[BTS] The Road to War - Historic Edition 2.0

[kiwitt]

Try to see the "Transport" as a fleet of transports with minor escorts. Given the fact that it can transport divisions, corps and even armies/army groups. However, the second tier of SS are "wolfpacks" or similar and can be more deadlier.

[The Flame8]

Can I see a link to your download for the most recent version?

[The Flame8]

Nevermind, found it, I'll post my feedback

[Tasunke]

I'm guessing the Soviet player (Authoritarian + State Property) will have a lot more access to drafts?

Im thinking extra food on some improvements (I guess workshop/watermill is a possibility), extra happy, and at least 5 drafts per turn. with drafts and happy being more important than the food I guess.

[kiwitt]

(see my post)

Originally Posted by kiwitt

I have decided that my next version of Road to War - 2.0, will be based on this scenario and framework. It will save a lot of development time and I will only have to add unique units for each civ. I will miss the European-only scenario, but most of supporters of my mod would prefer a global map. The fact that it also includes all the features of BUG, RevDCM, et.al. will make this a good option for my development.

I hope you all understand, but in order to make RtW 2.0 as rich as possible, this will save a lot of pre-development work and coding, I will not need to do.

[Gosea]

Hello there Kiwitt, I was wondering if you might have a release date in mind for the beta that you're developing? If so, I was wondering if there might be one later on this year? I'm a great fan of road to war, as well as hoi3. Good luck in your modification, and I'm itching to try out your version 2.0. Have a good one!

P.S. are you going to be releasing the Europe map first, or are you going for a worldmap?

[kiwitt]

Global one first - see post two for development

[kiwitt]

Notes from FNP

You will need to recalculate all the significant parameters and assign the other "non data" categories.

History loss summary approx numbers for an appreciation of what sank what:

US naval combatant ship losses 16% attack by ships, 20% to submarines, 37% to air
US submarine losses 42% attack by ships, 37% to attack by air

Japanese combatant ship losses 60% to air, 36% to submarines
Japanese subs?

German combatant ship losses 37% attack by ships, 12% to submarines, 37% to air
German submarines 40% to attack by ships, 40% to attack by air

UK combatant ship losses 20% attack by ships, 34% to submarines, 28% to air
UK submarine losses 36% to attack by ships, 03% to submarines, 14% to air. Lots to mines, lots of "failed to return"

Observations for bigger game picture:

Air has to be able to sink ships and subs.
Huge upgrade to UK and especially US ships anti-air defenses after 1941.
Japanese torpedo very effective. US torpedo not so good until late 43.
Proximity fuse further increased UK/US anti-air effectiveness 4x in late 1942. By 1944, most attacking aircraft were shot down by CAP and ships.
Ultra in Europe and breaking Japanese Naval code were critical.
Japan started out way ahead but was not industrially or organizationally capable of replacing losses of material or of trained technical skills rapidly even before their industries were attacked. Was unable to make up for losses of aircraft/pilots, ships/engineers.
Japanese carrier forces could launch strikes at 300 miles, US carriers could launch strikes at 200 miles.
By 1943, US aircraft were far better than Japanese aircraft and produced in far greater numbers. US pilot training was even better. Ship production was accelerating rapidly.

Search radar made successful surface night ops possible [42-43] Radar fire control made long range naval gunnery accurate [41-42], made anti-aircraft fire much more accurate [43-44].

The hardest thing about war at sea is finding your target. Surveillance is everything.

About fighter aircraft:

Modifications and upgrades pretty much balanced / counterbalanced European fighter capabilities. Not a great deal of difference between Spitfire, FW-190, P-47, P-51. Actually, not that much difference between ME-109 and FW-190. Properly flown, they were all capable of holding their own except for range. Shouldn't be any significant difference in the game except for range. P-47 was a bit of an exception ... incredibly rugged aircraft.

Pacific theater, A-6M had an advantage until F-4F was replaced for USN and P-40 replaced for US Army. Spitfire MK IX arrived for UK. F-6F, P-38, F-4U for US/UK - all better than IJN and JArmy a/c if flown properly.

