WesWorld

I agree with Hoo, lets keep things simple. The basic rules are sound but they do need tweaking. I'm not so sure about tech trees. Real life doen't follow tech trees, no-one told Whittle or Watson-Watt when they could make thier discoveries. Its less arguement but less fun too. I feel players should be responsible enough to know the boundaries and stick to them. we have had the odd exception to that though!

i've had a major AH idea for a while recently. What0if Britain had allied itself to Germany in 1909? This may lead to the Great War being France and Russia versus GB, Germany, Turkey and Austria-Hungary. Frances loses in late 1914, Russia collapses in 1917. This leads to a German dominated central Europe. The Ukraine is independant as is a smaller Poland and the Baltic states and Finland. In the alt WW1 the UK fights in Iran agianst the Russians and instead of Gallpoli we have an invasion of the Crimea (Crimean War MkII).

In 1938 civil war breaks up Austria-Hungary. Austria goes to Germany, Slovakia and Croatia is then formed. Serbia breaks up in 1941 after a 1940 Italo-Greek war over Albania. Stalin invades Finland and Poland in 1940 but gets kicked out. No real WW2 but in 1941 Japan (1922 Treaty renewed and of course no Washington Treaties at all were signed)decides to invade south. Leads to long war (until 1951) with UK, US, France and Commonwealth. Leads to different Korean and Vietnam wars which are basically US vs Japanese backed sides.


Of course I still like to see how WW pans out after 1950...

I also agree with Hoo, lets keep the things simple.

But there are some questions. What about the starting conditions of the different countries ? All the same ?

Which other countries could / should be added ??? I don't know.

Actually, it does not matter to me, I will take part in any case.

@Hood: Very interesting your ideas

Some tech rules would be cool.

upkeep for built ships in active status.

Some manpower rules so ship crews aren't raised from nowhere.

things like those, mainly.

I subscribe to the KISS principle.

Tech is simple - in SpringSharp its the "Ship laid down" and "Engine built". In wesworld its assumed that everyone automatically goes up each year which shouldn't be the case.

Innovation is a crap shoot. It should be a game of luck here too.

A simple POI - a million years ago the UK sinks into the Atlantic. What happens now ; ) Every European country has a mirror colony in America?

Perhaps rather than playing empires we should turn it around and play a collection of shipyards.

Cheers,

Quoted

What if Britain had allied itself to Germany in 1909?

With GB in with the Central Powers, Russia would have backed down (probably would have told the Austrians 'you can have fries with that'!) over Serbia - no WW1.

Cheers,

Simple is good, but there are times when I think we've gone TOO simple. Case in point: the lack of maintenance/manning expense other than life-extension refits. The lack of maintenance expenses means that a fleet can continue to expand far past it's reasonable size, because it's constrained only by construction capacity, not the high costs of maintaining a fleet.

If there were a WW2, I'd want to see maintenance expenses (not just for navies, for armies and air forces as well), and some method of costing increases in technology and non-productive items like fleets, armies, etc. All of it costs, and those costs come from somewhere. I like the idea of having some resource limitations: not everyone has access to everything, and as noted this will often become a source of contention and friction as competition rises over a limited resource.

IMO trade and upkeep are the biggest problems in WW, there is no need to trade in WW other than we think its fun and there is no limitations on how big the Navies can get.

As for new countries most of us have some "pet" countries we would like to see in the game be it Byzantium, Crusader states, A_H, SMOM or something else which is why I like the idea of a "pre-Game".

Or if the game again starts in 1920´s have factories not only based on shipbuilding but also on steel production?

Borrowing an idea Hearts of Iron a simple resource model say
Coal, Iron/Metal, Food and Rare (Rubber, Alloy metals stc) and oil.

Quoted

Originally posted by Vukovlad
Borrowing an idea Hearts of Iron a simple resource model say
Coal, Iron/Metal, Food and Rare (Rubber, Alloy metals stc) and oil.

And are you volunteering to programm a spreadsheet for all types of Windows and Macs that can handle these 5 resources - combined with harbours or other "factory-like" facilities, number of these facilities, different use over time (like our todays fixed IPs), probably their location, manpower, maintenance, building times, material spend per month/quarter/intervall etc.?

Will it also deal with questions like "How much of resource x is left?" or the varying degree of stuff one might be able to put into one project over time?

