Im a little surprised (Full Version)

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Gratch1111 -> Im a little surprised (11/13/2019 9:06:20 PM)

Just started playing, used to love WINSPMBT, but the move one tank at a time got me tired, I do have Flashpoint but the artilleri is just to powerful and it doesnt do infantry very well. But since this game has been out at least a little while and very few, or any, new scenariosmaps or oob are done, so are there just not enough players or is it to difficult?



Lowlaner2012 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/13/2019 9:33:14 PM)

Hi, I think the lack of user made scenarios is due to the excellent battle and campaign generator, although there is a great Grozny mod you should check out...

I have kinda fallen in love with AB ;)



Gratch1111 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/13/2019 9:45:09 PM)

and user made oob?



blaa -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 1:39:33 PM)

Whatīs an OOB?

I think the reason for not-that-many scenarios is that there arenīt that many scenarios you can actually create.
Itīs basically a single player mission, only you can enter a description and hand-place the player units.
Not sure if you can pick the enemies, but certainly you canīt tell them to do specific stuff like "attack here after 5 minutes".
But yeah, itīs basically a sp mission with a flavour text and pre-chosen units.

Then again, this gameīs mission generator is better than anything else Iīve seen, especially the way you can chose the battle field. So the game relies less on ppl making scenarios.



CCIP-subsim -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 1:58:39 PM)

OOB = Order of Battle, basically a set of units and formations (and yes, that mod does have it). "DB" or database is technically the more accurate term for that in Armored Brigade, since besides the AOB it also includes things like weapons performance data.

Otherwise - it's also worth mentioning that, if you played the old versions of Armored Brigade, before it went commercial, it was 100% about the scenario generator. The single standalone scenarios are really just a bonus feature for the commercial version - the heart of the game is still its generator(s), and I think they're very good.



blaa -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 2:11:57 PM)

Ah yes, DB I would have understood in the context.
And of course your mod is the best example of how much a flavour text can make a mission better- the whole "crossing the third barrier of fear" thing made a lasting impression on me. Chilling!



blackcloud6 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 5:24:16 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Lowlaner2012

Hi, I think the lack of user made scenarios is due to the excellent battle and campaign generator, although there is a great Grozny mod you should check out...

I have kinda fallen in love with AB ;)




yep. I rarely play pre-made scenarios. It is so easy to generate battles in this game. I do a series of battles building one on the other and write story AARs.

And I too, have fallen in love with this game. It is my favorite wargame at the moment.



TitaniumTrout -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 7:47:07 PM)

I played a scenario or two and that's it. Almost all of my time is spent finding a cool area and either assaulting it or defending it. Then I'll do the same thing with an ACR or Cavalry Squadron, or just infantry, or artillery heavy. I'll be looking forward to new objective types in the future updates.



Gratch1111 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 8:07:10 PM)

Yes sorry, I mean DB. There should be more player made, no?




DoubleDeuce -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 9:01:29 PM)

Creating a new OOB (the DB in this case) is a lot of work. Very few people, imho, have the time needed to do it right.



Policefreak55 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 9:19:21 PM)

The research is what takes up 90% of your time in my experience lol, but I guess it would just depend on how well documented the area is you wish to represent. Finding primary sources or works that can at least cite primary sources can be exhausting, especially if they're for a different country in a language you don't speak. Once it's all organized though it's a breeze to get it into the game, Trello's been very helpful with organization.



Mr_Luxury_Yacht -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/14/2019 11:22:28 PM)

Sprites are a bigger issue in my experience.

For actual values, while I get why the developers are striving for accuracy I'm finding for modding it doesn't really make much practical gameplay difference if a value is off by 10mm or 20mm. I've more been approaching it from "Can gun A penetrate tank B at expected ranges?". Research-wise, between Wikipedia, SPMBT, the Steel Beasts wiki, and War Thunder's armor analysis mode I can get things close enough. As long as it's balanced with the rest of the game and seems realistic, who cares if it's perfect?

