RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (Full Version)

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steveh11Matrix -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/1/2005 12:38:48 PM)

The other thing attributed to Dunnigan that ought to be remembered here is the Cow Effect: "It'll all Come Out in the Wash." In other words, simplify, simplify, design for effect, make the game accessible and yet model that which is actually necessary. This was for Game, not Scenario, design, but I fell the same principle holds.

It's a fine balance. Some of the time I feel that the TOAW scenarios I've seen go over the wrong side of that balance. OTOH it's different for everyone, so the scenario designer has to make his own judgement and stick with it. The successful scenario designer will have his reward in seeing his creation downloaded, played and talked about, the less successful one won't. Darwinian survival! [:)]

Steve.



golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/1/2005 2:32:08 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

First of all you do not have a historical counterpart. Secondly, this statement needs to be qualified, i.e. “According to Ben Turner . . . makes them fun“


That would be why I prefixed the paragraph with "I want".

quote:

Also, if you open your eyes a bit, there are things other than historical accuracy to make the gaming experience enjoyable, i.e. “fun.”


Well, if it's not a historical scenario, you can cut out the 'historical' part. But accuracy is still important. How would "War of the Ring" be if the elves were crappy and Hobbits were the best troops?

quote:

There appears to be little understanding or appreciation that others have an equal opinion to what constitutes a “good” scenario.


The trouble is that while TOAW at present can make scenarios which satisfy their desires, Geozero's suggestions would make it totally impossible to make scenarios which would interest me. To put this in real terms, if Matrix took the equipment system out of TOAW (not that I think there's any danger of that), I would just keep on playing whatever the last version with that system was. What's more, I can think of several other designers who'd do the same. JMS and Fidel Helms have already posted. Colin Wright I am sure would go this route. Probably lots of others- including Daniel McBride- too. Figure something like half of the designing talent out there at present would drop out of the game system. And Geozero's one of the people who emphasises the need for more scenarios.

quote:

I bet that any scenario Ben Turner designed under these conditions would not be screwed up.


It probably would be. All these monstrously overrated British units. In TOAW, I plug in the numbers and the German battalion turns out to be better than a British battalion. In your hypothetical game, I happily rate the British one as 6 and the German one as 5.

That's just it- I'm not being conceited here. This change would make me a worse designer. I am outrageously biased, and TOAW helps to cure me of some of that.

quote:

I bet that any scenario Ben Turner designed under these conditions would not contain units with crap ratings.


What I meant by crap ratings was that the unit would be made a 1-1 or whatever. Not that it would be poorly modelled- though that'd be the case too.

quote:

Secondly, who really cares whether you learn anything from a scenario? Is it not impossible for you just to enjoy a good match?


Sure- but I'd rather scenarios didn't perpetuate existing misconceptions. Take Jim Dunnigan's (or Doug Bevard's) France 1940. The moral of the story is that the Germans had overwhelming material superiority and were destined for victory. As you and I both know, that's nonsense. Yet playing those scenarios reinforces the misconception.



lok -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/1/2005 3:49:48 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

I am outrageously biased, and TOAW helps to cure me of some of that.



I, too am biased...and so is everyone else including Norm who defined the orginal ratings for the weapons database. We are relying on his numbers in our scenario design.
I personally enjoy looking up TOE's OOB's etc and building an army the "TOAW way".
At the same time, there are times I wish I had a lot of variables/ratings to adjust than what is presently available in TOAW. I can see the advantage of having a large number of fully adjustable (not just boolean flags) variables/ratings for each unit so I can micromanage every unit design to death. That means of course, an entirely new game.

I am happy with the TOAW weapons database but it would be nice if a few bugs (like SAMs) are corrected and some way of adding or editing weapons is added (e.g. setting the movement of different naval units). I'd be just as happy if we switched to 128 different ratings all fully adjustable from 0-255. (insert your favorite numbers)



golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/1/2005 4:17:26 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: lok

I, too am biased...and so is everyone else including Norm who defined the orginal ratings for the weapons database. We are relying on his numbers in our scenario design.


Right. However, it's harder to be biased about the penetrative power of a 6 pounder shell than it is about the fighting ability of 7th Armoured Division.

