Western Citadel Beta Testing

[engineer]

Still proofing.  I've added about a half-dozen Allied merchantmen that will be in the IJN.  These are ships in Home Island ports at the outset of the war that are taken over by the Japanese.  I've also relocated about a dozen merchantmen from various safe ports to put them at sea in various locations around the Pacific.  I just need to make sure they don't run into any pre-programmed bombardment forces and absorb enough ammo and ops points to abort a mission that is otherwise working fine. 

[showboat1]

Hey engineer, its been awhile, how's this going? It sounds like a great scenario.

[engineer]

Look over in the After Action Forum for the Western Citadel thread.  It gives a play test report on the first four months of a campaign against Japanese AI.  I've found a few, non-fatal bugs that I've corrected. 

[Anthropoid]

I sent you a PM with my email so's you can email the DL to me engineer.

[Jorm]

hey Engineer,

Hows the mod comming along?

has it been posted to any of the WPO/WITP sites for D/L yet ?

I was keen to see if Tanker was ever going to release his database mods but your mod/scenario sounds just he ticket.

I have *just* restarted a new WPO campaign but i think ill wait till your scenario is ready as im keen on 1926-30 mod perhaps even a 1930-34 type mod to get some of those interesting interwar planes into the game.


cheers
Paul

[engineer]

Not quite.  I've gotten wrapped up in a beta test to the bitter end.  Up in the After-Action reports you can see the whole thing.  It's August, 1928 and the Allies are ashore on Honshu in a giant arc from Sendai to Nagoya.  Operation Alesia, the encirclement of Tokyo, is underway. B2 Condors are ready to start bombing Tokyo from airstrips on Honshu.  The top US ace has 20 kills.  The Soryu, just about the last IJN first line surface warship, recently went down in a hail of Allied airpower than included low altitude attacks by B2 Condors with 1000 lb bombs and a coup d'grace of T4M and Hawker Horsley torpedo bombers flying from Torishima. The Japanese have managed to damage several merchants, destroyers, and even put a torpedo in the USS Washington during the Honshu landings, but only one gunboat and the war-time construction oiler USS Housatonic have been sunk.  

This has been quite useful, however.  Among the things I've found and either have corrected or need to correct before final release:

• Tweaking the civilian engineering units to use generic engineers instead of the "national" engineers.
• Tweaking the weapons build rates so the guns and tanks in the division OOBs have appropriate high production rates for standard TOE hardware instead of low build rates for specialty weapons.
• Some WPO.Hex errors were caught on the new NA rail net.
• Some unit OOB errors were found with multiple Indian Divisions with the same number.
• Some US capital ship errors were found where scout plane detachments aren't showing up with the reinforcements.
• Some errors were present in the aircraft upgrade tree that need adjusting.
• The UK aircraft production is appropriate for peace time but way too low for a front line aviation power under wartime mobilization. 
• Several new historical Japanese aircraft have been added.  I've also including an ahistorical variant on the Gotha V bomber for the Japanese.
• Tweaking some of the infantry combat factors.  The Soviets were too strong, the US gets some improvements during the course of the war from broader adoption of submachineguns and shotguns, but nothing like the improvements seen in WITP.  The Commonwealth is harmonized so the ANZACs aren't supermen anymore.  However, the ANZACs and the Gurkhas still are the elite of the British Empire's forces. The Enfield, a fine rifle, gives the UK and her Dominions, a slight edge on the other power's riflemen, but the US is quicker to adopt SMGs and has the most powerful basic infantry by mid-scenario. 
• Torpedo bombers have actually turned out to be pretty devastating for the Allies (far more Japanese battleship tonnage was lost to TF's flagged on a CV than due to shellfire) so I'm going to revisit the mid-scenario upgrades and look at upgrading the AA armament on capital ships across the board (and for mid-late scenario UK capital ship reinforcements).  Combat experience in the war would trump the historical upgrades and likely lead to better AA protection, just as occurred in WW2.  

The scenario isn't at all balanced.  It's more like WW2 in the late 1920's.  The Japanese have a brief window of advantage at the outset.  However, by mid-1927 the Allies should be building an ever increasing advantage.  The plane art isn't new.  I did find some public domain photo's on dirigibles for those, but the rest is just re-used from WITP or reassigned from other WPO aircraft. 

[Jorm]

Engineer,

Sounds like a very detailed and well thought out scenario.

For interest what program are you using to mod, the in-game scenario editor and database editor or some other program eg export files to excel then do mods there ?

