Reinforcements idea

[TOG]

In some mission briefings you are told that some reinforcements are avalible if needed in some time. How about giving the player the option to call reinforcements when needed in some missions. For example, the enemy could receieve some victory points for diverting more enemy forces into the area. This way you would have to decide if it is really necessary to call for reinforcements or it is possible to manage without them.

[Paper Tiger]

Sounds like a good idea to me. I occassionally don't WANT those reinforcements as I feel I've got the situation under control already AND I don't want the frame rate hit that comes with their arrival.

[Combatintman]

I think if we used the term 'reserve' then this idea has merit. However this would be managed in terms of time delays to be realistic to account for changes in notice to move times for the reserve. A realistic time interval would therefore be a minimum of 30 minutes from initial call to the reserve arriving on the map. I'm not sure we need to go down the extra victory points route although I can see its merits. What it could do though is offer campaign designers more branches and sequels in a dynamic campaign and that would be really interesting.

Remember in many scenarios the arrival of reinforcements is what in real life we would be calling the order of march and therefore they aren't reinforcements at all. One of the reasons for this is quite often the map size doesn't permit all of a force to be placed at setup because there simply isn't the room to do this.

[TOG]

I don't say that player would have to actually call for every reinforcements. Just when it would fit the scenario and it could be up to scenario designer which units could be called, and which would arrive at some point of time anyway. It would give some more flexibility and I agree with Combatintman that it would give more options in branched campaigns. Next battle could depend on calling reinforcements or not.

Time delay of reinforcements arrival could be a little bit shorter than in real life becouse battles in CMSF are shorter than in real life, or scenario designer would just have to set longer time limit. Anyway the delay of arrival since the moment of call would have to be set by scenario designer and thus it would be compatible with battle duration.

[Combatintman]

Ok what I think we have here is two possible constructs.

The current system of reinforcements which is a slightly loose term as I've said before but I suppose its more elegant than anything else I can think of. I suppose a way of getting what TOG is after here is for a dialogue whereby it says something like 'A Company has arrived - commit?'. Then having a button on the interface that says something like 'commit next unit'. If the unit isn't committed it can be committed at the click of a button and arrive on the next turn. I have no problems with that but I think it starts getting messy when you have more than one wave of reinforcements.

Then there is the concept of the reserve which I suggested and it is important to recognise the distinction between 'reinforcements' and 'reserve'. I see the reserve being from the next echelon of command up from the level you are playing so if the scenario is a Company-level command then the reserve will be the Battalion Commander's reserve. This would be on call using a separate button on the interface labelled 'call reserve'. On calling the reserve there would be a suitable time delay - 30 minutes is realistic but I'm not going to die in a ditch over it - but anything less than 15 minutes between calling it and it arriving would be unrealistic so I wouldn't want to see it as less than that. Committal of the reserve could then be used by campaign designers to engineer branches and sequels.

[Webwing]

TOG,

I like that.

I like the idea of giving more control to the player.

As a scenario designer the hardest thing to do is to balance a mission, not to make it too hard or too easy. But players expectations and skills are different and what one feels is easy another thinks it's too hard.

I sometimes put in more forces than I think is necessary, in the form of reinforcements, to account for that fact.

Would be nice if the player could chose weather to use them or not. Specially important in a campaign.

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Combatintman,

Interesting points.

But to not mess too much with what we got already in the game, what about if the players reinforcements(what they are called now in the game) arrive but stay off map. The player would then have button to call them in (only a few minutes delay) if he feels he really needs them.

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[Combatintman]

Webwing,

That's pretty much what I suggested in my first paragraph, I'm happy with it and have no issues with it (for a change!).

The reserve concept is something entirely different but it is where I feel that it opens up the possibility of more dynamic campaigns which the committal or not of reinforcements doesn't address in the same way. The player's reward potentially for not committing reinforcements is that they will be at 100% combat effectiveness for the next mission. Of course the penalty is that by not making the maximum use of his resources he may incur more casualties from his committed troops than he would have with the extra firepower he could have brought to bear.

With the reserve concept - say the battalion reserve is committed by the player - it offers the campaign designer the chance to create a few scenarios where the player has to go and sort out a problem created elsewhere because the reserve wasn't available to another commander and he therefore lost his battle.

