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Suggestions to improve WITE - 3/30/2013 9:46:18 PM   
tex_ka95

 

Posts: 89
Joined: 11/27/2007
Status: offline 		I have a couple of suggestions to improve WITE.

I see at least one person already suggested this.....at the beginning of a scenario, giving the player the option to get randomized unit reinforcements and the ability to request them. I'm not saying ALL reinforcements and should be randomized, but we all know that a lot of the reinforcements the Germans in particular received were due to what was going on in the war and that may not coincide with what is happening in a players particular game. Why does Germany receive a load of reinforcements in July/August 1944. Because AGC evaporated. But that didn't happen when I played the 43-45 scenario. It would be cooler if players had ability to request extra reinforcements when they are needed, expending admin points. The less requests you make, the more VP's you get and less admin points you spend. And the game is more realistic. This probably makes more sense in the larger campaign scenarios than in the smaller, shorter battle focused scenarios. Withdrawals could be randomized too but probably not worth the effort.

My other suggestion is to allow players to click on and find units that are scheduled for withdrawal from the Reinforcements and Withdrawal screen like you can in the OOB screen. Otherwise if I have a unit about to be withdrawn and I want to replace it in the line with another unit, I either have to dig it up on the map or in the OOB screen. Both a pain.

Totally looking forward to War in the West!

Thanks!
Post #: 1
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 3/30/2013 9:59:07 PM   
Joel Billings


Posts: 32265
Joined: 9/20/2000
From: Santa Rosa, CA
Status: offline 		In WitW, we have the East Front Controll Option. When this is on, there is an active East Front/Other Fronts box where German units are deployed by the German player. Any reinforcements that moved to the west or withdrawals that moved east are not in effect when this option is on. The player gets to decide when to move units. Based on the units in the East Front box, progress on the east front is tracked, losses taken, etc. I expect that in WitE 2.0 we'll have a West Front Control option that works in a similar manner.

_____________________________

All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

(in reply to tex_ka95)
Post #: 2
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 3/30/2013 11:42:14 PM   
Simbelmude

 

Posts: 28
Joined: 2/24/2013
Status: offline 		I'm worried about WitW having the same scale as WitE. Episodes like the Battle of Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge will have a lot less depth if portrayed at divisional scale, specially with the current stacking rules. Worse, the one week turns: the I-Go U-Go (one player does his whole week movement while the other does nothing) might be ok to represent Soviet lack of reactiveness in early war, but I can hardly imagine the same system for Normandy. Imagine: the US punches a hole in the German lines and uses his full motorized mps to drive the whole way to Paris while the Germans sit and watch, before being allowed to do anything.
(This, BTW, is another prolem that has been mentioned before, but sparked little reaction: there is no such thing as delay in WitE. Either you punch a hole or you don't. Whether you open a corridor with one early hasty attack resulting in a rout (conceivably a 12 hours engagement), or with 25 deliberate attacks all of them resulting in "holds" except the very last, and sucking up all of the attackers' mps (probably using up the whole week), the exploiting motorized units will use their full mp when moving through the breach). This is a severe shortcoming of the simulation model.)

< Message edited by Simbelmude -- 3/30/2013 11:43:05 PM >

(in reply to Joel Billings)
Post #: 3
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 3/31/2013 4:48:30 PM   
rmonical

 

Posts: 2474
Joined: 4/1/2011
From: United States
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quote:

Either you punch a hole or you don't. Whether you open a corridor with one early hasty attack resulting in a rout (conceivably a 12 hours engagement), or with 25 deliberate attacks all of them resulting in "holds" except the very last, and sucking up all of the attackers' mps (probably using up the whole week), the exploiting motorized units will use their full mp when moving through the breach). This is a severe shortcoming of the simulation model.)


The extra MP cost for entering an "enemy" hex helps with this issue. The next logical step is to treat combat in a hex as something like interdiction with each combat adding to the cost to enter the hex. A hasty attack adds X and a deliberate attack adds 2x. A feature like this would have a fairly dramatic impact on WITE.

(in reply to Simbelmude)
Post #: 4
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/7/2013 2:28:35 PM   
The Guru

 

Posts: 94
Joined: 12/24/2012
Status: offline
quote:

The extra MP cost for entering an "enemy" hex helps with this issue.

Might "help", but it doesn't solve the problem.

The current model introduces two very undesirable aberrations, from a simulationist perspective.

