Balanced game play

[Sombra]

Well I know there will be an "allpowerful" editor. Nevertheless like many players I prefer to stick to original scenarios.

I would like to see in the game:

- a historical accurate Fall Weiß / Fall Blau Scenario

- an official competion Fall Weiß scenario / balanced not 100% historical

- An 4-6 player competion scenario.

I am very excited about SC2 and hopefully the release won´t be delayed. By the way any updates regarding the game on the website soon. New sreenshots anything? Only to give us the immpression that things are improving steadily. Perhaps an developers Log. => 1-2 daily sentences about what crosses his mind at the time?

[pzgndr]

an official competion Fall Weiß scenario / balanced not 100% historical

This is more likely. The game's abstractions at this scale more or less rule out 100% historical accuracy. Just consider the Corps vs Armies issue, which is simple enough. Ideally these could be interchangeable units, but they're not in the game. So some decisions need to be made regarding which historical Corps are independent and which are part of Armies. Or do we include both in the force pool limits, which could result in up to double the manpower available? For example, in A3R Germany gets about 33 infantry corps. How many should be combined into armies? Half? If we include all 33 corps plus about 15 armies as limits in SC2, that becomes the equivalent of over 60 infantry corps which then becomes "unrealistic." If we include about 15 corps and 15 armies, that's still over 45 corps equivalents. But if we further reduce the number of units available, then Germany will have a very difficult time covering ground in 1942. That's just one issue we'll wrestle with during playtesting and hopefully find a nice balance someplace.

Nevertheless like many players I prefer to stick to original scenarios.

"Default" scenarios may be a better term. The original SC1 scenarios did change a little with the various patches, like addition of a Russian cruiser in the Black Sea etc. I'd expect SC2 patches could include some adjustments to the official scenarios based on player feedback to enhance play balance and, to the extent possible, historical accuracy. We do need to maintain some sense of a "standard game" that most everyone can accept for both competition and forum feedback comments. If we all start playing 50 different versions of Fall Weiss and arguing about what works and what doesn't, we'll all go insane. Well, more insane then we already are.

[SeaMonkey]

This is a good point Bill. Something which we should possibly discuss with an eye toward an army-corps interchangeable relationship, ie. the ability to breakdown and recombine. In MPPs an army costs the same as 2 corps. Your example shows the need of this relationship and the ability of Germany to "outdistant" itself in conquest. As Germany spreads its controlling wings throughout Europe it will become more difficult to hold a vast empire due to the force pool limitation. The Axis player will have to pay careful attention to the allocation of its garrisoning forces adding more variabilty to replay features of SC2. Has a militia unit been contemplated as a possibility? Will the force pool limit be restricted by the number of units or the accumulation of the strength of all the units. Example: does a 9 strength Inf army have the same force pool consideration as 3 three strength Inf. armies?

[pzgndr]

Something which we should possibly discuss with an eye toward an army-corps interchangeable relationship, ie. the ability to breakdown and recombine.

I'm not going there. I'll assume the unit types will remain as they are planned unless Hubert decides otherwise. This is just one of those abstractions in the game we all need to be prepared to wrestle with.

Now, an option for some future variant could be to make everything Corps level. Armies and Tank Groups could all become corps-size, and the current Corps unit becomes militia or reserves or garrisons or whatever. The editor would allow for some experimentation along these lines. :cool: However, this would defeat the reason for army-size units in the first place, ie a form of unit stacking. So there may be problems either way.

[ May 28, 2004, 07:48 AM: Message edited by: pzgndr ]