I found a couple of bugs. One I think is known, that if you grind the game without quit after completing a turn, things can start to get wonky.
I noticed a few time, so I'm guessing it's standard, every time an infantry unit is 2 and 1 turns away from requiring a resupply, if they were in ambush or OP mode, they quite the mode and stand up. Aside from it being a PITA to put them back they way they belong, with SF, when you put them back into OP mode it costs doesn't just cost another 3 to put them back, but actually 5(!!) are assessed, which means, if you had planned on calling in an A-10 Warthog to hit an enemy, you can now forget it, because your SF are now on hunger strike.
I've seen Husky hit mines and have the highway damaged. Additionally they lose the rest fraction of their movement point, which can leave them in a lerch.
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What still bugs me, sometimes badly:
Game Mechanics
- Let me pick my flight path by myself by using Ctrl-Click... really. I don't want to fiddle around with your wonky path, which flies right over an area Taliban has just disappeared into.
- When with a Buffalo, I click on 'construct road', ALL the hexes eligible are highlighted. When a Blackhawk over the mountains wants to drop an infantry squad somewhere near a poppy field, I have to fiddle around with the mouse pointer, going over ever hex, to see which ones are eligible. And it's the exact same thing when picking a squad up. Man, leave the ef'ing poppies alone and do it right, like the Buffalo! *SHEESH* what a PITA!
- Speaking of dropping off and picking up -- squads AND supplies -- what's this adjacent hex sometimes, and sometimes not BS. Make it all the same hex and stop fooling around with non-sense.
- I've played some very complex board games, and I've rarely had an opponent who was against or incapable of counting and keeping track of fractions of movement points. No, generally, if I asked if we would play that way, people looked like I'd asked if they'd like to cut off a finger before starting the game. But as with the helos, if you kept track of MP fractions, and allowed using Ctrl-Click to plot a move, it would be so much fairer and easier to plan, instead of making me bang my head on the desk every time. It's a computer program. Doing fractions and keeping track of minutia is what computers were made for... well, that an porn.
- If I don't have enough PP or whatever to use it, grey-out an option. Don't rearrange buttons. I don't know how many times I've tried to go through units quickly, clicked to pick up supplies from a nearby FOB, and then go into ambush mode, but the buttons have shifted and I accidentally clicked on RTB!! FUUUUUUUU!!!!! Really!! Leave the poppies alone, man!
The concept is interesting. The imbalance of power and influence in different areas affecting the same outcome will probably always fascinate curious humans, and that's asymmetrical warfare in a nutshell. However, von Clausewitz is in affect more than ever in AW - War is merely the continuation of politics by other means. And here is where the game breaks down, IMHO.
Looking at the cost of running the war, the best advice -- what apparently the public wants -- is to never leave the HQ. Fighting a war is logistics, first and last. And in this game, not the enemy is your enemy, people back home telling you not to drive your trucks is your enemy, and I don't think that reflects on the conflict and public support at all. No one complained about the day-to-day business of logistics. They complained about losses, and costs, compared to successes.
The way the game works now, unless you immediately have most villages hooked up to the highway and with a water tower, the negative PP are practically impossible to maintain. Running supplies and sweeping roads of IED's cost immensely, when they should not cost at all.
PP, IMHO, should be based on
- Turn number. The higher the turn number, the more PP you ought to have.
- Loses. Wounded and especially lost units should cost PP.
- Maybe having too many units in-land, but there has to be a number of units that cost nothing. The premise of anything else is ridiculous.