Sprites though, that's a real hurdle, especially if you're artistically hopeless like I am. Making a sprite from scratch is like, orders of magnitude more work than making several units. I've taken shortcuts because I originally was doing this for just personal use. I dumped sprites from SPBMT (the included utilities make it super easy to do) and modified them to work in AB,and I'm also grateful the devs didn't lock out the DLC sprites for people who don't have the DLC. However, given the first source I'm not sure now if I can do a wider release, even as a non-commercial mod (I've got a pretty complete Egypt/Israel from 1950 to 1995, as well as expanding the US to that timeline. Currently finishing up Russia then am going to move on to Japan). Long story short, I've managed to do that in a couple months on and off in my spare time. If I had to make all the sprites for it though? Probably would be a fraction of the way there.



Policefreak55 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/15/2019 6:29:47 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Mr_Luxury_Yacht

Sprites are a bigger issue in my experience.

For actual values, while I get why the developers are striving for accuracy I'm finding for modding it doesn't really make much practical gameplay difference if a value is off by 10mm or 20mm. I've more been approaching it from "Can gun A penetrate tank B at expected ranges?". Research-wise, between Wikipedia, SPMBT, the Steel Beasts wiki, and War Thunder's armor analysis mode I can get things close enough. As long as it's balanced with the rest of the game and seems realistic, who cares if it's perfect?

Sprites though, that's a real hurdle, especially if you're artistically hopeless like I am. Making a sprite from scratch is like, orders of magnitude more work than making several units. I've taken shortcuts because I originally was doing this for just personal use. I dumped sprites from SPBMT (the included utilities make it super easy to do) and modified them to work in AB,and I'm also grateful the devs didn't lock out the DLC sprites for people who don't have the DLC. However, given the first source I'm not sure now if I can do a wider release, even as a non-commercial mod (I've got a pretty complete Egypt/Israel from 1950 to 1995, as well as expanding the US to that timeline. Currently finishing up Russia then am going to move on to Japan). Long story short, I've managed to do that in a couple months on and off in my spare time. If I had to make all the sprites for it though? Probably would be a fraction of the way there.

Hey if a vehicle only has 14-18mm of armor, 10-20mm can be a YUGE difference lol. Then there's also weapons values such as accuracy, ranges, ammo types for all sorts of weapons from tanks to small arms and their effect and penetration values, soldier and vehicle round counts, squad weapon numbers and unit TOEs. I mean if you approach it just from an angle of can A shoot B or throw some infantry in a database that's comparable to other nations for gameplay purposes there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's enjoyable, but to really nail down a proper database takes time and research in my opinion.

I am ALSO artistically hopeless lol, I ended up using blueprint vectors as a base to work from and scaling them down to proper dimensions for vehicle sprites. I'm planning on doing the infantry sprites from scratch to give them more period specific walking animations and equipment, but I have ideas of a way to streamline that process.



Mr_Luxury_Yacht -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/15/2019 4:48:46 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Policefreak55


quote:

ORIGINAL: Mr_Luxury_Yacht

Sprites are a bigger issue in my experience.

For actual values, while I get why the developers are striving for accuracy I'm finding for modding it doesn't really make much practical gameplay difference if a value is off by 10mm or 20mm. I've more been approaching it from "Can gun A penetrate tank B at expected ranges?". Research-wise, between Wikipedia, SPMBT, the Steel Beasts wiki, and War Thunder's armor analysis mode I can get things close enough. As long as it's balanced with the rest of the game and seems realistic, who cares if it's perfect?

