CMBN games seem to be more imbalanced...

[GreenAsJade]

It's definitely true that the basis for this thread is H2H play.

I think I've said that already - I for one am not remotely interested in vs AI play.

Clearly for vs AI, the result is whatever the single player makes of it, and the VP calculation is entirely academic.

So, scenario designers: please feel free to experiment with whatever victory conditions you like. Casual/vs AI players know when they have won anyhow and they're going to ignore your victory calculations. Longterm gamers will work out who designs scenarios with sensible feeling victory conditions and will choose those in the end.

Thus the "feel" is what matters.

Personally, I think it's nuts to have a wargame where casualties don't count.

How many players come to a battle and think "well, I didn't kill any of the enemy, but it didn't matter because I ... something?"

So if you don't put Destroy Units objectives in, your battle feels wrong. Simple as that.

GaJ

GaJ

[womble]

Personally, I think it's nuts to have a wargame where casualties don't count.

I think such situations have their place. "At all costs" objectives shouldn't be the bread and butter of scenario builders, but they can be exciting prospects for an occasional game. There are "mechanistic" circumstances in certain campaign "battles" where you can have a fun scenario but assigning destroy VPs (or other inappropriate categories) can bugger up your campaign flow logic in some cases (see "Crossroads" in the Courage & Fortitude campaign).

[GreenAsJade]

Yeah, to every rule there is an exception.

Really, this thread and my point in it is about a generality, not the exceptions.

Of course there will be great scenarios with purely "touch" objectives, sometime, somewhere.

However, for me, and the folk I play with, I can tell you for sure that strange distribution of results from CMBN games feels all wrong, as does 'your average scenario' not giving any point for casualties ... and these two are intimately linked.

Almost invariably, reports from games with scores like 95-5 are "well, sure I lost, but not that badly, I destroyed lots of his stuff, it was a much closer battle than this result says".

Feels wrong.

GaJ

[slysniper]

Well, anyone judging their ability in this type of game by the "score only" is a fool. No matter how good the designer is, it is almost impossible to design a game to be truly fare that would reflect the true winner. there is just to many variable.

Playing the AI is a poor test of ones skills as to if one is truely good at the game. So them scores are not reflective of any true skill.

So that leaves H to H play, and casualties receiving points does not prove if you are better than the other guy either. not unless you both have the exact same units playing a meeting engagement on the symetrical map.

So knowing how good you are really comes down to how well you play against players you also know have good skills. All this is left to judgement. because I have yet to see even a ladder or tournament prove them skills correctly all the time. I have seen some good tournament results for people that just had some lucK of whom they played and what side they had in scenarios.

Ladders can be deceiving also. Are some of the best players at the top, oh yes, but there is some that get there any way they can and it really is not because of their great skills within the game, more to do with their great skills of how to play the system of the ratings.

So feeling that you are good is not a bad way to judge ones selve if you are seeking out the hardests players you can find to play and then managing at times to pull out victories in situations when you know you are at a disadvantage.

Then the score is true tactical skills at that moment and hero for the day, you hang your hat on that and move on to try it again. That is the only time that victory in the game is truly sweet.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

An example from my perspective where a scenario has the scoring all wrong is Barkmann's Corner. I read an AAR at Band of Brothers where the German player managed to knock out 7 or 8 Shermans plus cause some infantry casualties but then had to withdraw the Panther as it suffered a gun hit. At the end of the battle the Panther was still intact albeit without an operating gun yet the Allies won a Total Victory of 100:0.

That's where it get's pretty ridiculous in my eyes. The Allies are down 7 to 8 Shermans plus infantry casualties yet these losses are not reflected one iota in the end score. The Germans still have their Panther and Barkmann intact (withdrawn to the rear due to the damage) so it wasn't exactly a total catastrophe for them yet apparently the end result was a complete flogging for the German side. I mean... WTF?

