Posts made by CrazyIvan

Testing Forum poster

Test summary from TripleA, engine version: 1.9, time: 11:16:21 PM
Savegame

Ok, Game number 4, gribble and I have decided that we wanted to experiment with the techs in the Anniversary Edition, and so have decided to play with War Bonds edited in at game start!

Alright! Got that turn done, AND properly posted, back to Japan for their J!.

10:21pm, June 4th.

Alright! And sorry for all the problems. Let me hit that real quick.

TripleA Turn Summary: British round 1

TripleA Turn Summary for game: World War II Classic, version: 2.0

Game History

Round: 1

    Purchase Units - British
        British buy 1 carrier, 1 infantry and 1 transport; Remaining resources: 1 PUs; 

    Combat Move - British
                AA fire in East Europe : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
        1 bomber moved from United Kingdom to Black Sea Zone
        1 battleship moved from West Mediteranean Sea Zone to Black Sea Zone
        1 submarine moved from East Mediteranean Sea Zone to Black Sea Zone
        2 fighters moved from United Kingdom to Baltic Sea Zone
        1 armour moved from Anglo Sudan Egypt to Algeria
              British take Libya from Germans
              British take Algeria from Germans
        2 infantry moved from India to Indian Ocean Sea Zone
        2 infantry and 1 transport moved from Indian Ocean Sea Zone to Red Sea Zone
        2 infantry moved from Red Sea Zone to Anglo Sudan Egypt
        1 infantry moved from Syria Jordan to Anglo Sudan Egypt
        1 infantry moved from South Africa to Kenya-Rhodesia
        1 armour moved from East Canada to West Canada
        2 infantry moved from United Kingdom to North Sea Zone
        2 infantry moved from North Sea Zone to Finland Norway
              British take Finland Norway from Germans

    Combat - British
        Battle in Baltic Sea Zone
            British attack with 2 fighters
            Germans defend with 1 submarine and 1 transport
                British roll dice for 2 fighters in Baltic Sea Zone, round 2 : 0/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                Germans roll dice for 1 transport in Baltic Sea Zone, round 2 : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
                British roll dice for 2 fighters in Baltic Sea Zone, round 3 : 0/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                Germans roll dice for 1 transport in Baltic Sea Zone, round 3 : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
                British roll dice for 2 fighters in Baltic Sea Zone, round 4 : 0/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                Germans roll dice for 1 transport in Baltic Sea Zone, round 4 : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
                British roll dice for 2 fighters in Baltic Sea Zone, round 5 : 1/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                Germans roll dice for 1 transport in Baltic Sea Zone, round 5 : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
                1 submarine owned by the Germans lost in Baltic Sea Zone
                British roll dice for 2 fighters in Baltic Sea Zone, round 6 : 2/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                Germans roll dice for 1 transport in Baltic Sea Zone, round 6 : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
                1 transport owned by the Germans lost in Baltic Sea Zone
            British win with 2 fighters remaining. Battle score for attacker is 16
            Casualties for Germans: 1 submarine and 1 transport
        Battle in Black Sea Zone
            British attack with 1 battleship, 1 bomber and 1 submarine
            Germans defend with 1 battleship and 1 transport
                British roll dice for 1 submarine in Black Sea Zone, round 2 : 0/1 hits, 0.33 expected hits
                British roll dice for 1 battleship and 1 bomber in Black Sea Zone, round 2 : 2/2 hits, 1.33 expected hits
                Germans roll dice for 1 battleship and 1 transport in Black Sea Zone, round 2 : 0/2 hits, 0.83 expected hits
                1 battleship owned by the Germans and 1 transport owned by the Germans lost in Black Sea Zone
            British win with 1 battleship, 1 bomber and 1 submarine remaining. Battle score for attacker is 32
            Casualties for Germans: 1 battleship and 1 transport

    Non Combat Move - British
        2 fighters moved from Baltic Sea Zone to Russia
        1 fighter moved from India to Russia
        1 bomber moved from Black Sea Zone to Anglo Sudan Egypt

    Place Units - British
        1 infantry placed in United Kingdom
        1 carrier and 1 transport placed in North Sea Zone

    Turn Complete - British
        British collect 31 PUs; end with 32 PUs

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

Germans : -1.67
British : -1.67
AA fire in East Europe : : -0.17

Savegame

Actually, now that I’m looking at it, every allied turn in round 1 seems to have generated dice rolls, including B2, and the taking of western europe. I keep having throbbing, pulsating pain in my right eye, and it is coming and going for the last several hours.

