Situational Awareness (and the lack thereof)

[Hellfish6]

I played my first 2020 game last night (I actually ended up playing it till 4am, damn you all!).

Overall I like it. A lot. In many ways it's very nearly the geopolitical simulation I've always wanted. I played SR2010, but not in a long time, so I'm approaching this with fairly fresh eyes.

1. The lack of geopolitical situational awareness. I picked the 2020 World in Conflict campaign as my very first mission. There was no description of what the campaign actually entailed (were the enemy countries just more hostile in general? Were people already at war with each other?).

I had no idea what was happening in the world. It was only some six months in, after I'd solicited Russia for some of their technology that I noticed they were at Defcon 1. WTF? I looked at their alliances and THE ENTIRE WORLD was at war with China, North Korea and Myanmar.

I had no idea. I looked at China and saw huge gouges of their territory swallowed up by their enemies. Hong Kong was besieged by the Vietnamese. Manchuria had Russian tanks all over it. I had no idea.

There's got to be some kind of world news system. I feel like I'm living in a vacuum. Never at one point was I made aware of a declaration of war, never was I solicited to join either side's alliance, etc. At the very least, I should be notified if someone goes to war with someone else. I'd also expect to be asked to help one side or another.

It'd also be nice if news events swayed public opinion - either random events (evidence shows China murdering POWs, or US bombs school, dozens of kids killed) or events triggered to cities/towns falling that affects your country's attitude toward another combatant and provides towards a future casus belli.

Think of all the little events that made the war in Iraq so unpopular across the world. Even without the initial invasion, events Abu Ghraib, US soldiers accused of murder, evidence of Iranian involvement all have an effect on world opinion.

2. Lack of unit formation structure. We've talked about this elsewhere, so I won't continue it here. It does hurt the combat system, though. I'm thinking of a viable solution.

3. Diplomacy. This is kind of tied into #1. I'd like to be able to offer gifts and make demands in the diplomatic negotiation screen. Right now, AFAIK, I have to make a counter offer (x for y) to be able to make a deal. I'd like to offer gifts to allies that I like, which increase their favor with me, and make potentially unreasonable demands of my enemies, which can affect casus belli.

The diplomatic negotiation menu is pretty useful - in many ways far more useful than in other strategy games. It just isn't fully utilized, especially vis-a-vis the AI. I only get trade offers, counter offers to trades I initiate (which are often unreasonable, BTW) and the occasional alliance offer. I'd love to see the AI take better advantage of the diplomatic system. Again, it feels like I'm living in a void in the game world.

4. Buying/Selling units. As far as I can tell, we can only trade unit designs right now. That's unfortunate, as I'd really like to be able to buy and sell battalions, ships and squadrons. The arms trade is a massive international business - far moreso than technology trading.

I played as South Africa and right off the bat I cut half my army. I'd much rather have sold them that scrapped them.

5. Unit production. It's a little too optimized right now, IMHO. I bought the design for the Su-30 from Russia and 120 days later (give or take) I had an Su-30 squadron. I'd think it'd take a bit longer than that to produce 18 aircraft, never mind tooling up for production.

I suspect some people would argue with me on this, but I'd like to see longer build times. Two or three times longer, at minimum. I'm building amphibious ships in three months - a feat even the United States in WW2 was hard pressed to achieve. In 76 days I've got three squadrons of IL-76 aircraft.

You can give us production bonuses relevant to our respective Defcon levels, but I'd expect peacetime production speeds to be pretty low.

This might be a larger issue with:

6. Game speed. Even at fastest it feels too slow when you're not doing anything. I realize that since it's real-time, and there is probably fighting going on elsewhere in the world, it might not be practical from a gameplay or CPU perspective to speed the game up any faster. I'd like to see a 1-day-per-second pace, however, as an ideal.


Like I said at the beginning, SR2020 is a good game. On the verge of being great. I offer the above as humble constructive criticism as a fan of the genre.