Building the game up from the level of equipment removes a layer of subjectivity from scenario design. There are many layers left over- but it's an improvement on the alternative.

quote:

I personally enjoy looking up TOE's OOB's etc and building an army the "TOAW way".
At the same time, there are times I wish I had a lot of variables/ratings to adjust than what is presently available in TOAW. I can see the advantage of having a large number of fully adjustable (not just boolean flags) variables/ratings for each unit so I can micromanage every unit design to death.


I agree completely. Everything should be placed completely under the designer's control. The existing settings would just be defaults.

quote:

and some way of adding or editing weapons


We have this already with the BioEd. I'd like to see it integrated into the scenario editor and made more flexible, though.



sstevens06 -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/2/2005 3:49:08 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious


quote:

ORIGINAL: lok

I, too am biased...and so is everyone else including Norm who defined the orginal ratings for the weapons database. We are relying on his numbers in our scenario design.


Right. However, it's harder to be biased about the penetrative power of a 6 pounder shell than it is about the fighting ability of 7th Armoured Division.

Building the game up from the level of equipment removes a layer of subjectivity from scenario design. There are many layers left over- but it's an improvement on the alternative.

quote:

I personally enjoy looking up TOE's OOB's etc and building an army the "TOAW way".
At the same time, there are times I wish I had a lot of variables/ratings to adjust than what is presently available in TOAW. I can see the advantage of having a large number of fully adjustable (not just boolean flags) variables/ratings for each unit so I can micromanage every unit design to death.


I agree completely. Everything should be placed completely under the designer's control. The existing settings would just be defaults.

quote:

and some way of adding or editing weapons


We have this already with the BioEd. I'd like to see it integrated into the scenario editor and made more flexible, though.



Good discussion.

I'd suggest if it isn't possible to release an 'equipment editor' with TOAW ME, at least on the first go-around, serious review & correction of the obvious errors in the latest default equipment database should happen.

Would anyone from Matrix care to comment about this?



stauffenberg -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/2/2005 3:50:20 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Well, if it's not a historical scenario, you can cut out the 'historical' part. But accuracy is still important. How would "War of the Ring" be if the elves were crappy and Hobbits were the best troops?


lol! Not laughing at anyone mind, just struck me as hilarious. Best laugh all day thanks.

D.



stauffenberg -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/2/2005 5:01:40 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

One quick comment, aimed at nobody in particular, but when designers start designing scenarios based on how the game does work, as opposed to how they think it should work, then a lot of the complaints about "exploiting the engine" will vanish. For example, the dreaded, and oft-maligned "supply drain attack". If designers were to make their units start at 33% readiness, 1% supply, as a normal state, and adjust the supply stockpile rates, movement biases, and attrition divider settings accordingly, you will see that preparatory attacks will have substantially less effect. There is no golden rule that states that unit supply states must be <<<<<....this....>>>> big, or that. Some scenarios will play out better with high supply rates, and prep attacks, others will not. Design for effect, instead of some one to one relationship with some imagined "reality". At the end of the day, the operational focus of the game dictates that the primary gauge of whether one side or the other has won or lost is reflected in where the lines of counters stand on a virtual map, and how much "strength" each side has lost. Designers should keep that in the front of their minds, much more than whether 9th Bicycle Battalion had 6 25mm AT guns, or 12.



Edited for one focus too many


Glad I waded through to find that. Very nicely put.

D.



Fidel_Helms -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/2/2005 5:53:00 PM)

JAMIAM wrote:

quote:

If designers were to make their units start at 33% readiness, 1% supply, as a normal state, and adjust the supply stockpile rates, movement biases, and attrition divider settings accordingly, you will see that preparatory attacks will have substantially less effect.


But then you'd have no ability to show losses of supply or readiness. You've essentially presumed total supply and readiness for both sides. You'd have no way to contrast the supply situation of two opposing forces.



Hellen_slith -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/3/2005 5:35:11 AM)

quote:

when designers start designing scenarios based on how the game does work, as opposed to how they think it should work, then a lot of the complaints about "exploiting the engine" will vanish.


That's a mindful, and spot on I think....I'm hope I'm not off-base saying this, but Bob Cross's scenes of The Next War are brilliant examples of how to design scenarios based on how the game works. I can't get enough of playing these scenes, even though they aren't exact copies of the underlying boardgame, they WORK.

