Operations not a good idea?

[Shmavis]

I'm designing a scenario and haven't decided if I want it to be an operation or a long battle. I've noticed some scenario authors don't design their scenarios as "operations" because of problems that they say they have with the operation format. It has something to do with reinforcements and front line movement, I believe. Can anyone give me his opinion on this matter?

[JasonC]

Make a single battle scenario and phase reinforcements into it. Or my present preference, make a series of company sized scenarios. Operations don't work all that well in CM, in my experience. The one thing they do give you is force carry-over from fight to fight. But the map stuff, movement of front lines, the goals, etc, are all not what you'd pick yourself.

[76mm]

I'm hardly an expert, but I will say that I don't play operations because of how the front lines move between battles--for the new battle the lines are moved somewhat arbitrarily based on the positions of the units at the end of the old battle. It's fine in theory but in practice you often get odd--and frustrating--results, with units giving up hard-won positions, etc.

[Krautman]

There is a feature that reinforcements are only given if the original force was decimated, in various degrees, depending on whether the designer specifies the reinforcement to be battalion reserve, regimental reserve etc. I have not tested this, but probably one could prevent the operation from becoming imbalanced this way. In general, I think operations are too complex to be balanced though; even a normal scenario requires quite a bit of playtesting. With CMC, operations might be superfluous anyway, right?

Greetings

Krautman

[Shmavis]

Alrighty. The scenario I'm designing is a large/huge one, forces and map. So, I'll just make it a single battle.

[Joachim]

Add extra ammo for the inf and give the tanks appropriate ammo loadouts (HE, AP, smoke) depending on the enemy force.

Gruß

Joachim

[JasonC]

Krautman - my experience with the conditional reinforcements, aka "reserves", is that one side blows out the other in a particular battle at some point. And gains so much ground the reserves are unimportant. If the fight is relatively even the feed in and keep it going, that is the best one can say.

[Bannon DC]

I'm not a big fan of the operations system against the AI. The "reserve" system does work OK in terms of feeding units, but far from perfect. Don't make your reserves too big.

When playing head to head, I prefer the "play as the lay" house rules. If both sides can agree not to teleport units around, then you can get a good battle going that gives you an over all strategy that makes it worth while to plan from one battle to the next. (Play as they lay -- keeping frontline units more or less where they are between battles. No complete reshuffling of the units between battles. Reinforcements start a certain distance from the frontline and have to move forward risking observation and fire.)

I think urban or heavily wooded situations work better for operations. Keep "no man's land" small.

Bannon

[zmoney]

Bannon I would just like to say your operation-combined arms south of Kiev is probably my favorite operation that I have played. Especially against the AI. I am currently playing it against a human opponent. I am Axis by the way and am playing your first version. I took the liberty to add two more tanks to begin the first battle and adjusted ammo content a bit, but other than that it is excellent. I noticed you had a new version out, I’ll have to try that one later.

Now on to my main point, I think operations are great if you play by a few rules, most importantly, like Bannon said, "play as they lay". I don't think you can simulate all the great things operations bring to the table by simply adjusting turn amounts or by scheduling reinforcements at different intervals in a single scenario.

Like some have mentioned earlier one great thing is the addition of conditional reinforcements in OP’s, which can’t be done, in regular scenarios. Plus if you want to simulate a 2-3 day battle you can simulate different times of a 24hr period in an OP. Such as the battle begins at dawn, you fight through out the day and night until the following dawn. You can't simulate different changes of time in a single scenario. Plus you might have different weather from one battle to another in OP’s, which you won't get in a regular scenario.

Lastly I think the vehicle repair and return option is a brilliant idea and really ad's to OP's, which again scenario's can't simulate.

[Bannon DC]

Originally posted by zmoney:

Bannon I would just like to say your operation-combined arms south of Kiev is probably my favorite operation that I have played. Especially against the AI. I am currently playing it against a human opponent. I am Axis by the way and am playing your first version. I took the liberty to add two more tanks to begin the first battle and adjusted ammo content a bit, but other than that it is excellent. I noticed you had a new version out, I’ll have to try that one later.

Now on to my main point, I think operations are great if you play by a few rules, most importantly, like Bannon said, "play as they lay". I don't think you can simulate all the great things operations bring to the table by simply adjusting turn amounts or by scheduling reinforcements at different intervals in a single scenario.

....

Excellent... a two player match-up. You'll have to let me know how that goes. Drop me a note on TSD and keep me posted. I've experimented with Russian tin cans against German armor. I think 100 to 10 sounds like a good ratio to make it a little challenging for the Germans. :eek:

New version is not much different. Primarily I had to correct some errors in the brief... I was telling people to adjust things that weren't adjustable! Then added a few more Russian tanks.

Good luck to you and thanks for the comments.