1) as Simbelmude pointed out, the absence of delay caused by enemy resistance. Whether the advance path of a unit is unoccupied enemy territory or whether it had to be cleared of enemy units, which held their ground against a good number of assaults makes asbsolutely no difference.

quote:

The next logical step is to treat combat in a hex as something like interdiction with each combat adding to the cost to enter the hex. A hasty attack adds X and a deliberate attack adds 2x.

Something like that, yes. Hexes where comat occured should have a mp cost penalty, and probably a zoc. (cost would depend, you're right, one the type of assaults led against the hex and the numerof "hold" results")
quote:

A feature like this would have a fairly dramatic impact on WITE.

A very beneficial one, in my opinion. Would probably solve the Lvov opening issue.

2) Units using their last mps, can open a breach through which units units using their first mps can pass. They can even combine in attack. While asbsolute synchronisation is not necessary, the current system is still a serious aberration. This leads to the classical tactic of clearing the way with the units furthest away from the frot line, so the units closest to the front line can exploit using their full mps.
A solution would be to have to sort of a sequence of movement impulses, three for example, where each unit would have to use athird of its mps (or forfeit them) efore moving on to the next impulse.

These two features of teh current model constitute a serious problem. In fact, the current model even constitues a severe retrogradation compared to the ancestor War in Russia, with its "plotted movement" system.

I find it curious that it doesn't really seem to bother anyone...

(in reply to rmonical)
Post #: 5
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/7/2013 7:04:24 PM   
Numdydar

 

Posts: 3211
Joined: 2/13/2004
Status: offline 		Because it is fun anyway .

(in reply to The Guru)
Post #: 6
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/7/2013 7:44:23 PM   
rmonical

 

Posts: 2474
Joined: 4/1/2011
From: United States
Status: offline
quote:

A solution would be to have to sort of a sequence of movement impulses, three for example, where each unit would have to use a third of its mps (or forfeit them) before moving on to the next impulse.


HPS (John Tiller) Total War in Europe uses 10 KM hexes and 2 day turns which essentially has the same impact - it roughly simulates the reaction cycle of WWII armies. The combat system has major flaws, so I lost interest. Essentially tripling the number of turns might have a negative impact on the campaign game but might make for great scenarios.

The other point to keep in mind is that the movement factors of the combat units are not "truth." They only approximately relate to time. So a corps can effectively expend all of its movement points in three days opening a hole for another corps to exploit in the following three days. The assault corps is effectively played out even though there is more time on the clock . The exploiting corps expends its energy in the second half of the week because it rested the first half of the week.

(in reply to The Guru)
Post #: 7
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/8/2013 2:28:22 PM   
The Guru

 

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Joined: 12/24/2012
Status: offline
quote:

The other point to keep in mind is that the movement factors of the combat units are not "truth." They only approximately relate to time. So a corps can effectively expend all of its movement points in three days opening a hole for another corps to exploit in the following three days. The assault corps is effectively played out even though there is more time on the clock . The exploiting corps expends its energy in the second half of the week because it rested the first half of the week.


The "resting" or "exhausted its energy" can be used as a justification in some cases, but not many. Certain situations do not imply a need to rest for half of the week, nor any sort of exhaustion requiring half a week of iddleness. In the initial advance phase of the German army in 1941, it certainly doesn't.
I admit there there is no necessity for an absolute synchronistaion of time and movement point expenditure, but there is a relation.

quote:

Essentially tripling the number of turns might have a negative impact on the campaign game but might make for great scenarios.


Including impulses in the player's turn does not mean multiplying the turns. It just means you have to complete a fraction of all your movement points for all units before expending the other fraction.

(in reply to rmonical)
Post #: 8
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/8/2013 3:31:23 PM   
gradenko2k

 

Posts: 935
Joined: 12/27/2010
Status: offline 		While trying to rein in the temporal alignment of the game might make for better realism, I'm not sure it'd necessarily lead to better gameplay. There's a lot to be said about the simplicity of WITE's movement and attack orders, compared to the tangle of The Operational Art of War.

(in reply to The Guru)
Post #: 9
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/8/2013 8:38:33 PM   
Numdydar

 

Posts: 3211
Joined: 2/13/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: The Guru

quote:

The other point to keep in mind is that the movement factors of the combat units are not "truth." They only approximately relate to time. So a corps can effectively expend all of its movement points in three days opening a hole for another corps to exploit in the following three days. The assault corps is effectively played out even though there is more time on the clock . The exploiting corps expends its energy in the second half of the week because it rested the first half of the week.


