My biggest gripe: the timer!!

[JonS]

a timer forces a lot of players to move quicker than they want to or should and thus sustain more casualties than they would if they didn't feel pressured.

Firstly, the player-as-commander should feel pressured. If he isn't under pressure then the scenario designer has failed to set a challenge.

Secondly, the only one 'forcing' the player to do anything is ... the player. The designer doesn't care how you do. The designer will most likely never know how you do. It is up to the player - not the designer - to come up with a plan that balances the resources available (and I KNOW that you will have been taught, as part of mission analysis and the MDMP, that time is a resource, just like bullets, men, and tanks are resources) against the objectives set. There is generally no requirement to kill everyone and take everything. Decide what level of casualties are acceptable. Decide which objectives to go after, and which to ignore. Then make a plan to achieve that.

[womble]

However, as in the example I gave, if my lead elements see the enemy moving to my front and my units have not been spotted I might be tempted to watch and see what happens. Its called tactical patience and it shouldnt be punished by a game clock.

Way to miss the point. That movement to your front is only occurring because of the game clock. Waiting to see what happened is effectively cheating because a real live opponent wouldn't be doing that maneuver until you were committed. That's not "patience", it's exploiting a limitation of the game engine. If you want to play against the worst possible adversary, making random moves unrelated to anything you might be doing, you can adjust the clock to a longer time. If you heed the time restraints, at least the designer has tried to coordinate the defender's responses to the attacker's potential actions.

If you don't care about maximising your score, why do you care about time limits cramping your style? How are you "punished" if the simulation is what you care about? You hurt the simulation more by using time limits other than those specified by the person who wrote the AI Plan.

You'll have to work a little harder to convince me of this. Does this mean the bullets are flying twice as fast? The guys that are running are really walking? I'm sure thats not what you meant but its not very clear.

It's mostly about the coordination that's possible because of the player's "God's Eye View". You don't have to wait as long for news of success or failure of an action before initiating the followup. You have better information available when you're bringing your forces to bear. You can coordinate fires more quickly and effectively than any RL battlefield commander could. The tactical tempo of the battle is much faster overall than could be managed even with modern "Battlefield information space" tools. If you haven't realised this, then you're missing something.

Do you mean that for most of the actions leading up to a CM scenario it would take most of a day in real life? If so, than yes I agree wholeheartedly. CM portrays what professionals call "actions on the objective." The "Last One Hundred Yards," so to speak.

What? No ****? Really? Gosh.

You are right, when that rifle company gets handed to you in a CM scenario it has been...[snip]...has nothing to do with a starting a stopwatch once the first round is fired, initiating "actions on the objective."

So there's no coordinated time when the prep bombardment stops and your section of the front goes into action coordinated with its neighbouring section? And time is irrelevant? You never have the pressure of being in place before the counterpunch could be expected to land? Coordination between different parts of a plan never matters? A time limit for a CM game represents any number of different external factors that can affect the assessment of whether a given engagement was successful. Factors that can't necessarily be waved away.

Thats good. But a timer forces a lot of players to move quicker than they want to or should and thus sustain more casualties than they would if they didnt feel pressured.

Perhaps they should focus on how they move, rather than how fast and whether they move. Perhaps then they wouldn't lose so many men.

I would like to see more concern about learning how to conduct an attack with minimal loss of life to your team.

If you have all day, you won't learn that, evidently.

"And maybe if you work harder to make the deadline without increasing your losses, you'll get better at playing this game." If you mean becoming a more tactically savvy player than I would argue that right at the top of those valuable lessons is exercising tactical patience when its called for by your read of the enemy and the situation.

No. I'm saying I can finish scenarios with victory and minimal loss of life in the time allotted. I'm stressing that it's a game. A simulationist game, for sure, but still a game not a simulator, with all the constraints that implies. If you try and use it as a simulator, it will struggle to fulfill your requirements.

