Robert Olesen

But a litte later it says clearly: So, your Favor seems to be wasted [ March 04, 2003, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

Joker, you're not supposed to advance 1 month when you get a counterattack. Instead you just go to the next time period on the same day (or the following day if you go from night to dawn).

You're right that this is the strict interpretation of note 12. It seems a bit unfair to loose so many points. Your opponent can - and will - buy the full complement. For a 5000 point battle you could potentially lose close to 2000 points, as you could conceivably get it by rounding up from 3001 points. I'd like to get an official confirmation if this is indeed the correct interpretation. [ March 04, 2003, 04:36 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

Wow, Lane, you ask more questions than my mother in law I did get an email with points, but it wasn't all that easy to read. I got two emails from you in total. The second reply had to be sent twice because your reply address didn't work. The question and numbers above are for Biltong and his crew, not specifically for you. Try studying my doc and see if that helps.

I have a question regarding purchase of the task force units. The numbers don't add up in my head. Let me explain. Parameters 29 to 35 specify the maximal number of points you can use for each category. The total number of points you have is the sum of these points and the value of your battle group incl. attached units, rounded up. An example: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Meetign Engagement Battle Group 653 Attached Units 0 Infantry/Support 225 Vehicle 60 Armor 150 Arty/Air 0 Large Arty 550 Fortifications 0 Purchase Point Total 1638</pre>

Lane, I have a word file which combines all the info in the Player's Guide with the rules and notes in the spreadsheet. It is for South 41. It should help answer many of your questions. I can send you a .rtf file if you can't read the .doc - I think .rtf is more easily digestible by a Mac I made it on my own initiative to help myself out understanding this, and have offered it to Biltong Sunday. I haven't heard from him since, but he's probably busy with the BCR campaign - He didn't ask for it anyway. I have tried to write it all into a sequence telling you how to proceed, and collect all the relevant stuff where it is needed. Send me an email or post here if you want it (or anyone else for that matter). My email is available by clicking on my name in the left column. I haven't sent it to any of the sites, as I wanted Biltong to comment on it first. As I said, he didn't ask for it

That's probably a bug in Biltaid. Try using the AutoParam spreadsheet - set it up for the initial battle and hit F9 repeatedly. You should get several large battles.

OK, I understand that priority. I am in fact considering a way to simplify the small PC adaption. Let me try to get J2SE SDK up and running, then I might get back to you regarding the source code. I'll drop you an email in case I'm interested.

A small bug: The custom campaign screen doesn't accept negative favor. So if you try to input an existing campaign with negative favor, you suddenly find that your CO was replaced, and the new one hasn't been briefed abut your previous history Oh, and I'll try installing the SDK and see how far that takes me. I have programmed before, but not Java. Shouldn't be too hard to get into though. [ March 03, 2003, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

That's a nice touch. But I need to use smaller battle sizes, and I might also like to tweak a couple of other things. Your tool doesn't seem to be customizable yet. Have you considered reading the die rool results from text files? That ought to be doable, unless it requires a redesign. Customizing the modifiers will probaby be much more difficult. [ March 03, 2003, 08:46 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

Peterk, I ran a small test and came up with an immediate suggestion: I selected File > New > Default and found that I could not edit my own experience. It was set at Normal and I use Green. I then tried setting up a custom campaign, and found that I had to enter all the units manually. It would be useful to have the ability to either import the default unit set during the custom campaign setup, or edit the player setting. Or both You might well want to change the player setting inside a campaign between battles. Actually, Biltong suggests somewhere in his mass of rules that you can, if you prefer, change your battle group during a campaign. Within reasonable limits ofc. Would it throw the program completely off to allow editing of the battle group units during a campaign? [ March 03, 2003, 05:34 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

You have a good point about the month modifier, Peterk. Using a specific roll is much better. I would increase the range from 1-2 to 1-4, however. You need to consider the average as well, which is 3.5 for a die roll of 1-6. I think (do't recall the math exactly) that the average length using your suggestion is 5 battles, while it would probably be 2.5 usign my suggestion. On top of that there is no fixed length using this method. These details aren't all that important, though , as this is obviously a temporary change.

I'm still a bit unclear on attached units. I haven't actually had the chance to buy any, but I hope I will, eventually Do I have to buy a unit the first time I get it using the same nation/division as the task force for that battle? It would make more sense to me to use the same type of unit as my battle group. Experience is assumed to be regular the first time I buy it.

It is in fact a simpler solution for the paper rules, as you do not need to keep track over several battles of how long you are going to spend in the city. You determine from battle to battle if you'll still be there.

city fights could be handled simpler. Note 4 implies that the player knows how long he will be in the city, and he also has to keep track of this in advance. Instead, I propose that the roll for the date (parameter 1) gets a -3 modifier if the previous battle was in a large town and that the roll for days (when it appears) is substituted with an advance of 1 day when the previous battle was in a large town. That should keep the player in the large town for a relatively long and indefinite period.

A practical suggestion if you do an update: I have found it much more convenient to separate the parameter rules and notes into two pages in the spreadsheet. It allows me to have a cursor location in both the paraneter rules and the notes, and easily switch between the two as I roll up a battle. I'm also working on a "small PC" variant. I'll publish my findings when I get a bit more experience with it, but drop me an email if you're interested in what I did so far.

Good stuff :confused: Suddenly a ton of posts hop in between :confused: I was referring to the change regarding intial casualties. [ February 28, 2003, 04:03 PM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

The way I understand it, it is as if the crew were killed. You get a new replacement crew for a vehicle of the same type (or the same vehicle perhaps). Thus, your accumulated experience is lost. I gather it works just as if an infantry unit failed to show up: They are presummed killed/missing and will be replaced with new people. The effect is less with infantry, as the experiene has to be evened out across the unit (you can't buy an infantry company with varying experience), but it is a problem for vehicles and other supporting units that you buy individually. I can accept the assumption that missing infantry is lost, but for vehicles it is more likely that it simply broke down and the crew is thus unable to participate in this battle. The same goes to some extent for guns.

Nope - broke down/got bogged/lost etc on the way to the battle - no experience in that - just a mouthfull from you, the CO </font>

sandy, I'm pretty sure that you also get more points when you have casualties. So it should even out. But it _is_ a p.i.t.a. - as it must have been (probably more so) in the real syuff.

Here's another one of my "stupid" questions I finally managed to get a manageable first battle set up, only to discover that due to 20% casualties, my PzIV and PzIII doesn't show up (along with 4 out of 5 vehicles in a PzIIC platoon ) Do these unfortunate two tanks get the +1 experience bonus after the battle (note 16)?

It's in your inbox.

OK, I will have to reduce the force size. My first battle involved a battalion of green Romanian infantry (plus some artillery and a bit of support), 40+ green Romanian tanks (probably roughly equivalent to another battalion) and my own force. This was a 2000 point assault on a small town map with massive damage. It took seconds to get a response to any mouse or keyboard input. Processing a turn (or the setup) took minutes. That won't do. I later noticed that there is a warning regarding the damage setting and "small" PC's - but it shouldn't be that bad. Is it? I'm using a P3/550 with a 32Mb TNT2 graphics card and 256M RAM. I'm attempting a reduction of the force multipliers, so that they start at 0.5 and end at 2. I may have to introduce a map damage modifier as well. I also changed the roll for the number of turns to get a much wider spread.

And another thing, while I'm at it In my repeated recalcs using the autoparam spreadsheet, testing the effect of my force size changes, I noticed a fairly large number of cases where a meeting engagement concides with allocation of large artillery, I don't have any hard statistics, but I do find it noticeable. I'm no history buff nor a military tactician, but it seems to me that a meeting engagement in general should not allow for very much artillery. These battles are supposed to happen accidentally, so any artillery allocation has to be a standing allocation to the unit. It can't have been assigned for the purpose of a specific battle, as no battle is planned. So, it would feel more right to me if artillery had a negative modifier for a meeting engagement. With the current rule set, a meeting engagement gives no artillery modifier. I could be wrong

Another question: I'd like to reduce the size of the battles. Partly because I find larger battles cumbersome, partly because my PC doesn't like managing too many units at the same time. My preference is in the 1000 point range. So, I grabbed one (or more) of Bilton's rules (can't remember which one) and copied the rule sheet. I appreciate that rule set, Biltong Reducing the size modifier (param 28) is easy enough, as is the game length (param 43). And the autoparam sheet is a great way to test the modifications But I'm a bit unsure as to whether I should change the values for the support units (e.g. reduce them by 20% or so) - that is params 29 through 35. My battle group will be of the same size, perhaps just a bit smaller. Should the amount of support units be aligned to the size of my battle group? I guess so. Perhaps I need to reduce my battle group even more to get this to work properly? What would be a good size? Another thing: Will this get me into problems later in the game, when axis forces are less plentiful - will I be severely outnumbered? And finally: Is there a side effect of this change that I have overlooked? Edit: Actually, it occurred to me that the battle multiplier is applied to the support forces only, so reducing the multiplier and the force values themselves amount to the same thing in the end. So, I can achieve more variation by reducing the support point values and using a wider spread in the battle multiplier. In fact, there's no reasn why the battle multiplier can't go below 1 for a very small die roll, except that you need to have enough points to buy something useful (I suppose that 50 points for air power is useless ) There obviously isn't a "correct" answer to my questions here, but I would be interested in hearing about how the support values have been calibrated (so that I know if I'm violating any assumptions or making something that is grossly historically inaccurate) and whether others have experimented with this. [ February 26, 2003, 05:48 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]