas is using ancient biplanes as the equipment in
his strategic targets. We need to use the aircraft icon so that it will show up ( be visible ) without the Theater
Recon value for the Axis side being 100. I tried a TR of 100 and that makes the strategic targets
visible all right but it makes every other Soviet unit visible as well. That wasn't going to work.

Also, I made the changes to my B41* scenario based on what we're finding out playing EAW and we
did a re-start with me as the Axis still. We're on T4 already and I'm nearing the place on the map where the
strategic targets are coming within range. Not quite but just a little bit further. Maybe by T10 or so. Then
we can start the bombing and see how many raids and how many turns, etc. it's going to take to destroy one
of the targets.

Notes: B41 stands for Barbarosa '41

[Lobster]

Larry, instead of AARs and scenario design changes on old scenarios could you maybe tell us why latest long delay, what's being added that caused this delay, how the development is progressing, what has changed from the old features list that Bob posted, you know, real dev diary stuff. Heck, even some shots of the scenarios you are playing and of the editing that you are doing. We want meat not soup. [;)]

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Lobster
Larry, instead of AARs and scenario design changes on old scenarios could you maybe tell us why latest long delay, what's being added that caused this delay, how the development is progressing, what has changed from the old features list that Bob posted, you know, real dev diary stuff. Heck, even some shots of the scenarios you are playing and of the editing that you are doing. We want meat not soup.

OOOoooookay, okay, I'll quit with the Development Diary. You guys are bored to death of it. I can tell. You want to know why the
long delay......well, there's only the one Ralph dude and he's part-time. Do the math. I heard he has a contract and they can't
replace him. S'okay, he's earned what he gets. He's one of the best, IMHO. I wouldn't leave if I was him. It's no secret that there's
only the one coder dude and we beta testers are finding more then enough to keep him busy, that's not the problem. It's the low-budget
approach they are using where most of the workers are unpaid-volunteer people who walk in off the street, find an interest in TOAW
and the next thing you know he's a beta tester. One thing leads to another in this case. One programmer means slow progress.
I've been pestering Bob Cross for permission to post screenshots and his advice is that first impressions are important and the UI isn't
where we want it to be yet. So no screenshots for a while at least. That's what Ralph is working on now, is my understanding. And I
guess it goes without saying that we can't move the AAR's from the development forum to this one yet. I asked. I'll probably get kicked
off the team for spouting off like this. That's fine. I'm so frustrated I'm ready to go.

[Meyer1]

Thanks Larry. I guess I was right with the only one guy doing the coding...

[r6kunz]

I am playing and replaying my some new scenarios with IV, and I can only say that it will be worth the wait. I would not want to go back to III. Not big things, no game engine changes (?yet), but things like roads can now run along a river and not be subject to bridge blowing. The Planned Combats dialog make rounds of combat much easier understood than the old Ring of Stars...

[Lobster]

Hey Larry thanks for the reply. For some reason the powers think silence is a good thing but they couldn't be more wrong headed. Even bad news is better than total silence. Sure people will grumble but there is less chance they will turn their backs on the game. And Bob is wrong. Showing screen shots of a work in progress is a sign of...you guessed it...progress. We want more news and screen shots of the game as it's being developed. All we have now is two weathered planks nailed together, over grown with weeds with old barely legible painted letters..."coming soon".

[larryfulkerson]

Time for an update and I have a question for all you gamers out there. Especially you frustrated Naval Admirals. Thomas Harvey
added some strategic targets to the Japanese Homelands, 10 of them, representing the civilian industry that contributed in a material
way to the military effort of the war. The producers of the tanks, planes, guns, etc. for the Japanese forces. So of course we had to
test it. So we're on turn 23 and I'm the Japs and the Allies are contesting the smaller islands east of Guadalcanal and there's been
several sea baattles and so on. You don't want to hear the particulars.

The question is this: Thomas has produced a version of PAW that has half-week turns, 380+ of them. And I'm wondering how
many other people besides me that would like to play it. Thomas has produced lots of the smaller shorter kind of scenarios too but
I specifically asked for this monster, he produced it, Thanks a lot by the way, and now before I get started testing the half-week version
I'm kind of curious to know if it will have subscribers, people who will actually play it. I intend to. That's one. Anybody else?

