Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: tucson3217

I have enjoyed all the SSG games and will buy this one-I do wish that more scenarios could be made, a professional quality scenario with perhaps new units or unit art would be fantastic--and I would be willing to pay quite a bit to have these. I think if you develop one flexible system that you could make a bit of money and have many happy customers buy applying updates to the engine, art and scenarios. I think you might be surprised how much people might pay for these types of things-and for whatever reason we customers tend to be more accepting of small but requested improvements to an existing engine (even if we pay for it) than we seem to be of a new game design.

I think the reason for this is because it makes the customer feel that they are being listened to. Even if their requested fix was not applied right away, the fact that the game was being worked on and designed and tweaked and improved makes the customer excited and feel appreciated. I, for one, think the AO improvement itself looks quite genius, and I am very excited by the strategic possibilities it may open up, and how it might improve the sense of purpose during each move- and even total game immersion.

Ok, I have a couple of questions about the new game:

1) I liked the artillery system in battlefront better than in the previous games. however, I did not like the fact that they artillery ended up being a indirect fire anti-tank weapon. I think it may not have been how the system was intended to be used, and am pretty certain that is not how it was ever used in war. I am wondering if this has been addressed in some manner in this new engine? Or is the artillery back to the way it was in the older games? I would like to see the system in battlefront with some tweaks to make artillery perform in a more historical fashion.

2) I assume the 4k hexes means the direct fire system has changed? I did try and read the blurb about the new direct fire rules, but I guess I did not quite understand how tanks, armor and AT guns and effects will be used--it seems like it may be a mesh between the older games and battlefront? I am not sure though. Another question about direct fire weapons-could a sce. designer make smaller hexes and add ranged direct fire to the game system?

3) I was looking at the new battlefront sce. being currently in designed on the Run5 forums. It looks beautiful. I was wondering if the same sort of graphic tweaks might be included as a possible variant in the new game engine? Or make something like this downloadable? I think an easy upgrade like this would make people quite pleased--I know I would enjoy it. While I can tell the difference between a PZ IV and PZ III from their shawdos/outlines such as they are, the unit art in the following examples are much more fulfilling and would increase game play for me a lot. I think the following art is ported from the 'Volcano Man' Art upgrades he makes for HPS games-so I am not certain if the exact art could be included or made available. Maybe you could ask him? Or if that is not an option, maybe something similar might be made available?

I am looking forward to this release. I hope others will give it a chance as well-I am guessing it will be quite good. I also see the point of some of the complaints however; so perhaps a bit more attention to after release value added features and game play might be considered?

I think everybody would be happy with that scenario-there are very few quality computer war game designers left (board war games OTOH seem to be making an amazing comeback both in quality of components, playability and popularity).

It would be quite tragic if a very talented and experienced designer/developer quit making games not because the games were of low quality, but because the customers and designers had a sort of falling out due to a misunderstanding of desires and intent.

I really do not think customers and developers are that far apart-it seems we all want the same basic things, but that due to some possibly fumbled communications and maybe even some bad market choices there is a bit of mistrust built up.

I honestly don't think there is any huge gap created though-I think SSG has earned some more patience on our part based on a long track record of quality games. I think some of their new ideas sound very promising-real and innovative change is not coming from many places in computer war gaming, and SSG does attempt to add significant and creative game designs. Designs that seem to take advantage of what computers offer, not just simple board game ports. For instance, the AO design? That would be hard to try and design in a board game (I realize MMP-and maybe others as well- has a sort of similar concept in their TCS games with the written orders, but some consider it too awkward. I happen to like it, but anyway...)

Having said all that, I do think the designers owe it to the customers to add more value to their future releases (such as they have done in the past). Perhaps an engine that is more flexible and open to engine upgrades and mods? Or maybe mods and tweaks for graphics or backwards compatibility etc. W/O that, at least some quality scenarios, content and additions should be given to each release before moving on to the next design.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gregor_SSG



Thanks for the considered comments. As I've said elsewhere, this design will be used for our next game as well, so we hope that this will give people some confidence in the stability of the system and our desire to support it.

The answers to your specific questions are as follows:

1. Artillery is a sort of anti-everything system. Used in the attack it causes step losses and induces retreats. It is not specifically used in the defence except that artillery units tend to have good Direct Defence chances, so if assaulted they can cause extra step losses to the attacker (as they could in Battlefront). I don't really understand the anti-armour part of the question since artillery only ever targets a hex rather than specific units.

2. The Direct Attack system has changed from Battlefront. In BF you had to chose between using armour units from 1 hex away to fire on eligible targets, and forgo their use in Close Combat, or just chuck them into the Close Combat and forget about the Direct Fire.

The system is now caused Direct Attack because armoured units can cause extra casualties to eligible units (basically anybody not entrenched) in the defending stack as part of a Close Combat. Since you get one dice roll per hex side attacked from, it pays to have your tanks attack from as many directions as possible.

The interaction between Tank Attack, and Tank or Anti-Tank defence factors is a separate system and remains as it was in BF and operates just to modify the dice roll on the CRT. Its essence is to reward you if you have better quality tanks than the defender's anti tank defences and penalise you if it is worse.

The old style Direct Fire can't be resurrected but despite the long explanation, the new system is in fact simpler and easier to use.

3. The graphics in the games are just bitmaps, it doesn't take an engine tweak to change them, just different artwork. I'll have a look at the examples you are talking about.

I would hope that we have earned some of the patience that you talk about, given our long history. For instance, we did a great deal of work and added the Mystery Variants to Carriers at War, which greatly increased playability, even though it probably wouldn't have resulted in a single extra sale.

If I could make one philosophical comment applicable to this whole discussion it would be this: everything we want to do takes time, a long time, and there's only a few of us to do the work. With Kharkov, I'm absolutely convinced that we have got the basics totally right. It's a very exciting game, and the Mystery Variants add great replayability, especially to PBEM games. It will be great value for money and will only get better.

Gregor

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dale H
It was an invitation to disaster to leave a single squadron or company on its own because combat usually resulted in the loss of the unit. I made it a habit of keeping the companies stacked together as whole battalions. It makes more sense to my limitied understanding of the historical situation to have the armored units represented as battalions & not anything smaller especially when the infantry units were regimental size.