Quoted

Originally posted by HoOmAn

Quoted

Originally posted by Vukovlad
Borrowing an idea Hearts of Iron a simple resource model say
Coal, Iron/Metal, Food and Rare (Rubber, Alloy metals stc) and oil.

And are you volunteering to programm a spreadsheet for all types of Windows and Macs that can handle these 5 resources - combined with harbours or other "factory-like" facilities, number of these facilities, different use over time (like our todays fixed IPs), probably their location, manpower, maintenance, building times, material spend per month/quarter/intervall etc.?

Will it also deal with questions like "How much of resource x is left?" or the varying degree of stuff one might be able to put into one project over time?

Why would you need a spread sheet for various systems? We are already using a similar system with the tonnage...

Writing a spreadsheet would be fairly straightforward: do it in either Excel or OpenOffice, then post it in both formats (OpenOffice is free and available for PCs, Macs, Linux, etc). The spreadsheet Rocky gave me when I joined the game had most of that already.

Oh, another thing that might be good for a WW2: random fluctuations in the world or national economy. Currently, the player nations all have "iron budgets", we know what we're going to have available years in advance (barring wars, of course) and can make plans accordingly.

While I can cope with spreadsheets, I prefer the engineering K.I.S.S principle as the more complicated something is, the harder it is to enjoy.

I have a pic of my spreadsheet at hand but no way to put it online. Of all spreadsheets available among WesWorld players it probably is one of the most complex - still it deals with only one resource: Factory output.

Try http://www.imageshack.us for your quick image hosting needs, Hoo.

I have to echo the comments of others; simple is good, especially with the leisurely pace we keep here. I'm able to run Canada from a pair of simple .txt files, basically.

This is my spreadsheet.... It deals with material and availability of slips/docks. Can´t see how it should handle 5 resources easily. It is possible, of course, could use a pivot or something, but then it starts to no longer be fun.

Is everything calculated automatically? For my spreadsheet I have to choose a design and place it in the slot for slips/docks. The rest is done by Excel. Problem I see that with more resources one has to calculate against 5 values, not just one. I´m not sure I am able to handle that.... :o/

(There is a second sheet/page on my sheet that helped me deal with the treaty limits but as those are gone I haven´t posted it here.)

On the resources what I was suggesting was more along the lines of they are needed to make factories active. Hopefully one wouldn't need to alter the ship building part of the spreadsheets at all, just add a new section to figure out how many factories are active.

At a basic level :

Say "AH" has 15 Factories.
To make those 15 work, you need 15 units of "Major Ore" and 15 of "Major Energy"

Now AH only produces 8 "Major Ore", but 40 of "Minor energy" (coal) which converts to 20 "Major Energy". Leaving 5 to try to trade for the missing Major Ore.

Say they can only get 5 in return...then only 13 factories run.

So you sign a deal with a minor country to protect them and give them 1 factory worth of output in return for a free 2 major ore. Now you can run all 15 factories, but have a vested interest in that supply line and events effecting that minor nation as a long term relationship. Alternately, you could just invade them. Which might annoy someone else looking to strike a deal/invade.

Could you subdivide into coal,rubber, tin, nickle and the other 'strategic' resources- sure.
For each Factory need : 10 units Iron, 1 nickle, 1 rubber, Can substitute LG Iron, "alt alloy" (copper/moly) and synth rubber on a 2:1 basis... etc.

Either way, the trade and economics simply set up how many factories you run, things don't change after that.

Of course, if you wanted to make units of Oil and Coal needed to run the fleet around (maintenance).

Quoted

Originally posted by HoOmAn
Is everything calculated automatically? For my spreadsheet I have to choose a design and place it in the slot for slips/docks. The rest is done by Excel. Problem I see that with more resources one has to calculate against 5 values, not just one. I´m not sure I am able to handle that.... :o/

(There is a second sheet/page on my sheet that helped me deal with the treaty limits but as those are gone I haven´t posted it here.)

I enter a ship's tonnage into a suitable slot, and each quarter I change the "current quarter" upward by 1, and the rest is automatic.

I can adjust the build speed N (normal), E (extended, plus 10% time) or S (slow, plus 20% time); each step recalculating tonnage per quarter so allowing a little flexibility in the building schedule.

As the tonnage on the Shipyard, Scrapping, and Refit pages change, it automatically adjusts the tonnage on the Factories page.

Just use money!
=simple
Iron -steel-oil etc. = money

and Springsharp already accounts for it and benchmarked against existing ships.

Cheers.