Sprites though, that's a real hurdle, especially if you're artistically hopeless like I am. Making a sprite from scratch is like, orders of magnitude more work than making several units. I've taken shortcuts because I originally was doing this for just personal use. I dumped sprites from SPBMT (the included utilities make it super easy to do) and modified them to work in AB,and I'm also grateful the devs didn't lock out the DLC sprites for people who don't have the DLC. However, given the first source I'm not sure now if I can do a wider release, even as a non-commercial mod (I've got a pretty complete Egypt/Israel from 1950 to 1995, as well as expanding the US to that timeline. Currently finishing up Russia then am going to move on to Japan). Long story short, I've managed to do that in a couple months on and off in my spare time. If I had to make all the sprites for it though? Probably would be a fraction of the way there.

Hey if a vehicle only has 14-18mm of armor, 10-20mm can be a YUGE difference lol. Then there's also weapons values such as accuracy, ranges, ammo types for all sorts of weapons from tanks to small arms and their effect and penetration values, soldier and vehicle round counts, squad weapon numbers and unit TOEs. I mean if you approach it just from an angle of can A shoot B or throw some infantry in a database that's comparable to other nations for gameplay purposes there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's enjoyable, but to really nail down a proper database takes time and research in my opinion.


Oh for sure it'd be an issue for 14mm of armor, but it's never those cases that are the issue. It's always more modern units with fancy penetrators and weird armor that are the issue since exact values aren't often known.

I just wanted to avoid having to deal with the headaches I see on things like the War Thunder forums, or even here, where people get into pedantic arguments about whether the T-64B's third APFSDS round has 415mm or 423mm of penetration because THIS secret document says the Stalinium Carbide alloy used in the penetrator underwent a different hardening process that provides 1.4% more penetration during winter combat.

I guess my philosophy with the mod I'm making is, a game like Steel Panthers didn't have perfectly exact values, but it was close enough. If I was fine with that then and it felt realistic and balanced, seems like a good track to follow now.


quote:

ORIGINAL: Policefreak55
I am ALSO artistically hopeless lol, I ended up using blueprint vectors as a base to work from and scaling them down to proper dimensions for vehicle sprites. I'm planning on doing the infantry sprites from scratch to give them more period specific walking animations and equipment, but I have ideas of a way to streamline that process.


Infantry sprites look like absolute hell to edit or create compared to vehicles, even for crew served weapons that are relatively simpler. That's why when I made early AT-guns for Egypt/Israel, they all just used Finland's Pak-75 sprites.



CCIP-subsim -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/15/2019 7:03:17 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Mr_Luxury_Yacht


I guess my philosophy with the mod I'm making is, a game like Steel Panthers didn't have perfectly exact values, but it was close enough. If I was fine with that then and it felt realistic and balanced, seems like a good track to follow now.




I think this is really important!
There's lots of ways to approach realism, and I think the problem is that people often confuse "realism" with "reality" - one can never be the other. It's especially ironic that games like War Thunder (which I'd consider fundamentally unrealistic, not that there's anything wrong with that for a game) have the loudest arguments about it, too.

One thing that is really hard to do in games is model ALL the possible factors - even with all the tech available these days, there's still a lot of abstraction and reality always proves more complicated and difficult. Ironically, sometimes simply mimicking the real mechanical operation of systems ends up with absurdly implausible results - usually because there's more to it.

My own approach to realism has always focused on results + narrative. In other words, I care mostly that a) the outcome of decisions roughly corresponds to what's happened historically or likely to happen in the real world; b) the player experience tells some kind of story or conveys some kind of message, which also has something to say about the real world. I care much less about the means - numbers, code, mechanics - by which I get there, as long as those first two points are met! That's the approach I took in my mod for AB also.

There's other ways to do it for sure! But I definitely encourage people to think about the outcome and the overall experience, if not before, then at least alongside the numbers and details [:)]



Gratch1111 -> RE: Im a little surprised (11/15/2019 8:47:15 PM)

Its the sprites for me, If you look at WINSPMBT you can get most values there, so that isnt as hard. And then its becomes harder again when you approach 2000 and beyond since there are so much new tech to consider and the data isnt as available



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