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Iconoclast

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  1. Rune, It's funny! Just to show you how complicated this whole numbers thing can be, I'm pretty sure we're in raging agreement that we both believe the current rating scheme to be FUBAR-- yet it seems we're each interpreting it differently! I'd have said the rating scale is 1-10, with 0 being Not Applicable (as it clearly states on the scenario review form). When even folks who really care about the numbers and the ratings-- either because they are scenario designers trying to figure out what the hell the gaming public thinks about their efforts, or because they're reflexive number-crunchers (my hand goes up in confession)-- can't seem to agree about what a scale means, it becomes next to meaningless. This is on top of the scale being subject to distortion because of the small N, sample skew (i.e, the only ones who care enough to rate are at the two tails of the bell curve on opinion), etc. Part of the confusion about the scale is whether folks are using 1-10 as a genuine bell curve with 5 being average, or equating it to academic grades, where 70% (more or less) equals "F" and a failure. Here's a proposal, Rune. I'm nearly finished playing a double-blind PBEM game of another one your designs-- a Battle of Minors. I have some specific "issues" (OK, criticisms) I'd like to raise in my feedback. You know my position on scenario reviews by now-- that if something doesn't make sense or feel "right" to this 30+ year grog, then in my mind it is fair game to point these things out in review comments *without* asking the designer to explain them first, since the odds are that John Q. Gamer won't have "gotten it" either. (That's the fundamental difference between FEEDBACK and a REVIEW in my mind.) What I would couple this with is a) providing a fairly lengthy assessment of WHY I found these elements problematic, I will provide NO NUMERICAL RATINGS at all, just comments, and c) I will include things I *liked* and do a summation. (Not sure if I'll try an "X stars out of 5" approach or not-- I doubt it.) The only way a prospective player of the scenario would see my opinions is if he scrolls down the reviews column after having clicked on the scenario. This way there's no risk that I artificially skew your numbers, yet I say my piece. Sound worth trying to you, since we're both not happy with the status quo? Jim [ December 11, 2002, 03:00 PM: Message edited by: Iconoclast ]
  2. Rune, No problem with your answering here before seeing your home email; I'd normally be in the same boat-- with the exception that I couldn't even be reading the forums from work without big troubles. (As you said, another subject for another time. ) I'm glad to hear that the AAR and variable reinforcement locations are on "the list" for CMII. I still think there is a lot of value in having another field on the scenario list for "type", but understand there is competition for a limited number of character spaces. BTW, I was using "tutorial" as a euphemism for any scenario designed with 'teaching a lesson' as one of its primary goals, rather than describing only those turn-by-turn walkthroughs. I'm not sure that going to a system of 1-5 stars, letter grades, or percentiles is going to get around the facts that: a) everyone has differing criteria, and the tyranny of small numbers means unless you have a "best seller" or CD distro scenario, one low review will really skew your numbers. This is just intrinsic to subjectively applying numbers without a common baseline. There is some tension between supplying feedback solely to a scenario designer and making it available to a wider audience. Both are appropriate, IMO. If I come away from a PBEM game saying "well, I've just wasted a month of my gaming life" I want to a) tell that to the designer (hopefully with reasons why, in the form of constructive suggestions) let others know c) try to lay out why I hold this OPINION (not fact, my subjective impression) in a manner that others can evaluate even if the don't agree with my beliefs. These are not mutually exclusive goals. I actually do practice self-censorship, in that when I have had less-than-flattering things to say about the efforts of a fledgling designer I have opted *only* to send a polite and constructive email ("thank you for taking the time to design this... thought you might be interested in the following feedback/able to answer these questions") to him. In these cases I have opted NOT to post a public review of a scenario rather than post something that might discourage someone from creating and sharing more stuff. Only well-established guys like Rune get the dubious benefit of my unvarnished opinion in public. See, a backhanded compliment. I, too, wish that The Scenario Depot had a way of letting you track reviewers as well as designers. That way if you find someone whose tastes run like yours, you can follow in their gaming footsteps; likewise, if their preferences are the antithesis of yours, you can always pick what they panned. Either way it's a win. Jim