To be clear, I'm not saying the timer's perfect. And I'm hoping that the triggers due in v3 and the subsequent anticipated improvements to that system will do away with the need for "artificially short" timers. However, as a game, CM is, to a large extent, about telling a story (or why would we rewind to see our little pTrppens' heroics), and stories about combat need tension, even if it has to be applied by a deadline. I'm sure it's one of the reasons Market Garden remains so fascinating: it might have been the longest, biggest time-limited action of the whole ETO, if not the whole war, and the rewards of beating the deadline of "how long can the paras at Arnhem hold out" would have been well worth the effort.

[bwgulley]

ScoutPL,

I think your comparing your experience with modern combat to WWII. I agree with you in that keeping our guys alive is more important than any objective in the current wars. In WWII the objective had more importance because taking ground was the objective whereas today “body count” and limiting friendly/civilian causalities is the objective. Of course keeping causalities low as possible was important at least for the western allies in WWII. That being said, Marine causality rates in the Pacific were very high due to time pressure to take objectives.

Remember in WWII the German policy of counterattack everywhere every time. If you’re tasked to take a crossroads or small village time is critical because the German counterattack is on the way. If you don’t seize the objective in time your blocking force won’t be ready to repel the counterattack. Result, several friendly causalities for no gain and now we have to attack again or come up with a different plan because we didn’t complete the mission in a timely manner.

In modern combat we’re thrilled when the enemy reinforces their position or attempt a counterattack as it makes it easier for us to kill them with massed fire support. A favorite US tactic since Vietnam is to place a unit as bait and blast the counter attackers, great for “body count” not so much for gaining ground.

The time limitation though artificial I feel is required especially H2H or 4 hour+ battles would take several months with very little action most of the time. IMO the realism of CM is one must use, for the most part, RL small unit (platoon/squad) tactics to play well. Your argument is the timer is artificial and takes away from the realism, well of course it does, but it’s a game and I play for the fun of the game. If I wanted true realism I would have spent my 24 years in the Army or Marines not the Air Force.

I would like to thank and salute you for your service.

[womble]

Another way the hated "stopwatch" is entirely appropriate is when a designer is making a historical scenario that, say, covers the first period (let's say, for the sake of argument, the first hour) of a battle. He assigns historical OOB to each side, on a carefully researched and lovingly detailed map, and sets the VCs such that the player gets a Draw if he achieves what the RL forces achieved in that first hour, with greater progress/less damage sustained giving a victory, and failing to hit the terrain objectives that the RL attackers reached in their first hour, or taking excessive (relative to RL) casualties producing a loss.

Setting aside that the best player in the playtest group might be achieving the goals in 30 minutes due to the artificial acceleration of the tempo, and even assuming that the clock doesn't have much to do with how the AI conducts its side of the battle (a static defense) is it right or proper that a player would get the same level of victory by taking 2 hours to achieve what the RL forces did in 1?

Since any scoring schema is going to take into account, even if only subliminally, the time for the scenario, because it's a game, changing the time allowed makes the scoring invalid. And yet if you don't care about the scoring, why do you care that you didn't take the objective: you only took three wounded and a broken fingernail, after all.

[bruce90]

Yes. I too 'hate' the timer. It's my game I should be able to finish it when I choose and as far as I'm concerned no one will ever convince me that it's a good or necessary feature.

[Macisle]

Darn it, I think I should be able to play "Five Card Draw" with six cards if I choose and as far as I'm concerned no one will ever convince me that it's a good or necessary feature to restrict a five card game to only five cards!

[Jock Tamson]

There is a fashion in PC gaming these days for the single player game to be a necessary evil that seems tagged on to the core multi player game.

For me, as CM's graphical fidelity has increased over the years, the shortcomings in the single player game have become more visibly jarring. For example the mob rushes of infantry squads leaving a huge pile of bodies in the same couple of action squares as the AI relentlessly tries to carry out its time based plan. When this was more abstracted, it didn't seem to matter so much.

I really - really - hope that the new triggers will start to give a bit more love to the single player experience. There are wargames out there where the AI responds to the player, it would be great if CM could stand among them.

