@DoManMacgee That is about no combat during T1 as a very good solution to “the game favors Axis”. As for the patch, we plan to release a big one today at 12pm PDT.
Right on haha. I will say it’s cool that someone other than me likes those ideas. Thanks Julius
But its also important to remember that when Greg was asking for guidance about the Tournaments from Larry, we did offer suggestions about starting income adjustment, turn order, or phase skipping alternatives, and these were all passed over in favor of a starting unit set up patch.
It’s all cool if people like my proposed solution, but I think if that’s all we get (with no bid or tournament patch) people will be rather disappointed, and justifiably so. Not least because they know that it was proposed as a workaround, not because of its already glowing popularity, although a workaround I happen to think might work pretty well. I’ve been trying for a while to come up with and popularize alternative solutions to the standard bid, but it’s pretty hard. The bid does things many enjoy, even if it falls short in others areas, it’s still the go to. Most people commenting in here were also participating in that conversation, so a lot of what we’re talking about now is a re-hash for Beamdogs benefit. As to the Tournament patch itself, there is a thread ongoing in the 1942 sec ed section with some discussions about the pros and cons there. It’s also important to recall that the patch was offered for a specific Tournament with fairly strict time limits, so whether its the best solution for the long form game is hard to say.
For myself, I didn’t really find the process of arriving at that tournament patch particularly inspiring or insightful from a design standpoint, because it kind of felt like Larry was just riffing and pulling stuff out the hat like “what about this? and this? and then stick the bomber in Ukraine. Go!” without providing a whole lot in the way of background thinking or thematic or historical justifications for the specific changes. I know there’s a depth of knowledge and design experience there that doesn’t really require further explanation and justification, but just felt kind of off the cuff.
I like a rationale for why changing the set up that dramatically would be fine for a tournament, but why having an official balancing or handicap system built-in to the base game isn’t something we have yet? Or like more of an explanation about what sorts of historical battles the first turn is trying to emulate in the patch or preserve from OOB, and how specific set up changes are meant to get closer or farther away from those. Still it was better than the base set up, so obviously I’ll take it haha. I just think it falls kind of short in terms of what A&A (and this map in particular) needs to be viable longer term. A hard set up change is among the least adaptive of long term solutions, since it just provides a stop gap really while people are try to figure out how the balance of the changed set up shakes out.
But what we need is some official balancing and handicap conventions built-in to the thing, that can change as the specific players change, or as the board gets older. The sort of stuff that would have its own section in the game manual, and it’s own tutorial or whatever. Otherwise the game is just kind of stuck for some. Its not like we’re perpetual malcontents over here, or trying to railroad the game into being just what we want, instead of what it actually is (even if it probably seems that way sometimes hehe). I love the game and want it to be something that stands the test of time, but the balance/bid thing always comes up with A&A boards, so we need an official type solution that is supported by the publisher.
ps. I wanted to post a link to the tournament patch discussion thread at harrisgamedesign, but something seems to be up with that website. Site is down with a bunch of weird text displaying over it in the google search. Has anyone visited that place in a while? Too bad if all those discussions got canned, because there was a lot of info in a lot of threads over there. I guess A&A org is the now the site of record?
@Black_Elk LH.org is now dead. Long live LH.
“For myself, I didn’t really find the process of arriving at that tournament patch particularly inspiring or insightful from a design standpoint, because it kind of felt like Larry was just riffing and pulling stuff out the hat like “what about this? and this? and then stick the bomber in Ukraine. Go!” without providing a whole lot in the way of background thinking or thematic or historical justifications for the specific changes. I know there’s a depth of knowledge and design experience there that doesn’t really require further explanation and justification, but just felt kind of off the cuff.”
This why he makes the games and we play em. I’ve tried to make quite a few games and trying to make the perfect? Good luck.
The patch we have has made the tournament dynamic and fun again, at least. I enjoyed it again.
@Black_Elk
Just see:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/33377/larry-harris-website-has-been-shut-down/
There is a link to what has been “web-archived”:
http://web.archive.org/web/20181018235554/http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/index.php
Only a fraction of the original content, unfortunately.
Luckily Larry’s setup modification is discussed here:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/29339/larry-harris-semi-official-tournament-game-patch/
with the changes noted in the first posting of that thread:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/post/29339
@Black_Elk Let’s be real, 70% of this site just wants G40 and won’t accept/play anything else, not matter how balanced it is.
