Hey Scenario Designers - Please give the attacker a chance!!

[rune]

That is not what is said, what was said is you can't just depend on points. I just made a scenario where the defender has 396 points, the attacker has 3561. Defender won.

How? I made a scenario for the fun of it of Rourke's Drift. The Russian partisans are the zulus, unarmed, and the Germans are the British defenders. Ever see a few thousand attack 139 defenders?

The message is, you cannot go strictly by points. Experience of the units, type of units, etc etc etc all come into play. As does the type of player and VARIETY! I cannot stress that enough. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an scenario that teaches you, or gives you the chance to do better then the historical outcome. My favorite comments are the ones saying you should adjust play balance in an HISTORICAL battle. People are missing the point....

Rune

[Ligur]

Care to post that scenario?

I am of the opinion that scenarios should be made difficult or easy depending on the historical situation, I don't mind getting trounced bad when, well, the scenario aims for that unless I perform superbly.

As well, IMHO there are loads of scenarios not well suited for competitive ladder play as one side often times holds an advantage, sometimes huge. Play Cemetary Hill as Axis exclusively vs human oppos to see your score drop, hurr hurrrr.

Shoulnd't competitive play use only QB ME's or scenarios specially made for human vs human? If you pick anything else...

[rune]

It has to be played two player...best I could do with the engine as it is. Will email it to you so you can have a look.

Rune

[Lady Roxanne]

Ligur,

The only real fair way to do competitive play is to play mirrored games simultaneously where both players know both sides of the scenario. If you do this, you can play any scenario or QB you want. Competition and blind play don't mix too well except maybe in the case of that fancy Nambla System the ROW tourney uses.

[Kingfish]

Originally posted by CrankyKris:

Competition and blind play don't mix too well except maybe in the case of that fancy Nambla System the ROW tourney uses.

The NABLA system...N A B L A

Nambla is something entirely different. Do a google search if you are interested in finding out.

[Lady Roxanne]

um......sorry there, Kingfish. I actually meant for that to be a complimentary statement.

[Guest konrad]

Originally posted by Kingfish:

Nambla is something entirely different.

Why ? Boys like to play with men ,and men like to play with boys.

[Capitalistdoginchina]

"Balance" is one of those things that can be very subjective depending on who plays who and the result or final outcome.

Without going into a long list of reasons it is better to show an example.

Please find below the summary of results for a Scenario Boots & Tracks designed for the Rugged Defence Tournament, all were PBEM blind.

Scenario name: RD-Into Russia We Go

Total number of battles completed = 112

Axis attacker wins = 45

Russian defender wins = 42

Draw = 25

Total percentage points scored for Axis = 5,811

Total percentage points scored for Allies=5,395

Average score = Axis 51.8% - 48.2% Allied

I think most would say that this was a pretty well balanced scenario for PBEM.

However, if you go here: Round one results you will see that in a few isolated instances both sides had some dramatic victories/defeats. The majority however had quite close outcomes. I am quite sure that those few players on the receiving end of a good hiding would argue that this was not a well designed, or well balanced scenario and you can be sure that they have a long list of reasons why

The conclusion can be that although the play balance was very even for most players the results can still vary wildly depending on how each player approaches the battle. In addition luck can play a major part as well as the difference (Gap) in experience/skill of both players.

On turn numbers i would like to mention that with variable turn endings "Our Backs to the Volga" should last to turn 35.

The only other thing to add is please read Holien's post, it hits the nail on the head.

All the best

CDIC

[ June 29, 2003, 11:38 PM: Message edited by: Captitalistdoginchina ]

[kenfedoroff]

Good post C-Dog

I haven't played that particular scenario but you can't argue with the results.

Hmmm....... Maybe less turns are better. Then I can still blame the results of my cowardly, cautious play on the scenario designer.

Thanks All, for the input.

Ken

[Capitalistdoginchina]

Kenfedorof,

The scenario can be downloaded from the Scenario Depot listed as : RD-Into Russia We Go

Regards

CDIC

[Holien]

A good scenario and if you play it, don't forget to review it.

H

[Thin Red Line]

Originally posted by Captitalistdoginchina:

On turn numbers i would like to mention that with variable turn endings "Our Backs to the Volga" should last to turn 35.

Very true, 36 in my case. The result was a draw.

[Runyan99]

Update on the 'Our Backs to the Volga' game.

Spoilers follow********************************

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Final score was a Draw. Here are the stats:

Axis / Allied

Flags Held: 600 / 1200

Enemy Casualties: 3455 / 2583

Prisoners: 44 / 0

Score: 52% / 48%

Casualties: 369 / 500

KIAs: 83 / 161

Vehicles lost: 8 / 12

Pillboxes lost: 0 / 2

Guns lost: 0 / 4

Mortars lost: 0 / 7

Men captured: 0 / 7

I am very proud of the fact that I inflicted more casualties than I took, even in the attack. In fact, this is the only reason that I managed a draw.

In any case, it is my play style to take care of my men as much as possible, and I take the above statistics as a sign of good play, and a personal victory, regardless of the actual score.

I still feel that this scenario is too short to be fair to the German player. I think if he plays well, the German gets a draw, and if he plays poorly, the German player loses. This is not a balanced scenario, regardless of the number of 'draw' results that are achieved by good German players.

If the German player is to have the *opportunity* to take the rear objectives, including the HQ bunker (which is named in the briefing as the German objective) I think a minimum of 50 turns is needed, and I do not think 60 would be over the top. My feeling is that if the German player attacks badly and takes heavy casualties, he will never reach the objective, regardless of the time limit.

