WesWorld

So if WW2 would ever become reality what changes would you like to see?

One where the 2nd Roman Empire stretches around the world?

I quite fancy moving Antartica about 40° north into the Southern Pacific as well as another possible country.

Another possible country?

Quoted

Originally posted by Vukovlad
Another possible country?

I have an idea for keeping it fairly close to the South Pole, remote and cold but having Neanderthals develop to a similar level of modern humans. Haven't fleshed it out much though yet.

A true Terra Australis or a southern Lemuria...

So how about rules?

Kinda sounds like my "Motunui" fictional land...

In Wesworld 2 I'd like to play a Great Power with some overseas colonies. Maybe something with the relative power of France. I have this crazy idea for an island country - basically, break off the southern end of Greenland and move it south until it's warm enough. Acquire Iceland as a bonus, some Caribbean and South Sea islands. Have it settled by Saint Brendan's Irish and a bunch of Vikings.

It might be fun to see a world where Austria-Hungary didn't splinter.

I also had an amusing idea for "The Outremer Kingdom of Jerusalem" which administers the Suez canal and Yemen. Sort of a 1920s state of Israel.

Something I was thing of was having a "pre-Game" starting in say 1500 with 10 year turns to create a history for any overseas possessions.

And Of course the Knights of St.John has to survive

Interesting question.

Vukovlad's idea is interesting as well.

My thoughts are more on sim structure than historical nations.

A. Economics.
I'd like to see some sort of simple resources involved. Industry needs ore and energy. If you don't have the primary, you need multiple of one or more secondaries. Don't have enough, then your industry doesn't run. Therefore you have to indicate who you are obtaining it from- presto a supply line exists.

This could make strategic alliances, and trade protection considerations more important in fleet development.

The economy could also have 2 aspects- industrial and manpower. Manpower allocated in large amounts to achieve something like building a dock.

B. Fewer real heavy weights and light weights.
We are blessed to have some folks that enjoy storylines and keep the small countries running.

But if you figure 1 factories DD/Es, 1 misc, 1 infrastructure, 1 for aux, 3 for cruisers and 3 for capital ships. Then in 20 years you can have 60 DDs, 12 CLs, 4 CAs, 8 BBs/CVs on 10 factories..hey that was the original baseline.

So I think all PC nations should be limited to say 8-16 factories, with larger/smaller staying that way, unless somebody really wants a smaller. The bigger ones should have part of their factory base dedicated overseas, or dependent on imports.

C. Ports, not docks/slips
Right now I think much of the investment for a drydock can only be rationalized as going to the cranes and machine shops, plate making , gun foundaries, all the infrastructure dedicated to that. However none of these run flat out. I think ports should be the big investment sink, and the docks or slips there relatively cheap.

D. Generic tech limits
Set broad tech limits, make it random if in any given year the game progresses to the next one.

E. Not necessarily maintenance calcs, but some sort of limit on overall size based on population.

F. Forced war...or threat of same. Or some heavy hand on diplomacy.
For some reason it bugs me to see big blocks of adjoining nations all harmoniously joined against the outsider. History usually sees adjoining nations fighting, or considering it.

Maybe a default diplomatic status, and you can only adjust it up once a year ? Early on that would preclude trade so you make friends with different people... Not sure how this would work.

Along those lines I'd like to see infrastructure for army, airforce and civil sectors as well.

As for reality changes I also like the idea of an intact A/H empire along with the Ottoman empire.

What would the civil sector comprise of in game terms?

Well of the top of my head factory's, foundry's, mines and refinery's. Basically a base to determine what materials a country has. It might be that a country has none of the materials it needs and has to trade to aquire the ones it does.

You guys might want to take a look at N-Verse (navalism.org) to see how such a system would work. There we have covered most of the stuffed discussed here with varying degrees of sucess.

As for WW2, hmm... a true Mexican Empire would be nice...

Other interesting options:
Israeli Empire
Persian Empire
Carthage
Mini-Siamese Empire

Personally, I took a greater interest in Wesworld mostly because it had history close to our timeline. I considered Navalism briefly, but the history was just too wacky for me to follow.

Well that was the difference between both sims. Wesworld was more or less as historical with a few diferences while navalism was completely fictional allowing for unlimited possibility's.

And that's fine for some folks, but I prefer the more historical bent of things. I mean, Wesworld is ahistorical - we've got Bharat, Nordmark, SAE, Atlantis, a Japan which actually appears to be technologically competent... but I always can get a feel for what happened in history.

While talking WesWorld 2 please consider the following:

KEEP IT SIMPLE!


AFAIK most of us run WesWorld without much complicated spreadsheets, some probably just use pen and paper. And this is good. You all know how real life can kick in and it doesn´t make much sense to have a rule and economy set that asks for several days of work to get one report done (it already does eventually when you run a war).

TechTrees are fine - but have to be very, very flexibel to allow players to go different ways. How qill this be dealt with? A permanent game master?

