Ithikial_AU Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 One for the scenario designers. I've been thinking about a dormant Carpiquet campaign I really want to get done and realised it's a bit hard to test objectives and victory point levels I want to set before committing. Unless they are a maths genius, scenario designers have to wait for the testing phase to truly see any results. So I created a calculator to do it for me... This little tool allows you to mix and match any variation of objectives available inside the CM editor. You can assign varying victory point level and the 'theoretical score' the player will achieve to play a bit of a what if game so you can see all the possible outcomes. (ie. What would happen if I lowered the 'Church' objective by 50 pts for the allies?) Can be used either way with the Blue or Red Force being the 'player.' Just like the game it calculates from the highest score. See Page 82 of the CM 3.0 manual for more details. The additional requirements required the higher degrees of victory are also included in the considerations for the final calculation. All calculations are done on the fly each time you enter a new value. You'll see a 'red cell' if you stuff up by having more points awarded to the player than you plan to assign in a scenario. You can get a copy here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51696551/Combat%20Mission%20Victory%20Calculator%20v1.0.xlsx Any error/bug reports or additional feature ideas please post below. Thanks in advance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 Oh that is cool - I have been doing this manually (without the actual points ratio and victory label - nice touch). Downloading now... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 The auto URL detector did not work well there. This this link instead: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51696551/Combat%20Mission%20Victory%20Calculator%20v1.0.xlsx 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted October 17, 2014 Author Share Posted October 17, 2014 Cheers Ian. Think I fixed the first post. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger73 Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 Cheers Ian. Think I fixed the first post. I confirm Initial Post URL works correctly now. Spreadsheet opened properly when downloaded. Looks like a good tool. Thank you for posting it. BTW, Ithikial, just watched your Operation Windsor tutorials on Youtube this week at URL = Found them worthwhile. Thank you. Good luck resuming that project! Also, are you the same Ithikial at The Few Good Men's "Combat Mission World War 2 Era Scenario Design / How do I use the Scenario Design Area?"? I'm interested in learning more how FGM makes that work if you wouldn't mind telling us about that here. Thanks again. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vergeltungswaffe Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 That is neat. Appreciate it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted October 18, 2014 Author Share Posted October 18, 2014 Also, are you the same Ithikial at The Few Good Men's "Combat Mission World War 2 Era Scenario Design / How do I use the Scenario Design Area?"? I'm interested in learning more how FGM makes that work if you wouldn't mind telling us about that here. Thanks again. Yes I am. About what 9 mths ago now, the current set up wasn't working and the the boss of the FGM, Bootie, looked for volunteers to revive it. I put my hand up and reorganised the area into distinct catergories and imposed a bit of organisation around it for people using it. Take up was virtually instance since it was pretty easy to follow. The CM community scenario designers are doing their work it drips and drabs because lets face it we have real work and lives to attend to, so the setup needed to be easily sortable/searchable where threads could linger for months if need be without getting lost. There's also a unqiue area where finished products are moved to so users can review the final piece of work and provide feedback to the designer. (Something I've noticed has been discussed here as well). Many projects also stall when individuals can't work out how to do that one little bit of work in the editor or can't find that one bit of source material on one side's OOB. We created a unique area where users could pose information requests in and organised manner. Hope that helps as a start. Simply creating a thread for designers and letting users just dump everything into it just wasn't working. Scenarios are trickling out now so it must be doing something right. Oh and one of our members, Fredrocker, has just released a 10 mission campaign for CMBN. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PanzerMike Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 Thanks for that! Useful indeed! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
umlaut Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 Wow!! This looks like a brilliant and very useful tool. I am going to try it out today I only hope, I can figure out how to use it - I´m usually hopeless when it comes to using these sheets. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger73 Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 <snipped> The CM community scenario designers are doing their work it drips and drabs because lets face it we have real work and lives to attend to, so the setup needed to be easily sortable/searchable where threads could linger for months if need be without getting lost. <snipped> So very true for me as well. Besides learning what "starting small" really means in order to finish a first effort! Numerous false starts lie in my wake. The map overlay feature is wonderfully done for making it so much easier to build maps. Unit purchase is pretty straightforward. Learning the AI and building plans is much more nuanced. Perambulator's Youtubes are very helpful ( ). Start small indeed! Y <snipped> Many projects also stall when individuals can't work out how to do that one little bit of work in the editor or can't find that one bit of source material on one side's OOB. We created a unique area where users could pose information requests in and organised manner. Hope that helps as a start. <snipped> This helps very much. Thank you. Y <snipped> Simply creating a thread for designers and letting users just dump everything into it just wasn't working. Scenarios are trickling out now so it must be doing something right. Oh and one of our members, Fredrocker, has just released a 10 mission campaign for CMBN. God willing and the creek don't rise, I aspire to be one of them. Hope to ping you there sometime before Christmas! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 This is brilliant. Weird victory results that make no sense have been an issue with all CM2 games. Hope this gets used to make the victory levels seem "right". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted October 19, 2014 Author Share Posted October 19, 2014 Wow!! I only hope, I can figure out how to use it - I´m usually hopeless when it comes to using these sheets. Pretty easy. The light red and blue shaded cells are the important ones where you need to type in point value numbers. Left hand column of each is the total number of points you as a scenario designer wants to assign to that objective. The right hand column is for you to test different combinations of what the player may score against it. The final battle result they will receive appears below automatically. Any questions just let me know. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
umlaut Posted October 20, 2014 Share Posted October 20, 2014 Thanks, but it is so easy to use that I actually managed to figure it out all by myself And as it seems to work perfectly, this is going to be a very handy tool for scenario designers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted October 21, 2014 Author Share Posted October 21, 2014 Cheers umlaut. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Wenman Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Ithikial thanks for this it, is a lot more elegant than pen and paper. How do you add additional lines - I'm thinking terrain objectives specifically now we can have up to 15. I inserted the rows required but then picked up the selection tabs for unit objectives when I wanted those for terrain. thanks P 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted October 28, 2014 Author Share Posted October 28, 2014 Guys, updated version thanks to some good work from fellow FGM member Berto. Who wants a Pie Chart with their data? New Features - Visual representation of 'Assigned Points Values' (Pie Chart) - Check boxes to tick to assign victory points to appropriate cell. - Some conditional formatting for totals to more easily distinguish the victor. - General tidy up. Get it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51696551/Combat Mission Victory Calculator v1.1.xlsx 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted October 28, 2014 Share Posted October 28, 2014 @Ithikial_AU is link challenged:D. This will work better: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51696551/Combat Mission Victory Calculator v1.1.xlsx 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted October 28, 2014 Author Share Posted October 28, 2014 It honestly doesn't like me copying links does it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vergeltungswaffe Posted October 28, 2014 Share Posted October 28, 2014 Mmmm pie... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted November 6, 2014 Author Share Posted November 6, 2014 Berto has managed to find a little error in the key formula. Updated version can be found here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51696551/Combat%20Mission%20Victory%20Calculator%20v1.2.xlsx 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PEB14 Posted June 10, 2023 Share Posted June 10, 2023 Hello, I was very first surprised to discover a couple of errors, the main one in the key formula. After all, the tool is being used by modders for nearly 10 years! After discussion with @Ithikial_AU, who is pretty busy right now, he agreed to let me offer a corrected version. I took the liberty to add a second sheet, which is designed to show the thresholds allowing the winning side to progress from Minor to Tactical to Major to Total Victory. Not as beautiful as @Ithikial_AU 's sheet for sure, but it might be useful for designers (at least it is for me). By the way, I found the errors thanks to this new sheet, as both sheet provided different game results in a couple of VP configurations! Nobody's perfect. I myself am not any more perfect than @Ithikial_AU, so… I encourage any volunteer to test the corrected sheet against the game results (not the manual!). I performed systematic tests against CMBN's latest game engine for 26 configurations of VP ratio / potential VP earned , but I may have missed something. Feel free to report. Here is the download link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lio8dxkx3wn3gb8xb107b/Combat-Mission-Victory-Calculator-V3.xlsx?dl=0&rlkey=gfxnagef9v51jdzsk25lel2d2 @Bootie: I have secured @Ithikial_AU agreement for you to upload the corrected version at the repository. FYI, here is the test grid I have used: In the "game test" column you can see in red text the cases where Victory Calculator v2 was wrong, in green text the cases where it was correct (I didn't test the v2 version for the cases where the result is in black text). "Game test" means that for each line of the table I've set up a test mission with the proper VP ratios, which afforded the indicated result. Once again, don't hesistate to perform your own tests and report any mistake! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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