Tutorial scenario improvement thread

[Gil R.]

I want to make sure that our "starter scenario" is as informative as it can be (or, at least, needs to be), so I thought I would ask for suggestions regarding what to add. What would you like to have been told by means of one of those fat, yellow question marks, but weren't?

So far on my list are that Headquarters and Supply units cannot hold Victory Hexes, and that artillery can fire beyond six hexes even if the base damage shown in the lower-left just gives the first six numbers. What else?

[Rosseau]

Well, I learned something already today about arty.

Also, need to read the manual, but... Division order change affects all Div assets (all or none if it fails), Brigade all brigade assets, and you can also try to change a regiment's order (e.g. to advance), although nothing is guaranteed.

[Gil R.]

(Bump)

[sherlock1]

Why cant a demo of this game with one or two tutorials be made available. So often you purchase a game and find out it all bells and whistles no substance. Not saying its this game but all to often gamers spend much money on games that are not all that.

[ericbabe]

Demos cost a lot of time and money to make, and they are almost as much of a hassle to release and maintain as a full game. We've simply found with the demos that we have made that they don't generate enough sales to pay for all that. Demos seem to work better to interest people in the less-detailed, more-mainstream types of games, but they just don't seem to work so well with the more-detailed sorts of games. We have released our manual. There are great video reviews online. Erik Rutins released a two-hour video explaining all the details of the game. I think that's enough to give potential customers a good understanding for the game.

[zakblood]

plus map and books as well ^^ and all free [&o][&o][&o]

[whoofe]

would be helpful to know what the differences in difficulty level were. I don't see anything I the manual that details this?

[zakblood]

the higher you go, the more chance of units activation failures and higher casualties plus other goodies

[Gil R.]

What Zakblood said. We don't have a specific list that at this level X is different, but at the next level it's X & Y.

All you really need to know about difficulty levels is what we say on pg. 12 of the manual.

[whoofe]

well is there a "default/historical/average" difficulty level?

[FroBodine]

I don't understand why you guys are being so vague about the difficulty levels, and can't give us a straight answer. What does "other goodies" mean?

This game is programmed, which means there are specific rules and logic for everything. We all want to know exactly what changes as you go up in difficulty levels. It is in the code somewhere.

What is the increase of activation failure each difficulty level? How many more casualties each difficulty level? What other goodies do we get each difficulty level?

Why so secretive? We would like to know if we choose a certain difficulty level, exactly what the modifiers are. This is grognard level wargaming, and grognards want their statistics and charts and details.

Thank you for listening.

[AlessandroD]

I agree, difficult level bonus/malus and a terrain movement cost chart should be accessible to the players, a combat modifiers chart would be a nice touch as well.

[kagee]

I think Brother in Brother is one heck of a game. The maps are perhaps the nicest I've ever seen in a computer game and the manual seems to have covered all the important points. Having dabbled in wargamming for nearly 40 years, I know a quality piece when I see one. This one has all the essentials except... I can't play the darn thing! Simplistic concepts like adjusting the facing, ranged fire etc have resulted in a frustrating purchase. Why can't there be a tutorial along the lines of the excellent ones found in games like Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm and The Battlefront Combat Mission Games?

I've tried most of the video's too. Sorry. They didn't help answer a lot of the basics. I don't think I can begin to convey how important I consider this issue. Right now I'm wondering why I ever attempt a game like this without a good tutorial in support. Enough said.

[FroBodine]

To adjust facing, select a unit and right-click on an adjacent hex in the direction you want the unit to face. I have no idea how many movement points this costs, or if it is different depending on what terrain you are on, or what else it affects.

But, yeah, I completely agree with you, and that's why I wrote my tutorial concerns in the first place.

[zakblood]

ORIGINAL: whoofe

well is there a "default/historical/average" difficulty level?

yes, and it's set up by default as the standard level so is around Second or First Lieutenant, any higher than that, and it increases the difficult and makes the outcome less historical, regarding casualties and activation failures etc

[zakblood]

ORIGINAL: jglazier

I don't understand why you guys are being so vague about the difficulty levels, and can't give us a straight answer. What does "other goodies" mean?

This game is programmed, which means there are specific rules and logic for everything. We all want to know exactly what changes as you go up in difficulty levels. It is in the code somewhere.

What is the increase of activation failure each difficulty level? How many more casualties each difficulty level? What other goodies do we get each difficulty level?

Why so secretive? We would like to know if we choose a certain difficulty level, exactly what the modifiers are. This is grognard level wargaming, and grognards want their statistics and charts and details.

