Seeking General Adice on Environment (Full Version)

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Ladmo -> Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/10/2007 2:52:44 AM)

This is directed at those experienced scenario designers out there...I am trying to create a large scenario and am happily plugging away on my map, gathering TOE and OOB notes, and the like. I hope to simulate the guerrilla war waged by the FSLN against Somoza's National Guard in Nicargua circa 1976-1979. The map could later be recycled for a Contra War scenario. The map itself will be all of Nicaragua and the border territories of Hondurus and Costa Rica, all plotted at 2.5 km per hex (it's a big mother!) At this time I envision the units being at company or maybe battalion strengths. The war was basically a bunch of very small engagements and a lot of regional uprisings (lots of armed civilians.) There will be a small international brigade on the Sandinista side and a handful of Cuban sappers. The event editor could simulate the gradual U.S. disengagement with Somoza.

Now, my question...What sort of turn rate should I look at for this thing? I feel that map size, unit size and density, and turns all pull together to define how playable or exciting a scenario is, but I have a very imperfect understanding of the dynamics at work here. Given what I have said, what would you do? I will gratefully accept any other comments as well. but if you are going to tell me to redraw the map I ask that you attach a loaded .45 automatic with your reply! I am drawing maps in my dreams now!



Fungwu -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/10/2007 3:15:57 AM)

One thing to keep in mind is the map size and turn length go together it determining how far a unit moves. Because of some errors in the game matching the wrong hex scale with the wrong time scale will allow units to move way too fast.

For 2.5km per hex your turns should be either half day or one day.

If you go down this forum there is a topic called "basic unit movement"
In that thread a guy posted a chart showing which hex scales match up best with which time scales, and I explain what errors occur when you don't a little better than I did above.



Ladmo -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/11/2007 12:31:52 AM)

Thanks very much. I shall heed your good words. What's more, I shall try to spell my next thread title correctly - how embarrassing. Seriously, that was exactly what I needed to know. I just wish I'd looked a little closer to begin with.



ColinWright -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/11/2007 12:47:39 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ladmo

What's more, I shall try to spell my next thread title correctly - how embarrassing.


Don't worry. It just gives people the impression you're Canadian.



Veers -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/11/2007 11:09:25 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ladmo

What's more, I shall try to spell my next thread title correctly - how embarrassing.


Don't worry. It just gives people the impression you're Canadian.



*glare* [:@][:D]



golden delicious -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/11/2007 11:41:03 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Fungwu

For 2.5km per hex your turns should be either half day or one day.


Yeah. Of course, if you're covering a three year period you are going to hit the 999 turn limit, and in any case people are going to balk at spending the next ten years playing a scenario about a relatively obscure conflict.

So you're faced with a number of equally unthinkable options;
a) reduce the length of the scenario. Cover only the most intense period of activity, perhaps six months to a year. This still makes the scenario very long at one day turns.
b) go with half-week turns. This will cause real problems with movement rates, which will either be wrong for the time scale or else so huge that one security unit will be able to scour a huge area before the guerrillas can move on.
c) go with a less detailed map. You've already rejected this option but I thought I'd put it in anyway.

Whatever you do, seek counsel with Curt Chambers. His Campaign for South Vietnam is a highly innovative take on that conflict- and he faced similar problems with the scenario duration.



ColinWright -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/11/2007 9:10:46 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious


... c) go with a less detailed map. You've already rejected this option but I thought I'd put it in anyway...


A lot of times that is the solution -- just go with a different scale. I went through playtesting with one designer on his Crimea scenario. It had major problems -- and just about all of them would have been solved if he'd just gone with 5 km per hex rather than 2.5 km per hex.



ColinWright -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/11/2007 10:04:52 PM)

Anyway, without knowing much about the Nicaragua conflict, I would suspect that for much if not all of its duration the primary arena of conflict was really more civic than military. Wasn't the key question often more whether Somoza could shut down La Prensa without alienating his base of support than whether his troops could successfully defend the bridge over river x against Sandinista column y?

If there was a period where the military issues were dominant, it probably didn't encompass the whole conflict, and so the shorter period is what you would want to simulate. Else you aren't simulating much of anything. In TOAW, the movement of units will be determined by military considerations -- and if military considerations weren't what was dictating their movements in real life, then you won't be able to construct a simulation.



a white rabbit -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/13/2007 3:42:37 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright


quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious


... c) go with a less detailed map. You've already rejected this option but I thought I'd put it in anyway...