Its just a thought - again I'm not going to die in a ditch about it.

[Webwing]

Originally posted by Combatintman:

Webwing,

That's pretty much what I suggested in my first paragraph, I'm happy with it and have no issues with it (for a change!).

Sorry!

I guess I got a bit lost in the reserves thing!

I think this idea has a good potential. But like you pointed out it also can be messy in some situations.

It would be nice that once the reinforcements had arrive that you didn't need to commit to them imediatelly. They would be there in a sort of poll of units waiting to come to the map if you needed them or not.

Also, there could be an option in the editor where the designer would decide if the reinforcements are optional or mandatory. Some the player has no say as to accepting or not, others he does.

As for the reserves to be used in campaigns it's still not clear to me how to best do that. But it would sure be good to carry on talking about it because, like you said, it would make it even more dynamic.

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[Paper Tiger]

webwing:

"As a scenario designer the hardest thing to do is to balance a mission, not to make it too hard or too easy. But players expectations and skills are different and what one feels is easy another thinks it's too hard."

Boy you got that right!

Combatintman

"The reserve concept is something entirely different but it is where I feel that it opens up the possibility of more dynamic campaigns which the committal or not of reinforcements doesn't address in the same way. The player's reward potentially for not committing reinforcements is that they will be at 100% combat effectiveness for the next mission. Of course the penalty is that by not making the maximum use of his resources he may incur more casualties from his committed troops than he would have with the extra firepower he could have brought to bear."

As it happens, I have already started planning my next campaign (on paper) and I want this to be an important aspect of playing the missions. I have an idea that might just work at simulating this. I want to give the player the option to USE the reinforcements when they arrive or NOT to use them. By selecting the whole reinforcement group, and giving the enemy a 'Destroy' victory point award if he inflicts casualties upon them, this might deter the player from committing them. The briefing will tell the player that he can use these reserve units, but that there is a price to pay for doing so. It's far from perfect but it should work out.

[C'Rogers]

I don't have the game anymore but I believe Sid Meier's Gettysburg did this.

[Pete Wenman]

Gents hi

Reinforcements and Reserves. In a couple of scenarios I've designed I use what I call the offmap holding area. Basically this is an area at the map edge out of LOS from the rest of the map.

This solves the problem of running out of room when setting up units. Also it allows the player to move units out of LOS and so move onto the map at a place of his choice. As always swamp can be used to prevent lateral movement if req'd.

I built on this concept in my "Unlocking the Key" scenario by placing several HQ units on "occupy" objectives within the offmap area. This meant if the player chose to use these units and move off the objective they lost points. The Enemy side was given a bonus of VP to match those gained by Freindly forces so at the scenario start both sides we even. Thus the player is penalised if he uses these units.

On a bigger scale this will work for larger amounts of reinforcements, although a restriction will always be that the best method is to place one unit per objective, otherwise the player can split forces. Of course you can always make these objectives unknown to the player and just mention in the briefing that he will be penalised if the additional units are used.

Hope the concept can be understood here, it's easier to do than describe.

In the picture above if each Red tank was placed on an occupy objective and awarded 100 points for each he would lose 100 points for every tank used (moved off the objective)

HTH

[Paper Tiger]

Hi Pete

That's a very good idea. However, don't you run out of victory point locations very quickly if you do that? Also, it really doesn't matter which unit occupies that objective zone to earn those VPs. It wouldn't be hard for a player to cheat and occupy those zones with some crummy unit either.

Phew, I guess I'm getting a little cynical about people finding ways to cheat . Your idea will work fine if the player is honest. BTW, I loved your maps. I should try them out again with the later build some time.

[Pete Wenman]

PT hi

Yep the number of terrain objectives is a problem. As you say it doesn't matter which unit occupies the objective, however if the objective is only one tile, the player will be hard pressed to find it unless he moves one unit off and another on, and if he's going to do that he's only cheating himself.

It's not perfect, but maybe linking it with your ideas on destroy VP will make it robust enough to work.

P

[Paper Tiger]

Aha, the 'Not known to either' option. Yeah, that would certainly work for tanks.