Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Keke

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ORIGINAL: Ben Turner
Notably, the best TOAW player I've encountered in PBM (Colin Wright) is one of those people who plays the game as if it were a real battle.

I wonder if this Colin dude has ever played against any ladder leaders of SZO. Might get his a** whupped.

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ORIGINAL: Mantis

I've gone through the mods available recently, and taken a few bmp's from here, and a few from there. The bulk of this mod is from Peter's mod, which is available at www.tdg.nu for those interested.

Have a peek!

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ORIGINAL: Mantis

I've gone through the mods available recently, and taken a few bmp's from here, and a few from there. The bulk of this mod is from Peter's mod, which is available at www.tdg.nu for those interested.

Have a peek!

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ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Well, I've always liked the way in HPS games when you select a unit, you immediately see in it's unit box how many men or vehicles are in that unit; while with TOAW; you have to select the unit, and then right click to see a breakdown of numbers. Perhaps the unit information screen in the upper right corner of the TAOAW screen could be reworked to show raw men/tanks/vehicles/ships in that unit to help us gauge how big that unit is at a glance; as a Division counter might actually be only at regimental strength, especially on the Eastern Front.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

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ORIGINAL: Keke

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ORIGINAL: Ben Turner
Notably, the best TOAW player I've encountered in PBM (Colin Wright) is one of those people who plays the game as if it were a real battle.

I wonder if this Colin dude has ever played against any ladder leaders of SZO. Might get his a** whupped.

You seem to have managed to miss the point.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Anyway, I wanted to mention we've compiled quite a list of possible changes over at TDG.

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ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Other than removing the cheat bug, the most important change to this game would be the elimination of early turn ending do to a “failed proficiency check”. This feature is supposed to add randomness to the play, but in fact greatly reduces the games ability to accurately recreate military operations. Although it does not happen often, when it does, it can wreck a game.

There are many other improvements that can/should be made,but the two above need to be on a high priority. Not too many new players will stick with a game after they get hit with an early turn ending on a turn that they just spent 2 hours carefully preparing for the 1st round of combat.
There is a lively discussion regarding this at the Strategy Zone. http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33397

Might as well "get it on" here too.

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

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ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Other than removing the cheat bug, the most important change to this game would be the elimination of early turn ending do to a “failed proficiency check”. This feature is supposed to add randomness to the play, but in fact greatly reduces the games ability to accurately recreate military operations. Although it does not happen often, when it does, it can wreck a game.

There are many other improvements that can/should be made,but the two above need to be on a high priority. Not too many new players will stick with a game after they get hit with an early turn ending on a turn that they just spent 2 hours carefully preparing for the 1st round of combat.
There is a lively discussion regarding this at the Strategy Zone. http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33397

Might as well "get it on" here too.

New players won't be spending the two hours, though, surely? They'll be breaking themselves in with smaller scenarios. Well, I know I did, and I thought it was the obvious way to go, but I suppose I could be wrong.

Is it really that unrealistic? Can you not find a plausible reason for it happening? It is, after all, a 'proficiency check', a better force will suffer from it less. When it happened to me I always thought of it as Clauswitz's 'friction' in action.

Steve.

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix
In the game, as it currently stands, there's some provision for formations. Let's have this fleshed out, so that the failure of one division in a game based on, for example, PanzerGruppe Guderian, doesn't spell the end of the whole turn - it just eliminates that formation from future use in that turn.

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

In the game, as it currently stands, there's some provision for formations. Let's have this fleshed out, so that the failure of one division in a game based on, for example, PanzerGruppe Guderian, doesn't spell the end of the whole turn - it just eliminates that formation from future use in that turn.

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ORIGINAL: Keke

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

In the game, as it currently stands, there's some provision for formations. Let's have this fleshed out, so that the failure of one division in a game based on, for example, PanzerGruppe Guderian, doesn't spell the end of the whole turn - it just eliminates that formation from future use in that turn.

Now we're talking! In other words, I agree.

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

OK, read that now. Since I'm not registered there...

I'd like to keep the random element, but I sympathise with the complaints of the people who say "Why should my turn end over the whole front because one element a thousand miles away failed a check?"

In the game, as it currently stands, there's some provision for formations. Let's have this fleshed out, so that the failure of one division in a game based on, for example, PanzerGruppe Guderian, doesn't spell the end of the whole turn - it just eliminates that formation from future use in that turn.

Sound workable? I'd guess only the Dev Team could say...

Steve.

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ORIGINAL: Keke

http://www.tdg.nu/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.pl?board=TOAW;action=display;num=1128991272

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ORIGINAL: Nemo69 Yeah, but should be optional with a toggle on/off shortcut - the unit TOE can hold up to 32 different items if memory serves me and could use quite a bit of the display surface.

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ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

OK, read that now. Since I'm not registered there...

I'd like to keep the random element, but I sympathise with the complaints of the people who say "Why should my turn end over the whole front because one element a thousand miles away failed a check?"

