Questions for Designers Concerning Scenario Length

[Lady Roxanne]

Dear Scenario Designers,

Why are many scenarios designed with extreme time pressure on the attacker? Why is there no explanation in the briefings as to WHY the attacker must take big risks and move fast? Why, for example, must objectives be taken in 35 minutes instead of 55 minutes. What is the justification for the added risk of moving quickly?

As we all know, a few more minutes can make a big difference in a CM battle. Why end the battle artificially? IIRC, when ammo gets low, a ceasefire is automatically offered. When morale gets low enough, surrenders automatically occur. Why not let nature takes its course?

I can think of only one good reason not to set turn limits to the max. That would be when the designer wants to simulate an historical or fictional battle where time really IS important. In these cases, I think it would be great if the briefings explained the REASONS the attack must be prosecuted swiftly. After all, I'll be writing lots more letters to mothers back home than would be necessary due to the time pressure placed on me. In the briefings, tell me WHY I don't have much time. Tell me why 55 minutes is too long, but 35 minutes is good.

Thanks for all your hard work designing scenarios.

[ June 01, 2003, 11:58 PM: Message edited by: CrankyKris ]

[Schwarze]

Well wouldn't you like a challenge

[Lady Roxanne]

Can't scenarios be designed in such a way that they are challenging WITHOUT imposing an arbitrary time limit?

Time limits are fine, but I want there to be a reason for them. For example, I need to take three objectives 1000 meters away in 35 minutes. Why not 55 minutes, or even 155 minutes.

Something like:

"The German column is closing on the crossroads as we speak. The've been spotted less than 2 kilometers from here. Bravo company can only hold them up a very short time. We need you at that crossroads in less than half an hour no matter the cost."

Here's another way to look at this. I've won and lost many battles just because time ran out. I have failed because I needed 5 more minutes?! I get a major victory because my opponent needed 5 more minutes?! You see what I'm driving at here.

Now, I could just assume that all short battles have an attendant good reason for being short even though it isn't spelled out in my briefings. The problem with this is that time is an issue in MOST battles (at least the ones I have played). Surely there were battles fought at the scale of CM where +/- 30 minutes to gain an objective did not matter. Am I wrong?

[ June 02, 2003, 01:30 AM: Message edited by: CrankyKris ]

[SgtMuhammed]

One of the considerations for length of the scenario is ammo. Units tend to burn through their basic loads extremely quickly. It just isn't fun to have most of your force on low or worst during the last several turns. During individual battles this can be fixed with reinforcements but during the battles in an operation it can't.

Another consideration, especially for operations, is the need to keep the scenario playable. Meaning that people will actually want to play it to the end. If an operation consists of 10 battles of 40 turns each this is a major time investment and one that many will refuse to make for a variety of reasons.

I agree with you that the time limitations are unrealistic but so would be making every battle a race to make up for them. From personal experience I can remember taking up to an hour to take one small house while taking only three hours to defeat an entire armored battalion and move 20 klicks. There are usually no specific time conditions but there is always the need to move as rapidly as possible because of the need to keep the momentum.

One way you can help is to review and playtest scenarios. Suggest longer turn lengths and help the designer try them out.

[Sergei]

The designer expects you to be able to achieve your goals within that time limit to be victorious in a relative sense. If you have an hour and a half and a regiment facing a depleted platoon over good terrain, can you really claim to be any sort of tactician to win in that situation?

Time is an important asset, consider it as a force multiplier. When on attack, the more time you have, the more capable you are of scouting, maneuvring to attack points of resistance with concentrated forces, and using covered approaches. So if the attacker and defender have very similar forces, more time can be given. It also should depend on force types, if the attacker has plenty of AFV's then he probably can and should use their mobility, but if he's got infantry with slow support weapons, more time would be in place.

I like short time limits. Firstly, because I don't really want to play scenarios over 35 minutes. I feel that the same thing should be possible to be delivered in a shorter period of time.

Another thing is the general situation. The longer time is spent, the more the situation will change. Let's say an infantry company is attacking. Its sister companies are probably on the attack too in nearby sectors. For the battalion attack to work well, it is important that all companies reach their goals at the planned time. But if one of them gets delayed by half an hour, maybe the others have reached their goals and the enemy has to make a tactical withdrawal. In that case, those goals you're pursuing have lost their value. A new situation and a new scenario.

