Posts made by rjclayton

Classic (not Revised) rules question:

This one always gets me:

Let’s say I am attacking a Baltic Fleet with UK air + boats.  UK wants to retreat back to NOR sz.  What happens to the fighters in the battle (assume no ACs).  Do they:
a) Have to retreat to NOR with the boats and then splash due to no ACs?
b) Have to retreat to NOR with the boats and then are able to land on any legal adjacent land (ie UK or WEU/FIN if Allies own them), or
c) Don’t retreat with the boats, and then get to move their normal Non Combat with whatever movement points are left.

Remember, Classic not Revised.

Also, in LL you can still get bad dice, but the chances of the dice evening out are much less, because the variance in dice is much less.  Thus, in LL, as soon as you get a little bit behind (either due to dice, or strategy, or whatever), it is very difficult to catch up.  In ADS, play it out, you never know what will happen.

My programming is barely good enough to get by, but I’ll take a shot at answering your question.

I’d recommend going with the Generic and Expandable version of XML tags over the Strict version.  No need to lose flexibility at this point, and you can always build the validation into the map util.

Just my opinion.

Dave,

I really like where you are going with this.  Tonez and I discussed this as well about a month ago, and arrived at the following observations:

ABattlemap: not open source, and no development seems to be happening with this right now, so not sure how we could integrate anything with this map util
Mapview: looks like development is a possibility with this tool, since it seems as though current development work is underway.  Not open source however, so we would be limited by others as to what we could do
TripleA: open source.  Graphics are pretty good already, and the game engine is really nice too.  We could integrate this to use whatever xml you wanted.  TripleA already has game actions as transformations, and it remembers previous states of the map, including production and cash on hand values.  It also enforces A&A movement rules.
Other Mapping Utils: dunno, haven’t tried any others.

Conclusion: creating an xml format would be great, but realistically we only see tripleA being able to use the format.  If other mapping utils come along, or existing one are developed further, they might also adopt the xml format.  But I don’t know how likely this is to happen anytime soon.

As a result, we decided against the option of an xml format in favour of improved readability.  Check out our beta test game threads for actual turn summaries generated by TripleA.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8259.0
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8142.0
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8331.0

Compatibility between different mapping utils is still an issue, and to be honest I don’t know how to get around that if development is not happening on those various mapping utils.  Thoughts?

Rob

@Baghdaddy:

Or perhaps the FTR can still retreat and in that fashion move a 5th sea zone that the CV would NCM to…

:?

No.

I understand this the same way Switch does…

The fighter needs to have a potential landing spot to engage in combat.  In the non-combat, if the fighter still lives and the only potential landing spot was an AC, then the AC must move and allow the fighter to land (no kamikaze fighters allowed).

@newpaintbrush:

Subs in the old edition only got one round of opening fire, if I remember correctly.

Actually, in classic, the attacking subs shoot in opening fire every round, defending subs never shoot in opening fire.

Jen,

Try DMs first post here.  There is a link to the AAR module for Mapview.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a classic module yet…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=5125.msg77928#msg77928

Yep, I’m in the Guelph area.  Tonez is in Ottawa, although visits Guelph occasionally (actually he’s rolling in tonight through to New Years).

Check this link…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=7927.0

I also like TripleA.  A lot.  Yes, it takes a long time to load.  Like 10 seconds.  But it only takes me 5-10 mins to post a turn instead of 20-30 minutes in ABattlemap.  So I’ll gladly wait the the 10 seconds.

Kills all SBRs?  Give the Owl his Crack Pipe back Jen!  In various threads you’ve accused almost every dicey of this.  Give me a break.

GUI is VERY FRIENDLY (IMO).  Plus the graphics are pretty good.  If you are new and looking for ways to play online, at least get TripleA and decide for yourself.

go to triplea.sourceforge.net and download it.

Is it just me or is the way it ends kinda cheesy?  I could totally dominate and get 90% of the carrots but still lose because I didn’t get the magic carrot?

I think both are viable options (ie. China + Bury vs. China + Uk fleet).  I would prefer to take out the UK fleet (and take out the russian fighter!).  The Bury stack is not very threatening in actuality (barely any reinforcements), and you can force it to retreat the following round anyway.

That would be my motivation for playing it that way.

Agree.  So rather than spread forces between China and Bury, in this instance I would focus on China, while strafing the UK fleet.  As U-505 said.

China + Bury + UK fleet is too much on J1.  IMHO.

I would prefer U-505’s strat to Cyan’s.  Here’s why.

In a non KJF game, Japan usually has very little resistance until it gets to Moscow (or Novisibirsk at least).  I would rather not squander my numerical superiority as Japan on marginal attacks (if you don’t take China you could be in trouble), particularly when I can force my opponent into a retreat the following round versus overwhelming odds.

Even when you succeed in marginal attacks, you almost always lose more inf in the attack than you would have if you had waited 1 turn and attacked with overwhelming force.  So you gain 2 more IPCs in production for one turn for winning the extra territory, but meanwhile you lose 1-2 more inf on the frontline (3-6 IPCs).  Are you really coming out ahead?  And what if the dice aren’t favourable?  Now you don’t even take the territory (because it was a marginal attack to begin with), plus you lose even more inf.  Definitely not coming out ahead on that one.

Bottom line, with Japan you don’t want to leave yourself open to any kind of attack, and just build up your forces can you can roll through to Moscow pretty much unopposed.

Just got this game and played it on the weekend.  Kinda fun, but I think I need a few more games before I decide about it.  Anyone else play this game?  It’s card-based (like Magic: The Gathering) except the cards are not collectibles.

Also the need to remove units from the board/change territory ownership.  I can see where you’re going with the need to be able to add/remove units at any time (and possibly change territory ownership).  I think everything else would work fine as described.  These edit options would somehow need to be prominently displayed when they are active, so that players are aware of what edit options they have at different phases in the game.  Perhaps even giving them a button on their “action” panel when an edit option is available would be appropriate.

And of course, any edits would need to be highlighted as edits in the history panel.  Prominently highlighted.

Why did I think that AA guns fired during non-combat?  I know they don’t in classic, but thought they did in revised.  Is this rule different for OOB vs. LHTR???

A small blocker in SZ6 won’t prevent the linkup.  Germany can simply sink the sub with it’s fighters and still do the linkup in non-combat movement.

TripleA comes with everything needed to play AAR.  You should be able to Load New Game and select revised (the default is classic).

Make sure you have the newest stable release from triplea.sourceforge.net

This works very well to either play live, or email the file back and forth.  For Play-By-Forum, my brother is working on some changes to incorporate some additional features.  Stay tuned.