Some areas to look at highlighted. Checked displacement, speeds, armament. Minor corrections.
Cruise speed shouldn't be a really big factor, its all a fuel consumption vs speed tradeoff anyway depending on mission. Most cruise speed numbers were not available.
Top speed may be a better predictor of overall cruise efficiency. Say 6 knots slower than max speed would be a reasonable high speed cruise number for determining fortnight range.

(Parens) next to ship name is the location at start of historical hostilities. location columns are ships location at the beginning of listed year. Brit/ UK locations taken from ships logs.
Fr were hard to find and are a best guess in some cases (they weren't too sure which side they were on and didn't keep very good records of Fr navy ops in WWII).
Ge location data is good as is US data. Still looking for good Russian data ... everything they did was a secret.

Added a BB for Italy (Roma). Recommended a couple of ship deletions. AA cruisers should be much better at anti-air.

never got to the bottom of which ships had radar and when they had it but radar was a big plus in detection and ranging for guns. Will continue to look for a good source.
Your Spreadsheet didn't come with formulas so you will have to insert appropriate formulas and recalc values.

If you want an opinion on effectiveness and other "immeasurables" let me know.

[kiwitt]

A massive research project is on again as I now make the values of the ships even more accurate. There are over 500+ unique capital ships to be included and researched, now that I have expanded to include the whole world.

I may however, not use unique destroyers and submarines classes for the minor powers. They will simply use generic or their major allies equipment.

[Raven Destroyer]

Good to see you aren't sitting still kiwitt i really love the historic version of The Road to War
just started a new play trough i will look if 1.04 is compatible with the version i have (and please do not ask i have been sitting on my lump of timeless rock for ages now :P )

Keep up the good work
if your writing is an indication of your next jewel i can hardly wait

[kiwitt]

Don't expect it anytime soon. I am a perfectionist and it must be right before I release it. As to ships, my current research, the list of uniquely named and specified ships is growing to possibly 1,000. Aircraft will need to be expanded next as many nations need to be researched to determine who used what and when.

[Raven Destroyer]

Well just try to be finished before i finally conquer Europe :P

So that gives you about 2 years
knowing myself and the curse of Europe somehow making it's way into a game that is an optimistic guess

[kiwitt]

I am aiming for an Alpha release (2.00) in September 2012, which will include all the new units. The Beta release (2.01) in December 2012 will then bring in most of the RTW events and Preview release (2.03) will have my 1.04 tweaks in March 2013. The Final release (2.04) will have been debugged in mid/late 2013.

[Raven Destroyer]

i was a bit stupid with my latest game i overwrote it

so i will have to try to conquer Europe and the east coast again so you will be done before i am

Also stupid me apparently i had the latest version

[The Flame8]

Kiwitt I am completely amazed at what accuracy you are accomplishing this and with such speed. I am a huge ww2 fan and I guess I can't wait until mid/late 2013. Ever think about a career in this?
EDIT: And will your Global map represent China in Nationalists and Communists better than Dale's? That is one of the worst mistakes he had in his scenarios

[kiwitt]

My key dates will be 1940-41. I be basing borders on this time-frame.

And yeah it is a lot of research ... a career out of ... are you offering

[GoseaN]

Wow, I really like the idea of implementing different variants of combat units into the game, especially the inclusion M1A1 (or 2?) Abrams and the Leopard 2 from modern day armour. However since this scenario ends upon the date of 1956, I was wondering why you decided to include modern day weaponry, especially futuristic ideas such as a hover tank, or even fusion powered aircraft? I still like those ideas though, it'll be fun crushing Russia with means from which they can't defend against.

(btw, will ground attack play a larger role in the game mechanics?)

[kiwitt]

It is still a work in progress. What is above was my initial thoughts. It will change later I am sure.

[FPSlover]

It seems interesting ! Can not wait for the full release/Beta testing.

[kiwitt]

I have decided to revert back to my original thinking regarding Divisions/Corps/Armies, etc. There was solid reasoning for this in 1.xx and that reasoning remains the same in this version. Albeit, I will need to ensure the reduced tech list takes this into consideration.