OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (Full Version)

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Winterhawk -> OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 4:52:58 AM)

But seriously...

I am for all intents and purposes a newbie to BiN. I have KP and have had it for awhile but admit to letting life get in the way of an adequate amount of playing time to really come to appreciate it. I've been anxiously watching and waiting for BiN though because I remain an avid strategy gamer and have an especially keen interest in anything Normandy/Western front. All that said, I have an issue with the game engine regarding combat that hopefully someone can shed some light on.

It would appear from my intital forays that combat is best avoided unless you have overwhelming odds in your favour. While the combat system does an admirable job of informing you about said odds, doesn't it perhaps remove a little too much of the uncertainty? From everything I've seen, read or heard, armed combat is anything but predictable. Did Ike need the assurance of 10-1+ odds before he made the decision to go? No, of course not. Even lowly platoons advancing toward unmarked villages often encountered resistance and achieved results contrary to their expectations.

I appreciate from a game designers perspective that there is a mandate to make the game accessible, but is there such a thing as going too far? I'm sure we could all recount 'fer instance after 'fer instance when, during a historical combat situation, a unit succeeded against the odds. The combat system in BiN would seem to preclude such possibilities.

Perhaps though, as I mentioned previously, someone could share their insights on this. As I said already I haven't spent alot of time with BiN and my comments are based on limited experience. I really am hoping someone can offer evidence to the contrary. But for now it would seem that regardless of the die roll, the real determining factor is how big your pile of shift is. [:(]



Adam Parker -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 5:38:36 AM)

Imho it goes a little deeper in BiN, for in every operational game system combat comes down to an odds equation in the player's mind.

Take HPS's Panzer Campaigns in which CRT's and odds tables are not used. Even here fog of war renders the opponent as an estimation of strength "xx" being 10-99 men, "xxx" being 99-hundreds etc. Success comes to those who partly make use of their manpower through estimated numerical odds.

Whilst PzC then incorporates many other factors to finesse this basic equation - morale, fatigue etc., BiN does too.

In BiN the one thing the Allies do not have is time. 32 campaign days (32 turns) goes fast vis the entirety of WW2. Therefore severe damage to the Wehrmacht will be inflicted at greater odds, however attrition and weakening the enemy's line for breakthroughs - tying the enemy down, will be accomplished at much less. BiN is very much a game of maneuver, of bluff and strategem as much as a clash of titans.

Then BiN throws another level over this the odds game for us... Shock and Anti-Shock, column shifts left and right - factors which influence not merely the preponderence of the force ratios but the make up of the forces themselves. This of course making for a subtelty of sorts.

Therefore, imo, all war is an odds game and all operational war games too. At Alamein Monty waited for the odds to build in his favor, at Kursk OKW wished to proceed in May when the odds favored them.

True, it would only be Monty Python who would think of bringing a big rubber dice like an earth ball to the battlefield in World War 3. Yet, anything is possible [:)]

Adam.



Black Cat -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 6:39:16 AM)

Adam

Well said and correct but I suspect his point is that unless you have at least 8:1 + attack odds it`s best not to push the button.[;)]

In fact 5:1 in the Game is a prescription to lose a step or 2 in your attacking units while not hurting the defender a whit.

In almost any Historic ( real war ) early-mid battle the attacker usually had 3:1 and often the Germans had less relying on quality and better doctrine.

Given the" ticking clock" in the default 36 turn issued scenarios it`s my opinion that the CRT deck is stacked against the allies if you play in anything close to an historic non gamey approach.

While I like the Game a lot it, seems the Game design/system, especially the CRT, is molded around an attempt to create a historic timeline that develops, and fits Normandy rather then the other way round. This is always going to be a problem in "one size fits all" Wargame design, and indeed is an issue in the HPS PzC Games, especially PzC Normandy..

IMHO, SSG should have considered the Western Desert for the Game since IMO the engine and CRT is far better suited for that location.

Having said that, Normandy, for a lot of reasons, is a very tough battle to simulate well as a Game and with some Historic fidelity, and I don`t think any of the Boardgames got it better.



Gregor_SSG -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 6:58:11 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Winterhawk

But seriously...

I am for all intents and purposes a newbie to BiN. I have KP and have had it for awhile but admit to letting life get in the way of an adequate amount of playing time to really come to appreciate it. I've been anxiously watching and waiting for BiN though because I remain an avid strategy gamer and have an especially keen interest in anything Normandy/Western front. All that said, I have an issue with the game engine regarding combat that hopefully someone can shed some light on.