[womble]

Unfortunately, I don't think the triggers will change anything in and of themselves with regard to the lemming-like behaviour of the AI pTruppen on the move. That's kind of a "lower AI layer" (where lower layers are closer to actual pTruppe behaviour rather than the broader orders accessible to the AI plan scripting) problem. Which isn't to say I don't think BFC will be working on it, when they can. Pathing and pseudo-awareness are both challenging areas to write code for, and Steve has repeatedly said that AI programming gives poor sales returns per coding man-month, so it remains, for commercial reasons, a low priority to improve. Triggers might mean the AI doesn't send troops down the wrong (because it's now covered by 2 MMGs and a platoon of late Ami paras) approach route as often, but the pathing issues and lack of situational awareness and adaptability at the squad/team/vehicle level will remain.

[ScoutPL]

These are all great arguments that address things outside the scope of necramonium's reason for starting this thread. He stated that he disliked feeling pressured by the arbitrary time constraint that some scenario designers placed on the player(s). I agreed with him that I thought it was unnecessary and unrealistic. To which I got a number of responses laying out why the timer is so important to game mechanics and how time is often a factor in the resolution of a battle.

The timer IS essential to the execution of the game. Its required for game mechanics to work correctly and for controlling the AI in a single player game. I agree with this point 100%. However it has nothing to do with the point I was making when I joined this thread.

Time is of enormous importance to the execution of a battle or operation. It is essential that planners and subordinates understand timing in order to maintain the initiative, tempo and synchronization of an operation. However, "operational time" (this has to happen before this other thing can happen) has nothing to do with the actual closing with the enemy in your objective area (ie CM game space).

I will use Market Garden as an example to illustrate my point since it was brought up earlier. According to the US Armys official "Green Book" history, the 101st and 82nd jumped at around 1300. They had not captured all of their initial assault objectives (the bridges) until hours later (1600 in the case of the 101st). Did time and speed play a huge role in their success? Of course. If they had lolly-gagged on the DZs they would have failed completely. But are you going to design a scenario for players that portrays that 2-3 hour long dash for the bridges? Not if you want players to actually enjoy your scenario. No, you are going to focus your scenario on the last 30-45 minutes of the actual capturing of the bridges and the FIREFIGHT that took place there. Historically you know what forces were present. You know their composition, their equipment, their location, etc. The forces that were present for that thirty minute fight are there and they arent going to change. So why not give the player 45 min instead of 30? Is a force of significant size going to show up in that last 15 minutes? Not historically, or else the Germans would have simply recaptured the bridges and MG would have failed even more horrendously than it did. The time crunch is past (get to the bridges). What remains is simply fighting the fight with whats available in CM. There is no need to give the player exactly 30 minutes and tell him he has to take the bridge in that time or he fails. He's there, the race is over, now its a tactical problem.

Another point for clarification: I am sure most of you have heard of METT-TC. Its a planning tool that the US Army teaches to leaders to conduct mission analysis. It stands for Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops - Time, Civilian Considerations. As you can see by its inclusion, Time is extremely important from a doctrinal standpoint. However, time in this case has far less to do with how long it takes to secure an objective and a whole lot more to do with planning and movement prior to the objective. In US Army doctrine unless it is for a very, very specific reason, the time given in a mission statement will be a No Later Than time to attack, defend, or even just cross the Line of Departure. Doctrine concedes that once the fight has started you cant control time. To try to do so inhibits your commanders and defies the doctrinal precepts of Mission Orders. If you tell a commander he has to attack a hill by 1500 and then tell him he has to have it in his hands by 1530 he will immediately question your reasoning and ability to command (albeit, probably behind your back). There is no way to know what will happen once you are fully engaged in a direct fire gunfight with the enemy. Things might go really quick or they may get bogged down. Thats why most synch matrixs and decision points are based on conditions that dont include time. Once x unit passes Phaseline Red this will happen. Once the enemy armored force has been reduced to 50% that will happen, etc.

