Why are off map reinforcements a thing?

[dan/california]

Simple phase lines would seem useful here.  The scenario designer should state, explicitly, that your flanks cannot be secured past phase line purple until time X.  This reflects the pace of operations to your flanks.

[Thewood1]

Lucas, I don't think you are getting this.  No one is complaining about enemy reinforcements per se, but if they spawn in on top of the player it is a flaw in the scenario.  They should either be spawned into an area that the player won't have reached yet, or they should start the game in dead ground and be triggered by player movement on the battlefield.

 

I tried that tact with people arguing this issue and it was useless.  This is a topic that should have stopped 4-5 responses it.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

No where in the briefing does it state reinforcements are near. A distant reserve would not be use because as you may have forgotten, they spawn on top of you. Not miles out where you get time to 'redeploy the reserve'. And unless that Highway at the top of the map seperates past that point and turns into the thickest jungle that not even modern optics can see into then there is no way they should of been ontop of me without being spotted first. You not having air defence is a great deal different than me not watching the borders of the map with 2 MBT's and 6 IFV. But whatever, I hope you don't drive if you can justify units not being able to see tanks down a MSR.

Ok so you feel hard done by that the scenario designer didnitwarn you about the arrial of enemy reinforcements. Lookng at what has been said by those close to the scenario designer that they did not expect what happened to you when they designed and ested the scenario. And it may be that off map there was some concealing terrain like a wood or a balka (ravine) So as the battle developed the combination of circumstances resulted in you being the victim of a surprise attack. These things happen in combat. Take the Battle of Chacellorsville May 1863 for instance. Or the Battle of the Bulge.

 

The point is anyone can make a mistake. The point I was making regarding neglect of my air defences and the consequences of that error (being caught in a Hind killing zone which had effects of similar seriousness (I lost te or eleven tanks anf IFVs in that.

 

Why can't you be honest, even if only with yourself and admit, if only to yourself, that you fouled up. I am happy to admit I fouled up in my battle which means I may learn from my mistake. Can you not do the same if only to be honest with honest with yourself? You don't even have to admit to a mistake here. So for Pete's sake will you just quit moaning!

 

For the rest of it pretty much everybody, myself included, agree that scenario designers should consider giving more warnings about pssible arrival of enemy forces. particularly when their arrival might be in an unexpected location. Or maybe you just advanced to the position where the reinforcements arrived far more quickly than the scenario designer expected. And how do you know that there isn't some cncealing terrain (a dense wood or a balka) just off the edge of the map? Maybe there is! I suggest you take it up with the scenario designer!

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Agree.  Also having some chance of losses inflicted on arriving reserves could be cool in terms of reflecting passage while there's still enemy air about.  This could also be really cool for campaigns, where if you've managed to keep your CAS assets more or less intact, later scenarios have an increasing chance of enemy forces suffering air interdiction, or perhaps the chance of air interdiction could be tied to how many ADA assets you've shredded in the last few missions (as if you're still fighting the same Brigade, but you've killed off 2/3rd of their air defense vehicles, they're not going to be as able to ward off attacks).  

 

Which is not to say this should be "standard" but it'd be interesting to see as an addition to user campaigns and narratives.   

 

Also assigning percentages to different locations for one arriving unit would be cool too (25% chance the reserve company shows up from the dirt road about halfway down the map, while there's a 75% chance it goes from the hardball road north of the Major VP location).  It'd keep the scenario lively, give the sort of tactical uncertainty that Lucas wants, while still being situations the player can plan around ("man, there's an enemy reserve to my east, and two high speed avenues of approach from that half of the map, I'd better have a plan to deal with those!")

Yep. Wuld be a nice thing to have if BF can program it. And perhaps an alternate position if the entry area has been taken. Or the reinforcements don't arrive at all. They see enemy forces have occupied the intended arrival location, take up defemsive positions and don't intervwene unless they have an alterate enry location. Which results in a delay. May not be s easy to implement this but, if they can work it out then great!

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Simple phase lines would seem useful here.  The scenario designer should state, explicitly, that your flanks cannot be secured past phase line purple until time X.  This reflects the pace of operations to your flanks.

That makes sense. If someone ignores that then whatever happens istheir own fault

[Jock Tamson]

Ok so you feel hard done by that the scenario designer didnitwarn you about the arrial of enemy reinforcements. Lookng at what has been said by those close to the scenario designer that they did not expect what happened to you when they designed and ested the scenario. And it may be that off map there was some concealing terrain like a wood or a balka (ravine) So as the battle developed the combination of circumstances resulted in you being the victim of a surprise attack. These things happen in combat. Take the Battle of Chacellorsville May 1863 for instance. Or the Battle of the Bulge.

 

The point is anyone can make a mistake. The point I was making regarding neglect of my air defences and the consequences of that error (being caught in a Hind killing zone which had effects of similar seriousness (I lost te or eleven tanks anf IFVs in that.

