Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Lobster

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

This is a good point. The timestemp should also affect the ZOC and other effects (e.g. supply?) that the relevant units have.
The other point about BTS - which I understand but am still not convinced - is that the turn would advance to the medium of the battle rounds, instead of minimum, under the new system. I understand this makes the game tricker and you have to plan more carefully, but since we have the BTS system, why not make it minimum so that it completely address the question about battle in Africa affecting France - by moving the rounds to medium clearly only mediumly solved this problem

The game code was originally written in the late 90s. That it has been brought to this point is nothing short of a miracle. If you want to wait another five years for the entire thing to be remade by one programmer then I suppose what you propose could be done. Most of us are already way past tired of waiting.

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ORIGINAL: odoakr


Timestamps idea is pretty interesting, but still can create some time machine paradoxes.
For example, in the last case the enemy unit was overrun on round 3. So on round 2 the player has a timestamp on that hex, which is ok. What is not ok, is that the adjasent hexes are not affected, because on round 2 the enemy unit is still there and can influence a ZOC, especially if the active disengagement rule is in effect. I hope you get my point .

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And the last thing I wanted to say is counter design. When I play TOAW, the most important thing to me is the percentage of movement point left. You can have movement point values on the unit counters, but you still have to count a lot.
I dont know if it is technically possible, but it would be fun to have the percentage visible right on the unit counter.
One of the possible solutions is the counter frame that would show the percentage of movement points. The image attached shows a unit that has 75% of movement left.

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

The other point about BTS - which I understand but am still not convinced - is that the turn would advance to the medium of the battle rounds, instead of minimum, under the new system. I understand this makes the game tricker and you have to plan more carefully, but since we have the BTS system, why not make it minimum so that it completely address the question about battle in Africa affecting France - by moving the rounds to medium clearly only mediumly solved this problem

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: odoakr


Timestamps idea is pretty interesting, but still can create some time machine paradoxes.
For example, in the last case the enemy unit was overrun on round 3. So on round 2 the player has a timestamp on that hex, which is ok. What is not ok, is that the adjasent hexes are not affected, because on round 2 the enemy unit is still there and can influence a ZOC, especially if the active disengagement rule is in effect. I hope you get my point .

One could argue that units don't exert ZOCs while under attack - they're too preoccupied. Note that units advancing after combat don't pay ZOC costs either - presumably the adjacent units can't fire at the advancing units because they are too closely engaged with the defenders.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

The other point about BTS - which I understand but am still not convinced - is that the turn would advance to the medium of the battle rounds, instead of minimum, under the new system. I understand this makes the game tricker and you have to plan more carefully, but since we have the BTS system, why not make it minimum so that it completely address the question about battle in Africa affecting France - by moving the rounds to medium clearly only mediumly solved this problem

We carefully considered this, but intentionally opted for setting the adjustment to the median instead of the minimum for the retention of skill that median imposes.

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

I think what he meant is that if the actual battle happens at, say, round 5, due to the late arrival of the attacking unit. So before round 5 the target hex wasn't under attack and therefore the target unit should exert ZOC as normal. However, if the median round is determined to be, say, round 2, although the target hex would have a BTS stamp and whoever enters that hex will fastforward its clock to round 5, the hexes around the target hex don't have any BTS stamp and would not have any effect on units that entering them -- while in reality the target unit should have existed by the time of round 2 and any enemy units bypassing it would have been affected by its ZOC.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
See post #17 in this thread:

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ORIGINAL: X.ray
I think what he meant is that if the actual battle happens at, say, round 5, due to the late arrival of the attacking unit. So before round 5 the target hex wasn't under attack and therefore the target unit should exert ZOC as normal. However, if the median round is determined to be, say, round 2, although the target hex would have a BTS stamp and whoever enters that hex will fastforward its clock to round 5, the hexes around the target hex don't have any BTS stamp and would not have any effect on units that entering them -- while in reality the target unit should have existed by the time of round 2 and any enemy units bypassing it would have been affected by its ZOC.

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ORIGINAL: odoakr
Do you consider implementing the possibility of choosing between two systems? One for the new players and one for more conservative ones?

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ORIGINAL: odoakr

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
See post #17 in this thread:

Excellent news! Combined with the Planned Combats dialog it'll make the game much easier to play!

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ORIGINAL: X.ray
I think what he meant is that if the actual battle happens at, say, round 5, due to the late arrival of the attacking unit. So before round 5 the target hex wasn't under attack and therefore the target unit should exert ZOC as normal. However, if the median round is determined to be, say, round 2, although the target hex would have a BTS stamp and whoever enters that hex will fastforward its clock to round 5, the hexes around the target hex don't have any BTS stamp and would not have any effect on units that entering them -- while in reality the target unit should have existed by the time of round 2 and any enemy units bypassing it would have been affected by its ZOC.

Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to tell. I understand that taking this into account could make the game more complicated, so it's up to you in which way to develop the game.

I would only want to ask one thing:

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ORIGINAL: odoakr
Do you consider implementing the possibility of choosing between two systems? One for the new players and one for more conservative ones?

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ORIGINAL: Joe 98

Battles continue until all units of one side have broken off,

1. What does that phrase mean? What is "broken off?"

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2. How do I know how many tactical rounds it will take to play out any one battle during my turn?

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

So how this BTS is impacting on game play? I guess it makes the defense stronger, and harder to surround units. Anything else?

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

harder to surround units

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ORIGINAL: Lobster

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

harder to surround units

How about more realistic when surrounding units.

The old way. You have three regiments in front of the enemy unit at the beginning of a turn. Then you take some small highly mobile ant units and move them around to the flank and rear hexes of the enemy unit. They use all their their movement points to get there. Now the unit is 'surrounded' with no hope of retreat. The three regiments that didn't move at all attack the hapless enemy unit and utterly destroy it without expending more than, oh, we'll say 2 of the ten battle rounds. So they consumed 20% of the turn.

Now think about that. If only 20% of the turn is consumed in the combat exactly where would those three surrounding ant units have been? Certainly not where they are currently at the time of combat because it took their entire movement to get there or, to put it another way, it took them the entire turn to get there. So was the enemy unit really surrounded? No it wasn't. It had an avenue of retreat.

Time and space considerations are one of the biggest problems when you attempt to mirror reality in a turn based game. BTS attempts to rectify at least some of the time traveling. You can't fix it all but at least it fixes some of it.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

So how this BTS is impacting on game play? I guess it makes the defense stronger, and harder to surround units. Anything else?

?? It has to help the offense - fewer early turn endings.

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ORIGINAL: Grognerd

I still don't see how BTS will stop ant tactics - It will stop large exploitation's due to ant tactics. But it won't stop placing an air-mobile company to block the retreat route of an armor brigade, will it? Oh well, I'll just play the new version and find out.

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ORIGINAL: Lobster

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

harder to surround units

How about more realistic when surrounding units.

The old way. You have three regiments in front of the enemy unit at the beginning of a turn. Then you take some small highly mobile ant units and move them around to the flank and rear hexes of the enemy unit. They use all their their movement points to get there. Now the unit is 'surrounded' with no hope of retreat. The three regiments that didn't move at all attack the hapless enemy unit and utterly destroy it without expending more than, oh, we'll say 2 of the ten battle rounds. So they consumed 20% of the turn.

Now think about that. If only 20% of the turn is consumed in the combat exactly where would those three surrounding ant units have been? Certainly not where they are currently at the time of combat because it took their entire movement to get there or, to put it another way, it took them the entire turn to get there. So was the enemy unit really surrounded? No it wasn't. It had an avenue of retreat.

Time and space considerations are one of the biggest problems when you attempt to mirror reality in a turn based game. BTS attempts to rectify at least some of the time traveling. You can't fix it all but at least it fixes some of it.

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

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ORIGINAL: Lobster

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

harder to surround units

How about more realistic when surrounding units.

The old way. You have three regiments in front of the enemy unit at the beginning of a turn. Then you take some small highly mobile ant units and move them around to the flank and rear hexes of the enemy unit. They use all their their movement points to get there. Now the unit is 'surrounded' with no hope of retreat. The three regiments that didn't move at all attack the hapless enemy unit and utterly destroy it without expending more than, oh, we'll say 2 of the ten battle rounds. So they consumed 20% of the turn.

Now think about that. If only 20% of the turn is consumed in the combat exactly where would those three surrounding ant units have been? Certainly not where they are currently at the time of combat because it took their entire movement to get there or, to put it another way, it took them the entire turn to get there. So was the enemy unit really surrounded? No it wasn't. It had an avenue of retreat.

Time and space considerations are one of the biggest problems when you attempt to mirror reality in a turn based game. BTS attempts to rectify at least some of the time traveling. You can't fix it all but at least it fixes some of it.

