W-I-P: Storm Over the Pacifc

I hope everything is well El Justo and your quiet due to good things in R/L!!

Delta_Strife said:

I hope everything is well El Justo and your quiet due to good things in R/L!!

Click to expand...

Ditto, and trust they are indeed, "good things in R/L" and not, oh, say, leprosy ...


,

Oz

I hope we get some news in the near future from you El Justo.

Please El Justo,
any news on the progress of any kind. This is too good just to leave. I´m sure R/L is stopping the stuff, but a little word on how things are is very nice.

I hope for the best, and guess a couple more like me have the same thoughts.

Best to you El Justo

Time for the monthly question !!!
How is progress ?

El Justo still strong and kicking in the Sport Fantasy World and I guess Real Baseball is about to kick off (well I guess one doesn´t say kick-off about baseball but what the heck) so this project is still suffering for R/L events.

However I still hope that something will emerge and that this very promising project gets to the finish line.

Hope you´re doing good El Justo

I didn't see the Musashi on any of the proposed orders of battle for the Japanese navy. She was deployed in the fall of 1942 and was initially positioned with her sister ship the Yamato at Truk. She was built at Nagasaki and commissioned in August of 1942. Of course, neither the Yamato or the Musashi survived the war.

hi all back from the dead as they say

real life was indeed intrusive over the last year or so. however, i have a little more time over these summer months to try and hammer out this project. i mean, i got a lot done on these files. now i need to to do some alpha testing to try and get something playable.

now, it is playable. i have run a few tests so far trying to monitor the opening turns of the scenario which is trying to depict the battle of the coral sea. it's not going well...in terms of the AI replicating the turn of events at that crucial naval battle. i probably don't have to explain a whole lot about why it's not unfolding the way i want it to but the assets are in place and i do have to sort of yield to a certain 'what-if' factor. so with that said, i am probably just resigned to have coral sea unfold in a crappy manner since it's only the first few turns of the scenario.

my other task is trying to get mainland china right in terms of the japanese and the two chinese factions. i've been working on this and have made some slight adjustments that i think will make it work.

of course, i could always use help with this project, both testing and possibly with gfx. so if anyone is interested in either one, please let me know. thanks!

You know me I will lend a hand gfx wise!

Yes, what do you mean by gfx work? I'm good for menial drudgery to lay off the uni-induced modding laziness…

mostly static pcx work and some maybe some units. will have to look. but i know for sure there are some things like city gfx, maybe some of the buildings large and small files and their civp images. stuff like that.

I give you a hand if you like. Gfx is not my strong side, but pedias perhaps or just testing.
Whatever you like and I try to give it some time.
It would be a joy indeed.

In all cases I´m so glad you´re back and might finish this. A very interesting scenario with as far as one can see very promising.

awesome thanks. i'll let you know when i can get it to a beta stage

Some help can be provided.

alright. thanks.

i've been chipping away, little by little

i had family in from out of state for the better part of the last week. so not much accomplished over the last weekend. however, i have sort of broke through some on the final victory conditions for the scenario. i had a rough base for it all along although it's become more clear to me over the last few days. it's not fully fine-tuned yet but it's a good start.

now, to review some from earlier in the thread, the victory conditions are going to be sort of different for each civ. Japan must rack up a certain amount of victory points through 'war material' returns (ala AoI) to the capital. the core strat resources of iron, coal, aluminum, rubber, oil are the 'spawning' locations throughout the map (buildings attached to said resource on map). i did a rough calculation, extrapolated it over the length of the scenario (1946), and set a certain number for the Japanese to attain 'victory'. it is a grueling task, to be able to win with this position (as it should be imho). Japan is at the height of its empire and lots of MM'ing with transports and such.

the US position will not rely on the 'war material' returns but instead have to knock out Japanese 'king' units placed across the map. after all, the game is set as 'Mass Regicide'. so once all of a civ's 'king' units are defeated, it's over and all your cities crumble and become ruins (in-game). Japanese 'strategic garrisons' will be placed all over the map, most in key locations. this is the idea that came to me within the last day or so, to sprinkle these 'strategic' units across the map, make Allies knock them all out etc. in sum, the US and her allies will have to knock out all of the Japanese 'king' units which will be in the Pacific, PI, China, SE Asia, Indonesia and also in Japanese Islands. nukes come into play for the US side to knock out enemy 'king' units (end game of course). the US will have an exclusive 'Nuke' branch of the tech tree. Openheimer himself will be a US 'king' unit.

Japan should have about 20 'king' units on the map to start. US about a half dozen but some, like Openheimer, are stateside. US allies will have about 3-6 each. totals will be about even (US+Allied @ about 20 & Japan @ about 20).

giving some fleeting thoughts to maybe trying to incorporate a 'space race' victory condition. not sure yet and i want to avoid anything too complicated. it could work for some of the smaller civs like Australia, Br India, China perhaps. still mulling it over.

gonna try and experiment with allowing the battle created unit (Leader) convert itself into a 'king' unit (War Hero). not sure if it will work or how the AI will handle it. we shall see. a key thing for me to observe during beta testing. if it works, it will allow for more added 'king' units to the map thus making it more difficult to 'win' (ie knock out ALL king units).

Vuldacon recently helped me by recoloring some coral reef resource gfx. he also helped me find a way to finally and definitively solve the Great Barrier Reef issue i was having (unsure on gfx and also how to prohibit sea travel over said tile). to put it simply, i set the Sea tile as impassable...and used these Sea tiles only where the actual Great Barrier Reef actually is on the map...and used V's cool coral reef resource gfx right on top of said Sea tiles. problem solved

i slashed the prices for ALL carrier planes by about 30%. they we already a good deal cheaper than land based aircraft. but i was to try and see more cv planes, mostly to battle the attrition rates and allow for real replenishment in-game. i've always seen poor AI build behaviors with cv-only planes. maybe this will help.