 

Why can't you be honest, even if only with yourself and admit, if only to yourself, that you fouled up. I am happy to admit I fouled up in my battle which means I may learn from my mistake. Can you not do the same if only to be honest with honest with yourself? You don't even have to admit to a mistake here. So for Pete's sake will you just quit moaning!

 

For the rest of it pretty much everybody, myself included, agree that scenario designers should consider giving more warnings about pssible arrival of enemy forces. particularly when their arrival might be in an unexpected location. Or maybe you just advanced to the position where the reinforcements arrived far more quickly than the scenario designer expected. And how do you know that there isn't some cncealing terrain (a dense wood or a balka) just off the edge of the map? Maybe there is! I suggest you take it up with the scenario designer!

You have yet to address how the player is supposed to deal with units that spawn on top of him.  Until you do that, your posts are just so much trolling.

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

 

 

Yep. Wuld be a nice thing to have if BF can program it. And perhaps an alternate position if the entry area has been taken. Or the reinforcements don't arrive at all. They see enemy forces have occupied the intended arrival location, take up defemsive positions and don't intervwene unless they have an alterate enry location. Which results in a delay. May not be s easy to implement this but, if they can work it out then great!

 

I don't know about difficult.  If we're adding parameters to reserve arrival, having one that's if a condition is met (as we already have the ability to set conditions for victory points), then the reserves do something else doesn't seem too out there.  As an example "if objective A is taken, reserves will not arrive" does not seem that hard to do.

 

I don't mean to criticize CMBS at all.  It's a great game.  Just some more tools would be cool if it turns out to be a Battlefront priority to add some features onto the editor.  

[LUCASWILLEN05]

The Iraqis did pretty much everything wrong at 73 Eastings.  Their outposts were too close and not armed enough to do a good screen (if it was a screen, I'm being generous and assuming the ZSU-23 that initiated contact with 2 ACR was some sort of anti-scout measure), and they clearly did not have enough vehicles on alert/ready to respond to the sort of situation they found themselves in.  On the other hand while 2 ACR did not expect to roll into the Iraqis specifically in that place and time, they did know as the lead element enemies could reasonably be all around, and in the desert there's not a whole lot of restrictive terrain.  While the US Army elements were surprised to run headlong into the Iraqis right at that moment, they were aware the enemy was somewhere front, deployed accordingly, and responded rapidly.

 

None of this is the same as having zero clue that THIS open field is where the enemy's company will appear, while the other fields on the map are totally benign once cleared of forces currently on the map.

 

 

It shouldn't be subtle.  When I sat down to do map recon, like pretty much every graduate of the Captain's Career Course, we'd assess known enemy and likely enemy positions, figure out mobility corridors within our area of operations and what they offered to both blue and red forces.  Players should have a reasonable heads up to that the enemy will reinforce, a vague idea of what will be showing up, and some sort of ability to guess at where those forces may show up with reasonable accuracy.  If it is not spelled out in the briefing, then the player should have what is reasonable tools to a person who's just really interested in military stuff vs a graduate of advanced military schooling or something. 

7th Corps was also coming from an unexpected direction much earlier than the Iraqis thought possible. he Tawakalna Division din't have a clue what was about to happen to them. And 2nd ACR didn't expect the Iraqis to be where they were. It is just that the ACR were professionals and held the initiative. The Republican Guard, whle being capable enough by regional standards at least were unprepared, surprised and out of position. Even if they gad not been they wyuld have lost anyway as accounts of other battles being fought art the sam time or over the next few hours. day or so clearly demonstrate Accounts in Scales# Certain Victory and other sources indicate this pretty clearly

 

Would you agree with the basic premise here that surprse and the unexpected is still quite possible in modern warfare? Perhaps because of an intelligence failure or the enemy ding something commanders failed to anticipate. Even with the best techmolgy in the world human error can still happen in the fog of war. It happened in the Kuwait War and it happened in Iraq 2003, even to an army with the training, experience and technology of the US military. Indeed, over reliance on technology could even be a factor here.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

You have yet to address how the player is supposed to deal with units that spawn on top of him.  Until you do that, your posts are just so much trolling.

 

Listen Jock. I am trying to explain what, IN THE REAL;WORLD might  result in such a situation. Like I said maybe

 

1 There was concealing terrain such as a wood or a balka just off the map tjhat the enemy used for ambush. Maybe enemy units were so well hidden it was impossible to spot them

 

2 There was an intelligence failure and the enemy force was just missed or the information did not get passed down in time for it to matter.

 

Or maybe i was just something the scenario designer did not anticipate and, because of that the scenario is actually flawed.

 

We are going roundf in circles on this matter. I have explained what I think might have happened and, assuming that it was a scenario design decision, not a simple design flaw, how such a decision might be justified. We have also discussed ways a scenario designer could make such a sitation fairer if it were a deliberate design decision.

