Slitherine

quote:


By definition, you must have abstraction in a wargame. It is just not possible to factor in all calculations needed to turn it into a simulation rather than a game and I'd never play another if and when that happened. To use the Panther example again, why not factor in the number of crew (5) who can bail and survive, so 10 tanks destroyed = potentially 50 troops on the battlefield. Would a designer really need to look at the exact scale of their map, work out that at the max speed of 46km/h a Panther would (providing it could travel that fast constantly) move through three hexes in one turn etc. etc. I know it's silly, but I think some people are in danger of going too deep. Just adapt what feels right and seems right and balanced in playtesting and release. If the scenario is way out on something, the players will soon mention it and a modified version can be released.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim_H

@kevinkin
I can't date it exactly, but also remember Perfect General and still have my copy somewhere! It's interesting you mention the abstraction of that game. I remember it now, but whilst playing the game I don't think it was that noticeable most of the time and I guess that's because the game dev made it possible for the scenario designers to work with some measure of flexibility. This also goes for AT and I do understand the reasoning behind the questions you and others are asking.

@all
But, to play devil's advocate, at what point do you draw the line and stop trying to be accurate or realistic or whatever word you want to use?
I'm not a designer. It's not something I've ever really wanted to try before AT and so am coming at this with a purely player's hat on. Perhaps I'm being a little too simplistic, I am not pretending to be a purist...but, if someone presents me with a WWII scenario for this game, with the unit names and equipment lists looking reasonable, along with a plausible scenario premise, I'm happy to suspend disbelief (this is a game after all!) and just enjoy the experience. However, I appreciate that there are people out there who would also balk if presented with a scenario where the calculation for the thickness of the front turret armour of a Pz Kpfw Panther II was 10mm out (it was 100mm by the way, and I wonder how many will check this!! ). To me, that's one step (or several) too far and takes something away from what should be fun, a game.

By definition, you must have abstraction in a wargame. It is just not possible to factor in all calculations needed to turn it into a simulation rather than a game and I'd never play another if and when that happened. To use the Panther example again, why not factor in the number of crew (5) who can bail and survive, so 10 tanks destroyed = potentially 50 troops on the battlefield. Would a designer really need to look at the exact scale of their map, work out that at the max speed of 46km/h a Panther would (providing it could travel that fast constantly) move through three hexes in one turn etc. etc. I know it's silly, but I think some people are in danger of going too deep. Just adapt what feels right and seems right and balanced in playtesting and release. If the scenario is way out on something, the players will soon mention it and a modified version can be released.

Flames on a postcard to....

Regards,
Jim

quote:

ORIGINAL: Awac835

I think you can only fail if you really try to balance each subformation out by saying this is a company, so many companys in a division so many in a army etc. You will always run into trouble somewhere i think. As a poster above said. If you say this unit is this and that, but then suddenly you stand with a transport ship that can ferry a whole armygroup or nothing more then a single company. Or find that becouse of the stack limit in attacks it would be unrealistic. Also if you dont figure in production, those units will be suddenly grow in size where you have super units moving around with 999 in combat power.

Only way you can really make it all fit together the way you want is to make a new master file and set the limits on stack, transport, production, combat power etc.

With the generic its all to abstracted. Like Tweber said. You can only really do it in reletive terms bewteen different units.

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ORIGINAL: Max 86

Here is my formula for division level games. The intent is to have all the major elements of a division in suitable numbers to best reflect partial casualties in a particular combat without losing all of the division's capabilities. Also, I have put aside the one for one comparison and have tried different multipliers for different unit types.

Inf Btns: multiply # of Btns by 10 (Inf Div with 3 INf Reg/6 yields 60 infantry. Out of that 60, 40 Rfl, 10 SMG, last 10 between mtrs, bazookas, IGs and MGs, player discretion according to mission.)

Eng Bn X 10 also. So one Eng Btn in the division = 10 Engs

Divisions usually had Rcn, Arty, AT, Flak Btns. For these battalions multiply by 2 or 3 ( I haven't decided yet). So each division with a Rcn Btn will have 2-3 Scouts or Scout Cars. Same for the other elements.