Ok, so I was attempting to play around using the TripleA engine, with our game, and run through several turns of different ideas. I didn’t save/post any turns, as I was just trying out some ideas, and I couldn’t actually get to the USA 1 turn without having the Japanese do nothing on J1, so I just wanted to playtest some stuff out, but it looks like I cannot playtest a game without generating actual dice server emails.

Not sure if this is because I loaded up a PBF save game, in PBF mode, and then playtested it, or should have loaded it up as a local game in order to playtest it, or if there is some other way to playtest a given position, without it triggering dice server roll emails.

I’m ok with the playtest results if you want me to use those dice rolls, but I don’t have a save game file from that stage. I ran up to R3 in my playtest, IIRC, but the dice server emails seem to have only covered my B1 turn.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a problem, I’m just having trouble figuring things out. So I should probably ask the following questions:

1. When playing a PBF game, is there a way to playtest out different options/ideas, without triggering dice server emails in the process?

2. If you do playtest out several turns ahead, is there a way to go back and just save the game at the point where you should have saved it as an actual turn?

Because right now, when I tried to go back and recreate B1, I tried to just walk the game to the end of the B1 turn, and save at that point, thinking that even though I had not actually been sure I wanted to go that route, that was the closest I was going to be able to come to a legit B1. Unfortunately, the autosave file is from B2 or B3, which is where I had playtested too until called away, and when I returned, that is when I discovered the playtesting had in fact triggered server dice roll emails for my B1 runthrough.

I’m still having some issues, it seems.

First, let me apologise.
Second, let me apologise again.

In homage to a movie scene I love:
“It looks like {CROW} is back on the menu, boys!”

I had more images, and a large amount of text that was going to be my reply, but then I noticed something else that I cannot explain.

I’ve been going on and on about the “Extra Playing Pieces” offered in the manual, but going back to the photo I just took in the wee hours of the morning, I just now noticed that it doesn’t actually say that!:upside_down_face:

In homage to a song I love:
"My eyes saw {Extra Playing Pieces} but the {book} still said {Additional Game Parts}.

I think I’ll shut up now, and wait for confirmation of what the official answer guy is saying just above.

Appropriately named 'Crazy’Ivan sits down at a very large dinner table, covered with a vast variety of dishes, all of which contain CROW!

@AcesWild5049 @Krieghund My sincere apologies, gentlemen, and maybe I should see the doctor.:face_with_head_bandage:

@AcesWild5049 said in Classic rules, and some disagreements.:

I read about half of this and now I’m pretty sure you’re trolling me. Well done, but I’m finished now. I have nothing else to say about this “topic”.

Except that I should ask if we are playing by your rules in our game?

Not trying to troll you. I thought at first that you were having a bit of fun at my expense, and were in fact pretending that you really thought that the FAQ was spelling out that folks couldn’t use the extra playing pieces, even if they bought them, but I think now that you are seriously saying that is how you interpret it.

House rule?

If by that, you mean, am I going to insist on being able to buy virtual pieces, that my budget can afford, rather than, say, being limited to some mistaken misinterpretation of the FAQ, which is after all specific to use of actual, physical playing pieces, on a physical board, and then being carried over to the virtual game, then I’m not sure.

I’ve remembered once upon a time, I ran across a guy that I was playing with at my last duty station, and he said something about not being able to split my bombers up and send them out individually after his scattered transports, and so I went into my parts boxes and pulled out an actual bomber playing piece, and poor alaska was just a mess! Apparently, he had heard about the Piece count limit as well, but when I pulled out 15 actual bombers and set them in alaska, that ended the objection to me using chips.

I have to ask for clarification on this point:

You and I believe differently on just what the FAQ is, and this basically comes down to the question of, does the conversation that larry harris had, way back when, that served as the basis for what became the FAQ, include the whole extra playing pieces question, or does it ignore it? If the conversation that later became the FAQ overlooked (or perhaps, predated) the printing of the 2nd edition manual, then that would mean that the issue was not ‘carved in stone’, but yet another example of what can go wrong when writing a game. :)

To answer your question, then, I first have to ask you not to call it a house rule (of mine), because to me, it is more like a house rule (of yours), based upon actual playing pieces, and then being (wrongly) imposed upon an electronic playing field, where there are no actual pieces.