Regards

KR

[MikeyD]

as does 'your average scenario' not giving any point for casualties

Every CMx2 scenario I've ever done, I think, has had either friendly casualty penalties or enemy casualty bonuses or both. More than a couple have been straight 'kill' scenarios with a laundry list of unit objectives and no terrain objectives. CMSF was purposefully hard on allies losing too many men given the modern dislike for casualties. Barkmann's Corner is not representative of the game. Its got minimal points accumulation, no individual unit objectives, you have to kill 70% of the opposing force just to get 100 points. You don't play that scenario with an eye toward racking up points because there's just not that many points to be racked up.

[Paper Tiger]

Ah, the pissiness of some of the posts about scenarios on these boards! Barkmann's Corner? You play that one to have some fun re-enacting the historical action, that's all. Why get all pissy about the Victory Points? Did you enjoy playing a mission?

Yes = good scenario.

No = not so good.

I find the lack of respect for the designer's feelings a bit much. We need to encourage more people to get working with the editor and not start pointing fingers or being overly-critical of their work.

[Sixxkiller]

Ya it seems you guys are expecting a modern casualty rate with WWII settings. I think 20 million ppl lost their lives in WWII, they had to have died somewhere. It's more ridiculous to expect lower casualties than history allowed.

[GreenAsJade]

Hey Paper Tiger,

The issue of designers' work being assessed to death is a long-standing one, and we have lost good designers from the community as a result of it already. This is really sad.

I don't know what we can do about that in general, because the opposite extreme is for us to not discuss what is good and bad about scenarios... clearly that wouldn't be right either.

To a certain extent scenario designers need to design for their own satisfaction, and not really care ... not be open to being hurt by... what other people think. It does take a thick skin and strong self esteem: I think that to a certain extent this is "life on the internet".

If you are going to get offended by someone who doesn't like any work you post on the internet, get ready to be offended. It is guaranteed that what you post will be disagreed with by someone, and that this opinion will be strongly stated. There's another factor too: it's easy for an author to "over-read" criticism, and be more "hurt" than is necessary. Just because someone analyses something and criticises it, doesn't even mean they don't like it... it certainly doesn't mean it's not good.

However, this is one reason why I was treating the topic "in the general" not "in the specific".

KR's point is true in general. In general, one expects the after-game analysis to reflect that if you inflicted casualties you did not loose 100-0.

I am asserting that:

*The only way for scenario designers to make this "feel right" _in general_ is to use the Destroy Units objective in good measure.*

This doesn't mean that a scenario that does not do this is bad.

This doesn't meant that Destroy Units is the only objective that should be used.

What I am doing is alerting the scenario design community to the fact that it is quite measurable (see the graphs) that in CMBN this has not been the case, and that if the scenario designers would like their work to be widely appreciated, they should take this into consideration, in due measure.

Note to MikeyD: "Casualty" objectives like ">30% cas" do more to hinder than help, because they are binary.

GaJ

[Michael Emrys]

I think 20 million ppl lost their lives in WWII...

Just as an aside, the Soviets alone lost more than that. So, probably, did the Chinese, although an accurate and comprehensive accounting there is not possible. Total war dead might be in the neighborhood of 60-75 million. It was a blood letting of vast proportions.

Michael

[Sixxkiller]

Mr Emry's ya I have heard 20mil from actual fighting before and it's what I used. No one will ever know and 70 mil worldwide sure is possible. Crazy that back then the value of life seemed almost nil to some in power.

As for the game, I think losing 30% of my forces is outrageous simply because if I lost one on my team in real life, I couldnt sleep knowing my actions may or may not have had something to do with it. But we have moved a long way from the battle fields of WWII and Vietnam where it was more of an expected rate of casualties as opposed to now and the casualties are simply forbidden format. Dont get me wrong I would have hated serving under Patton and sure prefer the modern approach.

I think though if you look back to how they did things, troops dying paled in comparison with actually taking the objectives. So in CMBN, I think this still trumps winning or losing by a fair margin. I think it says a lot of how you play if you take very few casualties yet dont hold objectives.