[engineer]

I've ditched the stock editor for EditorX since it has some self-check features for having the right sort of data and consistent data in the various fields.  For example, it will spot if you have a Lieutenant Commander in charge of a Battleship, a ground force captain in charge of a squadron, or if you're using an officer to command multiple units, if the hex sides in the WPO.Hex are consistent, etc.   

[engineer]

I've finished the Western Citadel beta-test with a massive ground campaign in Honshu that ended with the Stars and Stripes flying from the Imperial Palace.  See the After Action Reports for the details there.  That brings us to the final round of tweaks.

• Tweaking the civilian engineering units to use generic engineers instead of the "national" engineers:  Status - DONE. 
• Tweaking the weapons build rates so the guns and tanks in the division OOBs have appropriate high production rates for standard TOE hardware instead of low build rates for specialty weapons:  Status - Complete for Allies.  Japanese TBD.   
• Some WPO.Hex errors were caught on the new NA rail net:  Status - DONE
• Some unit OOB errors were found with multiple Indian Divisions with the same number:  Status - DONE
• Some US capital ship errors were found where scout plane detachments aren't showing up with the reinforcements:  Status - In Progress.  I've tweaked some things and just have to play test it to verify the correction "took." 
• Some errors were present in the aircraft upgrade tree that need adjusting:  Status - DONE
• The UK aircraft production is appropriate for peace time but way too low for a front line aviation power under wartime mobilization:  Status - DONE 
• Several new historical Japanese aircraft have been added.  I've also including an ahistorical variant on the Gotha V bomber for the Japanese:  Status - 90% complete.  The only missing item is that I don't have any artwork on the Gotha so I need to update that.  I'm simply re-using old art for the other planes so I might want to fix that with some work in Paint and borrowing some open source images. 
• Tweaking some of the infantry combat factors.  The Soviets were too strong, the US gets some improvements during the course of the war from broader adoption of submachineguns and shotguns, but nothing like the improvements seen in WITP.  The Commonwealth is harmonized so the ANZACs aren't supermen anymore.  However, the ANZACs and the Gurkhas still are the elite of the British Empire's forces. The Enfield, a fine rifle, gives the UK and her Dominions, a slight edge on the other power's riflemen, but the US is quicker to adopt SMGs and has the most powerful basic infantry by mid-scenario.  Status - DONE 
• Torpedo bombers have actually turned out to be pretty devastating for the Allies (far more Japanese battleship tonnage was lost to TF's flagged on a CV than due to shellfire) so I'm going to revisit the mid-scenario upgrades and look at upgrading the AA armament on capital ships across the board (and for mid-late scenario UK capital ship reinforcements).  Combat experience in the war would trump the historical upgrades and likely lead to better AA protection, just as occurred in WW2:  Status:  In progress.  The US capital ships are done. The Japanese capital ships are done.  I need to finish the British.  In addition, the lessons of war show close range night combat is the order of the day.  Consequently, I've included retention of the US battleship torpedos and upgrading them to triple mount tubes.  The Tillman's even get 2 inches of armor on their torpedo mounts.  The new, late-war Ticonderoga-class battle cruiser gets three triple mount tubes per broadside.  Long range night combat is contingent on radar that is still a decade or more off in WPO.  The US dreadnoughts ships also get small improvements to durability and belt armor due to additional torpedo blisters that are "paid for" with a slight reduction in maneuverability.  I had a hard time justifying six months in the yards for just adding some flak armament so the blisters genuinely create the need for drydock time.    

 

• One new item is that I found some open source artwork at Wings Pallette so there is new plane art for the Vickers Vimy, Fokker Tri-motor, Ford Tri-moter, Hawker Horsley, Berliner-Joyce P-16, A-8 Shrike, the Curtiss P-6, and the P-12B (the stock art represents the P-12E). 

[Terminus]

Wings palette is a good source of art, but it's not open source. Most if not all of the plane art there is stolen from various books.

[engineer]

Arggh!  I missed that.  Historical copyright holders aren't as fanatical as the RIAA in squeezing cash from consumers, but certainly I wouldn't want to be passing along black copies.  UK aircraft have excellent images at Air of Authority (www.rafweb.org) and you can go squadron by squadron for their equipment from pre-WW1 to now.  That's all copyrighted by the fellow there.  But it was an excellent source when I was updating the RAF OOB.   
 
The right thing is to go back to re-using close-appearing stock or build my own unless there is some open art floating around the WPO forum. 

[Terminus]

Well, Wings palette IS a Russian site... They don't take other countries' laws so seriously over there...[8|]