In the game, as it currently stands, there's some provision for formations. Let's have this fleshed out, so that the failure of one division in a game based on, for example, PanzerGruppe Guderian, doesn't spell the end of the whole turn - it just eliminates that formation from future use in that turn.

Sound workable? I'd guess only the Dev Team could say...

Steve.

That’s what I’m talking about, Steve. The current method is unpredictable and completely unrealistic. Early turn endings can occur to any side regardless of its proficiency. This does not make it more fair; it’s still an unrealistic feature.
It my position that “proficiency” should be a factor only in computing combat power and not have anything to do with allotted time. It does ad a great degree of “randomness” to the game, but is that what we play for? I think we play TOAW to try to get a feel for operational level situations-not “randomness”.
The situations that can arise in a game do to sudden turn ending are ridiculous and have no historical parallel. Most players obviously will not put up with such events for very long and will look elsewhere for their entertainment. Whether new players take a month or two months to start playing “huge” type scenarios is academic-they will see them and they will play them. It is guaranteed that they would be burned by a “proficiency check” before too long. Some will have caught the bug and continue to play regardless, but if the past is any indication, most will just move on to another game.

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ORIGINAL: Grisha

Don't know if anyone mentioned this, but I'd like to the scenario file to be the 'pointer' to the weapons/equipment database to be used. The database could be the default one, or a modified one. Sure, there would be a lot of possibilities wrt weapons/equipment capabilities because of this, but there would also be a drive to standardize. And, when you have a modifiable database that relies heavily on balanced realistic assessments, you will have gamers dedicated to meeting that requirement. Make the TOAW weapons/equipment database easily modifiable and linked to a scenario, and I'm sure there will be a select few of player-based databases that we can all rely on to a surprising degree.

-grisha

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ORIGINAL: Mantis

I've gone through the mods available recently, and taken a few bmp's from here, and a few from there. The bulk of this mod is from Peter's mod, which is available at www.tdg.nu for those interested.

Have a peek!

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ORIGINAL: Fidel_Helms

I'd also like to see some improvements to the playback function in PBEM. One thing I detest about the current setup is that detailed combat reports are not available to the player watching the playback. This puts the defender at a huge disadvantage in PBEM.

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ORIGINAL: Lava

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ORIGINAL: Mantis

I've gone through the mods available recently, and taken a few bmp's from here, and a few from there. The bulk of this mod is from Peter's mod, which is available at www.tdg.nu for those interested.

Have a peek!

Hmm...

Hope we aren't going to stray too far from the original game. My take on the mod:

* Towns - better
* Fields - better
* Roads - better
* Frontier lines (red vice black) - better
* Rivers - Purple and light blue... tends to blend in too much with the rest of the scenary and looks weird - worse
* Airfields - perfer black
* Trees - perfer original

Overall, at least from this screen it looks too darn "hexy." Like a boardgame. Hope the game will maintain the ability for terrain to spill over into the other hexes like before.

Change things (in general) too much guys, and sure fire sales, may not be too sure fire.

Ray (alias Lava)

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

quote:

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Other than removing the cheat bug, the most important change to this game would be the elimination of early turn ending do to a “failed proficiency check”. This feature is supposed to add randomness to the play, but in fact greatly reduces the games ability to accurately recreate military operations. Although it does not happen often, when it does, it can wreck a game.

There are many other improvements that can/should be made,but the two above need to be on a high priority. Not too many new players will stick with a game after they get hit with an early turn ending on a turn that they just spent 2 hours carefully preparing for the 1st round of combat.
There is a lively discussion regarding this at the Strategy Zone. http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33397

Might as well "get it on" here too.

New players won't be spending the two hours, though, surely? They'll be breaking themselves in with smaller scenarios. Well, I know I did, and I thought it was the obvious way to go, but I suppose I could be wrong.

Is it really that unrealistic? Can you not find a plausible reason for it happening? It is, after all, a 'proficiency check', a better force will suffer from it less. When it happened to me I always thought of it as Clauswitz's 'friction' in action.

Steve.

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ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix
I'm in favour of keeping the random element, for formations, not a whole side, but with would agree to a switch to turn it off. Whether this is a switch controlled by the player or the Scenario Designer is another question, I guess - I'm in favour of making it player choice, but others may disagree.

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I'm actually not too sure I like the variable number of rounds as it's implemented in any case, as I see it as an encouragement to 'gamey play' and therefore a real turn-off, and actually an impediment to playing against a human opponent - you play the system, not the military situation. When I very first started playing wargames, with miniatures, the rules I used - anyone remember Donald Featherstone? - had an override called 'Inherent Military Probability'. If the game umpire saw a single trooper with a pistol overcome a brilliantly executed flank march by some freak die-roll, he could step in and say that wasn't right, and over-rule. I seriously doubt that we'll get an AI capable of doing this, nor am I sure I want it, but the best answer is not to allow such things in the first place, to reward good play, and not to reward manipulation of the game engine in a manner that is a distortion of 'The Operational Art Of War'.

Steve.