[Tarquelne]

The Allies are down 7 to 8 Shermans plus infantry casualties yet these losses are not reflected one iota in the end score.

Another reason to uncouple score from casualties is if you're trying to reward good performance with the score rather than simply track the progress of the battle.

For example: If in a scenario the defender is expected to take out 50% of the attacker's armor over the course of the battle then having armor lost count for little, or only count after the 50% mark, could be a perfectly valid approach.

The other player might get a reward for armor survival... though just not having the units destroyed may be reward enough, in that it'd help increase that player's own objective or casualty points.

The closely tracking losses is indeed an approach that should generally feel right. It's simple and obvious. But taking the opposite tack may actually give a better measure of in-game performance, in that the "noise" of expected-losses (and thus merely-competent performance) can be filtered out. Such a scheme is harder to set-up right - so I think GaJ's caution has some merit - but in general I prefer it to the simpler approach.

[slysniper]

. But we have moved a long way from the battle fields of WWII and Vietnam where it was more of an expected rate of casualties as opposed to now and the casualties are simply forbidden format.

That is not true, I think it is foolish to think another war could not come along that will make us see numbers of people killed that would compare to or be worse than what happened in WWII.

It only takes two major nations to decide to use their war machine against each other to likely turn this planet into a living nightmare. And it will not be a war of bring our boys home because a few thousand died over there, there could be losses in them numbers daily. but who knows what the future brings

[slysniper]

Ah, the pissiness of some of the posts about scenarios on these boards! Barkmann's Corner? You play that one to have some fun re-enacting the historical action, that's all. Why get all pissy about the Victory Points? Did you enjoy playing a mission?

Yes = good scenario.

No = not so good.

I find the lack of respect for the designer's feelings a bit much. We need to encourage more people to get working with the editor and not start pointing fingers or being overly-critical of their work.

Great point

It a scenario that fits perfect for the challenges of designers.

First, I think it is a great scenario.

But for what.

It is a terrible scenario if you expect the score to reflect a final result that is fare between two human players.

but it is a GREAT SCORING SYSTEM if you are playing as the german vs the AI.

So, people judge it poorly because it does not score to what they think is fare.

The only thing that might need to happen is that designers start putting in information (which they already do) as to what they have designed it for, and maybe be a little more careful at designing the point system for that type of play.

I would never play the Germans in Barkmann's Corner, if it was to be HtoH and the score reflected some type of results in a tournament. The score and scenario is not balenced.

But Playing the AI, I would recommend it to anyone, because if you win as the german, you have played well and if you had results as was mentioned (100 to 0). seeing a score like that is fine because that is not good enough to match what you are are being tasked to do within the scenario.

[Chris Ferrous]

Note to GAJ:

You are quite right about the 'binary' (you get it or you don't) nature of victory conditions asking for >30% enemy casualties etc..

However, realising that, I have been identifying enemy units as targets for destruction with appropriate points awarded and unless it's literally one man, that IS NOT binary. For example, setting an enemy platoon as 'worth' 50 pts will give about 25 pts if it's half-killed.

That system would seem to be the way forward for smoothing out victory calculation. I definitely would expect to see it used for EVERY significant AFV, and if it had been the wobbley result at Barkmann's corner could have been avoided.

[GreenAsJade]

However, realising that, I have been identifying enemy units as targets for destruction with appropriate points awarded and unless it's literally one man, that IS NOT binary. For example, setting an enemy platoon as 'worth' 50 pts will give about 25 pts if it's half-killed.

There are two types of objectives.

One is called (in the manual) "Casualty objective".

They are expressed as >x%

These ARE binary (*).

The other is called "Destroy Units". These behave as you describe.

So the single point that I am making, the single request I have to designers who are designing for H2H play, is

............Please make good use of the Destory Units victory condition in most scenarios

because players _expect_ each kill to count for _something_.

