Sgt Joch Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 Can anyone suggest some good balanced and interesting PBEM suitable scenarios, preferably Blue v. Red, but also Blue v. Blue or Red v. Red. I just finished two back to back PBEM games with one of my regular opponents and the story is pretty much the same: Red player hangs on to dear life while the Blue player steamrolls over him. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabal23 Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 I just went back and replayed On the Edge and it was really well done. Also I think FISH, Siege of Latakia and Trial by Fire are all well balanced. I really like Trial by Fire because that one pits two very similar forces against each other in very explosive gun battle. The marines are inexperienced and the Syrians are the Elites. Adds a nice challenge. Perhaps some people could add a few of their favorites to the list. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Joch Posted March 18, 2009 Author Share Posted March 18, 2009 thanks, I presume these are all on CMMODS? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShaneO Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 Village of Trouble is good, radically different forces but equally asymmetrical victory conditions. A tough fight from either side. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabal23 Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 They are all on cmmods and the repository. Soon to just be on the repository as cmmods closes. I would suggest downloading all you can form cmmods since it is so much easier than the repository. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Joch Posted March 20, 2009 Author Share Posted March 20, 2009 thanks for all the suggestions. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Combatintman Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 I just went back and replayed On the Edge and it was really well done. Also I think FISH, Siege of Latakia and Trial by Fire are all well balanced. I really like Trial by Fire because that one pits two very similar forces against each other in very explosive gun battle. The marines are inexperienced and the Syrians are the Elites. Adds a nice challenge. Perhaps some people could add a few of their favorites to the list. I found Trial by Fire pretty unplayable - the inexperienced piece I can cope with but the fact that you have utterly no room for manoeuvre to start with and once you've played it once (and therefore have a rough idea of what happens) have to adopt some pretty unrealistic positions/make unrealistic decisions to start with did not impress me overly much. I don't mind bumbling into situations where I get zapped (and it happens a lot) but to have no choice and to have to expend all of your offensive support (when it rocks up) to get a foothold into the scenario is, in my mind, a bit disappointing. So for me Trial by Fire is not balanced ... anybody who has done well with that one is a legend in my book. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabal23 Posted March 21, 2009 Share Posted March 21, 2009 Well the opening moves are supposed to be an ambush, hence the no room to maneuver. This is not a meeting engagement, but a probe gone bade, turned into a rescue. Your scout squad was supposed to get in a no win situation until help arrives. They are just a probe that get pinned down. In the briefing it clearly states that your reinforcements are are rescuing the scout team from an unattainable situation. It is supposed to start off badly. But once you reinforcements arrive you have the upper hand, once again if you play cautiously. It is supposed be dramatic and tense because of the overwhleming firepower of the Syrians in the beginning(how often do you hear that statement? Syrians and overwhelming firepower..heheh). **Spoilers** I have played this single player and PBEM multiple time and none of my opponents seemed to have any problems. The reason I stated it was balanced was because if you set up your scouts in the buildings they start next to and hold the those building defensively until help arrives, you will be in an amazing firefight between buildings. It will be a tug of war the whole scenario. Then once help arrives you will reinforce those building and slowly clear the buildings in the area, making your way up to the warehouse and then you clear the warehouse. This is not supposed to be a scenario where everyone get out alive. The scouts and anti-armor have a real possibility of getting put out of action if luck is not on their side and you are not cautious(they are only a scout probe, not an attacking force). The scouts are not inexperienced, just the reinforcements. My scouts with sniper rifles and the anti armor units with them manage to hold off the enemy every time I play this if you play them cautiously. You have a bunch of jeeps with anti-armor(hint..anti-building) capability. One or two well placed TOWS and you have an empty building and smoking critters inside. Use them wisely and they will ruin the enemy. You are supposed to keep loses under 25%. that is pretty generous considering the firepower at the US's disposal. Also you have arty you can call in. I think you just had a bad game, because everything about this scenario that I have watched my PBEM opponents play, indicates to me a challenging and balanced scenario. Also one last note, if you look around the number one complaint about this game is how easy it is for the Marines to secure a victory due to their awesome firepower. My intention was to give the Syrians an edge and make this a challenge(mainly for PBEM players). Special force Syrians vs Inexperience green soldiers. I put buildings on each side for a nasty building to building battle (balance) and roughly similar sized forces (balanced), Inexperience troops played by and experienced player and experienced enemy Ai played by and idiot AI(balance). Lastly the enemy forces start at the edge of the board and must drive to the building, unload, enter and set up a defensive position, just as you scouts do and they each have the same amount of chance to stop the other from obtaining to strong of a defensive position. It's not like they just start in the buildings blowing US soldiers away. So I thank you for your assessment and will keep those factors you mentioned in mind for future scenarios, but I personally disagree based on the feedback I have received from my PBEM opponents. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tagge Posted March 21, 2009 Share Posted March 21, 2009 Rural QB map (dunno who's made it) is great for PBEM. My PBEM-friend and I just begun the second PBEM-game on that map. The first game was won by Syria (for the first time EVER in our Shock Force PBEM-history). USA: 1 x Styker Infantry Battalion (minus one company © and only the M1130 and the M1131 Strykers) Syria: 2 x Special Forces company + 1 x Mech Airborne Infantry + 1 x Recon Company. The Airborne Infantry was a reinforcement arriving at 10. minute. Small alterations for game #2, seems balanced enough at the time (at the 5. turn). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apocal Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Siege of Latakia is not a good H2H. The way the setups are, the Marines get slaughtered literally right from the get go. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabal23 Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Once again it is ambush scenario. It even says that in the briefing. The US still has a superior force to a decimated Syrian force. That ambush is their advantage, until their tanks roll out at the end of the scenario. I have one thing to say. Pop smoke on turn one and get you troops positioned to make the best of it. I played it PBEM against multiple players and came up with lots of different results. Some Marines win, some Syrians win. Even if your forces take a hard hit, you have way enough firepower to take down the Syrians. once again until the tank battles start near the end. Me and my opponents all felt it was balanced, but of course that is an opinion. I can only assume 570 downloads can't be wrong. Perhaps my idea of balance is not yours. Correct me if I am wrong but the number one complaint is...drum roll...that the Syrians are too weak. Give them a slight advantage and now it's no longer balanced. I give up. Nothing in the Syrian armory is superior to the US, so you have to find other ways to challenge the players and make things balanced. Point taken though, though I disagree. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlapHappy Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 This is somewhat a problem caused by the current CMSF being set in a "hypothetical" theater of operations. However the capabilities of the forces themselves are not hypothetical in that we know the relative capabilities of the weapons systems and the training levels of the forces involved. So we could judge the results based on a comparison between the game players result and the actual battle outcome, except, again, the scenario itself is hypothetical. If this were not the case we could say that US forces player "lost" the scenario because his casualties were higher than actual historical results even though he may have effectively wiped out the opposing Syrians. So the only remaining option is to artificially increase troop quality of Syrians to increase the tactical difficulty - As Cabal points out. Or use highly imbalanced numbers of Syrians vs. US to achieve scenario balance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Combatintman Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Or tinker with objectives to constrain the blue player - 'preserve' type objectives for instance and set casualty thresholds for the Blue Player. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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