xerxes Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 I've become very interested in unbalanced battles, particulary since treeburst and Nabla really started getting into the issue. One problem is that a militarily unbalanced battle will produce an inaccurate final victory result, i.e. most will end in a total or tactical victory for the superior side. Two (I hope simple) tools would help this. 1. For exiting units, make the victory point value some function of when they exit (earlier the better). This should be optional if the scenario designer wants to use it. 2. Allow the scenario designer to apply a VP handicap to one side. I believe these two tools would allow the creation of militarily unbalanced scenarios that would have more valid victory results. As it stands now, victory points have to be adjusted outside of the game. Having these victory adjustment options would allow a much wider range of scenarios. Since they are outside of the main game engine, these would seem to be relatively easy modifications. -marc p.s. why isn't the loss of a really good officer (+2,+2,+2,+1) penalized more than the loss of a really terrible officer (+0,+0+1,+0)? Realistically, losing that experienced and trusted platoon leader is REALLY, REALLY bad. Losing the dorky one that gets his own men killed is almost no loss at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr> 1. For exiting units, make the victory point value some function of when they exit (earlier the better). This should be optional if the scenario designer wants to use it. <hr></blockquote> I, too, thought that a nice enhancement would be some sort of sliding scale of points for exiting, based on time. It isn't clear to me that you would always want earlier to be better, though. Consider a scenario where you want to have a small force delay a larger force -- a fighting withdrawal. In that case, you would want the attacker to get a bonus for early exit, but the defender (who would have the same exit map edge as the attacker!) should get a bonus for late exit of units. Otherwise it might be best for the defender to immediately exit, which would be not much fun for either side. As to how to specify such a thing, there are a couple of ideas. One would be to have an edittable table of game turns and percentages (0 to 200%). Starting on the game turn in the first column, the exit point multiplier would be the percentage in the second column. Something similar could also be done for victory flags, although you might want that to be potentially separate for each side. In other words, an attacker should get more points by taking a location sooner, rather than later. The "time of capture" would be the last time possession changed hands if things go back and forth. Of course, since these would be difficult to implement, I wouldn't expect to see them anytime soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conscript Bagger Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by xerxes: why isn't the loss of a really good officer (+2,+2,+2,+1) penalized more than the loss of a really terrible officer (+0,+0+1,+0)?<hr></blockquote> Because an officer with those kind of bonuses was probably Crack or Elite, so he's already worth more points than Lt. Nothing (who was most likely Green or Regular). <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Losing the dorky one that gets his own men killed is almost no loss at all.<hr></blockquote> Don't say that in your letter to his mother [ 01-17-2002: Message edited by: Offwhite ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xerxes Posted January 17, 2002 Author Share Posted January 17, 2002 Withdrawing off your own map edge isn't exiting, but I agree the scenario designer should be able to control. Speaking of withdrawing, it would be nice not have the morale hit when withdrawing off the map. The way it is now, the retreating player needs to pile up all his units and exit them in a single turn. Troop quality doesn't effect co bonuses. That's been looked at and nobody was able to establish a pattern. I've had vet and crack co's that are terrible as well as great conscript co's. -marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 Redwolf, if you're reading this, now you can see why my head is ready to freaking explode! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xerxes Posted January 17, 2002 Author Share Posted January 17, 2002 explode? implode? why?? -marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by xerxes: explode? implode? why?? -marc<hr></blockquote> Nothing personal against you guys, don't worry, we were just discussing this at length in the flmethrower thread (I see you just posted there too). and I THOUGHT I had things figured til someone threw in that red herring about leader quality affecting the scores.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 I must have missed that, who says that leadership bonusses affect knockout points and where did he/she say so? I don't have time to test this before my vacation, but I am sure that is BS. Besides not going with my test results, I cannot imagine Steve and Charles bothering to do that, it serves no purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xerxes Posted January 17, 2002 Author Share Posted January 17, 2002 I said it would be nice if leader bonuses added to their elimination value. BTW, it serves the purposes of realism, vp point balance, and scenario design. -marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 The scenario editor already allows for the scenario designer to give one side an automatic point bonus for being handicapped. Check in the parameters menu of the scenario editor. It is a little known and used feature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conscript Bagger Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by xerxes: Troop quality doesn't effect co bonuses. That's been looked at and nobody was able to establish a pattern. I've had vet and crack co's that are terrible as well as great conscript co's.<hr></blockquote> Well I'll be... a quick test with two infantry battalions, one conscript and one elite, makes it look like you're right. Most of the leaders in both bns had 2-3 modifiers. The elite bn had a very slight edge in the number of +2 modifiers, but there wasn't the difference between these opposite ends of the scale that I'd thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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