Weather and Day/Night

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    • Weather and Day/Night

      I’ve been wondering, wouldn’t it be nice if the game had some real weather, instead of just sunny and cloudy? For example, for a country like the UK, you could have a lot of rain, for a country like USSR, you could have a lot of snow, and so on. Also, based on the weather, troops’ attack/defense would change as well. Day and night would also be interesting.

    • Good idea. Night would be interesting as battleships would dominate while aircraft carriers would rule the day.
      Problem is:
      The main issue with daytime is that the timespan is mind screwy enough already. It takes 2 days to make a lvl.4 Japanese battleship which takes three years in real life, while a motorised division takes just hours to travel the length of Great Britain or Honshu. On such idiosyncratic timescales, a good time for day or night might be only a few minutes.
      Also, Lady Arastoga reminds me that if the days were to take, say, a real day, this would benefit or detriment unfairly such players as live in certain time zones; I for example live in Australia, and generally interact with Asian or Australian players except if I have a day off. I might find a way to exploit this. Even a season may only take 6 hours or even less (IDK how long a day is and frankly neither do the developers).
      Weather would be good, and in, say, the North African desert or other extreme temperatures, infantry and other units might take attrition, and others be more effective. However, terrain already fills most of the function.
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • A bit of number crunching.

      WWII lasted from September 1st, 1939 to Sept 2nd, 1945. 6 Years x 365 days, that's 2,190 days and nights.

      I just played a 100 map and it ended on Day 24 several others ended around the same time so I'll use that as a base.

      So 2,190 / 24 (in game days) = 91 Day/Night in game changes for each of our 24 hour RL days. That puts game time at roughly 3 months per RL Day. That's almost 4 in-game-Days per RL hour.

      An average day with 12 hours of daylight day, would be represented in game, at normal speed, by roughly 8 minuted of in game "Day" followed by 8 minute of in game "Night"

      Any "EVENT" map at 10x speed would be as if sitting in front of a slow Strobe-Light... going on and off every 45 seconds.

      I think those kind of variations, including a typhoon that might last a week in RL yet only 35 minutes of Game time at 1x speed, are all too minor an event to incorporate into game mechanics. Would it really make a difference. And in speed games they become (even if only visual elements) completely irrelevant if not distractions.
      General Maximus Decimus Meridius - "Are you not entertained?"

    • OneNutSquirrel wrote:

      A bit of number crunching.

      WWII lasted from September 1st, 1939 to Sept 2nd, 1945. 6 Years x 365 days, that's 2,190 days and nights.

      I just played a 100 map and it ended on Day 24 several others ended around the same time so I'll use that as a base.

      So 2,190 / 24 (in game days) = 91 Day/Night in game changes for each of our 24 hour RL days. That puts game time at roughly 3 months per RL Day. That's almost 4 in-game-Days per RL hour.

      An average day with 12 hours of daylight day, would be represented in game, at normal speed, by roughly 8 minuted of in game "Day" followed by 8 minute of in game "Night"

      Any "EVENT" map at 10x speed would be as if sitting in front of a slow Strobe-Light... going on and off every 45 seconds.

      I think those kind of variations, including a typhoon that might last a week in RL yet only 35 minutes of Game time at 1x speed, are all too minor an event to incorporate into game mechanics. Would it really make a difference. And in speed games they become (even if only visual elements) completely irrelevant if not distractions.
      That assumes your war was as long as WWII, which seems doubtful. I've played far longer or shorter ones myself. Even if it were a HWW game between Britain and Germany there's a ton that could have affected the war.
      Besides, some of the units' names are, e.g. "Motorised infantry type 1934" and the P-26 is available on Day 1, meaning Day 1 is, at earliest, 1932, and day 2 is, at earliest, 1935. Atom Bombs are available from day 16 (in practice, day 18) in British doctrine, which puts it in early 1945. So 15 days = 10 years by that calculation, and 1 day = 0.66 years. The M60 tank of 1959 is available on Day 24, which is 8 days after, or just over 5 years later, when the M47 Patton came out. So no real calculations are possible and certainly not by measuring one's own game length.
      And 8 minutes is less than the 30 minute attack time.
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • I'm rather negative about the implementation of "weather", but I think it's wrong to predict that the short duration and infrequent occurrence of an event alone will have little impact on the game.

      Both can have a huge impact on the game as long as they don't overlap.

      In other words, even if a single weather event does not have a large impact, the impact of repeated weather events accumulates.