This is similar to the issue that odoakr raised but to a further extent. And this is the intrinsic problem all IGOUGO turn based games have and I haven't seen a good solution yet. Maybe one could design a "battle intention" system where all units that are assigned to move or attack tasks don't actually act upon the time of placing orders, and the orders are only shown as dotted/shaded intention on the map. When the player clicks the button and executes the orders, all units act simultaneously, and stops at the time when the first battle ends (or the first encounter happens). Then the player could issue new orders, e.g. follow up battles, alternative movements, etc (maybe with certain restrictions to avoid gamey behaviors), but all units would be running their clocks simultaneously in this case, so that any time travel would not happen.
Certainly this is not something to be expected in TOAW IV, but hopefully in TOAW V, if any, or some next strategy game down the road.

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ORIGINAL: rocketboy

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

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ORIGINAL: Lobster

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ORIGINAL: Meyer1

harder to surround units

How about more realistic when surrounding units.

The old way. You have three regiments in front of the enemy unit at the beginning of a turn. Then you take some small highly mobile ant units and move them around to the flank and rear hexes of the enemy unit. They use all their their movement points to get there. Now the unit is 'surrounded' with no hope of retreat. The three regiments that didn't move at all attack the hapless enemy unit and utterly destroy it without expending more than, oh, we'll say 2 of the ten battle rounds. So they consumed 20% of the turn.

Now think about that. If only 20% of the turn is consumed in the combat exactly where would those three surrounding ant units have been? Certainly not where they are currently at the time of combat because it took their entire movement to get there or, to put it another way, it took them the entire turn to get there. So was the enemy unit really surrounded? No it wasn't. It had an avenue of retreat.

Time and space considerations are one of the biggest problems when you attempt to mirror reality in a turn based game. BTS attempts to rectify at least some of the time traveling. You can't fix it all but at least it fixes some of it.

This is similar to the issue that odoakr raised but to a further extent. And this is the intrinsic problem all IGOUGO turn based games have and I haven't seen a good solution yet. Maybe one could design a "battle intention" system where all units that are assigned to move or attack tasks don't actually act upon the time of placing orders, and the orders are only shown as dotted/shaded intention on the map. When the player clicks the button and executes the orders, all units act simultaneously, and stops at the time when the first battle ends (or the first encounter happens). Then the player could issue new orders, e.g. follow up battles, alternative movements, etc (maybe with certain restrictions to avoid gamey behaviors), but all units would be running their clocks simultaneously in this case, so that any time travel would not happen.
Certainly this is not something to be expected in TOAW IV, but hopefully in TOAW V, if any, or some next strategy game down the road.

Flashpoint Campaigns has a system like that. You plan movement and attacks and then there is a WEGO phase that plays it all out. The side with better communications/HQ structure get to plan more often and has the initiative. I know there are several who want that engine adapted to WWII and it could very well work for both smaller and larger scale scenarios.

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

A true WEGO system will be difficult to PBEM.

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ORIGINAL: X.ray

But what I said above was not really a "WEGO" system as the other side did not "go".

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Grognerd

I still don't see how BTS will stop ant tactics - It will stop large exploitation's due to ant tactics. But it won't stop placing an air-mobile company to block the retreat route of an armor brigade, will it? Oh well, I'll just play the new version and find out.

That has already been addressed in III: Retreating units can try to RBC blocking units. Only if that fails do the blockers cause their elimination.

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ORIGINAL: HPT KUNZ

Bob, that is a brilliant illustration of the improved combat system and Combat Result dialog.

I have been playing TOAW since it came out. I could not understand why the AI did better than I. Next I started playing PBEM on The Strategist ladder. A guy named Wilhelm was my mentor. He was the #1 on the ladder. (I suspect he just used me to pad his numbers). He cleaned my clock every time- we played exchange games of Wintergewitter. He even beat me when I was the Soviets!

I then discovered the "Circle of Stars". That made a big difference. But if I had, say, six stars left as I finished my first turn planning, I took forever to go through all of my units to find which one had a "late unit" attack.

Fast forward to TOAW IV: Now using the new system, the Battle Time Stamp and Combat Result dialog make this whole thing much more intuitive. Thanks much for this post.

_____________________________

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ORIGINAL: Lobster

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Grognerd

I still don't see how BTS will stop ant tactics - It will stop large exploitation's due to ant tactics. But it won't stop placing an air-mobile company to block the retreat route of an armor brigade, will it? Oh well, I'll just play the new version and find out.

That has already been addressed in III: Retreating units can try to RBC blocking units. Only if that fails do the blockers cause their elimination.

Even with the RBC element you have time travelling. That unit that is blocking the way may not even be there at the moment of combat in the real world. I don't see any way around some of this with a turn based game without some human imposed limitations or 'house rules'. For instance if an opposing unit's retreat path is totally blocked by friendly units then all friendly units have to be used in the combat. That type of time travelling is then taken care of for the most part.