Ronald Wendt
Posts: 1880
Joined: 6/8/2009
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Hello,
first of all its nice to see you have such a deep interest in our game. In this post i integrated all posts of you i thought being relevant.
Now want to imply that our game is a game first and then a simulation. We tried to be accurate in many things e.g. the maps(locations,distance, terrain)/Scale/OOBs/time line/mission targets. Also there are only few scenarios atm. that have targets the attacking side did not reach historically. Whenever realism interacted with the flow of the game we always chose the alternatives we felt were more fun to play.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
I have played all three campaigns, the first two as "Officer" and the last as "General". In the first two campaigns I had, iirc, brilliant victories in all but one scenarios. In the third I had achieved only one brilliant victory. The limited mobility of the tanks certainly had an influence there. But I'm not sure how a mixed force could have done better.
The with increasing difficulty the resources are much more in the focus. Thus your tank forces are often more expensive to maintain. So what use is a 5 Point tank division when you can refill two Infantry divisions that than have more attacks with the same amount of resources ? This question is only of interest if the resources are limited, of course. So on "leutnant" and "officer" this usually is not an important question. So if you can repeat your experience while playing the first two campaigns on diffult, then we might have overseen a gap in the balancing during our QA.
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ORIGINAL: micha1100
What use is it to send infantry and artillery units in their transports ahead when they won't be able to achieve much except being decimated by enemy units the happen to meet?
To answer this, one had to know much more about the all in all situation. Artillery is of course not made for direct encounters. Also transports should be used carefully to avoid heavy damage - but thats quite natural and not a design mistake imho. Maybe you leftout details?
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ORIGINAL: micha1100
Perhaps I'm not playing the game correctly. If someone can show me how to gain brilliant victories in campaign 3 with a mixed force I'm perfectly willing to learn but my own experience so far is that infantry on its own is not very effective and when used next to tanks I had almost always wished I had another tank instead. Of course tanks are more expensive but in many scenarios I haven't bought any replacements anyway.
Well in Operation Blau you already got a mixed force and you usually don't have too many resources to build significant new units.
Getting all brilliant victories is really much more depending on the right division of forces and good resource management. "Brute Panzerforce" won't help here. But this should be true with the other campaigns on hard, too (see above)
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
In the last few days I have played the Barbarossa campaign until I reached the outskirts of Moscow. Then the historical note told me this was the farthest the Germans ever came, and the game brought me back to the main menu.
So the campaign ends there? No scenario where I can try to take Moscow? I know the Germans didn't manage that, but come on, I have won brilliant victories in all scenarios and still don't get the chance to improve the original outcome? This was really an anti-climax for me.
When i made the campaigns tried to recreate the historical course of each campaign. I never chose battles that were lost by the nation that is played in the campaign. So what you get is pretty much the key battles and the way the armies had to go during those campaigns. I also tried to recreate the difficulties that the armies were facing. Thus there is a great influence of weather, resources and the distance on the maps.
I am sorry if that did not work for you.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
I have bought this game and do like it so far, but I noticed several things that to a greater or lesser extent limit the fun I am having (some have already been mentioned in other threads):
1.) Unlike in PG, OB doesn't seem to place much emphasis in combined arms warfare. Tanks can do everything (except cross rivers), it seems. I think an army consisting exclusively of tanks would still be very efficient. I'm not sure if this is a good thing.
My experience with PG is different, "tank rushes" worked quite wll for me in PG & PG2.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
2.) The scenarios often seem to pose more logistical than military problems. Usually the farther victory locations are only lightly defended, but far away. The only way to secure a brilliant victory is often to absolutely ignore opposing units and march on as quickly as possible. This is, however, easily done as the enemy's units tend to run around in circles on unimportant terrain instead of counterattacking or falling back to save the still-unconquered victory locations.
While reading about the battles in the East i came to the conclusion that indeed weather and logistics were very important. These are military problems. I think you mean not everything is solved by battles, which is true.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
3.) The AI absolutely refuses to re-take victory locations. I even made a test where I volutarily vacated a victory hex with an opposing unit directly next to it. So in the AI's turn it could have re-taken the victory location just by moving one unit one hex unopposedly. It didn't do it, instead moved the unit off to search something in the forests.
This is indeed odd and not quite intended.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
4.) Fuel and ammunition seem to be much too expensive in relation to the unit prices. For example armoured infantry carriers cost 40 resources, and it also costs 40 resources to fill them up with fuel, which is obviously ridiculous.
This is obviously ridiculous but necessary. This emphasises the importance of the goods ammo and fuel without introducing seperate stocks for them. This is for keeping things simple while simultating supply issues.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
5.) Also ridiculous is the rule that with three adjacent enemy units the own unit cannot be rearmed or refueled, but it can receive reinforcements. It's possible to bring in, for example, new tanks but impossible to bring in fuel and ammunition?
I actually like the idea that the more enemy units are adjacent the more difficult it becomes to sustain the own unit, but the way it is done currently does not make much sense. I'd rather like to see the quantities of new fuel and ammunition being (only) gradually limited while the possibility of reinforcements should be decreased significantly. The way it is now the AI can defend some locations very well by always reinforcing the unit in question (even if it cannot be resupplied) if I don't have enough powerful units near it to ensure that it is killed in one turn.
This rule is indeed debatable, atm. it is very simular to the PG2 rules. It actually can lead to some odd situations though.
quote:
ORIGINAL: micha1100
6.) Infantry seems to out-march tanks, especially on roads. I don't think this makes sense. Actually I think infantry is often more mobile without transports than with it, because you rarely get to use the full mobility of the transports but have to regularly miss a turn for refueling. Speaking of that, there should be an option to abandon the transports. There are lots of possible situations where the player would gladly lose the transports if the infantry would just march instead of being stopped cold for a turn for want of fuel (like when a city has to be taken or there's a crippled enemy unit to be finished off).
7.) Pioneers seem to be unable to build bridges, but infantry units seem to be able to cross rivers with their transports - how do they do this?
Pioneers can repair bridges, but not build them to keep the strategical importance of the given bridges. Giving them the ability would destroy many settings and render the brigde feature useless.
Trucks cannot be abandoned to keep things simple.
Once more back to difficulty. I started a poll some time ago. Though there are quite few that took part yet, people seem to be quite satisfied with the game in this point. I don't know if you have already given your vote:
Difficulty poll
The aim of the poll was to get an idea if there should be changes in the balancing of the maps/campaigns. Obviously there seems not need for that right now.
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