It would appear from my intital forays that combat is best avoided unless you have overwhelming odds in your favour. While the combat system does an admirable job of informing you about said odds, doesn't it perhaps remove a little too much of the uncertainty? From everything I've seen, read or heard, armed combat is anything but predictable. Did Ike need the assurance of 10-1+ odds before he made the decision to go? No, of course not. Even lowly platoons advancing toward unmarked villages often encountered resistance and achieved results contrary to their expectations.

I appreciate from a game designers perspective that there is a mandate to make the game accessible, but is there such a thing as going too far? I'm sure we could all recount 'fer instance after 'fer instance when, during a historical combat situation, a unit succeeded against the odds. The combat system in BiN would seem to preclude such possibilities.

Perhaps though, as I mentioned previously, someone could share their insights on this. As I said already I haven't spent alot of time with BiN and my comments are based on limited experience. I really am hoping someone can offer evidence to the contrary. But for now it would seem that regardless of the die roll, the real determining factor is how big your pile of shift is. [:(]


There are several questions here.

The question of unpredictability is partly a question of scale. Anything could happen in an hour to single platoon, but the outcome of multiple divisions attacking over a 24 hour period is more predictable.

However, in BIN the outcome of a multiple division attack is by no means guaranteed. If you look at the Combat Results Table for Bocage, (which is where you'll be doing most of your BIN combats), then a standard combat has 1/3 chance of no result even at 10:1 odds. That certainly doesn't sound like a sure thing to me.

When you get to Eisenhower's level, then the decision making in many ways becomes even less random. Given sufficient certainty about the weather, Ike had no choice other than to invade.

On the more philosophical question of how much information to give to the player, and how to present it, then the design has to make certain concessions to reality. Gamers are not surrounded by a staff of experienced military men, nor can the take 32 days to play one campaign scenario. The game must abstract and condense both time and information. All wargames have always done this, ours is no different, except that I like to think that we do a very good job of presenting this information, and making it easy for the user to act upon it.

On a more gameplay related note, if you simply persue those attacks which give you 10:1 odds then you will definitely lose against any reasonable human player. You can head over to www.ssg.com.au and have a look at the articles there and read the posts in the the discussion forums about PBEM games.

If you're not convinced, try your theory out in a PBEM game. There are plenty of players there who will be more than happy to illustrate the subtleties of the game system and although you may well lose a few games, it's a very good way to learn and they are a very welcoming to new players.


Gregor



Gregor_SSG -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 7:36:10 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Black Cat

Adam

Well said and correct but I suspect his point is that unless you have at least 8:1 + attack odds it`s best not to push the button.[;)]

In fact 5:1 in the Game is a prescription to lose a step or 2 in your attacking units while not hurting the defender a whit.

In almost any Historic ( real war ) early-mid battle the attacker usually had 3:1 and often the Germans had less relying on quality and better doctrine.

Given the" ticking clock" in the default 36 turn issued scenarios it`s my opinion that the CRT deck is stacked against the allies if you play in anything close to an historic non gamey approach.

While I like the Game a lot it, seems the Game design/system, especially the CRT, is molded around an attempt to create a historic timeline that develops, and fits Normandy rather then the other way round. This is always going to be a problem in "one size fits all" Wargame design, and indeed is an issue in the HPS PzC Games, especially PzC Normandy..

IMHO, SSG should have considered the Western Desert for the Game since IMO the engine and CRT is far better suited for that location.

Having said that, Normandy, for a lot of reasons, is a very tough battle to simulate well as a Game and with some Historic fidelity, and I don`t think any of the Boardgames got it better.


Your theory about only attacking at 8:1 is almsot as wrong as the 10:1 version, especially if you are playing the Allies.

More importantly, you are confusing our final combat odds, which take into account things like tactical shifts and artillery, with the published historical odds, which only deal in raw numbers of men.

The fact that we have 16 different CRTs plus other factors like Shock/Anti-Shock, divisional integrity and entrenchment bonuses all affecting combat odds, makes us very confident that the BIN system is perfectly suited to the battle it portrays. After all, we spent a lot of time modifying the system used in Korsun Pocket to ensure just that.

Gregor



Winterhawk -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 3:40:06 PM)

Thanks all for your input, and I understand and agree with much of what was put forth. I fear though that my point was a bit lost on you Gregor. Please don’t take my comments as a criticism, because they certainly weren’t intended as such. Nor even were they an expression of a ‘theory’ because, as I already confessed, my playing time has been far too limited to even formulate one. I was merely looking for some clarification on an early observation.

