Victory Conditions and Surrender

[ChrisND]

Currently, if one side is forced to surrender, it results in an automatic Total Victory for the other side.

Even if the other side lost all of their objectives, and well, everything. They still get a total victory. This doesn't bode well for Red Player, since they are often forced into surrender and there is no possibility of a Pyrrhic sort of victory for the Blue Player.

Here's a screen shot of a test battle. Notice that it is 1000 - 0 Syrian, but the US gets a total victory.

My request is that is that surrenders can be turned off in the editor by the scenario designer. If a surrender event is triggered, it is then instead treated as a cease fire.

[Cpl Steiner]

Something along these lines would be quite good. I remember when the Falkland Islands were invaded a handful of Royal Marines held off the Argentine amphibious assault for several hours before surrendering. They had no chance of winning but were hailed as heroes and praised for upholding British honour by making a brave stand against the invaders. Although they surrendered, the Brits delayed the Argies for several hours and inflicted quite a number of casualties, including at least one blown up AAV. In this way they demonstrated British Sovereignty over the territory and humbled the Argentinian military.

[Mishga]

Three casualties, one killed, two wounded. One damaged AAV and one damaged Assault boat. But I agree, it was the willingness to fight that counted. They would have kept up the fighting but the Governor ordered them to surrender.

[Martin Krejcirik]

This problem annoys me from the beggining. It makes complex victory conditions useless. Auto surrender should be replaced with forced cease fire, meaning the losing side is forced to offer a cease fire and than it's up to the winning side to end the game when necessary.

[Other Means]

Good idea.

[hoolaman]

I think it all depends on the type of conditions.

For example if the US has a casualty limit and the Syrians beat it, that damage is done whether the battle is lost or not.

A spot or preserve or "kill this unit" parameter would also be completed even if the battle is lost.

If it is a terrain based objective like hold or occupy or touch, I think a surrender invalidates those results.

So it is not as simple as getting x points for goal y even if you lose the battle.

[Chelco]

Three casualties, one killed ...

The Argentine casualty was Cpt Pedro Giachino. He was badly injured as he tried (along with a handful of subordinates) to enter the Government House. I don't know if this is true, but in Argentina there is story about the Royal Marines trying to provide him medical assistance and Giachino "politely" declining while holding a pin-less grenade.

Anyway, I think that sometimes surrender in CMSF should come way before the near total annihilation we see right now. Just an opinion.

[thelmia]

Yeah, I always go for total victory if I know I've lost a lot of men or won't take all the objectives in time. Past a certain point, there's no point worrying about more casualties. A Total Victory is better than a marginal one, and it's worth losing quite a few more units to attain that.

This causes some gamey strategies. And not just for the player seeking Total Victory. For example, a player with Total Defeat hanging over them may simply hide their last few units to avoid losing. This leads to many minutes of boredom trying to find the last enemy squad. Since so much is riding on it, this makes the end of the game a bit frustrating and turns what should be a formality into a game breaker.

[ChrisND]

Shameless bump.

[Battlefront.com]

We'll give it some thought. It's not as clear cut and simple as it was in CMx1 where we had Global Morale and Casualties weighing against flag possession and time left on the clock. However, I'll see what I can do to make the Auto Surrender feature take victory standings into consideration for Parameters and Targets.

As Hoolaman said, Ground Objectives don't mean a thing if there's nobody to hold them or if the remaining forces can be easily swept aside. We've always hated games that pretend that if one side has a dude with a pistol on the objective in the last second of the game they win even though the enemy has a company of able bodied soldiers. We had this philosophy since CMBO and we don't plan on changing that perspective.

Steve

[Piispa]

As Hoolaman said, Ground Objectives don't mean a thing if there's nobody to hold them or if the remaining forces can be easily swept aside. We've always hated games that pretend that if one side has a dude with a pistol on the objective in the last second of the game they win even though the enemy has a company of able bodied soldiers. We had this philosophy since CMBO and we don't plan on changing that perspective.

Steve

What about if the defenders' objective was all the time only to delay the enemy by keeping the objectives long enough (=scenario time) so that something else on a strategic level can be gained?

They still don't mean a thing if all of the heroic defenders got swept aside in the prosess but it took the attacker long enough not to reach the objectives?

Objectives are what they are and if they are not reached in due time, the objectives are not met and results can be imagined on a strategical level.

[ChrisND]

We'll give it some thought. It's not as clear cut and simple as it was in CMx1 where we had Global Morale and Casualties weighing against flag possession and time left on the clock. However, I'll see what I can do to make the Auto Surrender feature take victory standings into consideration for Parameters and Targets.

As Hoolaman said, Ground Objectives don't mean a thing if there's nobody to hold them or if the remaining forces can be easily swept aside. We've always hated games that pretend that if one side has a dude with a pistol on the objective in the last second of the game they win even though the enemy has a company of able bodied soldiers. We had this philosophy since CMBO and we don't plan on changing that perspective.

Steve

My main issue with it is that the Syrians can inflict grievous losses on US forces, losses so great that they could have worldwide political ramifications, but if they lose all of their men the US wins by default. Take this situation: Imagine a scenario with "realistic" parameters: the US must keep casualties minimal and minimize civilian collateral. A platoon of Syrians ambushes a US column, destroying two Abrams tanks with dead crewmen, and kills over 30 US soldiers within minutes. The US player retaliates and kills all of them, and just for fun, blows up a few mosques while he is at it. The game would calculate this as a total victory, but is that really what the scenario design intended? Losses like this have caused entire operations to be canceled.