[Hellfish6]

Also, any way we can get a visual representation of weapon ranges? I'd like to see a circle showing the max range of the missile/gun/SAM my ship is carrying or the max range of the enemy SAM system I spotted so I can avoid it.

[Bones]

I just wanted to say this was a very nice post. I agree with you on every topic! Couldn't have expressed it better!

[danceswithfools]

Amen to that

[Bobb4]

Very well put.

And if I could stress on one point more than the other.
This is a massive geopolotical sim which include warfare.
Yet nothing political is goinging on.
I also played South Africa and invaded Lesotho to test the Military.
Ps by this stage I had secured rafale multi-role fighters and built six squadrons making me one of the most powerful nations in airforces in the region.
When I checked every nation in the world had a 99% casus belli against me.
Historically South Africa did invade Lesotho without incurring the world's wrath.
Also nowhere do I see the ability to effect regime change.
Yes I wanted to invade Lesotho but no, I did bnot want to incorporate them into a greater South Africa.
And option must be include to restore borders and install a sympathetic regime in later patches.
Also although I had a force 100% bigger than theirs, they never once attempted to sue for peace????

[Joly]

As New York, I did not notice half the country was at war with Texas, which took half the country, till it invaded Ohio :/

Solution:

1. If anyone on your continent goes to war, ally or not, have a window pop up, pausing the game and informing you of the fact. The window will have 2 check boxes, 1 to not be informed, 1 to not pause the game if this happens again.

2. Even if you are not allied, you should be able to declare war on the agressor for the sake of world peace. Right now if I want to stop Texas from conquering the world *I* am the bad guy :? When a war starts, you have the option to go to war on the agressor, any territory of theirs you capture which belonged to another country, goes back to that country when the war is over, if it was destroyed, it is re-created. If you conquer the agressor country... that I am unsure. Perhaps it becomes unable to declare war for X years, or build new military units.

[tkobo]

As New York, I did not notice half the country was at war with Texas, which took half the country, till it invaded Ohio :/

Solution:

1. If anyone on your continent goes to war, ally or not, have a window pop up, pausing the game and informing you of the fact. The window will have 2 check boxes, 1 to not be informed, 1 to not pause the game if this happens again.

I "think" there already is a "pause on event setting .I havent used it ,so i dont know if it does exactly what your looking for.

2. Even if you are not allied, you should be able to declare war on the agressor for the sake of world peace. Right now if I want to stop Texas from conquering the world *I* am the bad guy :? When a war starts, you have the option to go to war on the agressor, any territory of theirs you capture which belonged to another country, goes back to that country when the war is over, if it was destroyed, it is re-created. If you conquer the agressor country... that I am unsure. Perhaps it becomes unable to declare war for X years, or build new military units.

Agressive countries should be giving you belli against them,everytime they start a war or do to build cap.In your case are you not acquiring belli against texas ?
Now if texas is being attacked, well you cant really blame them for winning something they didnt start.

[StoweMobile]

When I checked every nation in the world had a 99% casus belli against me.
Historically South Africa did invade Lesotho without incurring the world's wrath.
Also nowhere do I see the ability to effect regime change.

Ok did you check to see who they were allied with? If you didn't have a CB yourself, then obviously the world would be pissed at you. Also This game isn't a History simulator, so It doesn't really matter what anyone got away with in the past.
-The only way to change governments currently is if you loose an election as a democracty you can set up a dictatorshit.

[Bobb4]

Ok did you check to see who they were allied with? If you didn't have a CB yourself, then obviously the world would be pissed at you. Also This game isn't a History simulator, so It doesn't really matter what anyone got away with in the past.
-The only way to change governments currently is if you loose an election as a democracty you can set up a dictatorshit.