All that being said, I’m just wanting to have a good game, and a good time with a fellow Classic A&A player, and so if your really want to play that way, I’m ok with it. Besides, I’ll not likely survive long enough to get to the point where limited AA guns/IC will be an issue, lol.

Well, you are certainly making me work hard to convert you from the true believer, into a radical non-believer!

@AcesWild5049 said in Classic rules, and some disagreements.:

Your anecdote is purely conjecture.

Actually, my belief is the one that will prove true.

There is no mystery here.

Indeed, I agree with you on that, there is no mystery. :)

It’s stated with perfect clarity supported by specific examples esp in regards to the restriction of building no more than four industries after the initial setup.

And of course, this doesn’t answer the real question, if one buys the extra playing pieces, and thus has 16 industrial complexes remaining, rather than just four, what then?

Anything else is a house rule.

I’ll give you this, you are putting up a stubborn defense of the faith, against my heathen army of despots!

In all seriousness though, I think that we have the truth now, it just needs time to sink in.

We both know that the official rules have lots of issues, and the same can be said for the FAQ. My position is not based upon a cherished, and long held belief, that I knew something that few others knew, but rather on the realities of business and common sense.

Lets try it this way:

#1 In the official rules, on page 2 (upthread, I mistakenly wrote page one), in the lower right hand paragraph, extra sets of playing pieces are offered for sale. We can agree on this?

#2 A business doesn’t spend money on a product they don’t believe is going to sell. We can agree on this?

#3 Both the FAQ and the Rules state that you can have more of a unit type than you have playing pieces for, and using chips or coins or whatever is ok, as long as the stack has the proper playing piece on top. We can agree on this?

#4 Other Gamemaster series games come with spare parts, but these are usually limited to 1-2 pieces of a given type, but the extra sets of playing pieces offered here are a full 299 pieces! A bit much, and more than a little overkill for just spare parts, is it not? We can agree on this?

#5 Other games in the Gamemaster series, contemporarys to A&A classic, expressly forbid using any ‘extra’ or ‘surplus’ pieces, because those games have exact army sizes and compositions. A&A classic does NOT forbid using ‘extra’ pieces, because it’s army sizes are not fixed with respect to size or composition, but rather can grow during the course of a game. We can agree on this?

I can go on and on, but the gist of it is that, if you want to cling to your (mistaken) belief in a “Piece Count Limitation Rule”, based upon the very flimsy foundation of a badly worded FAQ, that clearly isn’t including the possibility of having extra pieces, as ‘proof’ that they are not allowed, well, who am I to try to dissuade you? I just hope, that once you do realise that the FAQ is not forbidding folks from buying and using the extra playing pieces, but rather overlooks the issue entirely, because it was badly done, you don’t have any bad feelings about it. :)

I missed this the first time round…

@AcesWild5049 said in Classic rules, and some disagreements.:

What is more likely:

that there is a piece count limitation?

or that on three separate occasions the game designer and game company forgot to add in a game altering, critical exception that went against their own examples…

The answer is, there was a miscommunication, somewhere along the way, and folks came away with the misunderstanding that one couldn’t have more stacks than they had playing pieces to top them with, based upon what came in the box, rather than, say, that they simply could increase their maximum potential stacks by just buying the extra playing pieces offered on page one!

Instead, what was supposed to have happened, was that folks would shell out the extra bucks, and use the parts being offered, rather than using proxies.

So, it isn’t that MB wanted some weird “Piece count Limitation” in the game, but rather, that they wanted to sell extra playing pieces, that they had already made at their expense, but they did it so badly that… :)

What is more likely, that a toy company made massive numbers or extra playing pieces, at a significant cost that they intended to offset by offering them for sale, despite some ‘rule’ that forbid this…

Or somebody goofed, and there is no such rule, only a misunderstanding?

I want to say that I respect you, and am not wanting to anger/annoy, but you seem to be missing something. See the bolded part below.

@AcesWild5049 said in Classic rules, and some disagreements.:

This, to me, seems to be an exercise in reaching for a desired conclusion. Your extrapolated argument is so tangential that if the folks at MB and LH himself had intended the exception of simply buying additional playing pieces to circumvent this rule, they would have said so. Instead, it is clearly stated three times with multiple supporting examples to the contrary.