The use of a world map AS IS helps tp define where resources can be found. On the other hand this means a run on those countries that hold these resources. A map AS DEFINED would be nice to have some ahistorical powers, probably a completely ahistorical world. However, some of you would then always argue why the world is exactly that way while others just acccept it as give (see some old threads with discussion about how the SAE came to life).

KEEP IN MIND THIS IS SOME KIND OF "SPEND AS MUCH TIME AS YOU LIKE" SPARE TIME AMUSEMENT!

I like the idea to focus on ports instead of slips and docks even thought the latter actually played a very huge role in large warship production. Just read about british BB design in Raven&Roberts to see how much available docking space influenced british BB designs!

An economy based on two factors (naterial and energy, money and energy, manpower and material...) could probably be dealt with but more would be overkill. In fact I think WesWorld 2 probably should be build on money alone. That way some things could be handle that we do not really consider today: costs for ships in relation to size (DDs more expensive than BBs per ton), maintenance (see alt_navals proposal herefor), costs of R&D etc.

Forced war is a problem. Some never will have time for war or any interest in getting involved. It would be very annoying to be pushed time and again if you don´t want to. This should be fun first place - both for those interested in power and war gaming as well as for those just interested to see some of their ship designs "come to life". I also think forced war rules need a permanent and completely neutral game master who is not a player. I dare asking if you feel it realistic to find such person who is willing to be game master for years but is not interested in participating?

Our "/§$( wartime economy and ship repair rules are crap and need to be re-written!

If you include ariforce, army and probably a civil sector one set of rules for all of it must do.

Whatever you plan for WesWorld 2 keep this in mind:

WESWORLD 2 WILL NOT BE A COMPUTER GAME BUT STILL FORUM BASED!

So some features that are nice to have in games like Ages of Empires can NOT be copied in our current format......

The ideas I posted were just that- partially formed ideas.
I'm in Navalism, so familiar with their much more structured approach, but thats not for everone and would be unsatisfactory for many I think.

Various elements
Economy : I actually view the idea of identifying your sources of strategic materials as more important than a civilian economy or monetary units.

Right now it seems everyone has everything they need, or discover it early. Resources were very important OTL and they get ignored when they should define trade routes and important national interests.

If this is a naval sim, those trade routes may help define the importance of your navy to you- as well as that of your overseas possessions.

Ports : I wasn't saying discard docks and slips, but they always seem to cost to much. You would still buy the port infrastructure, and the level of that would also dictate the maximum ship it's prepared to build/repair (cranes and foundaries), which slips and docks you put there is up to you.

Tech Trees :Not for everyone. But the more free form has had conflicts. Plus, it allows a fair amount of looking ahead. So I'd like to see a compromise of the two. Somewhat like the transom stern became gradually available here by a date. Those dates would not need to be slavish to the OTL. This could also be a way to recognise an nation's specialty as a +1 time period. USA- engines, Italy- Aerodynamics, Japan- Anime etc.

Tech tree: Could be something as simple as each factory grants you 0.5 tech points to advance certain technology's. The technology's would be fairly simple and would merely serve as an indicator as to who is advanced in what feilds, not delve into specifics.

As for me, on the whole tech tree/economy issue, it really doesn't matter to me, however, so long as its simple seeing as im one of the pen and paper people.

As for countries

-Portugese Empire (Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Timor, and Brazil) sort of a middle-class power.

-Byzantine Empire

-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

-Outreamer sounds good to me, perhaps with Cyprus and Malta added?

-Crusader state of Egypt?

-Austria-Hungary would likely be my favourite to play, although any of the others would be fun.

My biggest thing is when we go Alternate History, changing one tiny thing means that there is a ripple effect on the development of other nations. Britain keeping its American colonies which was possible either through giving the Americans representation in Parliment or by crushing the rebellion has a huge impact on whether or not the rest of the Americas gain their independence from their colonial masters. It also means there is a definate possibility of no French Revolution, which means likely no Napolean, and either no Italy or Germany, or them forming at a later date.

Basically, everyone has ideas on how the map of WW2 is going to be, and thats great. There's nothing wrong with creativity, but it might be best to pick a couple PODs (point of departures) and work from there. Also, the further back in history we go, the more things we have to change.

Tight tech rules, and complicated economic rules were part of the reason I chose to leave Navalism 3, and not Wesworld when I realised I needed to give one up.

I like the idea of a tech tree, but as Hoo says it has to be very loose in order to allow a large amount of flexibility.

More important is the way we pay for things, infrastructure is very expensive, (more than Battleships), and and maintance and wartime issues are problematic as Hoo says.

Another concern is the start point we choose, and each nations levels in terms of starting infrastructure, and starting fleets.

And while it is unpopular, we need to start with some form of treaty in place in terms of naval limitations, though possibly not as tight as Cleito.

Countries I like the idea of include:-

The Confederate States of America

A More Balanced Nordmark (What this entails, I am not yet sure)

A Dutch Empire including a Colony centered on New Amsterdam (RL New York)