Planners use backwards planning to synch their units in time and space. As a company commander I might be given an attack time of say 0530. Its now 1300. So I have sixteen and a half hours. I apply METT-TC and the first thing I do is determine the time I think I will need to occupy my Support by Fire and Attack positions. Say an hour. Time to travel from my current location to the objective area? 6 hours. So I have 9 and a half hours to plan. I take one third of that time for myself to plan (3 hours) and I set aside two thirds for my subordinates to plan, rehearse, prepare etc. I am not planning (based on time) what will happen once I initiate my attack. Nor does doctrine say I should. CM scenarios generally start where the commander is beginning to move into his SBF and atk positions. If you think of the setup area as the last rally point before the attack (or Objective Rally Point - ORP), than you can see how the game fits into this construct.

So saying that we should have to watch a clock in a CM scenario because that a reflection of real life just isnt accurate. By the time the battle has progressed to the point CM can replicate it, time is irrelevant. Any reinforcing units that are within range to influence the fight are pre-planned by the scenario designer. Once the battle is engaged no commander is going to tell a subordinate who is moving aggressively against the enemy to move faster.

All of this illustrates my point that placing a significant time restraint (one that creates an artificial sense of urgency on the players part) is unrealistic. Sure you dont want an open ended clock that would allow the player to crawl across the map and "trick" the AI into exposing themselves. Thats just bad play and misses the real value that CM provides. But there shouldnt be anything wrong or disruptive with adding 15-20 minutes to what the designer believes would be necessary to accomplish the mission. All it does is prevent an artificial restraint that accomplishes nothing.

[bruce90]

Darn it, I think I should be able to play "Five Card Draw" with six cards if I choose and as far as I'm concerned no one will ever convince me that it's a good or necessary feature to restrict a five card game to only five cards!

That's the spirit Macisle. Fight your corner!

[sburke]

Actually this is a great example and a reason why the timer can play a critical role. In CM you can't blow the Son bridge so the timer reflects exactly the race to seize the bridge before the Germans can blow it in your face exactly as happened in MG. The US airborne was under enormous time pressure all the way until that bridge was blown. In fact that was the case for every single bridge objective in the operation. There are numerous example of units having to seize an objective despite not having all the forces present they needed nor the time to recon the area etc.

[A Canadian Cat]

So saying that we should have to watch a clock in a CM scenario because that a reflection of real life just isnt accurate. By the time the battle has progressed to the point CM can replicate it, time is irrelevant. Any reinforcing units that are within range to influence the fight are pre-planned by the scenario designer. Once the battle is engaged no commander is going to tell a subordinate who is moving aggressively against the enemy to move faster.

I can totally relate to your points as the attacker. I have often been making good progress and moving along doing things right when I realize that time is running out. Suddenly I have to start deciding do I continue to do things right or start taking risks. I don't like that feeling. And as you say, in reality what would another 10-15 minutes be anyway.

However having said that as the defender the clock is my only true weapon:D On defense I think I have only once actually destroyed enough of my enemy's force that the clock did not matter. The majority of the time, due to our propensity to press an attack through much higher casualties than would be typical, the defender has no choice but to hang on until the clock runs out.

[JonS]

Yep, and examples can easily be found from other campaigns too. The attack on the Merville battery on the morning of 6 June went ahead even only 80 men of the 800man battalion had shown up. It went ahead because they were on a timer, and the battery had to be secure by a specific time in order for the main landings at SWORD to go ahead.

Sure, the battalion commander in that case could have said "you know what, guys? Let's just display a bit of 'tactical patience' and wait here for a bit, and see what the Germans do. Then, maybe, later we'll attack the battery." But he didn't. Becuase he had a timetable to keep to.

He's there, the race is over, now its a tactical problem.

The race is never over. The race changes, but it never ends. Time doesn't stop being a resource because you want to display some 'tactical patience'. You can be 'tactically patient' until the middle of next week, if you like, but expecting a pat on the back and an attaboy for doing that is probably a little optimistic.

EDIT: 'tactical patience' is a valid use of your time resource, but using 20 minutes of a 40 minute scenario with 'tactical patience' is just poor resource management.

Macisle

I wouldn't sit down to a game of ASL where the scenario card rewards the defender with victory for holding out for five turns--only to demand 10 as the attacker and then expect to feel just as good, and brag just as much, about my victory.