[BigDuke66]

Well if it's there it will surely be played.
Of course looking at the player base there maybe less that will play this scenario compared to shorter scenarios but still I think there will be enough especially with the improvements in the Naval section of the game.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: BigDuke66
Well if it's there it will surely be played.
Of course looking at the player base there maybe less that will play this scenario compared to shorter scenarios but still I think there will be enough especially with the improvements in the Naval section of the game.

I'm especially looking forward to all the AAR's published about PAW games. I wish we could publish the AAR's that already
exist for this scenario in the development section but word is that the UI needs some tweaking yet. Maybe we'll get permission
sometime soon. I Hope, I hope, I hope.

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Time for an update and I have a question for all you gamers out there. Especially you frustrated Naval Admirals. Thomas Harvey
added some strategic targets to the Japanese Homelands, 10 of them, representing the civilian industry that contributed in a material
way to the military effort of the war. The producers of the tanks, planes, guns, etc. for the Japanese forces. So of course we had to
test it. So we're on turn 23 and I'm the Japs and the Allies are contesting the smaller islands east of Guadalcanal and there's been
several sea baattles and so on. You don't want to hear the particulars.

The question is this: Thomas has produced a version of PAW that has half-week turns, 380+ of them. And I'm wondering how
many other people besides me that would like to play it. Thomas has produced lots of the smaller shorter kind of scenarios too but
I specifically asked for this monster, he produced it, Thanks a lot by the way, and now before I get started testing the half-week version
I'm kind of curious to know if it will have subscribers, people who will actually play it. I intend to. That's one. Anybody else?

Well, if you look at the War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition forum, you'll see it is still going strong all these years after release.
It has a variable turn length (most often appears to be 1 or 2 day turns used), and is a very complex game that depending upon selected scenario can go from 07Dec1941 into 1946. Personally, I'd love a slightly more accessible game that covers the same ground. I'm just getting to the foot of the learning cliff.

[larryfulkerson]

Personally, I'd love a slightly more accessible game that covers the same ground.

Thomas Harvey and I finally finished our PAW game with weekly turns.......he won fair and
square. And we finally started testing the 1/2-weekly version. The shorter time period has
shortened the ferry range of the smaller-range planes ( fighters ) so much that there appears to
be a bottleneck for planes flying southwest from Pearl. You HAVE to go to Johnston island from
Pearl first of all because there's nothing else in range besides Midway and the USA west coast.
So Thomas is talking about adding another hex to the island and giving it another airfield to help
move the planes west.

We've found out that the Japs have hands-fulls of aircraft toward the end of the game and bombing
the strategic targets is turning out to be costly endeavors. Lots of losses. I can see now why the
Allies went to the trouble to capture Iwo Jima to base some P-51's to escort the B-29's over Japan.
Thomas used the Java-Celebes-PI-Formosa-Okinawa path to victory instead of getting tangled
up in some kind of fabulous land combat in the home islands. I'm learning a lot about the tips
and tricks involved in naval combat when you have to plan for 3 dimensions constantly. The ability
to hold battlefield awareness in your head helps a lot.

So far Thomas has been running rampant all over the map because in the early game stage he
outnumbers the Allies everywhere in the air, land, and sea. I've moved some troops to
Guadalacanal to try to put up a fight and so the fight begins. We're on turn 4 already. And there's
like 380+ turns left.

[Lobster]

As I understand it around 450 B-29 were lost in ops against Japan. 1/3 combat losses, 2/3 operational losses. That's less than 2%.

[larryfulkerson]

As I understand it around 450 B-29 were lost in ops against Japan. 1/3 combat losses, 2/3 operational losses. That's less than 2%.

Thanks for that data point. I'll compare it to what happens in the game to see how it compares with what I'm going to lose. I won't have
any B-29's until about T93, no make that T186, so it'll be a while before I'll have any losses at all but meanwhile I have B-24's
flying from Pearl to OZ and they have made it to Johnston island so far. Two units, two squadrons. There's some fighters in the
pipeline too plus some troops. I've landed about a division of troops on Guadalcanal just to say I'm putting up a fight. I'll probably
lose all of them but I can use them as bait to draw out the Jap ships.