It feels wrong if you wipe out a third of the opfor and still score zero. Sure, you didn't achieve the objective, but that's why you only scored low. But not _zero_.

If you make a scenario without a Destroy Units objective, you risk a player inflicting significant casualties and still scoring zero. Please take that into account.

That is all

GaJ

*: At least, everything I have seen and read tells me they are. If someone has opposite evidence, I'd love to be proved wrong on this one!

[sburke]

There are two types of objectives.

One is called (in the manual) "Casualty objective".

They are expressed as >x%

These ARE binary (*).

The other is called "Destroy Units". These behave as you describe.

So the single point that I am making, the single request I have to designers who are designing for H2H play, is

............Please make good use of the Destory Units victory condition in most scenarios

because players _expect_ each kill to count for _something_.

It feels wrong if you wipe out a third of the opfor and still score zero. Sure, you didn't achieve the objective, but that's why you only scored low. But not _zero_.

If you make a scenario without a Destroy Units objective, you risk a player inflicting significant casualties and still scoring zero. Please take that into account.

That is all

GaJ

*: At least, everything I have seen and read tells me they are. If someone has opposite evidence, I'd love to be proved wrong on this one!

What if your objective is to deny access to a bridge even at the cost of your entire unit. If you deny access to the bridge should your opponent get anything just for having tried? I think you can't set that standard on a scenario designer. Change the parameters if you want in the editor, but they are designing for a particular thought they have in mind, not for your perception or for tournament play etc. While I agree with you that you may feel kind of robbed, the point is not did you hurt the enemy, but rather did you achieve your objective. If your objective was that bridge and you didn't take it..well you lost. You didn't partially win. Now on the other hand if the defender was supposed to hold the bridge as long as possible but try to avoid their unit being destroyed, now you get into points for destruction, exiting units etc. It really depends on what the designer is projecting as the big picture that in turn decide the objectives and relative point value.

As probably a really good example if we do an Arnhem bridge scenario I expect all points to be on that bridge. Casualty rates were a secondary consideration to who held that bridge at day's end.

[JonS]

What if your objective is to deny access to a bridge even at the cost of your entire unit. If you deny access to the bridge should your opponent get anything just for having tried? I think you can't set that standard on a scenario designer.

I think GaJs point - and I may be reading things into it here - is not so much that the DESTROY objective must be used, and the casualty parameter must not be used. I think he's more saying that the designer should really understand what each type of points objective does, why he's using each, and how each fits as a coherent part of the scenario story.

Your bridge example is a fair one (although I'd suggest that if your force is destroyed yet the enemy haven't quite yet managed to get across the bridge then you haven't really achieved your objective of holding the bridge), but it's easy enough to come up with counter examples where use of the casualty parameter as the sole measure of success would clearly be wrong.

For me, the main issue with the casaulty parameter is indeed it's binary nature. Of course, it's designed to be that way, but it means that I can lose say 29 men from my company and suffer no points loss, but if I suffer 1 more to take it up to 30 I get pinged for 500 points, or whatever the set amount is. IMO, the casualty parameter is useful to offer the player a modest bonus for doing really well. For example, set the enemy force as a DESTROY obj worth 500 points, and also have a casualty parameter at 25% worth 50 points. It's double dipping, in a way, but if you think about it and set an appropriate %age and modest points it's worth having.

Jon

[sburke]

Mr Emry's ya I have heard 20mil from actual fighting before and it's what I used. No one will ever know and 70 mil worldwide sure is possible. Crazy that back then the value of life seemed almost nil to some in power.

As for the game, I think losing 30% of my forces is outrageous simply because if I lost one on my team in real life, I couldnt sleep knowing my actions may or may not have had something to do with it. But we have moved a long way from the battle fields of WWII and Vietnam where it was more of an expected rate of casualties as opposed to now and the casualties are simply forbidden format. Dont get me wrong I would have hated serving under Patton and sure prefer the modern approach.

