I'm proud to announce RobO's Quick campaign (ROQC) version 1

[Robert Olesen]

Hmm, good points Yggdrasill.

Perhaps the Favor allocation could be adjusted with the difficulty die roll(s) you get. That's effectively what you're asking for. I'll look into that.

[88mm]

Seems some thoughtfull is going on

Well, i haven't been sitting on my butt either. Since the rules changed quite a bit (v2.0 was a better approach in my opinion) i decided to start a new, fresh campaign from scratch. Robert suggested to make it a little more tough, so i see myself as a "hard" player

Starting out as "Oberleutnant" with my beloved 17x SS Panzer Co with Pz IVC's(green crews) i gave it a shot.

Battle one was hopeless (3000 QB, allied +10%), 50+ sovjet armor was just too much for my green core. The map didn't help, way too flat to make a nice ambush. Besides; with a vision of 200m even a T26 can do serious damage. No major victory, aldo i achieved to hold the flag.

Lost nearly all my Panzers (3 survided), so there was alot of crew to count. Favor: three whole points :eek:

Battle two; (2000 QB, Alied +10%)Meeting eng. Inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, lost some 7 Pz. but achieved to get all flags except one. Favor +103 and a promotion point.

Battle 3 , Meeting eng. Allied +50%. A dis-appointment, lost nearly all my armor (again) aldo i did inflict heavy losses to the sovjets. Again lots of armor against me. Maybe i should break contact asap; and keep withdrawing till of the map. Favor: -4.

Battle 4: 2000 QB and a meeting eng. , Allied +50%. This was a piece of cake, only sov. inf with no AT-guns or Pz. Only a handfull of flametrowers that kept running (conscript sovs).

Not one single crew lost this one, Favor +183 and my second promotion point. Is there a pattern here or am i too soon with this conclusion.

Alright, Battle 5 is th enext one. As i suspect, it should be a 3000 QB. Nope: it's a 2000 QB, what a relief :cool:

No enemy armor too, this is getting better every minute Allied +50% and they are Assaulting; wow, this is going to be a bloodbath

Anyway; i keep away from heavy/massiv damaged maps. With this size of core and QB's it's slowing down the game too much. That's the only setting i ignore, or better said; adjust.

Also i think wwith this rate of loss the Panzer-division's would be out of material before they reached Minsk. How about realism :eek:

[Robert Olesen]

88mm,

I didn't tell you to start a new campaign on Hard - I simply thought you had more promotiosn than one since the start of the other campaign. But I'm glad you did, as it gives me some feedback on the hard setting.

As to the attrition rate, I think that one really belongs with the game designers. I'm pretty sure it has been discussed extensively in these forums in the past.

Yggdrasill, how would this suit you:

You get +10% of the Favor Limit if your unmodified enemy handicap roll is 5 and 20% if it is 6 (if you're using 1D6 and version 1.00) - you lose 10% if the die roll is 2 and 20% if it is 1 (the corresponding values for 2D6 and the beta version would be 2-3, 4-5, 9-10 and 11-12 as it uses 2D6).

In addition, you get +10% if your own handicap roll is 5 or 6 (this is 1D6 in both rules versions). There's no negative bonus here.

Ehat would that give you in your particular case? Perhaps you can send me the spreadsheet?

[88mm]

atrition :confused:

Robert, sofar it ain't that bad. Battle 5 has gone as planned; total victory. My Co-tank scored 200 cas

and i recieved my first promotion; Hauptman !

So it seems i can handle this difficulty lvl, aldo i come in deep trouble when T34's en KV's are lurking the battlefield. Atleast as long i don't recieve longer, heavier barreled guns for my panzers. That will be mid 42, so till then i have to make best of the situation. Maybe flee when meeting massiv armored battles.

Unfortunatly you can't fiddle the QB more, it's alot of Pz against you or it's not. There is nothing in between.

ps: large hills are very ugly when random created. Maybe it's a good idea to bann them...

[Robert Olesen]

Attrition: You mentioned heavy losses.

You can fiddle the QB by buying the enemy forces yourself. That's up to you - perhaps only when facing a Combined Arms force. You might invent a rarity table to use for that.

I'm not going to ban large hills - they are a useful feature to have when playing. But it's up to you to change them to the next level if you really want to.

[88mm]

Played battle 6; Allied probe, Armor with a 75%+ handicap. 2000p QB. After substracting my core value i can spend -14p on support. Nada do

Now playing HARD is fine, but what can you do with a bunch of Pz. that haven't got a decent chance against a T34, let alone a KV. I have seen 12+ of them, including 20+ BT's and other light armor. And also atleast 1 bataljon of inf.