This is a very good example, but it glosses one important aspect. As the defender in that game I'd be highly annoyed if the attacker arbitrarily demanded an extra 5 turns. As defender I'm resourced for five turns, not 10. If the attacker can't get his A into G in the five turns available, then yay me! I win. The attacker shouldn't get a do over now that I've run out of everything.

Time is a resource. It is always a resource. Expecting that one of the resources available to you - in a game, no less! - will be unlimited is a bit silly. The whole point of games is managing and making the best use of the resources you have available, and doing it better than your opponent.

[JonS]

I can totally relate to your points as the attacker. I have often been making good progress and moving along doing things right when I realize that time is running out. Suddenly I have to start deciding do I continue to do things right or start taking risks. I don't like that feeling. And as you say, in reality what would another 10-15 minutes be anyway.

Right, so you get another 10-15 minutes, and guess what? You'd just lollygag around for longer before realising that you have to accept more risk, then rush the last bit and complain that the scenario is still to short!

Regardless of how long the scenario is, you have to manage your resources from start to finish. When time is short, you have to accept higher risk from the first turn, or you will run out of time and have to accept a LOT of risk at the end. If you fritter away one of your resources that's your fault, not the designers.

Think of it like this: you have a module of artillery. You see a patch of woods that might maybe contain enemy. You don't know, though, because you haven't recced it. So, anyway, you dump all your rounds in the wood but of course there was no one in there. Should you get another module of artillery because you wasted the first one?

[ASL Veteran]

So saying that we should have to watch a clock in a CM scenario because that a reflection of real life just isnt accurate. By the time the battle has progressed to the point CM can replicate it, time is irrelevant. Any reinforcing units that are within range to influence the fight are pre-planned by the scenario designer. Once the battle is engaged no commander is going to tell a subordinate who is moving aggressively against the enemy to move faster.

I'm sorry but you just aren't being accurate here. The problem, as I see it, is that you seem to view a 'scenario' in terms of a vacuum. As far as the player is concerned I suppose that might be accurate, but if you are comparing it to reality that isn't accurate. It isn't accurate because you have no idea what happens at the end of a scenario beyond the time limit that has been imposed. In real life, once the time limit expires the battle would not end. The battle would continue beyond the end point of the scenario. The only difference is that the conditions that were set to determine victory or defeat were not achieved within the amount of time that was allocated to the player to get a 'victory'. Victory in the sense of the issuance of points to each side for doing certain things. Victory or defeat in combat mission is an entirely artificial construct of the game that you are playing.

However you want to slice it, if you cannot achieve the 'victory conditions' within the time constraints that have been imposed by the scenario designer then you have not completed the mission as it was designed. Why did the time limit prevent you from achieving 'victory'? Take your pick of any number of reasons as to why the time expired. An atomic bomb exploded. General Patton sacked you for not being aggressive enough. Enemy reinforcements arrived at the exact endpoint of the scenario. A bridge was destroyed. Your flank became uncovered. Your troops have nothing to eat and refuse to continue fighting. It makes no difference. It makes no difference because what happens beyond the end point of the scenario is irrelevant other than to contribute to when the scenario endpoint is reached. The only thing that you need to know is that you failed in completing the mission within the time constraints that were imposed by the designer.

[ScoutPL]

I appreciate everyone's comments and all of you taking the time to read mine. But I learned years ago that when it comes to forum debates the real victor is usually the guy who bows out first, because otherwise the merry-go-round just keeps spinning.

I have said what I wanted to say. I'll be happy to observe from this point on.

[womble]

[snip]

That's all very interesting, but:

So saying that we should have to watch a clock in a CM scenario because that a reflection of real life just isnt accurate.

It is sometimes. And that neglects the times when because it's a game, there has to be an end. So you don't like feeling that you're being driven too fast? Shouldn't have wasted so much time earlier. There aren't many scenarios out there that are actually impossible to complete in the allotted time; that's what playtesters are there to help show. Sure, some are difficult to complete in time, but abandoning good tactics in the last 10 minutes probably isn't going to achieve a better result than carrying on being cautious, so why even bother? So you don't make the objective: Oh well, this scenario beat me; what could I have done more effectively? That's learning. If you decide that you did as well as you could, and as well as could reasonably be expected against the opposition you find when the "Review Map" curtain is drawn back, then that's fine too.

By the time the battle has progressed to the point CM can replicate it, time is irrelevant.

IRL, sure. I'll buy that. But it's not RL. It's a game. Which has to have an end point. And, apparently, a scoring system. Perhaps it should "finish", show you the "You lose" screen and then give you the option to carry on and get to those objectives. That'd be popular, I'm sure. "Late" isn't relative to military needs. It's late relative to the gamist need to assess every engagement for a win/loss. Which most times are pretty arbitrary anyway, so why feel bad that you didn't get that last VL?

All of this illustrates my point that placing a significant time restraint (one that creates an artificial sense of urgency on the players part) is unrealistic.

Unrealistic, but unavoidable. The sense of urgency is essentially pure competitiveness: you're competing against the benchmark time the playtesters helped the scenario designer arrived at. If you can let that go, and just accept the end point, then the urgency goes away.

But there shouldnt be anything wrong or disruptive with adding 15-20 minutes to what the designer believes would be necessary to accomplish the mission.

And if the player uses those 15-20 minutes to dawdle in their setup zone and let the enemy get away? Or stalls half way through due to lack of intestinal fortitude and serendipitously foils a timed counterattack, but still has time to complete when normally such frailty would mean "failure" (in the game's terms)? Sure, it's possible to design scenarios where such things won't matter, and plenty of scenarios have "extra time" which essentially the designer can't incorporate in their planning, since it may or may not be shorter or longer. But the player can't know (without blowing away the fog of war that's such a precious commodity handed to us in spades by CM) which applies.

So no, perhaps it's not always realistic, but that's the nature of the game. Realism is important, but total realism is an unattainable goal.

[Flying Penguin]

I'm sorry but you just aren't being accurate here. The problem, as I see it, is that you seem to view a 'scenario' in terms of a vacuum. As far as the player is concerned I suppose that might be accurate, but if you are comparing it to reality that isn't accurate. It isn't accurate because you have no idea what happens at the end of a scenario beyond the time limit that has been imposed. In real life, once the time limit expires the battle would not end. The battle would continue beyond the end point of the scenario. The only difference is that the conditions that were set to determine victory or defeat were not achieved within the amount of time that was allocated to the player to get a 'victory'. Victory in the sense of the issuance of points to each side for doing certain things. Victory or defeat in combat mission is an entirely artificial construct of the game that you are playing.

However you want to slice it, if you cannot achieve the 'victory conditions' within the time constraints that have been imposed by the scenario designer then you have not completed the mission as it was designed. Why did the time limit prevent you from achieving 'victory'? Take your pick of any number of reasons as to why the time expired. An atomic bomb exploded. General Patton sacked you for not being aggressive enough. Enemy reinforcements arrived at the exact endpoint of the scenario. A bridge was destroyed. Your flank became uncovered. Your troops have nothing to eat and refuse to continue fighting. It makes no difference. It makes no difference because what happens beyond the end point of the scenario is irrelevant other than to contribute to when the scenario endpoint is reached. The only thing that you need to know is that you failed in completing the mission within the time constraints that were imposed by the designer.

Perhaps that's just the problem, you don't know why.

The timer is just an abstraction for a whole multitude of operational factors which set the tempo required, Battlefront can't possibly code for every scenario so it's up to the scenario designer to explain their limit. If a scenario has a tight deadline. It could be perfectly reasonable in the circumstances but the scenario briefing doesn't generally give an explanation of the operational drivers for the timescale, which makes the limit seen arbitrary.

The timer is clearly a vital part of the game and of mission design, but like most abstractions, if the player doesn't understand why it's happening it can easily be taken as a completely arbitrary obstacle.

To quote the advert, 'it's good to talk'....

Cheers.

Jamie

[Skwabie]

I play real time... It's impossible to advance on multiple flanks. Tried but doesn't work, even a bogged vehicle requires my attention (or should I say especially a bogged vehicle. There's no worse way to lose a tank like this!). Let alone hearing an explosion, saw my tank blew up and wondering WTF! Therefore I generally advance on one side, when they're far enough ahead and in overwatch, I divert attention to the other flank.