Thank you for listening.

pg. 12 of the manual

my goodies were referring to what's printed in the manual so i didn't have to list any more tbh, nothing hidden or secretive either so just a poor choice of words on my part[:(]

[zakblood]

ORIGINAL: kj2kg2

I think Brother in Brother is one heck of a game. The maps are perhaps the nicest I've ever seen in a computer game and the manual seems to have covered all the important points. Having dabbled in wargamming for nearly 40 years, I know a quality piece when I see one. This one has all the essentials except... I can't play the darn thing! Simplistic concepts like adjusting the facing, ranged fire etc have resulted in a frustrating purchase. Why can't there be a tutorial along the lines of the excellent ones found in games like Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm and The Battlefront Combat Mission Games?

I've tried most of the video's too. Sorry. They didn't help answer a lot of the basics. I don't think I can begin to convey how important I consider this issue. Right now I'm wondering why I ever attempt a game like this without a good tutorial in support. Enough said.

the best way to learn and full appreciate any game is the manual, then the basic tutorial, it has basic steps in it which covers most things, but not all, those are for the manual and while a step by step approach for everything would be nice, it also would take forever to do, after a few small battles the basic is gotten with a few reads from the manual, like most modern games like WITW for just one example, once a few smaller battle are done then move on to a medium one.

smaller battles have less troops so can be sorted, played and replayed quicker, with the opposite for med and large ones.

so i'd try a few from both sides of a smaller battle then move on, playing both sides not only is good practice but teaches you the finer points and also what is or was in the history of the battle.

and tbh nobody hear with do it much better than what's already been done,

tm.asp?m=3844058

any more depth than what's shown here and you would be the reincarnated General on the battlefield from the time with knowledge far greater than what they or me have.

i'd do a step by step one, but it would be nowhere near as good as what's already been done, my AAR lack the depth and my pictures only tell what's happening not only in view, but where it's taken, elsewhere is hidden and also can be better or worse for you, so only tells and shows half if not a small portion of what's going off at any given time.

without putting a finer point on it, to play and play properly you have to be prepared to,

one put the time in,
and also loose as lot,

then and only then do you see mistakes and alter your plans and tactics, along the way you pick up either from game play or the manual / online video's / AAR the finer points to make you a better player and then gives you the knowledge to fully understand what is and isn't happening at any given point.

well that's my take on it, might be wrong, 50% of the time it's a coin toss tbh

[whoofe]

ORIGINAL: zakblood

ORIGINAL: whoofe

well is there a "default/historical/average" difficulty level?

yes, and it's set up by default as the standard level so is around Second or First Lieutenant, any higher than that, and it increases the difficult and makes the outcome less historical, regarding casualties and activation failures etc

thank you very much!

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: jglazier
Why so secretive? We would like to know if we choose a certain difficulty level, exactly what the modifiers are. This is grognard level wargaming, and grognards want their statistics and charts and details.

It's a lot of work to make these sorts of charts. The numbers aren't in a place that I can like copy and paste. The combat routines comprise something like 30,000 lines of code. Some combat numbers are in the code, some come from half-a-dozen different data tables. To make this chart right now I would have to sit down and go through all of that. It would take me a couple days of work.

Making official charts/tables are even more work, because whenever we change the game, then we have to update the chart or table. It ends up taking five times as long to update the chart than it does to make a change to the code, which reduces the flexibility of the engine enormously.

Finally, when we've made charts like this for our games in the past, we've gotten really low levels of downloads for them. So it doesn't seem like a lot of people want the charts a little, it's more like a little number of people want the charts a lot. I know there are at least hundreds of people out there who will be happy to see a patch with some new features and I need to prioritize my time working on this. Making charts is a lot of work, and making an official chart is a commitment to a lot of continued work in the future. Based on my past experiences, I expect only about 10 - 30 people to download these sorts of charts, and who knows what fraction of those do more than just skim them once. For now I've got to focus my work on things that I know will be of greater interest to a larger number of people.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: whoofe
well is there a "default/historical/average" difficulty level?

Difficulty level is meant to compensate the AI for the fact that AIs are not as intelligent as human players. An average difficulty level would mean a difficulty level that provides enough compensation to the AI that an average human player would need. We don't really have a good idea of this since all of our beta testers are people who are above average [:)]

Similarly, historical difficulty levels would be those that produce historical levels of casualties, but this also varies by player, and we just don't have enough raw data to be able to say what an "average player" is. One of the problems with computer war-games that leads to the games having inflated casualties above historical levels is that players of games simply don't have the same regard for the strength points of their units that historical commanders had for actual human lives. We can try to simulate this with morale rules and breaking strength rules, but it's never going to be quite the same.