Vuldacon also cleaned up the palette on the resource sheet

next up is to physically place the 'strategic garrison' king units. this will form the backbone of the human (and hopefully the AI too) strategy to actually 'win' the scenario. after that, more alpha testing (in and out of debug).

turn times are pretty quick on my pretty current rig. lots of sea units on the map. out of debug, much faster turn times since i don't 'see' all the moves. i'm talking well under a minute per turn. this makes me happy

Bravo


I am waiting for your Storm over the Pacific


Wotan49

pickin' up the pace over the last several days been alpha testing with the US, have played about 20 turns or so keeping a list of small changes to make for next alpha version.

here are some obligatory screen shots :

era1 (1942) tech screen


of course, i need to get arrows onto the advisor screen and also swap out the advisor head for a more WW2-ish set. when in DEBUG, the tech screen displays those magenta letters. that does not appear when out of DEBUG. there are 3 tech trees in this game. the ALLIED ones (US has one, other ALLIES have same minus the nuke line) and the Japanese one. gfx interface by Balthasar.

here's a shot of the city screen interface in sunny San Diego

if you look close enough, you can see a certain fuzziness in the 'screen'. the intent according to Balthasar was to give it a static-y feel based on the era. this screen might need to be cleaned up some once all is said and done.

here's a zoomed out shot of the Solomon Islands, pretty much right in the midst of my personal Battle of the Coral Sea

i tried to play the US position right by launching my attack on the IJN within the first turn. i didn't inflict a whole lot of damage on the first turn, even lost some carrier-based aircraft from aaa and some intercepting zeroes. however, second and third turns i did'em in, sinking two carriers and some non-capital ships. the Japanese ending up withdrawing the remaining ships back to Rabaul. i did not lose a single sea unit...so that didn't really unfold like it really did...but i'm okay with it, i guess.

we can also see the new Great Barrier Reef gfx that Vuldacon helped me out with. these are impassable sea tiles with a bonus resource placed on top.

next one is a zoomed out shot of the Japanese Home Islands

production rates are pretty good here. this is something i always keep an eye on while in DEBUG. goal is to strike the right balance in terms of shield output for certain cities, from the start, the production ceiling etc. in the later turns, about 6 or 8 turns after this particular screen shot, the IJN blocked the southern approach into the Sea of Japan. IJN continues to keep it blocked off with capital ships. northern approach isn't blocked off though. thought about sneakin' a pack of my subs in and pullin' a Scapa Flow on my opponent

below is a shot of a naval task force i just sent down to the Solomons

in the effort to play right, i'm trying to dislodge the Japanese from the southern part of the Solomon Islands (ie guadalcanal) and then work my way up through the neighboring island chains and link up with the USN in or around the central pacific. i've been trying to pump out dauntless dive bombers and b-17s to try and break through down here. but it's been rough. i lost a pile of flying fortresses and a handful of dive bombers trying to weaken the Guadalcanal defenders. they first had some of the Battle of the Coral Sea IJN ships docked there...and their stout and stacked AA ratings which i wasn't particularly pleased about in terms of me losing assets. i went all tin cup on 'em one turn and lost about a half dozen anyway, the attrition rates were a little high but that's ok in the big picture of things (for now, at least - after all, they maxed out on the AA stacking [4 iirc is the max stacking rate foe AAA efficacy]). so based off of the stiff aaa and an Elite zero or two, i decided to bring the ships from Coral Sea right up to Guadalcanal and use my guns on it. i do not have much firepower (some CAs and some DDs). so no redlining yet. i landed a dozen USMC units a few turns back, tempting the Japanese defenders to come out and try to fight. nothing so far. my interceptors (p-38s, p-40s, and some f4f wildcats) have knocked out a few betty's and some other IJN planes. long story short - the above screen is a task force of ships i'm sending down to the Solomons in an affort to blast away the defenders. the two north Carolina class BBs should help.

also on the same turn as this screen, i knocked the Japanese out of one of the Aleutian islands. it was the first 'king' unit i defeated. i had sent a force of ships up there to blast away for a bunch of turns and then brought in some infantry to wipe up (infantry have the amph assault ability too).

china has been a bloodbath. the Japanese have poured a lot of their resources into capturing chinese cities. they've gotten a few but the two chinese sides are making them pay.

Australia and British India haven't done a whole lot yet (ie Ledo Road stuff in C-B-I theater & New Guinea for the Aussies). the Aussies have provided me some air cover int he Coral Sea (don't you love it when an ally sends out its interceptors??).

the game, so far, is playing smoothly. of course, there are small things that need to be fixed along the way, and i'll have to re-start another alpha test when i do this. but so far, so good as they say

lastly, looking for a diligent individual to volunteer for Civilopedia work. i just don't have the time atm to do both testing and civp work. pm me if you're interested. i have a pretty good template for you to work from. thanks.

Looks really (!) good so far! I noticed you might want to update some of your ships though, there are several newer graphics available. But this is just an easy-to-fix issue in your epic endeavour.

One or two years ago I found that city names could be formatted to include bolding and italics -the thread is somewhere in C&C-, perhaps the same could be done to units, to highlight unit classes (bomber/fighter, destroyer/cruiser/carrier, etc.)?