      And even if it doesn't happen ofttimes, the effects of weather events that have fatal consequences once in a while need no explanation, doesn't it?

      Especially for the latter, even if it is "including a typhoon that might last a week in RL yet only 35 minutes", I think it's more appropriate to consider that the "period that may occur" before and after the event affects a game indirect.

      The post was edited 2 times, last by pod_than ().

    • pod_than wrote:

      I'm rather negative about the implementation of "weather", but I think it's wrong to predict that the short duration and infrequent occurrence of an event alone will have little impact on the game.

      Both can have a huge impact on the game as long as they don't overlap.

      In other words, even if a single weather event does not have a large impact, the impact of repeated weather events accumulates.

      And even if it doesn't happen ofttimes, the effects of weather events that have fatal consequences once in a while need no explanation, doesn't it?

      Especially for the latter, even if it is "including a typhoon that might last a week in RL yet only 35 minutes", I think it's more appropriate to consider that the "period that may occur" before and after the event affects a game indirect.
      The game's fine as it is.
      If we added weather we'd need more complexities in other areas (e.g. industry) to balance, that are of course detrimental, hence removed as of 1.5.
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • I agree that day/night is too microscopic to implement. Season might be able to be implemented, but please consider this scenario.

      It is saturday evening, after dinner. I have driven the kids to their sporting events all day, done the shopping, and even managed to make the time to keep my wife happy by having coffee with her in a nice cafe. Now all my daily duties are over, and I have some spare hours to play my favorite game.

      I load my current game. Alas, I am playing Russia and it happens to be the wet season now, so my entire tank army is drowning in the mud and the planes can't fly because the weather is really too awful. I can do three clicks to order some new units, but that's about it. Summer won't be here until midnight and I want to go to bed by then. I log off in frustration.

      Do we really expect our players to adjust their daily schedules to the campaign season in their games...? I personally think there is a pretty clear answer to that question.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      I agree that day/night is too microscopic to implement. Season might be able to be implemented, but please consider this scenario.

      It is saturday evening, after dinner. I have driven the kids to their sporting events all day, done the shopping, and even managed to make the time to keep my wife happy by having coffee with her in a nice cafe. Now all my daily duties are over, and I have some spare hours to play my favorite game.

      I load my current game. Alas, I am playing Russia and it happens to be the wet season now, so my entire tank army is drowning in the mud and the planes can't fly because the weather is really too awful. I can do three clicks to order some new units, but that's about it. Summer won't be here until midnight and I want to go to bed by then. I log off in frustration.

      Do we really expect our players to adjust their daily schedules to the campaign season in their games...? I personally think there is a pretty clear answer to that question.
      The world's climate does not change at the same time.
      Of course, it is expected that there will be days when it will be as you pointed out, but there will be days when it is not as you pointed out.
      Even without explaining the actual Russian climate, it's an obvious fact, isn't it?

      By the way, according to the Köppen climate type, the climate of Russia seems to be like the URL pasted below.
      upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…ussia_K%C3%B6ppen.svg.png

      The post was edited 1 time, last by pod_than ().

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      I agree that day/night is too microscopic to implement. Season might be able to be implemented, but please consider this scenario.

      It is saturday evening, after dinner. I have driven the kids to their sporting events all day, done the shopping, and even managed to make the time to keep my wife happy by having coffee with her in a nice cafe. Now all my daily duties are over, and I have some spare hours to play my favorite game.

      I load my current game. Alas, I am playing Russia and it happens to be the wet season now, so my entire tank army is drowning in the mud and the planes can't fly because the weather is really too awful. I can do three clicks to order some new units, but that's about it. Summer won't be here until midnight and I want to go to bed by then. I log off in frustration.

      Do we really expect our players to adjust their daily schedules to the campaign season in their games...? I personally think there is a pretty clear answer to that question.
      Yes, and this is probably the main reason why this wouldn't work.
      Would be interesting for those with enough time. Not too many of those though.
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • pod_than wrote:

      A situation that "my entire tank army is drowning in the mud and the planes can't fly because the weather is really too awful" is exciting for me though...
      It's like the Japanese Imperial Army of the Imphal operation ( ウ号作戦 ).
      Meanwhile what about at sea? E.g. Jutland was rather foggy which affected the outcome, and at Tsushima the weather was famously fine with high waves (hence allowing Tōgō 's fleet to engage at long range).
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks