A request to all scenario designers

[noob]

Could anyone designing a scenario create exit zones for either side in the relevant places, this will avoid the trapping of ineffective units on the map, and possibly contributing to the opponents score. 

[JonS]

No.

 

Once you figure out how exit zones work, you'll understand why this is a terrible idea.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Not sure that it is a totally bad idea.....Sometimes it's useful to get rid of transports after you've acquired all the goodies.

[JonS]

No, it is a totally bad idea.

[Rinaldi]

Uh oh...a scenario I'm designing has an exit zone. Should I be worried or re-think having it in?

[A Canadian Cat]

As long as you know how destroy unit objectives interact with the exit zone you are fine. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

No, it is a totally bad idea.

Could you expand on that statement at all please, for those of us who are still new to scenario design?

Edited May 15, 2016 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Michael Emrys]

1 hour ago, IanL said:

As long as you know how destroy unit objectives interact with the exit zone you are fine. 

How do they interact? Are you saying that exited units count as destroyed?

Michael

[noob]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

No.

 

Once you figure out how exit zones work, you'll understand why this is a terrible idea.

I checked the manual, and yes, it's a terrible idea if there are points rewarded for unit kills / damage. For any other scoring system, i'm assuming an exit zone would be fine.

However, I should of checked the manual first before saying anything, my bad.

Edited May 15, 2016 by noob

[ASL Veteran]

9 hours ago, noob said:

I checked the manual, and yes, it's a terrible idea if there are points rewarded for unit kills / damage. For any other scoring system, i'm assuming an exit zone would be fine.

However, I should of checked the manual first before saying anything, my bad.

Of course if points aren't awarded for kills or damage then the entire purpose of creating the exit zone in the first place is defeated since exiting things that give no points is a pointless exercise is it not? 

[A Canadian Cat]

11 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

How do they interact? Are you saying that exited units count as destroyed?

Michael

No, it's the other way around. As soon as you add an exit zone any unit that is part of an destroy unit objective counts as destroyed if it does not exit. Having the exit zone changes the way destroy unit objectives behave.

[noob]

8 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

Of course if points aren't awarded for kills or damage then the entire purpose of creating the exit zone in the first place is defeated since exiting things that give no points is a pointless exercise is it not? 

Not if it's a "Casualty" parameter. For example, in a recent game I played with an exit zone, I was rewarded 500 points for exiting with less than 25% casualties.

As for scenarios with just terrain objectives, the exit zone would be purely for the purpose of clearing the battlefield of useless units. For example, I played a game where I had a lot of unarmed transport vehicles, and they were only going be used once. That meant that once they had completed their mission, they had to be hidden in cover that I wanted to use during the rest of the battle. They took up space, and were easier to spot than prone troops, thus potentially drawing unwanted attention from enemy units, that otherwise would of been ignorant of my presence.

[ASL Veteran]

4 minutes ago, noob said:

Not if it's a "Casualty" parameter. For example, in a recent game I played with an exit zone, I was rewarded 500 points for exiting with less than 25% casualties.

As for scenarios with just terrain objectives, the exit zone would be purely for the purpose of clearing the battlefield of useless units. For example, I played a game where I had a lot of unarmed transport vehicles, and they were only going be used once. That meant that once they had completed their mission, they had to be hidden in cover that I wanted to use during the rest of the battle. They took up space, and were easier to spot than prone troops, thus potentially drawing unwanted attention from enemy units, that otherwise would of been ignorant of my presence.

So in other words, you don't want any scenario designers for any of the various releases (every forum) to use any casualty VPs other than parameters for every scenario all designers make so that you can have an exit zone in every single scenario for both sides even for scenarios that don't have any 'useless' units in them.  Alright, your suggestion has been noted.  Now that everyone who makes scenarios has their marching orders from you should we all respond in every forum or will just this one do?  

[noob]

13 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

So in other words, you don't want any scenario designers for any of the various releases (every forum) to use any casualty VPs other than parameters for every scenario all designers make so that you can have an exit zone in every single scenario for both sides even for scenarios that don't have any 'useless' units in them.  Alright, your suggestion has been noted.  Now that everyone who makes scenarios has their marching orders from you should we all respond in every forum or will just this one do?  

No, when I first made my request, I didn't know what the consequences would be for "certain" types of battle parameters. Once I was educated as to those consequences by JonS, I re assessed the situation, and modified my request.
However, I have come to realise that encroaching into the territory of experienced designers is a dangerous game for the uninitiated, so I think I will tweak any scenarios I play myself, based on the knowledge I have acquired creating this topic

Edited May 15, 2016 by noob

[ASL Veteran]

Very good.  Even if exit zones were modified from their current form I'm not sure that placing exit zones on every scenario would be a good idea.  In situations where someone is playing a manually run campaign that exist outside of the game as sometimes are run on some of the fan sites - yeah, I could see some utility there.  For an average stand alone scenario that isn't linked to anything greater than itself adding an exit zone for both sides seems to have a very limited utility and would probably be a confusing feature that the vast majority of players would not use.