Transportation I try to keep simple; Mechanized Divs have halftrack/truck mix, Motorized Divs have trucks only and non-motor/mech (groundpounders) use 3:1 horses to truck ratio. Unless the scenario calls for a lack of transport, supply enough of the correct transport for the entire division.

Tanks represent a different animal entirely, initially I thouught 1 tank per tank company in the division but that would lead to as many as 16 tank units for a 2-Tank-Regiment division which is way overpowered for this game. So, try using one tank per tank type per regiment. Confused yet?

An early '42 German Pzr div might consist of 1 Pzr regiment with a PzII company, 2 PZIII companies and a PzIV company (Based on the Campaign Series model for sake of discussion). This means that this division would receive 1 Lt tank and 3 Med Tanks with the PZIV classified as a medium. I am planning to allow both Med Tk 1 and Med Tk 2 to be produced simultaneously (if possible) to represent the PZIII and PZIV medium classes.

A 2-regiment tank division based on the model above would have 2 Lt tanks and 6 mediums.

To summarize;

Inf Div with 3 Inf regiments and Rcn, Arty, AT, Flak Btns would consist of:

40 Rfl, 10 SMG, 3Mtr, 3MGs, 2IGs, 2 Bazookas
10 Engs
2-3 Arty
2-3 Scouts
2-3 AT guns
2-3 Flaks

Tank Div with 2 Tk Regiments and Rcn, Arty, AT, Flak Btns would consist of:
2 Light tanks and 6 Medium tanks
10 Engs
2-3 Arty
2-3 Scouts
2-3 AT guns
2-3 Flaks

Again, the idea is to be able to send these divisions into combat and sustain a few losses without necessarily losing divisional capabilities like Rcn, Arty and so forth; but prolonged combat will still grind them up into a shell of their former selves.

The Hv tank Btns is another situation completely because the heavy tanks are so powerful in this game. I use 2 Heavys, 1 light and a 2 scout cars.  Only 5 units but they pack quite a punch and if losses do occur, it will not necessarily be the heavys that are lost.  I may remove the scouts and add light tanks because I am not sure if these Hvy Btns carried a scout company or not. Must research!

This is not set in stone but just a template to go by. Still use historical data to flesh them out. For example, I don't think Russian tank divisions had any mobile arty so do not inclued Arty in the Soviet tank divisions.  Some divisions did not have Rcn cars so use foot scouts instead. stuff like that.

I know this must be a great game because I have started a notebook for keeping track of things!

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Just some advice from me, since i tried a lot of things before releasing AT.

If you want more groggy OOBS and units my advice is:

1. Make a new sftype set in which you assume scouts, mg's, guns, artillery, horses, mortars, etc.. are included in:
-Wehrmacht Regiment
-SS Regiment
-Volkssturm Regiment

2. I repeat do not try to put 8 different subformations of the current set in each division. its hell to play.

3. Make country specific tanks and aircraft with their own historical names.

4. dont use horses, but keep trucks and halftracks so you can chose if you want to mobilize a division or not.

5. Add 2 new roadtypes: "rail" and "road+rail", make a trainsftype to be used by HQs to do transfers and str. transfers, diminish trucks capacity so rail becomes neccesary. Activate the 3th transfer mode rulevar so players can choose to use landcap, seacap or traincap.

6. Optionally make supply to hexes further away from rail and roads go bad earlier.

7. Optionally add auxillary (indepedent) Artillery and AA Regiments. (horse movement standard)

8. Add different people/peoplegroups for like Finish, SS, German, Bulgarians, Rumaninans and give them different morale scores and combat modifiers.

9. Do two layered HQ systems. With OKW - Army - Unit or OKW- Corps -Unit or Stavka- Front - Unit.

just some ideas from the designer here :) i never got around to making this sort of scenarios though.

quote:

ORIGINAL: kevinkin

Can standard OOBs be saved and shared?

Kevin