I think though if you look back to how they did things, troops dying paled in comparison with actually taking the objectives. So in CMBN, I think this still trumps winning or losing by a fair margin. I think it says a lot of how you play if you take very few casualties yet dont hold objectives.

Am reading A Dark and Bloody Ground now. All I have to say is I am glad I am just playing a game. What these guys went through for real just leaves me speechless. I get pissed when I see a mortar round hit a team I just moved up and knock out 4 guys. Then I read this book and see Infantry battalions and regiments just melting away over the course of a couple days and I just wonder how these guys dealt with it. Makes me feel a bit unworthy to even game it, but I rationalize that by knowing their experience at least isn't getting forgotten and the sacrifice honored and that goes for the grunts on both sides.

But back to the point, yeah the upper commanders would just keep pushing - you need to achieve obj x cause if you don't, some other unit is gonna get hammered now as their flank is wide open. Even Gen Cota commander of the 28th ID is reported to have collapsed from stress during the battle for Schmidt (possibly a result of complications with stress and diabetes - page 83, the description of the scene itself is well worth reading to get a feel for how brutal this campaign was) so I honestly don't feel setting taking an objective as the sole decision about victory is at all invalid. It may interfere with individuals perspective on "balance", but I am increasingly feeling that chasing after the "balance" concept is just inherently ahistorical. Now if you view CMBN as simply a game to play for points against an opponent (and that is not intended as criticism, it just isn't my play style) it is a whole other perspective, but asking for designers to take anyone's perspective but their own into account is a bit cheeky. :-P We are all free to design whatever we want even to the point of editing other's work.

[sburke]

I think GaJs point - and I may be reading things into it here - is not so much that the DESTROY objective must be used, and the casualty parameter must not be used. I think he's more saying that the designer should really understand what each type of points objective does, why he's using each, and how each fits as a coherent part of the scenario story.

Your bridge example is a fair one (although I'd suggest that if your force is destroyed yet the enemy haven't quite yet managed to get across the bridge then you haven't really achieved your objective of holding the bridge), but it's easy enough to come up with counter examples where use of the casualty parameter as the sole measure of success would clearly be wrong.

Jon

Gotcha, I think I was mis reading the intent then, sorry GaJ.

[JonS]

I honestly don't feel setting taking an objective as the sole decision about victory is at all invalid. It may interfere with individuals perspective on "balance"' date=' but I am increasingly feeling that chasing after the "balance" concept is just inherently ahistorical.[/quote']

No, but apart from everything else I think that using the DESTROY obj is a good way to give the losing player some points. It sucks to do sort-of ok, but not quite well enough, and still end up with zero points. Throwing the bone of a few points for killing some of the enemy means the loser won’t feel completely worthless, or that they’ve totally wasted their time.

True, moar scens is always good, and riffing off of other people’s existing work is probably a gentle way to get to grips with the scen editor.

[GreenAsJade]

No, but apart from everything else I think that using the DESTROY obj is a good way to give the losing player some points. It sucks to do sort-of ok, but not quite well enough, and still end up with zero points. Throwing the bone of a few points for killing some of the enemy means the loser won’t feel completely worthless, or that they’ve totally wasted their time.

This nails it.

And note that as with any "general rule", there are obviously exceptions.

If there is a situation where the commander in question deserves no recognition at all for kilking the enemy, then create such a scenario by all means. But this should be blindingly obvious in the briefing, and an integral part of the wonderful story.

Similarly, it's not "never use Casualty objectives". Just don't use them as the normal reward for casualties, because they don't work that way. Sure, if the goal is "you must destroy 50% of the OPFOR tanks", then have an objective like that, but again: tie it to the story and make it clear.

The point is that the Destroy Units objective is the one that by default people expect, it maps onto "war" the most naturally (and its no coincidence that it is the one that is built automatically into QBs).

