Suggestion: VP cost for artillery/air/reinforcements

[Cpl Steiner]

Hi,

I have had a couple of ideas which would help make scenarios more interesting if BFC would consider implementing them in a future patch/game. These are discussed below.

1. New Mission Parameter: Support Condition

As artillery/air support can make play balance an issue, but leaving it out can make the scenario unrealistic, we could have a new mission parameter called "support condition".

Example:

Parameter ------------------ Threshold ---------- Points

Friendly Support Condition ------ 75% ------------- 100

This would award the player 100 victory points if 75% or more of his artillery/air support ammo was still remaining at the end of the scenario.

Similarly, we could have:

Parameter ------------------ Threshold ---------- Points

Enemy Support Condition ------ 25% -------------- 100

This would award the player 100 victory points if the enemy had only 25% or less of his artillery/air support ammo remaining at the end of the scenario.

As with the other "condition" parameters, exactly how "ammo" is quantified for different types of artillery and air support ammunition is a bit of a mystery but I'm sure BFC could employ the same sort of logic for this. They would also have to ensure such ammo wasn't counted twice, once for the existing "condition" parameter and then again for this new parameter.

2. "On Call" Reinforcements:

Instead of reinforcements always arriving, the scenario designer could put together reinforcements which the player could call on as and when he saw fit - but at a victory point cost.

A new toggle would be needed in the scenario editor to indicate if a reinforcement was "timed" or "on call". If timed, it would work just the way it does now. If "on call", it would only ever arrive if requested by the player. If the scenario designer selected the "on call" option, a new field called "enemy points award" would appear. The value entered here (zero or higher) would immediately be awarded to the other side if the reinforcement was called in.

"On call" reinforcements would be associated with a new UI button named something like "Call for Reinforcements". This could be alongside the artillery and air support tabs on the control panel. Selecting this button would show the names of all available on call reinforcements in a drop-down list. If selected, the reinforcement would become active. The normal reinforcement parameters of "earliest possible arrival" and "arrival span" would then kick in. Thus, if "3rd Platoon" reinforcement was set to arrive after 5 minutes with a span of 10 minutes, and was called 15 minutes into the game, it would arrive between 20 and 30 minutes into the game.

Concluding Comments:

I think these ideas would make scenarios a lot less predictable, a lot more interesting, and a lot more balanced. Now the player would be told in the briefing that a formation or support asset was at his or her disposal but only to be used in an emergency. This would have the effect of making the player think more like a real life commander.

For example, instead of levelling the objectives with artillery on turn one, the player would try to take it using ground forces alone and only call in the artillery if the task looked impossible to achieve without it.

Similarly, the player would call on reinforcements only if it looked like his existing forces were going to fail to take the objective without them.

Such tactical dilemmas are the essence of interesting game play to my mind, as they allow the player to make decisions and weigh up the consequences, both positive and negative.

I welcome feedback from other forum members and from BFC on these ideas. In particular, if BFC could answer the question of how support assets feature in the existing "condition" calculations, perhaps idea number 1 could already be implemented without any code changes? Does artillery/air support ammo count as a bigger percentage of the overall ammo of the units in a scenario? If so we could just remember as designers to put in a friendly or enemy condition parameter if there was a lot of arty/air in the scenario, to discourage the player from becoming reliant on it.

[birdstrike]

+1 for the ability to call in reinforcements.

That's exactly how I'd like to see it. A point penalty for calling them up, and the ETA counted from the moment the request is made.

I'd also welcome the support condition parameter, and I'd also like to know, how these assets are currently calculated into the total. How is a JDAM taken into account compared to a FFAR or mortar round?

If such a support condition parameter would be included, we'd need a distinction between different ammunitions, based on their real world availability and cost.