AGEOD Forums

How hard would it be to program a way to right-click on a navy unit and see a dropdown list of the closest harbors (maybe even the number of days to get there) and allow us to select that port to move to?

This would prevent all of the dragging, dropping and the unusual amount of boring micromanagement needed to shuttle units from the blockade and shipping boxes back to port for repair.

BOA exemplified an elegant game that eliminated unnecessary micromanagement. I'm trying to love AACW, but I really do not like the navy part of the game and the horrendous turn processing times.

Perhaps some automated process .
Something like; if cohesion falls under 50% ships automaticaly goest to closest port. After it has been fixed it is again automaticaly sent back to his duty.
Same would work for repairs too.

Just my two cents

Often, you don't want to send the ships to the closest port; you want to send it to a large port, perhaps one with naval engineers.

But such a port would be easy to designate "When ships in the Atlantic boxes go below X cohesion and/or Y strength, send them to port P for repairs".

My two cents
(which should bring us to 4c total? )

Rafiki wrote:Often, you don't want to send the ships to the closest port; you want to send it to a large port, perhaps one with naval engineers.

But such a port would be easy to designate "When ships in the Atlantic boxes go below X cohesion and/or Y strength, send them to port P for repairs".

My two cents
(which should bring us to 4c total? )

You said it better

But your post made me think of it

(I like to stand on the shoulders of giants )

Pocus, you're so good at figuring out how to improve the game. The mark of your company's success is removing the boring and micromanagement from gameplay. In AACW, the Navy is the biggest nuisance, least important, most micromanagement and really needs attention.

I really like the idea of some sort of automation to port for repair and back to original assignment.

I would love it even better if the Navy was abstracted the same way that rail capacity is. You would have to spend a certain amount of money to make sure that you had enough in blockade and transport duties and would only build and manage ships for brown-water actions.

rasnell wrote:I would love it even better if the Navy was abstracted the same way that rail capacity is. You would have to spend a certain amount of money to make sure that you had enough in blockade and transport duties and would only build and manage ships for brown-water actions.

I would put this only as an option as there are quite few of us who enjoy naval aspect of the game. It is hard to make navy abstracted IMHO, as there are so many choices. Which harbor to block, where to attack, where to support your amphibious attack and so on.

If Pocus would manage to make repairs automated or something similar, that would be great.

No hard feelings

We are currently studying this point. Imagine the problem in our next game (Vainglory of Nations) when you are in charge of the 1880's Royal Navy...

rasnell wrote:
I would love it even better if the Navy was abstracted the same way that rail capacity is.

You could probably do it...

But I sure hope you don't.

If you want to destroy the game's historic flavor, taking away the ships is the best way to do it.

The big problem here is movement. It is a reeeeal pain dragging ships all the way across the map. A drop down menu for ports would certainly be a great improvement.

Ray (aka LAVA)

That's an interesting suggestion...we'll see if it is technically feasible

Well...

I don't see it as a big priority.

If you like playing as the yankees, then naval power is real important. Dragging your fleets around can be cumbersome, but it's really no big deal, at least to me.

Ray (aka LAVA)

marecone wrote:I would put this only as an option as there are quite few of us who enjoy naval aspect of the game. It is hard to make navy abstracted IMHO, as there are so many choices. Which harbor to block, where to attack, where to support your amphibious attack and so on.

If Pocus would manage to make repairs automated or something similar, that would be great.

No hard feelings

I agree that you should still have full control of the Navy for brown-water missions and transport. I'm suggesting an abstract for blockades/shipping so you don't have to micromanage movement and repair. You should still have to follow all of the expenses and strategy to decide how large your abstract force would be to maintain the blockade.

a quick option is coming, for whose who don't like to manage too much their ships, you won't have to spend supply and you won't lose cohesions in the various boxes.
This is strange that you find micromanaging there, because ships have already an ample autonomy: 12 to 16 turns. I thus think it is mostly a matter of taste, because others find tedious to have to organize in such a detailed way how troops gathers.

A right click to send to an harbor will ask much more works though... Can be planned for VGN and ported back to AACW, but don't expect that before some time.