Perhaps a ‘fer instance or two is in order to put a finer point on it. On the afternoon of June 7th E company of the 505th PIR, along with a few supporting elements, maneuvered through the sunken lanes of the Norman hedgerows. Their avenue of advance delivered them to the unprotected flank of a German battalion busily digging in. The Allied troops quickly deployed into firing positions and engaged the enemy. The entire German battalion was killed or captured with but a single casualty suffered by their attackers.

This incident was neither isolated nor was it an experience shared only by smaller units. In the Bulge it was a battalion or regiment here or a division there that, against the odds, prevailed. Would it be too melodramatic to refer you to Bastogne? Malmedy aside look at what Pieper’s regiment was able to accomplish. Who could have known that many of the regiments and battalions comprising the 99th division would turn and run at the sound of his tank tracks. Who could have known that others would not.

To use a ‘fer instance from the game, during the tutorial I maneuvered a couple of opposing infantry regiments to clear, unencumbered terrain away from the rest of the pack and faced them off. The extra step in the 8 Inf Reg / 3 Div of the Red force gave them a decided advantage in attacking over the 6 Gren Reg / 2 Div of the Blue force. Otherwise their differences were unremarkable. For Red to attack Blue all but one roll of the dice results in Red losses - as many as three steps! The converse is that only 1 roll of the dice results in a Blue loss, and that of only 1 step. The combat system won’t even let Blue attack Red on his own because he apparently didn’t bring a big enough stick to the battle. And that I guess is my point.

I appreciate that this little scenario was both clinical and not necessarily realistic, but it emphasizes the constraints that appear to exist in the combat system. I realize too that maximum odds are not always necessary to succeed in a given engagement, but it does seem a bit restrictive when it forces you to comply with a minimum. No such limitations were imposed in the summer of 1944, and conflicts throughout time have demonstrated that the odds of victory often have precious little to do with the number of men you field.



Capitaine -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/19/2004 4:34:38 PM)

I've commented on this a bit before, and I'd concur that the difference between minimum and maximum acceptable odds is very slim indeed in this game, and also is relatively high up in the odds column. Going "one-on-one" doesn't give each side a chance for victory or disaster, nor does it give the defender merely "an advantage". It makes attack impossible. Raw 3:1 odds do not fare much better. Confess I'm not professing a theory here either, just noting that 3:1 odds have historically been deemed acceptable attack odds. Would SSG say that these odds, in their system, are essentially the equivalent of 8:1 or better? [&:]



Gregor_SSG -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/20/2004 2:42:20 AM)

Winterhawk,

If I understand you correctly, you are asking for a category of 'out of CRT' results, where something unexpected/unpredictable could happen. In my experience, this is very rare, as most gamers want a predictable spread of outcomes that they can anticipate, assess and manage.

I'm not saying that your approach might not more closely approach the reality of war, just that, as I noted above, we're not dealing with that, we're dealing with a series of abstractions. In making these abstractions we must never lose sight of the fact that waht we're making is a game, intended to be played for enjoyment.

As an example, in our Warlords games we had combats between opposing stacks which involved numerous dice rolls. In that game it was mathematically possible for a single archer to defeat a stack of eight dragons. While that didn't happen very often, there were so many games played, and so many dice rolls that some of the less probable results were inevitably encountered.

When they were, the reaction was one of almost universal horror. If it was an AI game, people just refused to accept the result and reloaded. If it happened in a network game then we never heard the end of it, and I got many emails requesting me to constrain the combat system so that the results like this were impossible.

These are not islolated examples, and on the subject of randomness, it's been my experience that the people have spoken with almost one voice!

Gregor



Fred98 -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/20/2004 2:50:00 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Winterhawk


It would appear from my intital forays that combat is best avoided unless you have overwhelming odds in your favour.





I am only an adequate player. Let me tell you what the good players do:

The Allied sides receive a lot more replacements than the Germans. Good players make a lot of lower odds attacks right across the front, so that in each battle, each side loses one step only. The Allies can replace theirs much faster than the Germans – leading to weak points in the German line.

At the same time, the good player can arrange their troops so that one hex can be attacked twice in one turn at very good odds. If the defender does not retreat, even the strongest defender can be killed out right leading to gaps in the line.

Further, to achieve more shifts, the good players can move troops around in such a manner, as to not leave a weak defence on the flank.

And another trick, is to put in a series of attacks in good weather such that the day after your offensive the weather turns bad. If this leads to a weakness in your own line, the enemy cannot take advantage as their counterattack would be occurring in poor weather – thereby restricting movement. So keep an eye on the weather some turns in advance.