 

And now I really don't wish to waste any more of my time on this issue.So end of discussion.

[jspec]

I'm sorry this thread is making me crazy and I have to post -

 

 

 

 

Would you agree with the basic premise here that surprse and the unexpected is still quite possible in modern warfare? Perhaps because of an intelligence failure or the enemy ding something commanders failed to anticipate. Even with the best techmolgy in the world human error can still happen in the fog of war. It happened in the Kuwait War and it happened in Iraq 2003, even to an army with the training, experience and technology of the US military. Indeed, over reliance on technology could even be a factor here.

 

 

The basic premise here is NOT that "suprsise and the unexpected is still quite possilbe in modern warfare"! You are willfullly ignoring what many other people have called to your attention, which is that the WAY IT WAS DONE is what was being complained about. You basically started a debate on something that was not the point of the thread, and you keep going and going and going, I guess trying to prove you're "right"? About something that no one really was debating you about in the first place?

 

edit - oh of course, now it's 'end of discussion'.... in other words -things aren't going my way, so rather than actually saying something like "yes I see your point, the way it's handled in those scenarios by units teleporting on top of you 20 meters away is silly, but there should still be a way to have unexpected things happen in a realistic manner' I'm going drop out of the discussion.

Edited February 9, 2015 by jspec

[Thewood1]

Good, because you seem to be the only one not seeing what the real point here is.  You asked specifically for a currently serving member of the military to step in and he did.  You don't seem to like his answer.  You seem to be the only one not getting the point that this discussion is not just about reinforcements, but a design issue under specific circumstances.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Good, because you seem to be the only one not seeing what the real point here is.  You asked specifically for a currently serving member of the military to step in and he did.  You don't seem to like his answer.  You seem to be the only one not getting the point that this discussion is not just about reinforcements, but a design issue under specific circumstances.

 

Mate Drop it. I ubnderstand perfectly well that there are two issues here. Scenario design and real world issues beyond the game battlefield

 

I am also going to have to drop out of this discussion because it seems to be going nowhere and I also am getting pretty frustrated with it as well as putting morwe time into this than I want to or indeed have time for.

 

So I suggest we all agree to disagree and wrap this up here. Fair enough?

[Thewood1]

Sure...I guess

[Franko]

I think the big problem, and the most obvious one after more than ten years of these games, is that scenario designers often make maps that are TOO small in relation to the amount of units involved.   The real battlefield is largely an empty battlefield.   This may take care of the reinforcement problem right there.   

[ASL Veteran]

I think the big problem, and the most obvious one after more than ten years of these games, is that scenario designers often make maps that are TOO small in relation to the amount of units involved.   The real battlefield is largely an empty battlefield.   This may take care of the reinforcement problem right there.   

I definitely agree with this sentiment in principle, but in practice there are a lot of players who simply don't like large maps and / or the longer scenario time limits that go along with the larger maps.  Someone actually told me that they felt 'uncomfortable' while playing a scenario with a large map because it wasn't possible to assume a secure flank since the map was large enough that the map edge didn't play much of a role in the battle.  So yeah, while larger maps are usually going to give you better results, they also require longer time limits.  Larger maps are also harder on people's computers and some maps can be so large that a player can't even play on it.  So there will always be a balancing act that has to be navigated when creating something.

[agusto]

@ASL leader: i prefer huge maps with compareably small forces. A 2,5 x 2,5 km map and a mixed company of armor and mech infantry for both sides is pretty much my favorite type of scenario. To me, it is important that the scenario allows me room to maneuver, which cant be done on small maps or large maps with multi-battalion sized forced on both sides. If i cant maneuver, i feel that the scenario takes an important part of modern warfare away from me, it reduces the feeling of beeing in command. On the other hand, if you are not used to play with small froces on large maps, you can quickly feel overwhelmed by the amount of descisions that you have to make. Which avenue of approach is the best one? Where do i put my forces in overwatch? What is the most likely enemy course of action? How  do i do reconnaissance? On small maps you dont have too many options available, it is always pretty clear what you have to do. On large maps, with multiple possible approaches to victory, things are more complicated but also more interesting and challenging.

[BlackAlpha]

On the other hand, if you are not used to play with small froces on large maps, you can quickly feel overwhelmed by the amount of descisions that you have to make. Which avenue of approach is the best one? Where do i put my forces in overwatch? What is the most likely enemy course of action? How  do i do reconnaissance? On small maps you dont have too many options available, it is always pretty clear what you have to do. On large maps, with multiple possible approaches to victory, things are more complicated but also more interesting and challenging.

 

That's what makes it the most fun, in my opinion. I wish all maps were like that.

 

One thing I don't like is that in most cases, when there's a large map, it's completely filled up with units everywhere. That's probably why many people don't like big maps. But just because the map is big, doesn't mean there have to be loads of units.