The "resting" or "exhausted its energy" can be used as a justification in some cases, but not many. Certain situations do not imply a need to rest for half of the week, nor any sort of exhaustion requiring half a week of iddleness. In the initial advance phase of the German army in 1941, it certainly doesn't.
I admit there there is no necessity for an absolute synchronistaion of time and movement point expenditure, but there is a relation.

quote:

Essentially tripling the number of turns might have a negative impact on the campaign game but might make for great scenarios.


Including impulses in the player's turn does not mean multiplying the turns. It just means you have to complete a fraction of all your movement points for all units before expending the other fraction.


Please explain how moving all your units once versus moving all your units several times a turn will not mutiply the 'turns'? If you just mean a 'turn' in game time you are correct in that a week turn will not increase in lenght. However the amount of time a player will spend has increased so that you may as well change the 'turn time' in all praticaticality. So you may as well make the game one day turns (or whatever lenght you prefer).

If you do that then you will be in WitP AE territory with one day turns. Who want to play a game of 1,600 turns like that? Oh wait, i'm playing it now lol.

As Gary did both the original WitP (not the AE version) and WitE, I assume that not having smaller turns was a design design. Personally, I am willing to accept the trade off as one monster game with daily turns is more than enough

(in reply to The Guru)
Post #: 10
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/8/2013 9:56:17 PM   
Joel Billings


Posts: 32265
Joined: 9/20/2000
From: Santa Rosa, CA
Status: offline 		We won't be changing the game scale. Although I like the idea of having combat cause a certain cost for follow on units to move through the hex, the difficulty we face is allowing the large pockets that developed quickly during the war (within one turn) actually happen without making it too easy to happen. It some ways rules are easy to come up with, it's the interplay of these rules and how they actually play out in the game that is much more difficult to balance.

_____________________________

All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

(in reply to Numdydar)
Post #: 11
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 8:24:55 AM   
The Guru

 

Posts: 94
Joined: 12/24/2012
Status: offline
quote:

Please explain how moving all your units once versus moving all your units several times a turn will not mutiply the 'turns'?


Well, my idea of a turn is the segment of an alternate sequence of players' actions. So a three (or whatever number) impulses turn wouldn't multiply the turns because after completing an partial movement impulse you keep playing and don't have to wait for the oppponent's reaction (his turn). Yet, I admit that such a turn would take a little longer than the current ones, but not necessarily much longer.

quote:

We won't be changing the game scale. Although I like the idea of having combat cause a certain cost for follow on units to move through the hex, the difficulty we face is allowing the large pockets that developed quickly during the war (within one turn) actually happen without making it too easy to happen. It some ways rules are easy to come up with, it's the interplay of these rules and how they actually play out in the game that is much more difficult to balance.


Definitely. I have the greatest respect for the work of the devs; I'm just trying to be constructive and explore potential avenues for improvement.
My initial concern, the transposition to WitW, is still valid. The Allies weren't exactly blitzkrieg specialist, and with the exception of the later months of the war, in Germany, they tended to be rather unimaginative and push back the Germans through the sheer virtue of force.
Yet, with the current system, and considering that the Allies have a very high proportion of motorized troops, we can imagine that if they manage to punch a hole and preserve just one motorized unit in reserve, however tough the German resistance, that unit could fly from Normandy to the German border in a single turn. I think for WitW the incorporation of the idea of delay is essential, and since it's just a question of logic, and that I imagine the final idea is to have a standard system for both WitE and WitW, well...
And again, the Lvov delirium that we witness now is precisely a consequence of that: the Germans can bash right into the strongest red formations and yet some Panzer units may drive as if they had had nothing but desert in front of them.

< Message edited by The Guru -- 4/9/2013 8:39:58 AM >

(in reply to Joel Billings)
Post #: 12
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 10:00:02 AM   
janh

 

Posts: 1216
Joined: 6/12/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
We won't be changing the game scale. Although I like the idea of having combat cause a certain cost for follow on units to move through the hex, the difficulty we face is allowing the large pockets that developed quickly during the war (within one turn) actually happen without making it too easy to happen. It some ways rules are easy to come up with, it's the interplay of these rules and how they actually play out in the game that is much more difficult to balance.


Getting "time" back into the turns in some manner would be a really good thing.

One idea I had would be adding MP penalties to a hex when a combat occurred that depended on combat size and type/or losses (a hasty rgt. vs brigade attack pretty much ignored, an deliberate assault if 9 units against a fortified stack leading to requiring say 6 extra MP for all following moves).