  3. Rune and I continued this in a very civil discussion off-line; I'm posting some of my comments here. For the record, I know now that I was coming down with the flu last night, so I'm certain I wasn't as diplomatic in my posts as I might have been. I've had some graduate training in statistics and have had to rate people's performance on the job for most of my career, so I absolutely agree with Rune that virtually any rating/scoring system is imperfect, especially when it involves assigning objective numbers to subjective value judgments. I'll also freely admit that I tend to "low ball" in assigning numbers (my goal is to make a real bell curve, not a Lake Woebegone-style one). I told Rune to be glad this was only a game scenario rather than an annual fitness-for-duty report with real money at stake. Rune and I may perhaps have one remaining philosophical difference remaining, and hopefully this is one where we can just agree to disagree. On his request to ASK questions before REVIEWING, I'll note that I have corresponded with various scenario designers in my CMBO gaming days, and have done so on some CMBB ones as well, especially when I have issues I don't understand or think I see something to improve in that particular scenario. A review for me is a qualitatively different kettle of fish, though -- I write it for the person coming at the scenario cold, who probably wants to know what to expect (in broad terms-- no real spoilers) in terms of big issues like pace and balance. If there are issues that require an individual dialogue with the scenario designer to understand, then you're venturing into an area that may be too subtle to expect your average player to fully appreciate without this extra context. By analogy, a movie critic may have gone to the UCLA film school and actually understand in a very sophisticated sense what the director was aiming for in terms of the cinematographer's art, but he's probably better off leaving this out of his review for Joe Popcorn moviegoer, who only wants to gauge whether he's likely to enjoy the two hours he'll spend in the theater. In this case, having spent time in military vehicles during Bosnian winters, I actually *knew* what Rune was trying to simulate in this scenario with the German setup. I just wanted to point out how it played out for us-- two very seasoned gamers/military grogs-- andy why it might or might not be what others are looking for, depending on their tastes. I then tried to capture the flavor of the scenario in my description without revealing spoilers. (The mud, after all, *was* mentioned in the scenario description, so I wasn't giving away state secrets by commenting on its impact.) Reading it again, my tone in the review may have sounded more contentious than I intended (and could even be mis-construed as whiny), but again, I was trying to crank out a string of capsule reviews before I lost the window of opportunity. (Unless I'm missing something, there's no way for a reviewer to edit his own posts on the Depot ratings-- once you start one you have to finish it or abort, even if the Real World is standing there tapping her foot and looking at her watch. ) I was in fact being facetious in suggesting that only the last 10 turns of Korsun Relief were relevant, but the bottom line is that two very experienced gamers/military wonks both came away frustrated by separate issues in the scenario, and I felt that was worth noting. I think it occurred largely because Rune intended it as a teaching scenario, which wasn't what we were looking for. Would my have corresponding with Rune about this have changed our reaction to the scenario? No-- we'd already played it (and understood the lessons); I simply wanted to impart one guy's impression of it so others could take that into account in weighing whether it is what they're looking for in a scenario. If you've stuck with me this long in the post, I'll throw out two quick ideas on how CM3 could address this issue. Give me a sanity check, guys! One idea would be to segregate the scenarios further on the CM3 CD by some extra notation in the scenario listing about the emphasis of that particular scenario, with categories including "historical" (you may be facing a massacre, but that's what happened), tutorial (I'd put Korsun Pocket in this category, BTW), balanced for AI/human play (OK, this is a loaded one-- we'd like to think virtually *all* of the scenarios are such, but through beta testing the CM crew probably has a sense which fly particularly well as competitive games). Sure, it's not going to be absolutely cut-and-dried to put a particular scenario in one bin, but at least you'd have a general idea of what *type* of scenario you were dealing with beyond the current parameters of size/type/combatants. If BFC went to a typology like that on the CD, I suspect it would be mirrored on the scenario web sites, and folks might be able to find the category of scenario they hanker for without needing to use any kind of pseudo-precise rating system which both Rune and I agree is imperfect and prone to specious precision. The second idea would be to tweak CM3's scenario engine to allow for a fourth text file that would provide scope for an after-action commentary from the designer. This screen would display after the end-of-game summary. This would be a place for the scenario designer to say anything from "this is why I did X in the design" to "the Germans underestimated the force opposing them by over 100 percent, and while they took the secondary objective, the panzergrenadier battalion lost 400 men and most of its AFVs in the ensuing bloodbath." I'm sure every designer has had times when he'd like to tell the players something, but didn't want to impart a spoiler by including it in the scenario description or Op Orders. To maximize replay, you could even have separate files for each side (to at least facilitate playing the scenario a second time from the other side without having received scenario design spoilers.) Whaddya' think?