I argue that LHTR should be included as an alternative setup. Even give them different map names like “Spring 1942/Winter 1942” or something to differentiate them from one another. They can even have fun with it and write short historical writeups for each setup to set the tone. “Spring 42” can be marketed as taking place before the Axis majorly botched the war IRL (Stalingrad, Midway, etc.) to handwave the massive advantage they have in-game, and “Winter 1942” can be marketed as taking place in the middle of the Stalingrad battle to explain why Germany’s setup has them hanging a Bomber in Ukraine for no reason other than to cut Russia some slack. Just tossing out ideas.
The reason I’m clamoring for extra setups to be included is because it’s a perfectly reasonable stepping stone for getting some of the other maps included. 42 1st Edition, Revised and Classic are all relatively simple from a programming perspective compared to AA50/G40 (no NOs, no China rules, etc.) and more-or-less follow the same core rules engine as 42SE (aside from nitpicky things like SBR rules, AA Guns and the myriad of bizarre Classic rules that people on that forum have been arguing about lately).
This game is great so far but it has potential to be even greater.
Wow bummer. I guess I had just taken for granted that’d always be around. Now I wish I had visited those boards more over the past few. Is War Room just like newsletter stuff now?
Well anways, I do agree that more set ups would be cool. They are the easiest probably.
One reason I was frustrated with the tournament patch is because it kind of dispelled the notion that there is some proportionality or ratio between the starting units and historical starting forces for the start date. You know how people always say a unit isn’t just a unit but representing x, y, z as well, still some kind of correlation there. Or similarly that the units are where they are because battle such and such is meant to take place in the opener, because of the start date. Or really the frustration might have been just the number of changes or variables involved, whereas you could probably just pick one alteration and focus on how that changes stuff, while still preserving the earlier idea of correlation.
For example, if it said “well we really don’t want Pearl to happen on J1, or at least not without setting up a major TUV exchange with the US, because the start date is 1942. But people have found a way to game it with the Japan fighter in a way that wasn’t really anticipated, so we are going to give the US another destroyer.” That might be a big change right there to balance, but it’d just be on one dimension where it might be easier to parse out what the result will be. The tourney patch tweaked a lot more stuff. But I suppose once the notion is dispelled it does free up the idea, that units can be moved around and it doesn’t violate some really clear 1:1 for the OOB starting forces.
Alternative scenarios could be fun. If in addition to the tournament patch, maybe they just offered a couple riffs on different set ups. Still retaining the basic core rules of 1942.2 but with a few other start dates.
Winter 1942, would definitely be cool. Or Summer, nobody ever does summer hehe. Just stick like 3 scenarios up there with a couple different approaches and see how they pan out under testing.
Or maybe build the alternative simple scenarios around themes, or even around a particular unit type?
Naval expansion: like regular 1942 with more ships added to the starting unit set up to get something new going on.
Air expansion: similar deal but just with focusing on added air to the starting set up to get something new going.
Or I’d like to see a scenario where the production profile is changed somehow in a novel way. Like with a few 1 ipc starting factories or something to make peripheral areas of the map more significant. There are some fun spots it might be cool to try with that concept. I’d give 2 more starting factories to each player…
Russia: Evenki and Novosibirsk
Germany: Finland and Algeria
UK: Western Canada and Eastern Australia
Japan: Malaya and New Guinea
USA: Hawaii and Szechwan
Then just add a few unit tweaks and another start date, Summer 42 or whatever, let the players have fun with it for 6 months. Come out with another set up every year or so, and just see which ones are the most entertaining or well received using the 1942 ruleset. Just with more set ups like the tournament one that Larry did to kick it off, but maybe add in another couple others over time to mix it up. Veering off topic now I’m sure, but stuff like that seems like it would be simple. Maybe drag Larry out of retirement with Barbecue or something and see if he has some other ideas that would be fun to try out hehe. After everyone has had a run at the tournament 1942.3 game, just do it again the following year with another set up and keep it going that way, for the smaller scale board. I wouldn’t mind if we got like 5 editions out of 1942 in the end, each with something different going on. Or throwbacks, with Classic or Revised in there. I think AA50 would be killer. Global even better. But alternative 1942 set ups would be much faster to get up off the ground, using the same ruleset already in place for the base 1942 game.