I think there is a disconnect between wanting historically perfectly accurate depictions of say, the 7-pound shell versus a horse-drawn wagon on an individual combat basis, versus the operational vagaries of what might have happened in any given situation taking into account the entire battlefield.

You just can't drill down into individual formations, what's next, drilling down to the one rifle unit that shouldn't have been where they were?

<shrugs> just my 2 cents






golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/3/2005 3:31:56 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Hellen

I think there is a disconnect between wanting historically perfectly accurate depictions of say, the 7-pound shell versus a horse-drawn wagon on an individual combat basis, versus the operational vagaries of what might have happened in any given situation taking into account the entire battlefield.


This line of argument misses the point. It's not either good OOBs or effective testing. Good scenarios should have both.

If anything, the contradiction is between large scenarios and effective testing. Yet those seem to be the most popular with players.



Jeremy Mac Donald -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/4/2005 2:50:40 PM)

quote:


You guys start from a faulty premise, that all players have a certain knowledge level. That level includes stuff like finding and downloading scenarios or simplying understanding game mechanics. I believe that is not the case. If you want to expand the community, you must reach out to a younger crowd who may have absolutely no idea how to play TOAW.

You want to expand the community, design and include a tutorial. You want to expand the community, rate scenarios by level of difficulty and double the quantity of scenarios included in the game. You want to expand the community, stop acting like freeking "experts" and stop with the threads bashing TOAW.

Any young casual gamer will look at this thread and say "quark this, I ain't buying a game that complicated."

Personally I believe you are doing a disservice to the game and it is highly probable that you are turning off a lot of young people who have never experienced TOAW right off. Well done.

You may now continue with your rather innane conversation.

I don't think this game is really likely to ever appeal to the casual beer and pretzels crowd. I suspect its already to complex for that. When it comes to introducing new young gamers to the hobby one wants to do somthing like This



bluermonkey -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/4/2005 3:29:25 PM)

I'd never heard of that game before, it look like a lot of fun actually!



Pippin -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/4/2005 3:50:59 PM)

One thing that used to bug me, is you could not scroll the map with the arrow keys. What a waste of usefull keys. Was a real pain on 640x monitors.




golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/4/2005 5:44:38 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Pippin

One thing that used to bug me, is you could not scroll the map with the arrow keys. What a waste of usefull keys. Was a real pain on 640x monitors.


Yeah. Also the scroll speed- especially on the minimap- is kinda slow, which is a killer for huge scenarios. One could do what a lot of other games do and allow the player to switch to a full-screen view of the minimap (which would also be great for grabbing a screenshot of the whole map for planning etc.).

With scrolling, whenever I'm browsing a map site or similar now, I find myself trying to drag the screen like you can in Google Maps.



golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/4/2005 5:48:03 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Jeremy Mac Donald

When it comes to introducing new young gamers to the hobby one wants to do somthing like This


Holy crap... that game looks like the ultimate European liberal wet dream "2013: in an emergency vote, the EU approves the sending of peacekeeping forces to the United States...."

Anyway, seems to be in the same vein as all those WWII RTS games that have been released lately.



Pippin -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/5/2005 7:23:38 PM)

One gui issue that frustrated the hell out of me, was someone's smart idea to make some units do an automatic bombard and movement into an enemy hex when you right click on an enemy unit to plan an attack.... ARGGH!@$!@$!#$@$!$




golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/5/2005 7:37:40 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Pippin

One gui issue that frustrated the hell out of me, was someone's smart idea to make some units do an automatic bombard and movement into an enemy hex when you right click on an enemy unit to plan an attack....


This is what we call Retreat-before-combat. It's like manna from heaven. If you take it away I will kill you myself.

... actually, probably your objection is that sometimes you don't want to overrun the enemy unit for whatever reason. I can't see any easy design way around this, but for your purpose, if you right click with the weakest unit in the stack first then you can guarantee that this won't happen.



Pippin -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/5/2005 7:51:35 PM)

quote:

... actually, probably your objection is that sometimes you don't want to overrun the enemy unit for whatever reason.


That is god damn right! Many times I plan an attack, poof the enemy retreats, and my hq or something important ends up moving right into the midst of the entire enemy forces, just waiting to get obliterated on the next round.... This is nonsense, and I don't know why they bothered to implement such a useless feature.