Firstly, it isn’t a rule and never was. please bear with me, while I explain why this is so. I promise, even though I have a very tough time explaining things, I am doing my best to shed light on an area where folks are making something out of nothing, and coming away with a misconception. I apologise if this takes more time and effort to straighten out than it should, but in the end, I’m 100% sure that everyone is going to see the mistaken beliefs as what they are. :)

Actually, let’s approach this from a different angle, and perhaps this will shed some light on the subject, and get my point across.

Once upon a time, a really great game designer Larry is working with MB, back when A&A was young, and they made massive numbers of extra playing pieces, which cost them a lot of money, and if folks can use whatever they like to designate a particular piece, rather than, say, buy the actual pieces that are being offered for sale in the official rules {and, to reiterate a point I have already made, that have already been paid for by MB}, then they are going to be taking a financial loss for any of these additional plastic playing pieces, that they have made and are offering for sale.

Along comes a question and answer session, where Larry Harris does indeed make clear, “You cannot use anything else to substitute for an actual plastic playing piece!” And, as noted, this is indeed done several times, in various places, both in the rules and in the FAQ.

Now, let’s look at this from the perspective of a toy company. The facts:
#1 You cannot use substitute for the real thing, you must cap every stack with a plastic playing piece.
#2 We are offering additional playing pieces right in the rules.
#3 We already paid for these, and need to sell them or suffer a loss.

So, my contention is that, they want folks to buy their pieces, not limit the ‘stacks’ within their game, and this is probably a very good example of how they went about it wrong!

MB wants to sell these pieces, rather than waste the money on their production, so the whole thing with the FAQ/rules is NOT about making folks be limited in their gameplay, but rather, to get them to buy the pieces! :)

Hopefully, this attempt clears away all the misunderstandings and misconceptions about what Larry Harris was really saying way back when, and everyone can now put the flawed concept of there being a rule against buying and using the extra pieces to rest.

It isn’t in MB interest to make the pieces, and try to sell them, only to make a rule against their use, for then no one is going to buy them.

Like the kid in the Matrix said: “There is no spoon” === “There is no rule”.
:)

Ah! Maybe I’ve finally mastered the arcane workings of the quote button at last!

@AcesWild5049 said in Classic rules, and some disagreements.:

@CrazyIvan

I made the comment about spare parts. I’m pretty sure its only you and I in here. Virtually any game that is/was in production at that time would offer players spare parts. I don’t know why this is the hill you want to die on. I will make no comment other than to quote Larry Harris from his FAQ (in addition to pointing out the reference to piece count limits on page 7 of the 2nd Edition manual) to allow anyone actually following this to make up their own mind:

**Q: Can I have more stacks of bombers (or battleships, or whatever) than there are bomber pieces? If so, how would I mark them?
A: Marking them isn’t a problem because you can’t have them in the first place. The number of playing pieces is a limit on how many forces can be in play. No one, for example, can have more than three bomber forces or more than two carrier groups. The only exception to this absolute limit is chips; if you run out of chips you can use anything else as a substitute: pennies, beads, slips of paper, or whatever works for your game.

Note that this applies throughout the entire turn. A stack of six bombers can’t split up into more than three groups when they fly out to attack.

Q: After everything is set up at the game’s start, there are only four additional complexes left over. Can more than that be built?
A: No. Once four new industrial complexes are brought into play, no more can be built.**

Right, so I took the liberty of bolding the questions that Larry was answering, all those years ago, and from which came forth the FAQ PDF.

Larry’s answers are right and correct, if, and only if, we assume that this conversation is about an OOB setup. In both the rules & the FAQ, nowhere is there any mention of the extra playing pieces that one could buy.

The problem with both the PDF of the FAQ, and the rules, is that they do not address when extra playing pieces are on hand! The thing that I object to is the assumption, based upon no evidence I see in either location, that this answer is definitive even when the extra playing pieces have been duly purchased. The limit is on the actual playing pieces, not some preset number (unlike in Fortress America, where armies are of an exact composition), and in classic A&A, the RULES state that you can buy extra pieces. Folks misunderstanding what the FAQ is actually saying and then trying to make like there is some rule that is not in the actual rule book is clearly a mistake.