@Black_Elk I do think they have plans for more maps and more games. But what you’re talking about requires modding to crowdsource the effort–letting the community open up the engine and see what it can do.
I don’t think that the licensed nature of this particular game would allow that. Once the engine is completely finished, it could be used for other similar games, as AAA has been. But, that may not be permitted.
Alternative setups can be fun but allowing user-generated custom maps poses a level of security vulnerability that I’m not sure the game needs right now. All it takes is one bad actor embedding a virus into a map file for this game to face even worse backlash than it’s already gotten.
@DoManMacgee The backlash is from alot of sad, sad folks who think that $18 is a fortune and expect early access games to be polished Activision-level products from day one.
@taamvan said in Feedback and questions for other players:
@DoManMacgee The backlash is from alot of sad, sad folks who think that $18 is a fortune and expect early access games to be polished Activision-level products from day one.
I mean, you’re not wrong.
I don’t know, somehow this seemed fitting…
Saw it floating around as a meme in a nursing group of all places haha.
Recalled to mind the various A&A digital platforms that have come and gone. Maybe a cautionary lesson in there somewhere.
Best
Elk
@Black_Elk There are many similar phenomenon, where people will avidly buy an item that has been “discounted” from $8 to $6.99, where they will not purchase the same item that has had a price increase from $5 to $5.99.
Finally managed to lose a game, bringing me to something like 5-1 overall. I take back my previous praise of the dice server. I got diced to a ridiculously unrealistic level on R1. I Lost the battle for W. Russia despite bringing literally everything
I played the game out for like 4 rounds because my opponent wasn’t the most skilled player out there, but obviously ended up losing Moscow by G4. Bah.
Of course I’m just miffed about my “perfect record” going down the tubes due to dice, but at least there’s no ranking system, so it’s whatever.
Zooming Issue still hasn’t been fixed, as an aside.
UPDATE: 6-1 now. Lots of people like “deleting their game” instead of surrendering. No idea why since there’s no actual ranking system, but to each their own. No idea why people are rage-quitting after like turn 2/3. Games aren’t usually decided until like turn 4/5 unless it’s a curb-stomp (which none of my games have really been yet, save the one I lost).
@DoManMacgee said in Feedback and questions for other players:
Finally managed to lose a game, bringing me to something like 5-1 overall. I take back my previous praise of the dice server. I got diced to a ridiculously unrealistic level on R1. I Lost the battle for W. Russia despite bringing literally everything
I played the game out for like 4 rounds because my opponent wasn’t the most skilled player out there, but obviously ended up losing Moscow by G4. Bah.
If there is one major issue with 1942.2 and something that the tournament patch completely failed to address its this…
The R1 battles are way too consequential! The game hinges almost entirely on the results of the Ukraine and W. Russia openeing combats.
It’s why people are clamoring for a Bid or different rules or alternative scenarios. Without actually fixing this problem somehow, using a standardized solution that everyone can get behind, its going to be dead on arrival for many players, regardless of what else it has going on.
Yeah dice are wonky. But getting diced is offset by the fact that when I am Axis I can sealion a solid 40% of the time G2. A lot of new players on there, but it seems like overall it’s getting better slowly.
Eh, it happens. Even G40 has the G1 Paris attack that’s an instant loss for the Axis if it goes badly.
Most of my “feedback” is done at this point until we get our next major update though. Hoping for general QoL improvements like shift+clicking to select all units from a territory or ctrl+clicking to select all of a single unit type. Moving large stacks around one unit at a time is annoying.
That, and the zoom-in with most phase changes. It’s annoying.
As someone pointed out in another thread, I think I’ve played more 42SE games in the last two weeks than I have in the entirety of the game’s lifespan thanks to tinkering around with this game.
Yeah there are some funky dice results. Worst one is they exacerbate the RNG problems by doing a multiplier–so in one battle they rolled 1,2,4,4,5,6 but the x6 marker fell on the 1 and 2, giving them 12/18 hits on 18 '2’s. Disappointing given how hard it would be to roll 1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,4,4,4,4,5,6.
Some of the players are plenty good, its not really a good idea to let noobs on your team its better just to play the whole dang team yourself.
Still some problems with lag but already seeing improvement.
