m5000
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Posts posted by m5000
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sorry mate, but threads like this usually degenerate if people who take part and criticise don't know what they're talking about... so next time do some research, play a little and gain some experience...Originally posted by JasonC:m5000 - worthy of a college sophmore bull session. Amateur philosophy hour - subjective refers to one half of all experiences in an idealist philosophy. It does not mean "wrong". There is a subjective side of the sum of 2 and 2 being 4, and an objective side of the novel Alice in Wonderland. Obviously everything anyone ever says is their opinion or their lips (or in this case, fingers) would not be moving.
And I have played TOAW, and I can conduct attacks just fine in TOAW, and I win in TOAW, and I can and do do so by simply running the enemy out of units by killing a few each time I have the ball with sufficiently massive local odds, and no this is not the worst way, no it doesn't get everybody surrounded or run them all out of supply etc. Of course there are minor preliminaries and limits yada yada, doesn't change the fact. Fist is a far too strong local optimum.
Since we have now degenerated to salesmen showing up peddling spin, this thread is dead as a doornail. It started with honest attempts to improve operational games on computers, and it has degenerated into paid hacks proclaiming that All Is Well. Which will leave the grogs of the world on VASSAL, for operational games.
simply because you use a huge number of academic words in your posts and sprinkle it all with philosophical jargon doesn't mean that you will convince people that white is black...
cheers
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it’s a subjective opinion, others find quite a lot…Originally posted by JasonC:I find nothing even remotely sensible about TOAW. I have found it largely unplayable and quite unrealistic.
again, a subjective opinion taken out of nowhere…Originally posted by JasonC:They seem to have had the brainstorm that they would count all the beans behind the scenes to "relieve" the player of any concern with the actual determining factors in combat power, then expect it to be "accurate" because beans are counted minutely. It isn't, it is hopelessly broken and the incentives it sets up frankly silly.
au contraire, mon general, it’s the worst way, what you wrote is what beginners always think is the right way to play this game, that’s why they always lose, that’s why it’s obvious you haven’t played this game thoroughly…Originally posted by JasonC:Attacks are best conducted as mega overstack affairs at about 10 to 1 odds. No, the concentration penalties do not remotely forbid this.
(sadly) true, and hopefully to be improved in the future patchesOriginally posted by JasonC:Supply is so uncontrollable, the only way to actually manage it is to deploy some units so far from the action they won't have occasion to draw it.
no, it isn’t, it works all right, but you have to know how to play this game, it’s a bit like riding a bike – if you can’t do it, you will fall off, but does that mean bikes are badly designed…?Originally posted by JasonC:Artillery supply in particular is frankly unbelievable. Air winds up getting used in the first few attacks per turn, then air units have reduced supply state etc.
a subjective opinion again, I could say they are present, but the final outcome obviously depends on the way a scenario has been designed – there are worse ones and better ones…Originally posted by JasonC:None of the combined arms relationships of the real weapons are seriously present. Instead, units are bags of diversified combat power, supply and quality dependent to be sure, but not equipment dependent in any serious way.
again, a subjective opinion, personally, I don’t find them better…Originally posted by JasonC:The much older V4Victory series was better in every way.
it’s nice other games have drawbacks tooOriginally posted by JasonC:It also had a few drawbacks in supply depiction, but nothing compared to TOAW, and subject to realistic forms of player control. A few house rules were all it really needed (e.g. not to allow wholesale reassignment of artillery to some HQs then starved of supply, allowing too many combat units to be oversupplied. Also attacks below a threshold forbidden to avoid gaming the fatigue system).
agreed, and hopefully to be patched (see above)Originally posted by JasonC:If the operating thesis is that logistic thruput is the real generator of combat power, you can't abstract it and take it entirely out of players' hands and expect a livable game to result. A strategy game has to leave the major determining levers in players' hands.
no, they are not, again, your opinion is subjectiveOriginally posted by JasonC:The contact-withdrawal behaviors are also silly, far too draconian and "tar baby" esque. A Victory Lost gets the right effect much more cleanly by simply having a 2 MP movement penalty for leaving *or entering* a ZOC (and makes them cumulative).
no, it isn’t, it’s good fun, again, you voice a subjective opinion, the user interface is quite functional apart from the map, which I agree could be better designed, there are plans to improve it though…Originally posted by JasonC:The user interface is so painful that playing a game is a chore, not fun. And that is nothing compared to designing a scenario - much worse.
no, there isn’t such a tendency, there are lots of different scenarios, some huge, some medium, some small, army-level, corps-level, division-level, regimental, battalion, even companies, also, as already stated above, sadly you have absolutely no idea how to prepare and conduct attacks in TOAW, and how they work…Originally posted by JasonC:There is a decided tendency to giantism. When you have abstract units as bags of subelements, what sense does it make to allowed huge stacks of the things, and then attack from every adjacent hex? A cleaner design would have units at most one a hex in typical situations, and better still leave "luft" between them.
again, a subjective opinion, for me a game is more interesting if there are lots of counters on the board, and for many other people who like me love and play huge games too, simply because you don’t like (or can’t handle) huge games, doesn’t mean they are badly designed and make no sense…Originally posted by JasonC:Tiller's campaigns on the other hand have the grand tactical giantism problem - they seem to think a game is more interesting and grognardesque if there are 1500 counters per giant scrolling off the screen map. This simply makes them one unplayable and two unrealistic in the coordination the player has over that giant command span.
perhaps there are, and there were, but the question is what it means for a (computer) wargame to be better, I bet opinions are likely to be divided here, surely you don’t want to suggest that your ideas concerning a good wargame are the ten commandments of wargaming… my personal opinion is that TOAW’s (as you put it) ‘bean counting’ works quite well…Originally posted by JasonC:There are vastly better designs in modern board wargames, and even better ones in many much older board wargames. Instead of learning the art of game design from advances made in past games, what TOAW has done is thrown all of that away to lean on the bean counting of the computer, and then done that badly.
i think, you have voiced too many subjective opinions in your post for it to be the grounds for decision whether or not to buy TOAW
as for my opinion, I suggest getting TOAW, if you like operational-scale wargames
it’s flexible enough with a huge number of various scenarios, and it is constantly improved, it’s bound to give you hours of fun
hps panzer campaigns are a good choice too
for me, they’re both a lot better than SSG’games
i also suggest you put more ‘I think’, ‘it seems’, and ‘in my opinion’ in your future posts…
cheers
So what's wrong with TOAW from a CM'ers standpoint?
in Combat Mission - Tips and Tricks
Posted
i don't think we'll get any response from the main protagonists here
since now that we actually expressed a diffrent view, we were informed that this thread is...
maybe it's better that waydon't feel like waging flamewar right now
i'm off
cheers