  4. Agreed laxx, but the key point is, *when* do you start the "as is"? You could begin the scenario with the commanders getting their orders at headquarters, organizing the troops, and having one last latrine call before embarking on their vehicles. It all comes down to how much is relevant to what you want to simulate. In this case, I felt that Rune included a fair bit of what could be considered the approach to the FEBA; he obviously disagrees, which is his perogative. Doesn't mean I have to say "yeah, you're right-- I should enjoy exchanging a dozen PBEM turns of road column movement before the action begins?!" Some may like their games paced this way, others may not; I think it's a valid point to mention in a review as a possible factor in whether this scenario is one the reader would enjoy. You've got a very good point on time limits. Many scenarios have limits that seem exceptionally short given the task at hand. This is exacerbated by the tendency in many scenarios to pit an attacker against a dug-in defender with little more than even point odds--certainly short of the 3:1 ratio 'the book' calls for against even a hasty defensive position. (You've hit another one of my hot buttons here. :mad: ) It can be done, but requires concentrating your own forces so much that you probably can't clear an entire company or battalion defensive line in 30-45 minutes. (And Rune, before you launch another tirade in my direction, I'm NOT critiquing any of your scenarios with this comment. Down boy! )
  5. You're right-- and if that's the choice, it's pretty easy, eh? It's ironic-- I wasn't posting a "this sux, wher'z the powerups?" blast, merely trying to make some comments that might help folks decide whether this particular scenario was their cup of tea. I favor scenarios with multiple solutions, consistent pace (i.e., some advancing to contact but not 75% of the scenario)... and that's about it. OK, so historical plausibility (no elite SS Tiger bn vs. the Guards JS-3 regiment) and fun are kinda' nice, too, but I didn't say that either were lacking in this scenario. Think about it-- whenever you finish a scenario you implicitly have some kind of judgment about it (was it fun, was it balanced, would you play it again)-- my opponent and I certainly discuss these in our post mortems. Now that I've been revealed as some kind of knuckle-walking ingrate who probably can't even spell "CMBB", I guess I'll keep these comments to just my opponent and myself. Caveat Emptor, eh?!
  6. Since mine is the only feedback posted on Korsun Relief, I'm certainly the one you're ire is directed against here. Let me say right up front that I've played a number of your scenarios and enjoyed them. I certainly don't have anything but appreciation for the work that you and the other scenario designers on the CD and the Web put into your products. In fact, I designed a number of CMBO scenarios, posted them-- and never got a word of feedback. Made me vow that the least I could do for the guys who go to the trouble of creating and posting these things was to give them the courtesy of some feedback. I realized that I was way behind in doing this for CMBB, had some down time last Sunday afternoon, and posted some reviews of scenarios that my main opponent and I had done double-blind PBEM. Speaking of assumptions... my main opponent and I have a combined total of ~70 years of wargaming, a like amount of time studying military history, and 50 years of "real world" experience between us. I'm not saying that we're any kind of experts, but at least we're "militarily mature" and not some kind of displaced twitch gamers. I went back and looked at my comments. In hindsight, would I have worded things exactly the same way now? No, in part because yours was one of the last reviews I did in that catch-up session and I was probably rushing. But if you think I was so intemperate and ill-informed, I've got to tell you that my text was at least impartial enough that you didn't even guage my perspective correctly and instead chalked my whole commentary up to sour grapes. I was actually the Russian player in that game, didn't bog down in the mud, and won handily-- but that doesn't mean I can't call 'em like I see them, win, lose, or draw. You did hit one of my hot buttons-- scenarios that are billed as "meeting engagements" but actually are straight up attack/defend situations (I don't see how you can describe this as anything but a German attack on a Russian Hasty Defense). I also stand by my comments about the pace of this particular scenario --20 turns of approach, a short and exciting climax,and an assymetry in force capabilities that definitively conditions game play. Did I ever say it was ahistorical? No, so I don't know where you got that rant from, nor the one about Teaching Scenarios. For some of us a 30 turn scenario represents weeks to a month of real world game time commitment, depending on our schedules. We're not looking for perfect game balance or tactical nirvana (one of my rants is that "war