I think the problem is the sheer volume of ships required for transport and blockade boxes in two regions: Atlantic and Gulf. Even though an individual ship can last several months, many, many ships always require repairs to harbor or back from harbor to the box in every single turn.

It's really a pain when you have no substantive port near the Gulf and have to drag and drop a long distance. You've done an excellent job of requiring us to pay to keep transport capacity up for river and rail and have abstracted to eliminate any micromanagement.

Any attempt to do something similar for the concept of blue-water supply and blockade would be a great thing. I agree with others who like the Navy part of the game that you should still manage brown-water Navy just like individual units on land -- there needs to be planning, strategy, blockading and patrolling at that level.

Just my opinion.

Pocus wrote:This is strange that you find micromanaging there, because ships have already an ample autonomy: 12 to 16 turns.

Sure, but you still need to check on all stacks that are "on station" every round, to see if any ships need to be refitted and repaired.

I'd love to see two extra commands; "activate from S-status when full cohesion and/or repair" and "activate from S-status when less than a quarter* cohesion or power". In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing these automatic; a stack on S-status will always activate when reaching full cohesion and repair, and a stack on S-status will always activate when at least one unit goes below a quarter* cohesion/repair.

These would remove a lot of unnecessary attention to units being refitted/gaining strength (both land and sea) and to units e.g. on blockade.

[SIZE="1"]*A quarter being an example; the suitable number might be something higher or lower.[/size]

UI or AI ... User interface improvement had more than its share these days... so it is time now to add some neurons to poor Athena!

Pocus wrote:UI or AI ... User interface improvement had more than its share these days... so it is time now to add some neurons to poor Athena!

Not sure what this reply means. Could you type more slowly?

after spending time on bugs, for now, the rest of my time is on User Interface requests (a constant stream of them is issued each day). I feel it would do good to the game to spend some time on the AI now...

Rafiki wrote:Sure, but you still need to check on all stacks that are "on station" every round, to see if any ships need to be refitted and repaired.

I have to say that I think the naval part of the game should be left pretty much alone (except for fixing that pesky "building oceangoing units in the Great Lakes or on a river" problem).

I don't want the nasty things doing stuff on autopilot. Part of my routine for each turn is to check my naval dispositions thoroughly and make necessary adjustments. I come away satisfied that I have a good grasp of what is happening in that aspect of my war effort.

Now, if I could just get a naval battle report screen...

There is no real battle occuring in the boxes, just an abstracted calculation of some hits dealt to both side... yes we can present that in a sexier manner, when time allows, but for now give me some time for the AI please

A full battle report from the box is not necessary IMO...but at LEAST tell us a whole ship (ie, element) sunk!

In fact something like that should morale-swaying, I would think. The Kearseage sinking the Alabama was big headline news, for example.

Pocus wrote:yes we can present that in a sexier manner, when time allows, but for now give me some time for the AI please

You got it, but I am withholding your paycheck until I get some satisfactory results...

Say - does AGEod have any genetic engineers on board? Can we clone you? I realize that we don't want to overrun Europe with Pocuses, but surely our man Sarkozy can contain just two of 'em...

I'm trying to convince new rodents to come by

pasternakski wrote:I don't want the nasty things doing stuff on autopilot.

That wasn't what I aimed for either with my suggestion. I'd like something that let's you forget the things you don't want to pay attention to till you would like to pat attention to it again, in particular units one extended R&R and ships/fleets that are in one of the 3 boxes (at least in the way I use those boxes)

Pocus wrote:a quick option is coming, for whose who don't like to manage too much their ships, you won't have to spend supply and you won't lose cohesions in the various boxes.
This is strange that you find micromanaging there, because ships have already an ample autonomy: 12 to 16 turns. I thus think it is mostly a matter of taste, because others find tedious to have to organize in such a detailed way how troops gathers.

A right click to send to an harbor will ask much more works though... Can be planned for VGN and ported back to AACW, but don't expect that before some time.

If you are going to do that, then make them only half as powerful in the shipping and blockade boxes, so that you need twice as much shipping to achieve the same effect. Halfing their effectiveness would simulate the need to resupply the fleet but without actually doing the movement itself.

Personally, for the CSA, I don't really have a problem with the blue water navy as it is.