Its not about being historical but when is the last time you heard of a superpower interfering in africa?
The point I was try to illustrate was an over-active diplomatic system.
The USA invaded Iraq... The world did not declare war. You are right I did not have a CB against Lesitho as it was only my first game and a test.
It was dissapointing that the entire world got a 99 CB against me. Would China have cared?, Would the Russians? Would Iceland or Afganistan?
I would have understood a regional CB against me, but a blanket worldwide CB seems to drastic of a geo-political sim.
How do i mend relations with 249 countries?
As I have said it was a test game, I just expressed concern about the ease at wich the world turned on me the player.
I have restarted the game an obviously will not invade Lesotho again as it serves no purpose. But I will want to expand. My fear is a total onslaught hard-coded into the diplomatic system meaning the moment you go to war the world attacks you.
The only consolation I have is that my neighbours did not attack despite having high CB.

[Malkuth]

I agree with most of your points.

Don't agree with the build times.

By the way USA built a transport in WWII in 13 days. Average was 1 month.

[Hellfish6]

I agree with most of your points.

Don't agree with the build times.

By the way USA built a transport in WWII in 13 days. Average was 1 month.

That was WWII. It still took 2-3 years to build a fleet carrier, and 1-2 years to build and escort carrier or destroyer.

Ships got a little bit more complicated since then. Even if you could build a hull of an aircraft carrier in 270 days, it'd still take years to make the nuclear reactor and get it working properly, along with the catapults, arresting gear, communications systems, etc.

[Claudius]

Agreed on all points.

[el_slapper]

IIRC, there was 50 Casablanca CVE built in 18 months during WWII.....

What misses in most games is gearing production. It exists in HoI2 (though very badly design, & my beta-tester position was not enough to influence the way it was designed), and that's the only game I can think of.

IRL, the F22 is built in 48 of 50 of US states. Which means a big number of tools & manufature lines to process & assemble the whole bird. If, as Paris, I buy the F22 design, by no way I'll be able to build it immediatly. First I need to build all tools(I'd say 18 months for such a baby), then to set up production lines(maybe 3 months), & then I can build. And the first serie(maybe 6 months) will be slower than next ones. If I stop, & years later come back, the tools will be still here, but the manufacture lines are to be set up again, & the worker's experience is gone.

so, the F22 should be divided in :

==>R&D time(quite a few years, I guess, that's a tough baby); tradable, needed once forever.
==>Tools building time(18 months), not tradable, needed once forever
==>Line set-up(3 months), not tradable, needed for each new streak of buildings(if you build 3 squadrons at the same time, each streak needs the set-up once)
==>production time(6 months), modified so :

+20% for the first one
standard for 2nd & 3rd
-5% for 4th to 7th
-9% for 8th to 15th
-12% for 16th to 31st
-14% for 32nd to 63th
-15% beyond
(just a rough example, can probably refined further).

[Hellfish6]

I still think that's a wildly optimistic production time. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of components are used in the building of every single aircraft. To simply get a set of blueprints is not enough - especially as you'd have to make each one of those thousands of parts from scratch. You can't just to into a hardware store and buy even the nuts and bolts and fiber optic wire used in modern aircraft.

In essence, you'd have to make hundreds of smaller production lines just to make the parts to build an aircraft. You'd still need many months, if not years, of practice to figure out the practicality of putting them all together and ensuring they all work properly.

I'm willing to put up with the system since we can't buy, sell and trade individual units right now, but you guys are crazy to think it's easy or a matter of years to build anything modern from scratch.

A quick fact check... yes, Casablancas were built in amazingly short times. Looks to be about 8-9 months average from keel to commissioning. Note, however, that the ships were maintenance nightmares and almost all of them were decommissioned after the war. They weren't meant to last long at all.

I still fail to see any relevance of comparing WWII manufacturing capability with that of today's world. There is only one shipyard in the entire United States today capable of building an aircraft carrier (Newport News), and only three to four other yards capable of building a warship at all.

No matter how optimistic you are, you simply cannot build a modern aircraft, warplane or tank at the drop of a hat.

[Hellfish6]

BG, any comment?