For instance, if in this conversation the question had arisen, “If I buy a second game, or just a second set of plastic playing pieces, and therefore have more than 2 carriers or 3 bombers or whatever, can I then go ahead and have more stacks than if I just had one set?” and then the answer was given as, nope, not even then could you do that, this wouldn’t be an issue. But the FAQ & the rules don’t include any mention of extra pieces at all, so the assumption being made here (mistakenly in my opinion), is that the question of extra playing pieces had come up, and these answers factored them in seems baseless and unsupported. My own belief is that the question of extra playing pieces was not considered, and that, had it been, the answers Larry provided would have included something like, “unless you buy additional playing pieces”. :)

Basically, I need to see something that establishes whether or not Larry was taking extra playing pieces into account when those questions were being asked and answered, as otherwise we are left with two camps, one that takes these answers as is, and tries to deny folks the use of their property based upon a potentially misunderstood belief, or the other camp, that bought the extra playing pieces in good faith, with the understanding that they would then have enough pieces to have even bigger armies on the board, then being told that all those extra playing pieces must be set aside, and NOT used.

I’ll second that!

Ok, so here is the part that debunks all the stuff I see in the Larry Harris FAQ, and the rule book, where folks are trying to (IMHO) misinterpret/misunderstand what is actually in those documents. So, without further ado…

Now:
In the Larry Harris faq, and in the manual, the text is seemingly referring exclusively to the situation where a player has just the one set of 299 plastic playing pieces that come with the boxed game, otherwise known as “Out Of Box”.

This is fine, as far as it goes, and if that were all there was to it, that would be the end of it. However, that is NOT all there is to it, as the same manual has badly worded explanations also makes it clear that folks can buy extra playing pieces. Keep in mind, that the entire box has just 299 plastic playing pieces, so a single extra set (299 additional pieces) will include and entire duplicate of every playing piece in the box! And that this means you get, for each nation:

15 infantry + 10 tanks
10 fighters + 3 bombers
6 submarines & 6 transports
3 Battleships & 2 Aircraft carriers
(55 each nation, 275 total)

And, in addition, you also get:
12 Industrial complexes & 12 anti-aircraft guns.

So, when I ordered 3 additional sets of plastic playing pieces back in the day, some 30 odd years ago, that meant that I had 4 times the usual amounts of plastic playing pieces, and by the time I got out of the army, I had amassed 7 boxed sets, and 3 additional sets of playing pieces.

Later on still, after selling one box and 1 set, I somehow misplaced and lost all 6 of my remaining boards, and had it not been for eBay, I wouldn’t have been able to make good my losses. I currently have 4 boards, and something like 13 sets of plastic playing pieces.

Up thread, someone tried to claim that these “extra playing pieces” were nothing more than ‘spare parts’, with the implication that they could only be used in the case of replacement of lost pieces. I repudiate that expressed belief.

In both the rules and the FAQ, it is clearly stated that one can have as many units in A&A classic as they can afford to put on the map, but only are limited to how many stacks they can have, based upon the need for every stack to be topped by the appropriate unit.

In other words, every stack must be topped by the correct playing piece, at all times, but nowhere (that I can find) is it clearly and unequivocally stated that if you have more playing pieces than come in a single box (which seems to me to be the basic assumption in the FAQ made from a conversation with Larry Harris back in the day), you STILL cannot make use of them!

OK, sounds good. I’m especially interested to discuss my latest thoughts on how to get classic ‘back on the menu’, as it were, and I think I may have a way to bring balance to the game in a way that doesn’t totally break it in the process. I know you are leaning towards the whole RR thing, and I’m good playing with that optional rule for your test games, but I feel that that still doesn’t address some issues/concerns that I have, and also that removing their ability to ‘dish some out’ entirely kinda breaks the game.

Before I go there, though, I want to have the allies down pat, and honestly, I think that I’ll need several games to get myself into the groove, and so hope to make a habit of playing the allies to your axis regularly for the next several days/weeks. :)

Ok, so this game ended. I’m still learning, and with the things I have seen from you playing the allies this game, I’m interested in trying some things out in another game where I am the allies, if you want too. In fact, I’d like to keep playing with you, and just trade back and forth who plays the allies.

@dan-hamilton Hi Dan! Welcome. I’m also a newbie here, so good to see another fresh face. :)

Ok, so if I corrected all the mistakes I made in my first PBF game with you, we should see the second game created HERE!

GL&HF
:)