This unavoidably takes more time. I can easily imagine WeGo being much much more time efficient. I could try it but... perhaps not yet.

That and I really dislike arbitrary game limitations. Fully dynamic campaign ftw! No? Then it doesn't bother me to take my sweet little time to finish this RPG guy. It's not like we're due in Baghdad tomorrow or anything..

[womble]

...even a bogged vehicle requires my attention...

I'm curious: what does your attention do to help a bogged vehicle? I just leave them to it and they either free themselves or bury their wheels to the axle... Is there some method of extricating them?

Therefore I generally advance on one side, when they're far enough ahead and in overwatch, I divert attention to the other flank.

This unavoidably takes more time. I can easily imagine WeGo being much much more time efficient. I could try it but... perhaps not yet.

The obverse of the coin is that in WeGo, if you want to adjust a position by just a few metres and see what the unit spots (for example), it takes a whole minute. [Edit: or coordinate a Blast with other troops going through the hole; it takes a dry run in the scenario editor with troops matching the ones doing the blasting, to find out how long they take plus a whole minute of game time]. I'd agree that WeGo is probably more accelerated in tempo than RT is, on the whole, but it brings its own frustrations and hitch steps

It also brings the replay, which even if you're not squeezing every last drop of intel out of it, can be a sheer joy to watch sometimes, when things go right and one of your pTruppen earns themselves a medal citation, or a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions when things go wrong...

That and I really dislike arbitrary game limitations.

Only time limits are no more arbitrary than map edges or rarity points or victory locations or conditions. Or the requirement to board a vehicle to acquire stuff from it. I don't know how you play the game.

[Bulletpoint]

I have a love/hate relationship with the timer. I love it because it brings a sense of urgency to the battles, forcing me to take risks. It makes me sit on the edge of my seat sometimes!

On the other hand, sometimes there is just too little time to play the game properly, which leads to throwing away soldiers in a very gamey way, but this is due to scenario design.

I do think that players should automatically be given extra time when playing WeGo though, as all actions will then take at least 1 minute.

[MikeyD]

Back when I was building scenarios (I haven't built one for awhile). I'd test it... add an extra 15 minutes. Test it again... add another 15 minutes. Eventually it got so I'd just add that extra half hour without bothering to test. Things get complicated, though, when you need to go into the AI and accordion-out your order times to fit the longer run time.

[Skwabie]

I'm curious: what does your attention do to help a bogged vehicle? I just leave them to it and they either free themselves or bury their wheels to the axle... Is there some method of extricating them?

I don't know the underlying game mechanism, but multiple repetitive experience has led me to believe: If a vehicle's bogged with a movement order, it always immobilizes. But, if I cancel the command when it's bogged, issue something else like reverse or a normal move, 9 outta 10 times it drives out.

Dunno, maybe it's the Fast movement command i'm usually using causing the bog -> immobile, but I'm close to ruling luck out.

Only time limits are no more arbitrary than map edges or rarity points or victory locations or conditions. Or the requirement to board a vehicle to acquire stuff from it. I don't know how you play the game.

well yeah exactly as I hate all those, especially map edges. Fully dynamic campaign on a entire theater is THE STUFF. If only one can wait another... say 200 years for better quality entertainment...

[womble]

I don't know the underlying game mechanism, but multiple repetitive experience has led me to believe: If a vehicle's bogged with a movement order, it always immobilizes.

I can categorically refute that belief. Playing Road to Nijmegen at the moment, and I've had 4 instances that I can think of, in the two scenarios where I've had vehicles, that I've noticed bogged vehicles unbog themselves without any intervention on my part. And that's with setting long moves and ignoring them for a couple of minutes; there could have been "Bogged" moments that I never saw. That compares to 2 vehicles actually Immobilised in the same span.

But, if I cancel the command when it's bogged, issue something else like reverse or a normal move, 9 outta 10 times it drives out.

I'll try that and see if there are any better results. Ta.

[claystone]

I also hate the timer as well. They should give us the option to use it or not that way we are all satisfied.