A lot of times that is the solution -- just go with a different scale. I went through playtesting with one designer on his Crimea scenario. It had major problems -- and just about all of them would have been solved if he'd just gone with 5 km per hex rather than 2.5 km per hex.



..just to add to Colin's post...don't forget that the scale is nominal, you can design a map at 2.5k/hex and set the game-used scale to any value that does what you want, the same goes for the time-scale, the game setting may be 1 day, but if you want it to be 1 hour then just add the actual time as a news string..

..take a look at Ben's Med island scens, the actual map is fine, but the toaw ground scales are set to get the desired result..



golden delicious -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/13/2007 4:29:20 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..just to add to Colin's post...don't forget that the scale is nominal, you can design a map at 2.5k/hex and set the game-used scale to any value that does what you want, the same goes for the time-scale, the game setting may be 1 day, but if you want it to be 1 hour then just add the actual time as a news string..


There are some problems with this approach, the most insurmountable of which is equipment density.

quote:

..take a look at Ben's Med island scens, the actual map is fine, but the toaw ground scales are set to get the desired result..


Leros? Speaking as the designer, it's not a good scenario by any stretch. My other scenario in that theatre- Rhodes- is at a true 2.5km/hex scale.



a white rabbit -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/13/2007 5:24:43 PM)

..re equipement density..

..soooo ? if you wannna stack all your chariots in one hex, be my guest, the max limit is still 9 units..

..not to mention that my nice Egyptian chariots can then ride around your stack and basically mostly blow you away with bow fire and if anything's left i can then do some serious mugging with some rubbish infantry, leaving me free to take on your now isolated infantry..

..guess i win Kadesh...



golden delicious -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/13/2007 6:42:11 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..not to mention that my nice Egyptian chariots can then ride around your stack


Chariots didn't usually operate in formed units, but if they did they were generally undirectable. Like elephants, you just direct them at the enemy and hope he doesn't move.

See what I mean? TOAW really can't cope with things like this. They're totally beyond the scope of the game system.



ColinWright -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/13/2007 9:49:08 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious


quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..not to mention that my nice Egyptian chariots can then ride around your stack


Chariots didn't usually operate in formed units, but if they did they were generally undirectable. Like elephants, you just direct them at the enemy and hope he doesn't move.

See what I mean? TOAW really can't cope with things like this. They're totally beyond the scope of the game system.


Another problem with 'simulating' Kadesh et al is that we really don't know what happened at Kadesh.

There's a whole body of illusory 'knowledge' about just about anything that occurred before 1700 -- and the problem gets worse the further back you go. People read these secondary sources, and even if the author has been scrupulous with such clauses as 'it seems' or 'my speculation is' it all becomes established 'fact'in the minds of most readers. Go to the actual original sources and it becomes painfully clear that we know almost nothing -- and further research has a nasty habit of contradicting our earlier conclusions. The random bit of uncertainly interpreted chronicle that was itself a doubtfully faithful copy of a source written two centuries earlier by a violent partisan of one side or the other who himself didn't see the events in question gets transmogrified into a coherent hypothesis that in turn becomes truth. You can question American Blacks and 'discover' that 9-11 was carried out by the KKK. God knows what the sequence of events, level of destruction, or number of casualties would turn out to be if one probed further. That's the level of 'fact' we have to work with when it comes to the ancient past.

So you can put together a 'simulation' of Kadesh. However, you can with almost equal certainty of accuracy put together a 'simulation' of Romulans raiding a Klingon border outpost. The first doesn't have much more likelihood of being historically accurate than the second. Even leaving aside the problems of the inappropriate engine, there's about a 1% chance that Richard's 'simulation' of Kadesh will bear any significant resemblance to whatever actually happened. That's pretty close to the percentage I'll get for my simulation of the great Romulan attack on the spaceport at ol'Dor Kadak.



Ladmo -> RE: Seeking General Adice on Environment (12/14/2007 3:41:16 AM)

Thanks to everyone for offering up their experience on this.

I had already concluded that this conflict would best be simulated with a string of scenarios, for indeed the periods of significant military action were limited. The last month of the revolution was the most spectacular.

In any event, I suspect this one is going to be very difficult to put together. Fortunately, while the subject may be obscure, I am doing this for my own satisfaction. It will be interesting to see if, by judicious use of the event engine, an insurgency situation can be modeled in a manner that is interesting to the player and pays at least lip service to the essence of the conflict.

I appreciate everyone's comments. They were all insightful, generous, and useful, as are their authors...



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