Related to the general situation is also the enemy response. Maybe after that time limit the enemy gets reinforcements that would spoil your chances. You must get to that hill and take up defensive positions there before your enemy reacts!

Most of all, remember the other side of the coin. It should be playable for the defender, too. But these are just my views, and of course there are many scenarios where it is very difficult to reach the goals within the scenario time no matter how you play. A point could be made about game ending: in many games, after the end of the time limit the game presents you with your score and then asks, do you want to continue the battle. That way you can see if you could have taken that hill, or just do some mopping up and boost your ego. Gosh I better stop.

[WWB]

Originally posted by Sergei:

I like short time limits. Firstly, because I don't really want to play scenarios over 35 minutes. I feel that the same thing should be possible to be delivered in a shorter period of time.

Bingo. I took an informal survey over at Band of Brothers a while back. There was a very clear majority for the 25-35 turn range of battles, and a very clear dislike of anything longer than 45. Not only that, but I do have to test these things and get them tested by others. With 35 turns, the turnaround is manageable. Much longer and you really slow the process down.

Aside from that, I dont like playing long, slow battles. So I rarely will design one.

WWB

[Edit: Making subject and predicate match in number is kewl]

[ June 02, 2003, 07:53 AM: Message edited by: wwb_99 ]

[Thin Red Line]

I find the 25 turns scenario are usually too short, but i never get that feeling with with the 30-45 turns scenarios.

When i find a 25 turns scenario i would like to play, i now consider manually increasing the lenght in the Scenario Editor.

The problem is that the briefing is very important in a 20-25 turns scenario, and the recon should be done by the briefing. If not, recon is too long for the lenght of the scenario.

In a 30-40 turner, you can afford a proper recon and fight the battle correctly.

[xerxes]

It's a tradeoff of realism vs. playability. I don't like scenarios in which time is THE critical element but I also like things to move along. I don't want to wait as the attacker inches up his infantry for 25 minutes.

[Lady Roxanne]

Thanks for all the replies.

Thin Red Line brings up a good point I neglected to mention. Briefings in short scenarios should probably contain, in most cases, some amount of information that would reflect pre-scenario probing of some sort, the 10 or so turns before the scenario begins.

There were several good reasons, presented in the above posts, for keeping battles short. One of which is that people prefer short battles. This is understandable, but affects the quality of the simulation in a negative way without an adequate briefing IMO.

If you are trying to simulate a short 30 minute slice of time, the players need to know in detail what a real commander would know up to that time about the current situation. I'm questioning briefing content here, rather than the time limits themselves. For a commander to know he will win, lose, or draw in a precise number of minutes is undesireable unless the briefing explains why this is so.

As to the limiting nature of ammo supply, why not let the ammo run out with a ceasefire taking place naturally by the program or by player agreement? If one player does not agree to a ceasefire (because he still has ammo), the other must deal with the bad situation. Ammo conservation takes on new meaning when you have no idea when the battle will end.

For a battle to end naturally in 35 minutes, I would think the number of units involved would have to be fairly small with little in reserve. IOW, I don't think the length of many battles are consistent with the size of the battles. This causes the abrupt ending just as your T-34 has established LOS to the Panther flank. If people want short battles, they necessarily want small battles, much smaller than is manageable or usual in CM.

One way to keep game length short and still have quite a few units is to simulate only a portion of a battle with VLs placed appropriately. For example, one could create a scenario depicting the initial stages of a bigger battle, the middle 30 minutes, or the last 30 minutes (probe, attack, assault?!). In the first two cases, victory would be determined by progress made (VLs placed appropriately), rather than the achievement or not of some greater final objective. This would justify abrupt ending of the game!

In all cases above, the briefing should explain the current situation. Am I establishing contact, fiercely engaged, or making the final push on a suppressed and/or depleted enemy? If my orders are to take the hill (VL on hill), and I have 30 minutes to do it with more than a handful of troops, I should find myself exchanging fire with the enemy on turn one, and possess fairly detailed knowledge of his positions. The violence began before the scenario begins in this case. Fill me in on the past 30 minutes.

Now, I'm only guessing as to how long a battle of any given size should last before a natural ending would occur. I really don't know. What I do know is that battles weren't instantly halted because a time limit was reached. If the players have troops in good order with ammo when the time is up, the time was insufficient, unless they are fighting the initial or middle stages of a battle only. If simulating the culmination of a battle, a natural ending should occur.

In short, I think more careful consideration of time limits imposed is in order, and short time limits explained in the briefings, along with any appropriate intel. Time is one of the most important decisions a designer makes IMO and should be thoughtfully considered. I suspect time is often used as a way to balance scenarios by putting pressure on the attacker. This is not good because it causes mid-battle abrupt endings, with lots of combat capable troops on both sides, if the attacker is too slow.

I suppose I should put my money where my mouth is, and start designing my superior scenarios, eh?

[xerxes]

yes! Then you can fling it into the void of the scenario depot and have people rip it to shreds. After that, you're in the club. (Everybody gets at least a couple of their scenarios shredded). Designing good scenarios is MUCH more difficult then it looks.

That said, I think you've made a number of good points.

[ June 02, 2003, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: xerxes ]

[Lady Roxanne]

I just finished a PBEM of a very good scenario called, "Dead Ground & Dead Rye". It is a perfect example of too short a fight (28 turns) for the number of units involved.

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Due to careful play on the part of myself and my opponent we both had 2/3 of our armor left at the end. In another few turns there would have been a big armor fight. I'll admit the infantry on both sides was either dead or low on ammo, having just completed the battle for the central woods; but the open field armor battle was just about to begin.

Examining the scenario in the editor after the game, it is clear that the German's best bet is an all out attack from the start, to cut off Russian reserves. However, when I get real crazy like that I usually get stung bad.

The briefing provided no practical info on the enemy forces or location, yet the time limit cries out for an all out blitz, literally a blind charge into the unknown. I don't like blind charges into the unknown, so I played as though I had 40 turns.

This was a very enjoyable scenario (really); but, it could have been significantly better with a briefing of practical value and/or a dozen more turns. The shorter the scenario, the more informative the briefing should be IMO.

Sure, it's easy enough to edit the turns IF you don't want to play it blind; but I hesitate to go changing things that the designer has probably carefully considered.

What I think happens is, during the course of repeated testing, familiarity with a scenario skews the outcomes of play tests. Tweaks are then applied based on these outcomes. It's a tough problem to solve.

[Redwolf]

In CMBB you may also have green Russian non-radio tanks which will take a few extra minutes just to move down a road.

I wonder whether to would make sense to do this: the attacker has to cause surrender. If the scenario runs out and there is a normal result, any result other than a surrender of the defender then the ground counts as not taken and secured and the attacker loses.

Of course you need to give extra turns but I don't think the game will be that much longer overall. Given the new objective the attacker is tempted to hit even harder and to hurry up to prevent the game from running out.

Such battles are also likely to end with autoceasefire due to ammunition shortage (and hence attacker loss). Overall I think you won't see that many more turns in actual battles, so you wouldn't waste too much PBEM time.

[flammenwerfer]

Kranky Kris-

Thanks for taking the time to review the scenario and for the constructive feedback.

In designing 'Dead ground and Rye' my intent was to make 'time' a critical factor for the german side, and the first line of the briefing is "Our offensive to reach Kursk is behind schedule." Could I have added more details as to why? Yes, but the intent is the same.

The briefing Mission states: "The Communists have evacuated Bobrik and are pulling back . Drive foward and clear the crossroads and woods of any remaining resistance." In other words this is not an assualt but a fluid battle.

I don't like scenarios were everything is spelled out for you and a specific plan is dictated.

But going in both sides know you only have 28 turns. Is a cautious approach the correct tactic for this particular battle.?

Having said that feel free to change the length of the battle.

[Lady Roxanne]

I lost the battle 57-43 as Germans, and captured two small flags, the central flag and the one on my right. My opponent received 400 points for flags and I received 200. This means I did OK on the casualty ratio considering I was on the attack. Unfortunately, I didn't accomplish my mission. My men are alive to fight another day, but I have been relieved of command.

It's a fine scenario. I enjoyed it, and would play it again, even though it is not my favorite type of scenario (the rush factor).