[Battlefront.com]

Argh... I just thought about Ground Objectives again. If one side is tasked with destroying something, and does, then that is a situation which a Surrender won't undo. So now that I think about it, really the only Objective types that should be ignored are Occupy and Preserve. It should be presumed that a Surrender means that whatever space was Occupied would not be and anything that had to be Preserved would be destroyed.

On the flip side, the side being surrendered to should automatically get any Occupy and Destroy Ground Objectives awarded to it. The logic here is the same as above... after the enemy forces are gone it can Occupy and Destroy anything it wants, therefore it should not be penalized for not having done so before the enemy was wiped out.

Steve

[ChrisND]

IMO (and it is sort of a conglomeration of what others have said):

When surrender triggered:

Surrenderer:

- Ground objectives lost, except for any already fulfilled Destroy and Touch objs.

- Unit objectives calculated as normal at time of surrender.

- All Friendly parameters lost.

- Enemy parameters calculated as normal at time of surrender.

Surrender acceptor:

- Ground objectives fulfilled, except for any already failed Preserve objs.

- All Unit objectives fulfilled (if/when exit zones come back, units that exited don't count towards fulfilled).

- All Friendly parameters calculated as normal at time of surrender.

- All Enemy parameters fulfilled (if/when exit zones come back, units that exited don't count towards fulfilled).

[Battlefront.com]

Piispa,

Objectives are what they are and if they are not reached in due time, the objectives are not met and results can be imagined on a strategical level.

These are tactical objectives for a tactical battle, so it is likely that a half an hour or an hour, either way, isn't going to make any difference in terms of the Big Picture. In fact, the artificial time pressure of tactical wargaming is often cited as one of the least realistic elements. That's because in real life timetables are usually much more flexible, sometimes by necessity. An examination of traditional conventional warfare often finds the attacker pushing back its timetable for a particular engagement and then making up that time somewhere else.

I'm not saying that a Ground Objective might need to be taken by a certain bit of time, but it isn't the norm IMHO. Since we don't have a special form of Ground Objective that basically sates "Must Hold/Take By TIME" there's no way to account for these exceptions.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Other Means,

I don't see why the Friendly Parameters shouldn't count for both sides. If at the end of the battle the Surrendering force was supposed to maintain 10% of its force, for example, then it would lose that particular Parameter anyway since 0% would be retained (i.e. dead or captured). Now, the chances are that the Parameters will be lost anyway, so in effect they will likely be marked FAILED in the event of a Surrender. I just don't see why we have to predetermine that.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

FYI... done

Steve

[ChrisND]

Yaaaaaaaaa!

[dan/california]

Very Nice!!!!

[Scipio]

Now that's what I call a fast fix

[Chops]

What about the option for the Scenario Designer to assign negative points to objectives? For example, if Blue has an objective to Preserve a building, but they destroy it due to artillery fire, then they would have 100 points subtracted from their total points. As it stands now, if Blue does not Preserve the building they won't be assigned any points, however, they will not be penalized either.

[Battlefront.com]

Scipio,

Now that's what I call a fast fix

We like it when people point out problems that can be fixed by changing a few lines of code and not having to do anything else

Chops,

What about the option for the Scenario Designer to assign negative points to objectives?

We thought about allowing negative scores when we designed the system. One of the problems with doing it is that balancing becomes much harder. To use your example of preserving the building, it's true that the player won't be awarded the point if he destroys it. However, he definitely is penalized if the scenario designer makes those missing points mean something.

For example, let's say Blue has a total possible score of 2000 points, with 500 of them coming from a Preserve Objective. Blue doesn't do anything else wrong, however he doesn't destroy the building that is to be Preserved. He gets 500 points. This could save him from a really bad defeat or even him up if Red does badly. If, on the other hand, he destroys the building he's done for if Red does anything right. Conversely, if Blue gets its other Objectives and botches the Preserve his total is 1500. If Red does well, and the Scenario Designer gives Red at least 2000 points, then there's a chance that destroying that building will cost Blue the game. It's all about the balance between Blue's chances of coming up with x points and Red's chances of coming up with the same number of points.

One thing I like to do is give Red the possibility of getting more total points than Blue. Let's say 2000 for Blue and 2500 for Red. This means Red can screw up more and still beat Blue if Blue messes up even a little bit. The larger the theoretical point gap between the two sides, the more asymmetric it becomes. Especially if you diversify Red's Objectives so it is more likely to score some points no matter what. All kinds of fun stuff like that.

With negative points it becomes that much harder to predict how things might turn out, which in turn makes balancing more difficult. Because the lack of points is a real penalty I don't think negative points are necessary.

Steve

[Cpl Steiner]

We like it when people point out problems that can be fixed by changing a few lines of code and not having to do anything else

You said something similar ages ago about my suggestion to add a weight factor to the victory points awarded for various types of enemy casualty; e.g.: 1.5 for KIA, 1.0 for WIA, 0.5 for MIA, or some such arrangement. The idea was to make it more worthwhile for the player to perform buddy aid. Is this in the game yet?

[Battlefront.com]

You know, I'm not sure! I know that Charles said he'd put it in, but that was so long ago I'd have to consult the change logs to see. If it isn't in, I'll give him a nudge

Steve

[Chops]

Thanks for your input Steve!