isn't fair--get used to it!"), but OTOH if the first 20 turns (or two weeks worth of real life playing time for us) is so very slow as to amount to a protracted road march, that seems like a valid point to tell others up front. We're certainly not the only ones with constrained gaming time. Similarly if there seems to be only one viable approach for a given side to take, that seems valid to point out as well. You can disagree with my perspective, you can denigrate my opinion, you can dismiss me as uninformed or irrelevant. I don't really care. If you don't want feedback, far be it from me to give it to you. That's too much like what I have to do for a living, anyway. It's ironic, though. Talk about the law of unintended consequences or "no good deed goes unpunished"... Despite my best intentions, guess I'll cross "give feedback to scenario designers" or "try to support Scenario Depot's reviews" off my 2003 New Year's resolution list. I've got better things to do. Jim
  7. You can, but it's not graphically attractive. One flag looks like a military objective-- a cluster (say, three large and one small, to make a 1000 VP objective) looks more like a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey poster after a kids' birthday party.
  8. I enjoy playing around with scenario design, and one thing I'd like to see in a subsequent patch is some way to have victory point locations that are worth more than the 300 points of a large flag. Sometimes a piece of terrain is vital enough (a commanding hilltop, strategic crossroads, or mountain pass) that it would be nice to be able to make it worth more than 300 points (i.e., the value of a mere 2-3 decent tanks) in the game score. I'd like to see "huge" flags worth 600 points-- or even more! This capability would be useful even in more mundane situations, when an attacker fulfills his orders and "captures the flag" but can quite easily find he has lost more VP's in units than he gained for the territory. Sometimes this is fine (cost vs. benefit and all that); other times I think you'd want to be able to reward success more generously. It would be *really* slick if the flag value could be made variable (i.e, values set by the user, or perhaps picked from a menu) and accessable either through the Quick Battle generator or from the scenario maker. I could see this as an interesting variable to play around with even in QB's-- "flag fixation" (i.e., making one valuable enough to take it at all costs) might be a nice option to be able to foster under certain circumstances. I have no idea how tough this would be to implement-- or if I'm the only one to even care about it. Any seconds to the motion?
  9. Kevin-- funny you should mention your previous thread. I tried to start a thread about the turning speed of vehicles, and when I posted it, somehow it showed up on the thread list as "Infantry rarity" and initiated by you. If you actually opened the thread, though, it had my subject line, contents, and member id. Guess our posts must have collided in the BFC server somehow. I don't know if that jinxed the thread or made it invisible to users other than me, since it never got any replies. Too bad, since I was hoping someone would comment on the prospects in v. 1.02 for "neutral steering" on tanks that actually had that capability, since turning speed seems so much slower (and more realistic) under the 1.01 patch.
  10. This was my first PBEM game, done double-blind. We'd been looking for a meeting engagement and got duped by the mis-labelling of this one on the scenario roster. My opponent is pretty good (we've both got lots of CMBO time and other relevant experience). I too went down to a tactical defeat, but only because the game ended at the minimum turn limit while I was only a few meters away from claiming undisputed possession of the objective. As others have noted, with the narrow frontage and lack of off-map artillery, this is a toughie. My initial main thrust was on the German's left flank; that got stopped hard. My diversion on the other flank made more headway, especially after I took out the HMG commanding the approaches. I ended up shifting the bulk of my infantry to that side and rolling up the German flank. I'd broken most of his infantry when the clock stopped. It was a real bloodbath for the Russians, though, especially among the AFV's.
  11. It's not only the cream of the crop that is affected this way. Playing a June '41 scenario, I had a platoon of BT-5's hull down waiting to ambush some on-coming German 222's and Pz II's. As soon as the first two opposing light armor vehiclec got into sight, the entire platoon of Soviets decamped! This was a situation where both sides could handily penetrate their opponent's armor. The BT's definitely had a fighting chance (particularly as they were engaging from a hull down ambush), but got picked off (my opponent likened it to clubbing baby seals!) when they tried to flee instead of fight. Sometimes the tac AI's decisions on issues like this are downright baffling.