GaJ

[LJFHutch]

Yeah absolutely, I never liked the way you'd hit 50% or something and suddenly you got points, kill 246 enemy soldiers and you lose terribly, but kill 247 and you win! I've always put the destroy unit objectives instead, even in quick tests vs AI.

[Paper Tiger]

Hey Paper Tiger,

The issue of designers' work being assessed to death is a long-standing one, and we have lost good designers from the community as a result of it already. This is really sad.

I don't know what we can do about that in general, because the opposite extreme is for us to not discuss what is good and bad about scenarios... clearly that wouldn't be right either.

To a certain extent scenario designers need to design for their own satisfaction, and not really care ... not be open to being hurt by... what other people think. It does take a thick skin and strong self esteem: I think that to a certain extent this is "life on the internet".

If you are going to get offended by someone who doesn't like any work you post on the internet, get ready to be offended. It is guaranteed that what you post will be disagreed with by someone, and that this opinion will be strongly stated. There's another factor too: it's easy for an author to "over-read" criticism, and be more "hurt" than is necessary. Just because someone analyses something and criticises it, doesn't even mean they don't like it... it certainly doesn't mean it's not good.

However, this is one reason why I was treating the topic "in the general" not "in the specific".

KR's point is true in general. In general, one expects the after-game analysis to reflect that if you inflicted casualties you did not loose 100-0.

I am asserting that:

*The only way for scenario designers to make this "feel right" _in general_ is to use the Destroy Units objective in good measure.*

This doesn't mean that a scenario that does not do this is bad.

This doesn't meant that Destroy Units is the only objective that should be used.

What I am doing is alerting the scenario design community to the fact that it is quite measurable (see the graphs) that in CMBN this has not been the case, and that if the scenario designers would like their work to be widely appreciated, they should take this into consideration, in due measure.

Note to MikeyD: "Casualty" objectives like ">30% cas" do more to hinder than help, because they are binary.

GaJ

Long post but I'll try and respond to the important points.

First, 'Barkmann's Corner' is not my mission to feel offended about. Personally, I think the Designer is thick-skinned enough to take KRs comments onboard without taking any offense :cool: but he's not around just now to do so. However, that may not always be the case. I happen to think that the most valuable members of this community are the artists who produce scenarios and mods. Some of those folks will have more 'artistic' temperaments than your average wargamer and that needs to be respected if you wish to encourage the growth of this community. Negative feedback can be very helpful when it is sweetened with some positive feedback. A sweetener will go a very long way to helping both the emerging and existing talent to develop. Otherwise, you're just smacking them and a smack without something positive is bad in almost every context in life.

I appreciate that you are trying to raise the awareness of the scenario designing community of the need for a scoring system that rewards each player's perfomance. I agree with you 100% that this is absolutely necessary for missions that are played competitively and ladder play. However, Barkmann's Corner has no such 'Playable H2H' tag and so is not really a good example of a mission that is badly scored. If you play scenarios without an H2H tag, you should not be disappointed when they are not scored for H2H play. However, the number of true H2H missions that shipped with the disk is very small (I think 'Bois du Baugin' was the only one that was designed first and foremost for H2H play).

Finally, I do design 100% for my own satisfaction and I have a pretty good idea of my work's worth;). The fact that others enjoy playing them is just a bonus. I love this game so I'll still design for myself even if nobody else enjoys my work. At the moment, I have no WW2 missions under my belt that are suitable for competitive play. No doubt that will change at some point in the future and if there is a demand for my campaign missions to be made available for H2H play, I might be persuaded to do so.

[GreenAsJade]

However, Barkmann's Corner has no such 'Playable H2H' tag and so is not really a good example of a mission that is badly scored.

Yes, there is a big gap at the moment in terms of a good place to store, tag and review scenarios, eh?

Right now I don't know how we are supposed to know what a scenario is designed for? If I were a scenario designer I'd make that darn clear in the briefing at least.

GaJ