Charles2222
Posts: 3993
Joined: 3/12/2001
Status: offline
|
For those who think shorter scenarios are just the thing, I would suggest you put some more thought into it. I know that not being able to complete a battle in one session seems really decisive to some people, but even if one battle takes often 2-5 days for you to complete, as it can with me sometimes, the other end of things is worse in my opinion.
Suppose a battle takes 10 hours to complete, on average. You have a lot of problems knocking that amount down. For one thing I've expressed frustration with the 'mine' system, it's just too blasted long.
By the mine system I mean that mines take for too long to spot. This is even getting to be a problem for me in the standard-time campaign battles. The mines are taking longer to spot as of V.5, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've been unannouncingly been made harder to spot since.
The reverse awful opposite of that is how mines are handled in scenarios. For some reason, I suspect it's because accomodations are being made to make it difficult for the gamey, designers don't follow the campaign standard. They seem to think that giving 20 turns for a meeting engagement is the same thing as 20 turns in an assault with mines galore. I admit, 20 turns is usually a pretty good rate for a meeting engagement, though I think the campaign has it at 30 turns, but when you throw mines in there, that should change everything, as indeed the campaign does.
I don't rant in this manner for the sake of changing scenarios, because as far as I'm concerned that's a lost war anyway, but I do it in the hopes that people will reflect a bit more on how much different CL may become because of insistence on basically completing a game in one sitting, and also that CL campaigns would at least hold out to "the longer battles".
What has changed? We have campaign assaults which are often 35-40 turns long. We have designers who make those same battles often 18-23 turns long. From what I've seen, there's been no change whatsoever, in designing, once the mines became harder to spot. The fact of the matter is that scenarios haven't become longer due to too many turns, but they are often "played" longer because one is spending so much more time trying to find mines (for the gamey, of course that's not too much of a problem because they always know where they are anyway) though from what I've seen the mine placement is getting more unpredictable as the AI sets them.
The fact of the matter is, aside from the mines, that it's going to take you just as long to take what you've always taken no matter the turns allowed. If the total casualties amount to a couple of platoons lost for each side, with maybe one cluster of objectives taken, then they can make real short scenarios with very few units and that would speed things and make them very shallow compared to now. Personally I like playing to annihilate the enemy, which takes longer, but I doubt that something quicker such as much smaller forces, and one objective cluster right on the enemy front line would be very enjoyable even for those who aren't more into annihilating the other forces.
I'm just not so sure that many realize the full displeasure of the scenarios becoming shorter, yet, as compared to having to hash out a battle over a few days. Matter-of-factly I now find the most demoralizing and boring part of the game is having to place units on the map (and no, I don't use auto-deploy, which seems pointless). I enjoy the fighting so much with generally between 90-115 units on my side, that I sure don't want to be spending more of my time in the boring tedium of placing units (though upgrading is generally fun).
Thanks.
|
Printable Version
Raiders SP Arsenal scenarios-Do you play them? - 
Some REALLY good scenarios..... - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread