Treeburst155

Yeah, Redwolf gets the prize for this thread, with Vanir taking second for pointing out the Rexford threads and the earlier BFC statements relating to this. Thanks guys! Treeburst155 out.

Infantry isn't used much anymore in ME QBs?! Verrry interesting. Sounds like it could be a little gamey too. It's interesting to see how the QB cherry picking develops. Treeburst155 out.

What is it about night fighting that players think is so prone to luck. Is it the friendly fire incidents? Treeburst155 out.

EDIT: Post deleted LOL! I misunderstood Redwolf's posts completely. Good points concerning balance there, Redwolf. Treeburst155 out. [ October 29, 2002, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Replied with quote when I wanted to edit. Move along now. Treeburst155 out. [ October 29, 2002, 08:11 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

The Capt brings up good points. Force size is only one way to unbalance a scenario. It can be done simply with the time limit for example. The extreme example of an assault against superior forces is probably the least entertaining way to unbalance a scenario. I'm trying to show that even a scenario like this has merit with regard to the tourney as a whole, and can be somewhat interesting if approached with the right attitude, for lack of a better word. Even a hopeless assault can be designed to give the underdog choices and options. Large setup zones and abundant cover come to mind, as mentioned by The Capt. BTW, The Capt did well in Another Day because tigers are crummy tanks. Treeburst155 out. [ October 29, 2002, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

You would have to define "win" here. Does that mean 51 points? I can get a draw with the Allies every time in Another Day. Shall we try it? The numbers say that it is balanced when played by 36 different pairs of players. You cannot define balance based on one person's ability to win from a given side. This appears to be the idea behind your statement here. What is balanced for Wreck is certainly not balanced for the general community. Disagreement as to scenario balance is a good indicator that a scenario is balanced. The "interest" is provided by the fact you would not KNOW you are defending against limited forces. You also have to keep in mind the others who play the scenario from your side. What if one or more of them decides to attack out of the defensive position and does this successfully. You will not do well in that scenario. You were too busy being bored to win. Also, the wildly out of whack scenario adds more interest to the other scenarios because the uncertainty regarding balance permeates the whole tourney. I agree that a healthy majority of the scenarios should be no worse than 60-40 balance. Maybe even a VERY healthy majority should be this way; but, in order to preserve doubt, there should be an occasional blooper, whether players find the blooper scenario entertaining or not. The blooper enhances the entertainment value of the rest of the scenarios. So Holien, shall I send you an allied setup and the original scenario file for Another Day? Treeburst155 out. [ October 29, 2002, 07:18 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Combined Arms, The amount of action in a scenario is highly dependent on your opponent in many cases. In the game you just described I probably would not have counterattacked with my Tigers (I think they're crummy tanks ). It would have been a standoff with you on one end and me on the other. Would this have made the game boring? Naah, it would have made the game OVER in short order. Treeburst155 out.

Another Day spoiler / / / / / / / / / / / Kevin, It depends on how aggressive the AI is with the Tigers, I think. If the Tigers come forward there is a good chance they will die. I took over one game of "Another Day" for a dropout where he had moved two tigers well forward, not far behind the first treeline (from Allied perspective). They were overwhelmed by enemy Shermans before I could extract them to safer firing positions. Two dead tigers combined with a later lucky shot at range by a vanilla Sherman on a third tiger finished it for the Jerries. ________________________________________________ Thinking a bit more on extremely unbalanced scenarios, it comes to mind that these types of scenarios would probably not be much good outside the context of a Nabla scored tournament. From the perspective of Boots & Tracks, this is probably not a good thing at all. Of course, the occasional blooper could always be created by somebody else and shuffled into the deck with the genuine B&T scenarios. Treeburst155 out.

Nabla, Enemy exit zones are visible, and also marked as such. To All, A word on luck in scenarios while I'm here. Scott and I agreed that no extra luck should be introduced into scenarios by the use of aircraft or variable reinforcement entry times. 'Wet' ground conditions was brought up IIRC, but I can't remember what the verdict was on that one. Treeburst155 out.

Holien, "Another Day" really wasn't very out of balance. Medians were 47.5 and 52.5 after 36 games. _______________________________________________ I would never discuss my thoughts on a scenario's balance midgame with my opponent. Take, for example, an assault against a superior defender. The most I would do is let him know I've called for a ceasefire, and I'd think long and hard before informing him of even that fact. This gives him three choices: come get me, ceasefire himself, or rapidly exchange files. There is no boredom here because he either goes on the offensive (action), or my time investment in the game is miniscule from that point on. It takes nothing to hit Go and send a file, and if he hits ceasefire himself, the game is over. Does the lack of violent, chaotic firefights in one scenario really constitute boredom in the context of a five game tourney? The one hopelessly outnumbered assault may be uneventful, but the very fact it was in the tourney adds to the uncertainty and tension of the other four games. The lopsided assault is quickly dispatched with minimum time investment, once the underdog attacker realizes his situation; UNLESS the defender determines he has overwhelming odds, and comes out of his foxholes to get more points. That's why I would never inform my opponent that I thought he had a much superior force. Let him figure that out for himself if he can. The defender may think himself bored with a non-attacking attacker; but he would be wrong to be bored. He should be thinking, "Wow, the game's half over and he's only probed a little. Maybe he doesn't have much to work with. Maybe I should go out there and hunt him down. I wonder if he already hit Ceasefire? If I don't try for more points, and others in my situation do, I could end up below median. Hmmmm." In the above scenario there is little action; but the mind is still engaged. Treeburst155 out. [ October 29, 2002, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Jim L., Yeah, I'm thinking of you technologically challenged ROW vets. Whether I can do anything for you guys is another story. It depends on how many of you there are. You would probably have to put up with fictional scenarios designed by me too. :eek: Then again, we could raid the huge selection of scenarios at the Scenario Depot instead. FOW would take a hit, but it could still be fun. Each player chooses one scenario from the depot. Out of that pool I draw five at random from a hat. Sides are determined by the Nabla scheduling program. How does that sound to you? Treeburst155 out.

I take this as another way of saying that too much imbalance is not a good thing. _________________________________________ I brought up this balance issue because none of the ROW II scenarios were way out of balance. Even the 40-60 "Fire On The Mountain" isn't what I would call extremely unbalanced. The Nordic Championship vets and the Nordic Wannabee vets know about extremely lopsided scenarios. From this small sampling of ROW vets it appears that most like things the way they are now, with no EXTREMELY unbalanced scenarios. The problem is, players may begin to take for granted that the scenarios will not be way out of balance. I'm going to throw in some uncertainty. Boots & Tracks have my blessing if they decide to throw in a WILDLY unbalanced scenario in any future tourney. This fact will be added to the tourney manual for ROW III. If they choose not to, that's fine too. They're the designers, and the ROW tourneys belong to Boots & Tracks now anyway. I work for them. This way you guys will never really know what you're up against. Nothing can be taken for granted. Chances are that any given scenario will be reasonably balanced in the interest of fun for both players; BUT, you can never be sure. Your company may be assaulting a dug in battalion someday. Would Boots & Tracks do that to you? I really don't know. I just know I won't discourage them from doing it, nor will I encourage them. You just never know about some things, eh? Treeburst155 out.

Design your scenarios specifically around the AI as defender. The AI is much better at defending. Maybe you need victory flags WITH the exit zone. I'm no scenario designer, really. I would not be surprised to find there is a demand for good scenarios against a defending AI. Some people don't have time for TCP, and don't like the drawn out nature of PBEM. These people would play the AI a lot. Good Luck! Treeburst155 out.

Redwolf, Hmmmmm.... Treeburst155 out.

Naah, grogs aren't snobs. Besides, what you've encountered has nothing to do with grogs at all, really. This community has been around for over two years now. We take good natured shots at each other quite frequently. The fact you got six serious answers to your questions shows we're really a friendly community. Ignore any perceived condescension and make sure you give the search function a fair try. There's a decent chance the answers to your questions can be found by searching. This forum is very active. It's difficult to keep up, and some would probably rather not see the same questions asked several times. Do a few searches, then ask away if you can't dig up what you want. Treeburst155 out.

You must designate the units as "should exit for points" in the editor. In game, these units will display this exit info when you select the unit and hit Enter. Treeburst155 out.

Redwolf, LOL!! That's a good one. Treeburst155 out.

Actually, BFC is quite active on a few recent threads. IIRC, the patch is not going to happen for awhile. They are addressing many issues with it. I think I read it would be about a month or so. Treeburst155

Thanks, mPisi! I appreciate your taking the time to let us know about Tom. BTW guys, mPisi is the one who taught me how to secure the scenarios for these tourneys long ago. Needless to say, he has contributed greatly to the FOW you enjoy in ROW tourneys. Treeburst155 out.

Very interesting....the degree of imbalance may be the real issue here. Thanks guys! I want to hear from more of you on this, please. Treeburst155 out.

Strontium Dog, See the first post to the thread called, "ROW II: Boots & Tracks Brawl (Part VI)". It's not far below this one. Green Hornet, There will be a CMBB Rumblings Of War tourney kicking off in early January with signups in early December. Acceptance of newbies will depend on how many tourney vets sign up. Vets get first crack at a slot. I will need 72 players. I will also need replacements for the inevitable dropouts. These will be called to active duty in the order they were put on the replacement list. Vets will again have the first shot. With the ROW II tourney I actually had to recruit to get 72 players. This may or may not be the case with the upcoming CMBB tourney. The_Capt, Yeah, I'm beginning to think of CMBO fondly as "CM Lite" or "beer & pretzels CM". I just wish I didn't have to keep swapping my CM disks in and out all the time. I'm PBEMing both CMBO & CMBB you see. Treeburst155 out.

Do you enjoy playing the underdog side in such scenarios? Do you enjoy beginning a game without knowing whether you face a superior force, an inferior one, or a close matchup? Inquiring tourney managers want to know. Treeburst155 out.

If you are staying with CMBO, and you're interested in more CMBO tourneys (ROW style), post here. I'm curious as to how many tourney vets we're leaving behind by moving to CMBB. If there are enough of you, well....something might be arranged. Treeburst155 out. [ November 04, 2002, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

White4, I'll see what's up with Tom Norton. He's always been reliable in the past. Kanonier Reichmann vs MickOZ, Hehe...usually I root for the underdog in these situations; but since Mick is my long-time PBEM foe, who I USED TO BE ABLE TO BEAT, I'm pulling for Kanonier. As they say in the Peng Thread, "Die-A-Lot Now", Mick. Treeburst155 out.