  12. You're right for random arrivals, but there seem to be a lot of scenarios which leave the probability of arrival set to 100%. These are the big groups I'd break up. Even in the case of random entry, breaking the groups down reduces the likelihood of one of these odd 'teleportation' entrance scenes even in the absence of the ability to generate conditional entry setups (A must arrive before . Let's use your example of 30%; if the company PeterX and I were talking about was broken into its constituent platoons and slated to nominally arrive on consecutive turns (let's say, turns 10, 11, and 12), the odds are less than 1% that all three will enter at the same time (turn 12-- the odds drop even further in later turns).
  13. This is truly ironic-- we're both talking about the same scenario, but with opposite battlefield results! Peter, imagine what would have happened if your opponent had advanced fast enough to have his T-34's camped *on* that road between the church and the map edge?! I can tell you from firsthand experience that your "popgun" panzers do OK when they appear all around the T-34's and outnumber them by 3:1. Plus, some of them aren't quite popguns (long 50mm's). It was a massacre--my T-34's were dead within 30 seconds, and managed to only kill one and cripple another of the "teleporting tanks". And this was with supporting fire from another Soviet tank platoon in overwatch from a ridge off to the flank. Still, the moral remains that staggered entry times and sheltered entry hexes are probably the most neutral way to go.
  14. I thought about whther this could be coded for in the game engine, but it seems too dynamic a nut to crack this way. "Control" might be 10m. in the case of infantry near an entry point in dense woods, or 1000m. in the case of a Tiger platoon overlooking an entry point on the steppes. Better to leave it to the scenario designer to be aware of. Since you can't always anticipate what a player will do (that's how I think I "broke" this scenario), I believe as with so much in this game you're better off going with historical practice. In the case of reinforcements, I doubt that many commanders would drive a concentrated (company size or better) road column straight into action, hence my suggestion to break reinforcements down either temporally (stagger a company's platoons at one minute intervals) or spatially. It seems more realistic and won't produce large scale 'teleportation'.
  15. While I generally love the feeling of immersion you get playing CMBB (OK, so you're *not* really cold, in danger, or any more hungry/tired/dirty than you choose to be, but you know what I mean! ), sometimes the way reinforcements are set up to enter really breaks the "believability" of the game. You've probably seen this-- a whole column of reinforcements enters the map, and is so large that the front edge of the column starts hundreds of meters into the map. I suspect this is usually not a big deal, but it can be if the scenario has played out differently than the designer envisioned. It just happened to me in a scenario that shall remain nameless ('cuz I'm not picking on any designer in particular, just trying to make a point). I had opted to be very aggressive and gamble on a risky flanking manuveur in my setup. It worked phenomenally well, with the result that I was all the way to my opponent's map edge/victory locations by the time the scenario was only a third of the way through. I secured the victory locations and set up for a counterattack, especially from the direction of the road leading off-map. My forces flanked and in some cases were on the road, in a situation where in "real life" they would have had plentiful shots at any on-coming adversary, even if the LOS was assumed to be obstructed immediately off-map. What happened in fact was that my opponent received a full company of AFV's as reinforcements in a single turn, and the resulting column stretched over 200 meters in from the map edge. The effect was very gamey-- it was like having a column of "stealth tanks" suddenly uncloak in the midst of the defenders. I wish scenario designers would be a little more careful with their reinforcement entry arrangements. Now that you are no longer limited to four reinforcement events as in CMBO(it's now 30, I belive), there's less of a reason to bring a whole company of armor on in a single turn at a single point. It looks bizarre and stretches plausibilty when units literally spring into existence hundreds of meters in from the map edge. Bringing a platoon on at time --or using multiple (even if adjacent) entry points to get a company on simultaneously-- is less likely to cause the game system to produce odd results like units "teleporting" into position. Arguably it better mirrors route security or air defense dispersal by troops advancing into contact as well. It's just another factor to consider in scenario design, but one that if ignored can spoil an otherwise impressive scenario. Am I the only one to be bothered by this teleportation effect? Jim [ November 16, 2002, 10:40 PM: Message edited by: Iconoclast ]
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