Another thing i miss; with greater scale's of combat i've find it hard to imagine that the German's don't have 88mm AT/flak support. With rarity ratings of 40% or less you never can buy them. This is weird in reality, surely the Germans used the 88mm wherever they can and suspected Armored forces against them. They learned quickly that the present Pz. just could not compete fairly. So i believe At-support 75mm and up and Air-support (stuka's?) where used to support the hardpressed Pz-divisions. This is what i miss with the current campaign-system; Air-support is not done and you're lucky if you have a 75mm piece of AT to buy, let alone a 88mm.

Now i understand on a smaller scale this isn't that much of a issue, rare items are more rare on a smaller scale. with larger forces it seems weird, that's my idea of it. With the rarity-limit there's also not much varity in equipment you use, Flaks, PSw's and other "rare" stuff you hardly see or can use in a battle. Making the gameplay not very interresting i think, atleast it could be better but the rarity prevends it.

That's my opinion afcource. Not everyone shall agree but that's oke with me. Everyone have the right of his own mind.

[Robert Olesen]

Originally posted by 88mm:

Played battle 6; Allied probe, Armor with a 75%+ handicap. 2000p QB. After substracting my core value i can spend -14p on support. Nada do

That shouldn't be possible. Plz send the spreadsheet (but beware I'll be away for three days).

Another thing i miss; with greater scale's of combat i've find it hard to imagine that the German's don't have 88mm AT/flak support. With rarity ratings of 40% or less you never can buy them. This is weird in reality, surely the Germans used the 88mm wherever they can and suspected Armored forces against them. They learned quickly that the present Pz. just could not compete fairly. So i believe At-support 75mm and up and Air-support (stuka's?) where used to support the hardpressed Pz-divisions. This is what i miss with the current campaign-system; Air-support is not done and you're lucky if you have a 75mm piece of AT to buy, let alone a 88mm.

Good point. Low rarity may be too frequent.

But why haven't you added a couple of 88mm guns ti your core?

[88mm]

Sure, i could add a 88mn to my core. But that isn't like a TO&E Pz CO company. Maybe buy one, but then i lack the favor to upgrade to Pz to a better type. Invested some 300 on 7 Pz IVE's sofar, that's one 88mm. After six fights, i have 7 Pz IVE, 10x Pz IVC and 110 favor. I really favor a original structure with the abiltiy to add support when needed. 88mm's where not standard equipment for a Pz Company, think they were part of the Pz divions (or a attached division/regiment whatever) support and deployed where needed most.

Mail is underway...

ps: Been thinking about this. There isn't much to handle "difficulty" but only by QB-size mostly. Maybe this adds a nice twist to achieve a better balance and a more interesting approach.

option 1: add a extra dice to calculate which support-unit(s) you can buy for the next battle. for example; for a engagement with a Armored enemy it would be appropiat to get some or one AT-piece (this can be adjusted according to the handicap lvl and/or the total QB-size). So besides your "normal" support force you get some "unique" equipment for a given battle. Can't be too hard too make a formula for this. in the same manner you could get a 150mm Inf Gun or whatever special piece of weaponry which can be helpfull in a given battle. The formula should also take the "enemy force" type in the calculation. Maybe even the difficulty lvl for your Co should be a part of this too. You could call this type of units "attached units". When opposing a Armored force with 50% till 100% handicap you end up with more or better "attached" units then when the handicap is lower. This shall balance the game better and give you a better chance on the battlefield. Also the depending of points is less, you still buy support afcource with the given numbers but at the same time you can purchase (in th editor for example) those extra pieces which are given by the generated formule. Somewhat like you already do with the "exploit" forces but then in a other way. Afcource you need to add some more tables to make the math possible but to me it seems a nice feature to enhance the fun. what do you think ?

[ December 12, 2003, 09:41 PM: Message edited by: 88mm ]

[Robert Olesen]

88mm, I got that spreadsheet but haven't had time to look at it yet. I'll consider that support feature you're proposing, but I won't promise anything as I have a few other things in the pipeline:

1) A beta update with some adjustments, mostly minor stuff. like the rarity and negative support force issue. Hopefully tomorrow.

2) A real nailbiter: Replacing men and equipment.

I have been avoiding the latter, but it has been sneaking in on me lately. I think I can do a reasonable solution that doesn't involve too much bookkeeping. And I'd like to get stuff like this done before doing a lot of work on a CMAK version.

As to your 88's: You can use Favor to modify the rarity die rolls. Have you tried that?

[Robert Olesen]

Managed to get beta version 1.01f done tonight. Here are the changes from 1.01e:

The amount of Favor you get from a battle is adjusted for the difficulty of the battle. Large handicap die rolls battles give you a Favor bonus and small handicap die rolls give you a negative favor adjustment.

A demotion will now halve any negative Favor you might have instead of costing you 20 Favor.

Rarity table modified to allow for wider spread of results.

Force Purchase Handicap values reduced to decrease the probability of getting a negative support force purchase allowance.

That should address all of the issues raised. I'm sure you'll correct me if I missed something

I'm tempted to remove the Force Purchase Handicap completely, as this is the one generating the negative support force allowance 88mm is complaining about (and I do see the point in being able to play around with a support force of a reasonable size) but I'm not going to do a change like that on short notice, so I settled for a reduction in the size of the modifier for now.

I'll take errors on this and start working on the replacement issue. Next official release will be 2.0 - don't know exactly when.

[JAT]

I have been working on a support program for ROQC. If anyone would like to test this out, please email mail me with a Subject of CMBB or similar. Right now, I'm just trying to see if it will work on another machine. I am using Windows 98 and would prefer someone using Windows rather than Mac at this point. Will get to Mac when Windows is running. It has some really powerful features that will knock your socks off.

Thanks,

jt

ps. Thanks Robert

[Robert Olesen]

I should thank you, JAT, you played an extraordinary number of test battles using ROQC.

I have "seen" JAT's support program, but I can't really run it. It gives me a simple "subscript out of bound" error. That's on Win 2000 + Office XP and Win XP + Office 2000.

I can't help with this, as I don't have the time, nor do I have enough knowledge of VB to know where to look. It does suggest a missing initialization, but I'm at a loss to tell how, where and what.

I'm sure JAT would be extremely pleased if someone knowledgeable in VB could get him past this hurdle.

[JAT]

Robert,

I have some more battle for you. I decided to try Stop the Tide with my model and since STT was starting in '44. 2 or 3 more battles and I'll send you the History. I started the first 2 battles at Normal, then changed to grueling. Once again, as soon as I got a promotion...whap, 3 battle losses in a row and a demotion. Tho, the 3 battles were in Dec, Jan and Feb, all with snow and Dec Jan in deep snow. Lost my best vet Tiger, but the others are all Vet now. Not much support force when Tigers get to be vets.

jt

[Robert Olesen]

Is that with 1.01f?

[JAT]

The first 10 battles or so were with 1.01e and now the rest are with 1.01f. The 3 battles in the snow were with 1.01e. Some of the early games I was getting less than 100 pts support. I'll try and notice if there is a difference in support force size as the last game I did get around 250pts for support. Can't take much except MGs.

Oh, and I think the reason why the files I sent didn't work is because I sent you an incorrect (incomplete) data base. That's why you were getting the subscript out of range. It had to do with the Rank and one rank field was filled in. None were supposed to be there. Do you want me to resend?

[Robert Olesen]

I think the force purchase handicap was reduced from 1.01e to 1.01f. That should give you a good deal more support at your difficulty level.

Yes, please send an updated copy.

[Robert Olesen]

Beta version 2.00b is out.

The main changes are the addition of rules for core force replacements. There's also a lot of other stuff, most of which has already been published in the 1.01 beta versions. The full changelist is available on the web site referenced above.

I decided to introduce replacements to be better prepared for the CMAK conversion (I didn't want to do it twice). Also, the Crete region in CMAK only covers a few days, and would be impossible to do properly without rules for replacements.

[Robert Olesen]

ROQC for CMBB beta version 2.00b updated to 2.00c

I found a couple of minor problems in 2.00b, one of which might well deprive you of a few tanks in your core force as time goes by (it did take out one of mine), so I found it prudent to make an update, and threw in a few tweaks of the replacement modifiers along the way.

[Peterk]

Hey, just wanted to say this is a pretty fun ruleset and wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying it. I never would have thought using the scenario editor to do this would be so easy.

It got me back into CMBB after not playing it for almost a year (I'm the original programmer of the Biltaid tool and I overdosed on CM a while back and had to step away).

[Robert Olesen]

Originally posted by Peterk:

Hey, just wanted to say this is a pretty fun ruleset and wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying it. I never would have thought using the scenario editor to do this would be so easy.

It got me back into CMBB after not playing it for almost a year (I'm the original programmer of the Biltaid tool and I overdosed on CM a while back and had to step away).