Winterhawk -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/20/2004 6:06:44 AM)

Point made Gregor. As I said before I understand completely the necessity to make the game accessible, and that what we have here is just that, a game, and not a mirror of the real thing. Know though that I wasn't really asking for a change of any kind, but simply for a more thorough understanding of the current system and how some with more experience than I make the most of it. If the BiN combat system allowed for more unpredictability and if it allowed more freedom to attack with less than favorable odds (yet still provide the possibility of success with such an attack) then in my personal opinion it would better reflect the real deal and thus be a more enjoyable experience. But that's just my opinion. It's neither right nor wrong, it's just mine.

You see, I'm one of those gamers that, the more realistic something is, the more I can get lost in it. Dragons and archers just don't cut it for me. I like shooters where one shot can kill. I like strategy games where the only thing that stands between you and your objective is that six inch piece of terrain between your ears. I think the foremost design criteria for any game is a system that asks of the player only to accomplish a particular objective and then does it's best to stay the heck out of his (or her!) way. No restrictions, no artificial mechanics, just the freedom to execute your own unique brand of generalship. If you lose a match it should be because your opponent was a superior strategist and not because they were more adept at 'working the system'.

And speaking of game design, I've long had rolling around in the back of my head an idea for a WW2 era combat game that I quite think would stand this genre on it's ear. If anyone has a year or two of free time and a dump truck full of money they're not overly attached to then perhaps we should talk. [:)]


And to Joe 98, thank you. Your reply was very much what I was looking for. The strategies you laid out make alot of sense and I look forward to putting them into practice.



JSS -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/20/2004 2:26:31 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Winterhawk
....I think the foremost design criteria for any game is a system that asks of the player only to accomplish a particular objective and then does it's best to stay the heck out of his (or her!) way. No restrictions, no artificial mechanics, just the freedom to execute your own unique brand of generalship. If you lose a match it should be because your opponent was a superior strategist and not because they were more adept at 'working the system'.


Winterhawk,

BIN is the best I've seen at letting your strategy rule the day. The number of 'gamey' tricks is very small compared to any other operational wargame I've everplayed.

Another awesome feature of BIN is the easy to use editor... any scenario where you think the CRT or terrain movement costs aren't quite what you'd like to see you can create your alternate version scenario and put things as you like them[:D]

JSS



pterrok -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/20/2004 4:48:43 PM)

Winterhawk, here's an ARTICLE link for you to read!

The newest wrinkle in the Overlord game, specifically, is that the Allies combine their interdictions with some low odds assaults, and I mean LOW, like 1-2 all up and down a sector of the line! This uses up a defenders bullet, and he may have spent a bullet digging in on his turn. So two bullet units are RED if they can't get supplied.

The interdiction has to be kept up for multiple turns so the Axis supply trucks run out of emergency crates. Timing your attacks with the interdictions and making sure the interdictions DO cover all the supply routes is quite the trick and requires careful planning!

This is really only appropriate for the Allies to do--they have so many replacement factors coming on that they can't possibly use them all up, and if they attack with two 4-step infantry to make a 1-2 attack and roll an A2, they're down to 3-steps each and still very good defensively.

The Axis, on the other hand, IS constrained from doing these sorts of attacks since he can't really afford the losses. It's an elegant way that SSG has crafted to say that the Allies are on the offensive and the Axis on the defensive--though the Axis WILL be able to get local superiority and slam you hard--especially the Brits at Caen!

Back to your example...once the supplies are cut off, a single unit CAN in effect defeat a much larger unit since the RED isolated CRT is pretty unforgiving.



Winterhawk -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/20/2004 6:02:22 PM)

Thank you JSS and pterrok repectively for your expressions - again very much the kind of things I was hoping to hear. It's apparent that much more time on my behalf is going to be required to thoroughly round out my appreciation for BiN. And perhaps that's the best advice for anyone, grog or not, who first picks up this title. And that is simply to give it time. St. Lo by the 16th? Okeedokee...

No takers on the dump truck?



Ron -> RE: OK, WHO JUST SHIFT THEIR PANTS? (10/24/2004 7:58:53 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Capitaine

Raw 3:1 odds do not fare much better. Confess I'm not professing a theory here either, just noting that 3:1 odds have historically been deemed acceptable attack odds. Would SSG say that these odds, in their system, are essentially the equivalent of 8:1 or better? [&:]



FWIW the Germans found that when defending in the Bocage 5:1 became the acceptable odds. (Decision in Normandy - D'Este)




Ron



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