|
DuncanLang -> RE: ** Matrix to Publish Talonsoft Games ** (10/12/2005 8:00:28 PM)
|
Matrix Games,
Very glad to hear that you are picking up the Talonsoft Battleground series. I got many hours of enjoyment from them, but could not run them once I switched to XP. If you are planning any updates to them, I have a couple of suggestions. I am not an AI person, so I am not sure how easy it would be to implement them, but I think they would help make the games more realistic:
• Brigade Combat Effectiveness. One of the problems with the Battleground games was that units could continue to reengage even after absorbing incredible losses. Certainly losses did lead to units routing, but they could later be rallied, sometimes time after time. Especially versus the AI, units reduced from hundreds of men to 50 or 25 would continue to make suicidal attacks. A fix for this would be some sort of a Brigade Combat Effectiveness rule. This term/concept actually comes from the similarly scaled and detailed Great Battles of the American Civil War board games. In these games, separate player aids are used to track losses by brigade (the ability to take losses varies amongst brigades based on historical performance - in fact as there are games for most/all of the Battleground Civil War battles in the series, the research is essentially done). Once a given brigade has absorbed a certain level of losses, all units in the brigade are restricted in what actions they can perform and usually also suffer some level of permanent (in game terms) morale loss.
• Artillery Ammunition. The Battleground games gave each side a set number of artillery ammo points. Each time an artillery battery fired, one point was deducted. While that helped limit overuse of artillery, it permitted unhistorical use of artillery such as using all batteries at the same time, or allowing batteries in key positions to have an essentially unlimited supply. In reality, at least in general terms, artillery supply was managed at the battery level and one of the key command considerations a Civil War general had was to manage his artillery so that fresh batteries could be brought forward at the correct time and place as other batteries ran low on ammo. I think it would be more realistic if the artillery ammo was divided by battery and once a battery was out of ammo, it can no longer fire.
Another feature that would be nice to have would be to have the unit icons, at least the 3D ones, come in slightly different versions (perhaps 3 or 4 levels) to reflect their relative size. As it is, a 25-man infantry regiment appears the same size as a 1000-man one.
Finally, as you are probably aware, there were some unofficial variants produced using the Battleground software. I know that at least Eylau and Chancellorsville versions were produced and available online. It would be great to see the Battleground series expanded and it seems a lot of the work may already have been done.
Duncan Lang
Spotsylvania, VA
|
|
|
|