At the very least, the 300 point flags in the deep rear of the Soviet position are too valuable, and could be reduced to 100 point flags.

Of course, my opponent still disagrees, and we will be starting the rematch soon. I'll hold off scoring this scenario at the Depot pending the result of that game.

I will say that I recently downloaded the Kursk Pack, and I was pleased to find several scenarios with long turn allotments. I take this as a sign of progress.

[ August 16, 2003, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: Runyan99 ]

[Hans]

In one scenario I designed I received on the same day two emails, one complaining that it was to hard and the attacker didn't have a chance.

Another saying I needed to pump up the defenders pointage as it was no challenge at all!

[Capitalistdoginchina]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

Update on the 'Our Backs to the Volga' game.

Spoilers follow********************************

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Final score was a Draw. Here are the stats:

Axis / Allied

Flags Held: 600 / 1200

Enemy Casualties: 3455 / 2583

Prisoners: 44 / 0

Score: 52% / 48%

Casualties: 369 / 500

KIAs: 83 / 161

Vehicles lost: 8 / 12

Pillboxes lost: 0 / 2

Guns lost: 0 / 4

Mortars lost: 0 / 7

Men captured: 0 / 7

I am very proud of the fact that I inflicted more casualties than I took, even in the attack. In fact, this is the only reason that I managed a draw.

In any case, it is my play style to take care of my men as much as possible, and I take the above statistics as a sign of good play, and a personal victory, regardless of the actual score.

I still feel that this scenario is too short to be fair to the German player. I think if he plays well, the German gets a draw, and if he plays poorly, the German player loses. This is not a balanced scenario, regardless of the number of 'draw' results that are achieved by good German players.

If the German player is to have the *opportunity* to take the rear objectives, including the HQ bunker (which is named in the briefing as the German objective) I think a minimum of 50 turns is needed, and I do not think 60 would be over the top. My feeling is that if the German player attacks badly and takes heavy casualties, he will never reach the objective, regardless of the time limit.

At the very least, the 300 point flags in the deep rear of the Soviet position are too valuable, and could be reduced to 100 point flags.

Of course, my opponent still disagrees, and we will be starting the rematch soon. I'll hold off scoring this scenario at the Depot pending the result of that game.

I will say that I recently downloaded the Kursk Pack, and I was pleased to find several scenarios with long turn allotments. I take this as a sign of progress.

Hello Runyan,

So, although you say that this is not balanced the outcome was a draw The draw was in your favour too, another 6 percentage points would have given you a well deserved victory.

Looking at the final stats i would say that you did quite well. However for me the most important thing is that you enjoyed playing the scenario, the outcome can always be different depending on so many things and i would be interested to see how well you do in the rematch. Please keep us updated, and enjoy the rematch!

CDIC

[Ruthless]

***SPOILERS WITHIN****

Ok, just a few points that haven't been covered yet:

Time limits on the attack may need to be beefed up a bit on some scenarios, but this of course then takes away from the defender. In many scenarios the defender can only win because of the time limit as their forces are only enough to slow down the attacker.

(Note: I don't want to sound like I'm whining--these are just observations about how scenarios can play out. I just play for fun, not for trophies )

However, some scenarios I've played, it seems that if one side picks the optimal strategy, the other side has a very low chance of winning no matter what strategy they take.

For example, I played as the Russians in a PBEM "Approach to Sevastapol" ****SPOILERS****

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and gave my opponent a serious beating. It didn't seem to me that he did anything wrong, it was more a matter of I did it right; and I made probably a lot more mistakes than he did. But my positions were more or less impregnable given the forces he had to work with. In that particular scenario, however, air power matters a fair bit and his air power did not help him that much. Air power was just about the only way he could have dislodged my KV's from their hull-down hilltop positions that allowed them to cover pretty much they entire enemy approach. In the valley were most of the rest of my armor, as well as anti-tank guns sited for side shots. He quickly realized that if he tried to move forward, he would be chewed up badly, so he (wisely) chose not to try after losing several tanks in a probe.

In a similar way, playing "Action at Manutchskaya"*****SPOILERS*****,

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my opponent (wisely) chose, as the Germans, to split his forces and attack the village both from the south and from the east (IIRC). Lack of hull-down positions and total lack of cover for the Russian armor (I quickly found out that the trees on the map in winter time would not provide me with any useful LOS blocking) made the scenario a quick bloodbath for my poor tankers. In the end, I certainly could have prepared a better plan as mine was flawed in many ways, but the point I would make is that in that scenario, as in the previous one I described, one player doing a particular strategy can make it extremely unlikely that the other player's strategy will work.

Now I don't want to fault either of those scenarios in general because I thought they were fun, especially the latter. But I would like to point out that in some scenarios, if one player figures out the "optimal" solution to the scenario, the other player may not have any "optimal" counter to it which would make it reasonably likely to win.

As for "Our Backs to the Volga"***SPOILERS***, I am playing it now in PBEM, as the Germans because of this thread where it was argued that it is impossible to win (or at least unbalanced) for the Germans. I have not played all the way through yet, so I can't say whether or not that is true, but I am a bit concerned that even with almost a 3-1 ratio (I think 18 full squads to 7 squads) in a factory, my guys are getting mauled terribly. My opponent has sited his units, I think, very cleverly especially his anti-tank guns, and so this may be a tough one...