Any interest in War at Sea support for MapView

[Motdc]

I play-by-email (or play-by-post) because I dont have 2 hours straight to sit in front of a PC at some random time (timezones are killer).

I think you’ll find that the smaller back-n-forth type excchanges are often par for the course.

That being said, I haven’t playe WAS yet so I cannot fully comment.  Some games truely arent a good match for PBEM.  If you’d post a game file that might help me out.

Mot

[Motdc]

Opps, just realized you did post a map…I’ll go take a look.

[Half-Track]

@Brian_66:

I’ve been testing the first War at Sea MapView mod in the “Play Miniatures” section of this forum. Look for “GC_T1_B1 Cobalt vs Brian” post. My gut feel is that the back and forth placement of air units will drag games out to a very long time. There are also “casualty” maps required at the end of each phase. So while an Axis & Allies Miniatures game turn can be conducted in about 6-8 back and forth posts between players, it would take a War at Sea game at least 12 and probably between 15 - 20 back and forth posts between players. I’m thinking the only way to play War at Sea online is via some sort of realtime Java game engine like the ones used at Gleemax.

This was my fear with WAS.  Alternating placement of the air units takes a considerable amount of time.

However play by post can be done in realtime.  It’s a very quick download and upload with a fast connection.

[Motdc]

Question on planes…from reading your post it sounds like each player must deploy planes one-at-a-time, alternating back and forth?

[Brian_66]

Yes, that’s how the rules read. I think this forces the players to take risks with placing their deadly, expensive bombers. Do you you risk putting a single dive bomber on a ship caught alone in a sector or do you keep all you squadrons in tight formation with fighter escorts?

[Half-Track]

@Motdc:

Question on planes…from reading your post it sounds like each player must deploy planes one-at-a-time, alternating back and forth?

Consider that all your planes can’t take off at the same time.  Part of Naval stratagy.  Watch Midway.

Sequence of play
A. Initiative phase
B. Sea Movement phase
C. Air Mission phase (players alternate placing Aircraft)
D. Air Defense phase
E. Air Attack phase
F. Surface Attack phase
G. Torpedo Attack phase
H. Air Return phase
I. End of Turn
Casualty is performed after each individual attack sequence.

Example: The way I understand it if a ship is sunk during the Air Attack phase it is removed at the end of the Air Attack phase and can not attack during the Surface Attack phase, Torpedo Attack phase.

[Brian_66]

Nothing says you can’t take off all your planes during one mission phase. Being new to this game though, I have learned that’s not a smart move … as you (Half-Track) have said and history re-affirms.

In my first full game from the current Avalon Hill Guadalcanal online campaign, I have a land based, aircraft heavy force builds with over 5 quadrons on each side. I am beginning to suspect that that is not normal and I am not as concerned about the delay of play-by-forum game due to back and forth air mission unit placement.

[Motdc]

BUMP

Seems to be relevant again.

To reiterate to anyone new to the tool, MapView is program that makes it easy to play board games on a virtual surface.  Each turn is tracked in a history, pieces are moved with drag and drop, and it supports things like undo/redo.  Game files are very small and can be posted to the forum for “play-by-forum”.

MapView is game-agnostic, meaning you can play any game you want, you just need a module for it.  Game modules can be created by anyone with by linking their own maps and unit images together.  Image and XML, that all there is to it.  For A&AM, we all collaberatively created and maintained the game modules, with users contributing maps and unit images to put in the modules.

I will be glad to help create/modify modules and I can host the module files.  But I don’t know this game, and I don’t have time or the skill to make maps and unit images.  But it seems several high-quality map makers are around in the Minis forum?  I saw in this thread a sample module someone put together for WAS.  If someone can evaluate it to see if it will work and report back we can go from there.

Mot

[Deaths Head 420]

sure post it up and i will gladly play test it for you

[Motdc]

Are you familiar with MapView?  We used it to play dozens on play-by-form A&A Minis (land) games on here before the board got screwed up and ate all the game threads.  (Boy I’d give a dollar to be able to get those threads back from a backup of some sort).

MapView can be downloaded here: http://motcreations.com/mv_overview.html

The WAS module was in this thread…I’ll go back and find it and edit it into this post in a minute.

What I recommend is to download the AAM modules from the pinned location at the top of the AAM section of this forum to see what a finished module looks like and plays like.  I will post some game files.

The WAS module that was started is incomplete, but we can whip it intoi shape if the community thinks it will add value.

Mot

PS - Here is a site that has a WAS module:  http://www.battlevault.com/Campaigns/Guadalcanal/Guadalcanal_01.htm

I chose not to just link the download file so as to give credit to the forum member that did the initial work.

[Motdc]

So what do you think?  Is something like this useful?  What changes would you recommend?  How is the size of the map vs the size of the units?  I recall thinking the ship images needed to be smaller…

Mot

[Rebel]

Does it work on Macs?

[Motdc]

I’m working on some solutions for non-windows users, though you might see it on an Android or in browser first.  In the short term, I could perhaps add some image export options to make the maps at least easier to view on non-windows.