One could further this by making the MP penalty depended on the MP the attacking unit had, say a Panzer Div that attacks with the first of its say 40 starting MP causes small penalties on the first hex it "frees" in combat, but huge penalties on the hex it frees with the last attack exhausting its MPs. That way following units would "sense" time sequence in that the last hex costs "more time" to cross since it was liberated only lately, towards the end of the movement phase of the Panzer unit.

Any of those would be complex rules for sure, but would add the benefit to bring back a little more uncertainty and reduce the op-tempo for the attacker in general. They might be quite some work to balance, though, and a nightmare for AI to take into account.

< Message edited by janh -- 4/9/2013 10:01:16 AM >

(in reply to Joel Billings)
Post #: 13
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 10:39:00 AM   
Simbelmude

 

Posts: 28
Joined: 2/24/2013
Status: offline 		The idea of giving a mp cost to hexes where battles occured is an excellent one, and seems to have the favour of a few players already.

The current system creates a very undesirable distortion of the Blitzkrieg fundamentals. The idea is to penetrate deep into the enemy's rear, and therefore bypass the enemy's strongpoints by taking the path of least resistancein order to gain time.
With the current model, you can make your exploiting units go further by moving straight through areas that have been cleared with much effort and difficulty, than by taking a short hook through a path of zero resistance.
This has strong implications in the game, as the optimum tactic blatantly contradicts reality...


(in reply to janh)
Post #: 14
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 11:27:47 AM   
gradenko2k

 

Posts: 935
Joined: 12/27/2010
Status: offline 		The game already makes moving through previously-enemy-held hexes cost extra MPs as the hex gets "converted" to your side. The idea of making hexes that had combat occur in them cost even more MP has some merit, as it was done in Decisive Campaigns, but keep in mind that that game has a far smaller time and distance-scale.

(in reply to Simbelmude)
Post #: 15
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 12:38:55 PM   
Simbelmude

 

Posts: 28
Joined: 2/24/2013
Status: offline
quote:

The game already makes moving through previously-enemy-held hexes cost extra MPs as the hex gets "converted" to your side.


Well, there is a huge difference between moving into "enemy" territory, that is, territory that is simply not yet controlled, and bashing through successive layers of well-entrenched enemey divisions. Given the scale of the game, where regiments are represented with a counter, an empty, out of ZOC, enemy hex, can be considered as being virtually, well, empty. The problem is not that there is no distinction between enemy territory and friendly territory, thet prolem is that there is no distinction between totally unopposed advance into enemy territory and advance in the face of enemy resistance - whatever its intensity.

(in reply to gradenko2k)
Post #: 16
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 1:21:21 PM   
timmyab

 

Posts: 2044
Joined: 12/14/2010
From: Bristol, UK
Status: offline 		I'd be in favor of extra MP costs for units entering battle locations.Quite substantial in the case of deliberate assault or multiple hasty attack locations.To compensate the phasing player I would encourage the defending side to defend less deep by limiting fort building to within two hexes of an enemy unit and by encouraging defending units to stack and to form lines.Deep defenses would still be possible but much less effective than they are at the moment.Deep defensive fort belts would also still be possible but only with the use of FZs which need to be much more expensive and/or limited than they currently are.
There would probably have to be some special rules for turn one of the 41 campaign.

< Message edited by timmyab -- 4/9/2013 1:24:49 PM >

(in reply to Simbelmude)
Post #: 17
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 1:27:59 PM   
JeremyB

 

Posts: 30
Joined: 1/31/2013
Status: offline
quote:

I'd be in favor of extra MP costs for units entering battle locations.


I would definitely see that as a major improvement to the present simulation mechanisms.

(in reply to timmyab)
Post #: 18
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 1:33:18 PM   
morvael


Posts: 11762
Joined: 9/8/2006
From: Poland
Status: offline 		+1

it will be enough to add a fixed amount of movement point cost for each deliberate and hasty attack (different for leg and motorized) in the hex (in given player-turn).

(in reply to JeremyB)
Post #: 19
RE: Suggestions to improve WITE - 4/9/2013 3:12:15 PM   
The Guru

 

Posts: 94
Joined: 12/24/2012
Status: offline 		and maybe give these battle hexes a bit of a ZOC, which would cost less of course than the hex itself

< Message edited by The Guru -- 4/9/2013 3:49:01 PM >

(in reply to morvael)
Post #: 20
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