[Michael Emrys]

3 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

Even if exit zones were modified from their current form I'm not sure that placing exit zones on every scenario would be a good idea.

When was this suggested? I must have missed that. I brought up the subject of exit zones in another thread several days ago for a very specific type of scenario. Namely, I was testing if there would be interest in occasionally playing a scenario where the goal was to delay an enemy attack as long as possible while conduction a fighting retreat and then withdrawing off the map. This would not require altering anything in existing scenarios, unless the designer just wanted to. It certainly does not require exit zones in all scenarios.

Michael

[[MyIS] Buffpuff]

4 hours ago, noob said:

However, I have come to realise that encroaching into the territory of experienced designers is a dangerous game for the uninitiated, so I think I will tweak any scenarios I play myself, based on the knowledge I have acquired creating this topic

I wouldn't go that far. My experience (thus far) in figuring out scenario design has been uneventful and the community has been very helpful. More scenario designers means more campaigns/battles and that's good for everyone involved as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully one of these days (hint hint) Chris (Battlefront Guru/Developer) will do some Twitch streams on scenario design!

[ASL Veteran]

10 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

When was this suggested? I must have missed that. I brought up the subject of exit zones in another thread several days ago for a very specific type of scenario. Namely, I was testing if there would be interest in occasionally playing a scenario where the goal was to delay an enemy attack as long as possible while conduction a fighting retreat and then withdrawing off the map. This would not require altering anything in existing scenarios, unless the designer just wanted to. It certainly does not require exit zones in all scenarios.

Michael

Huh?  It was suggested by the guy who started this thread.  I wasn't referring to anything you mentioned and I have no idea how you thought I was responding to anything you typed since I don't think you even contributed to any of the threads this guy started.  The original poster in this thread (and the thread he posted in every forum) seemed to be asking for an exit zone in every scenario.  He continued to justify that request through the course of his many threads.  That's what I was responding to.  He wanted one so he could exit 'useless' units - and of course, how would a designer know in advance which units the player thought were useless.  I mean, if the designer thought a unit was useless he wouldn't include it in the first place would he?  

[noob]

12 hours ago, [MyIS] Buffpuff said:

I wouldn't go that far. My experience (thus far) in figuring out scenario design has been uneventful and the community has been very helpful. More scenario designers means more campaigns/battles and that's good for everyone involved as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully one of these days (hint hint) Chris (Battlefront Guru/Developer) will do some Twitch streams on scenario design!

My tongue was firmly in my cheek when making this statement, as the emoticon shows

[noob]

2 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

 how would a designer know in advance which units the player thought were useless.  I mean, if the designer thought a unit was useless he wouldn't include it in the first place would he?  

By useless, I meant gun damaged tanks, broken infantry, and units out of ammo.

[[MyIS] Buffpuff]

53 minutes ago, noob said:

My tongue was firmly in my cheek when making this statement, as the emoticon shows

Where else would your tongue be???

[Michael Emrys]

5 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

Huh?  It was suggested by the guy who started this thread.  I wasn't referring to anything you mentioned and I have no idea how you thought I was responding to anything you typed since I don't think you even contributed to any of the threads this guy started.  The original poster in this thread (and the thread he posted in every forum) seemed to be asking for an exit zone in every scenario.  He continued to justify that request through the course of his many threads.  That's what I was responding to.  He wanted one so he could exit 'useless' units - and of course, how would a designer know in advance which units the player thought were useless.  I mean, if the designer thought a unit was useless he wouldn't include it in the first place would he?  

Okay. I see where you are coming from now.

Michael

[noob]

On 5/16/2016 at 4:13 PM, [MyIS] Buffpuff said:

Where else would your tongue be???

Do you really want to know

[Sgt.Squarehead]

On ‎15‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 1:29 PM, ASL Veteran said:

Of course if points aren't awarded for kills or damage then the entire purpose of creating the exit zone in the first place is defeated since exiting things that give no points is a pointless exercise is it not? 

In a campaign.....Far from it! 

[ASL Veteran]

2 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

In a campaign.....Far from it! 

If no points are associated for exit purposes, then the exit zones are undifferentiated from the 'Cease Fire' or 'Surrender' result which can be selected by a player at any point during their game.  So, in other words, the exit zones serve no purpose since they do not influence the outcome of the scenario in terms of victory or defeat as defined by victory points.  If the exit zones do not influence the outcome of victory or defeat, then they serve no practical game purpose even within the context of a campaign.  In the game, campaigns are strictly against the AI and if you are at the point where exiting units for no reason becomes a practical possibility then you can achieve the same result by selecting the Cease Fire button without all the additional trouble of moving your units to the pointless exit locations.

However, if you have a desire to add exit zones to every scenario or campaign you make then by all means, go for it.