Hi Peterk, your handle did sound familiar, and that last paragraph certainly explains why. I did try BiltAid but didn't use it because I wanted to use non-standard rules.

I'm glad you like ROQC. You're not the first to report that it has brought them back to the game after a break.

[Robert Olesen]

There is a small, mainly cosmetic, error in the spreadsheets, all the way back to version 1.00:

The briefing for your own force shows the axis fitness setting even if you're allied.

I won't publish a new version for such a small change, but the fix is to use Auto!I19 instead of D33 in the formula in cell D9 of the Setup sheet.

[Blazing 88's]

When will a CMAK version be available?

Good stuff by the way.

[Robert Olesen]

Originally posted by Blazing 88's:

When will a CMAK version be available?

Good stuff by the way.

I'm working on it, but I can't give a date. Check this

First order of business is, however, to do an update of the CMBB version, to get a good base for porting to CMAK. That's pretty close by now, meaning that I can publish a beta with the complete feature set one of these days.

[Ice Cold in Alex]

Robert,

ROQC - awesome, stirring work. I'm on battle 4 with my cossacks providing recon for a Guards Inf attack on a wooded town, Mar 1942. ROQC provides a greater depth to AI battles that 'operations' don't (and I guess are not intended to)

Excellent rule set - very clear and authoritative - although (you will groan) I did as many others and misunderstood the value / cost thing the first couple of battles. I don't think it makes much different for me as in the Cossack campagin one starts with regulars . The tables in the rule set are vital to show the depth and complexity in your work that is hidden if one uses the spreadsheet alone.

A few tedious questions if I may:

AAA I'm playing ROQC ruleset 1.0 (that's where your posts initially lead), should I be on 2.0 now? Is it painful to upgrade?

BBB If I have an own-force handicap do I apply that manually to the table in the set-up worksheet or is that 'taken care-of'?

CCC and one more question, is it correct that one doen't need to edit unit strength because returning casulties and replacements always top one up to full strength?

Follow-up question - out of interest how can one reduce the number of men in a unit (ie add casulties to the starting line-up) with the CMBB editor? I can't seem to find the buttonn :confused:

Once again excellent piece of work, pity my wife doesn't share that opinion ("when will that stupid game end?")

[ January 06, 2004, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: Ice Cold in Alex ]

[Robert Olesen]

Originally posted by Ice Cold in Alex:

Robert,

ROQC - awesome, stirring work. I'm on battle 4 with my cossacks providing recon for a Guards Inf attack on a wooded town, Mar 1942. ROQC provides a greater depth to AI battles that 'operations' don't (and I guess are not intended to)

No, this is not an Operation. They are very different animals.

Excellent rule set - very clear and authoritative - although (you will groan) I did as many others and misunderstood the value / cost thing the first couple of battles. I don't think it makes much different for me as in the Cossack campagin one starts with regulars .

I'm getting used to the feeling, so no need to groan

I have tried my best to avoid that confusion. It's apparently not enough.

The tables in the rule set are vital to show the depth and complexity in your work that is hidden if one uses the spreadsheet alone.

True. Though there are so many modifiers that I'm sure some can be improved. Still, this is the product of upwards of a years work.

A few tedious questions if I may:

AAA I'm playing ROQC ruleset 1.0 (that's where your posts initially lead), should I be on 2.0 now?

Yes, you should. But hang on a little while, I'll publish a new beta shortly.

Is it painful to upgrade?

No, it isn't. Just be sure to read the section in the rules on how to do it. The History sheet is the only one that presents a problem. The best time is probably just after generating the sheet for the next battle.

BBB If I have an own-force handicap do I apply that manually to the table in the set-up worksheet or is that 'taken care-of'?

That's automatically taken care of. Of course

CCC and one more question, is it correct that one doen't need to edit unit strength because returning casulties and replacements always top one up to full strength?

Yes it is, for version 1. This has changed in version 2, where core force replacements come into play.

Follow-up question - out of interest how can one reduce the number of men in a unit (ie add casulties to the starting line-up) with the CMBB editor? I can't seem to find the buttonn :confused:

It can't be done AFAIK. I had to compromise here in the v2 rules. If a core force unit isn't at full strength, then it doesn't get to take part in the battle. This requires you to shuffle some men around after getting replacements, but the spreadsheet helps you with that.

Once again excellent piece of work, pity my wife doesn't share that opinion ("when will that stupid game end?")

Indeed, it is an excellent piece of work, and my wife doesn't appreciate it too. Oh well.