JAMiAM -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/5/2005 11:38:58 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
This is what we call Retreat-before-combat. It's like manna from heaven. If you take it away I will kill you myself.

LoL...the original complaint is like buying a Ferrari, and then complaining that it's got a racing engine, instead of a nice fuel efficient diesel.[:D]

To Pippin, managing the RBC's and the entire dynamic that it offers is one of the key features of the game. Like Ben said, if you don't want to RBC the enemy units, then initialize the attack with a very weak unit - even split a unit for the purpose, if necessary. You can always cancel the attack, afterwards. However, once the enemy unit has survived the morale check, then it will stay still for you to attack it the more deliberate way.



DanNeely -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/6/2005 2:31:53 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Pippin

quote:

... actually, probably your objection is that sometimes you don't want to overrun the enemy unit for whatever reason.


That is god damn right! Many times I plan an attack, poof the enemy retreats, and my hq or something important ends up moving right into the midst of the entire enemy forces, just waiting to get obliterated on the next round.... This is nonsense, and I don't know why they bothered to implement such a useless feature.


I could ask why you were using an HQ for a direct attack in the first place, but you can plan an attack with zero risk of an initial overrun if any unit capable of bombardment is within range. Use that unit to open the attack planning dialog instead of the ground unit next to it. I use this regularly when I only want to make a limited attack.

I completely disagree with your assertion that it's a useless feature. IN high mobility scenarios it's extremly valuable for overrunning broken units. Getting more than 4 or 5 rounds/turn is difficult, which means so is pushing a defender back more than a handful of hexes. In scens with only a dozen movement points/unit this doesn't matter much in ones with two or three dozen mp/for fast units it makes a very large degree of difference in how fast a breakout can occur.



JAMiAM -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/6/2005 3:06:46 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: DanNeely
I could ask why you were using an HQ for a direct attack in the first place, but you can plan an attack with zero risk of an initial overrun if any unit capable of bombardment is within range. Use that unit to open the attack planning dialog instead of the ground unit next to it. I use this regularly when I only want to make a limited attack.

This technique will work also, as long as the unit is not adjacent, when it does so. Otherwise there is still a possibility that the defender will RBC.



Pippin -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/6/2005 6:35:53 AM)

quote:

I could ask why you were using an HQ for a direct attack in the first place


I thought that was obvious??? If I want to smash into an enemy unit, I will use everything available to hit him as hard as I can. Why just use a BB gun when you can bring the shot-gun too.

If they went through the hassle of setting up the attacks this way, why not add another routine so I don't have to run into this problem of selecting weak units in my stacks and sub-dividing units etc, to prevent this from happening. O_o






golden delicious -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/6/2005 4:52:36 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Pippin

If they went through the hassle of setting up the attacks this way, why not add another routine so I don't have to run into this problem of selecting weak units in my stacks and sub-dividing units etc, to prevent this from happening.


The trouble is from a design point of view there's nothing that really comes to mind. What you'd probably want is for the player to have to select a special option if he wants to try for an RBC. That'd be a pain in the arse for the rest of us, though. The best solution I can think of is to have a player option "Never cause Retreat-Before-Combat". You can check or uncheck it as you please throughout the game.



Pippin -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/7/2005 8:17:03 AM)

Another thing that bugged me, was splitting and re=combining units gave a permanent decrease in efficiency. Shouldn't this penalty be removed after a while? I don't realisticaly see how the penalty for a combination of units back to its original parent should stay permanent. God help the smart general who makes it a habbit to split down forces into smaller units time to time.




JAMiAM -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/7/2005 11:17:05 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Pippin

Another thing that bugged me, was splitting and re=combining units gave a permanent decrease in efficiency. Shouldn't this penalty be removed after a while? I don't realisticaly see how the penalty for a combination of units back to its original parent should stay permanent. God help the smart general who makes it a habbit to split down forces into smaller units time to time.



That is no longer the case. I'm not sure which patch did away with that feature, but it is not a concern anymore. At least not with Century of Warfare.



Pippin -> RE: The most frustrating feature of TOAW engine (11/7/2005 8:00:39 PM)

Ok that is a relief. IIRC splitting a unit down gave only 80% efficiency, then recombining gave a 110% so you'd get short-changed. I always liked to split down so I could suround units with a small army, and force them to surrender early.




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