How many PBEM ONLY scenarios in TOAW III?

[jbunnelle]

The vast majority of PBEM scenarios are noted within the first few lines of the scenario desc. And a distinction should be drawn here between "PBEM only" and "PBEM preferably". All in all, I've only counted about six PBEM scenarios in the folders I'm interested in, which is anything pre-1945; I'm ambivalent about the modern stuff for a variety of reasons, none of which has to do with the quality of the scenarios.

[jbunnelle]

As far as major overhauls, Brian Topp's many EF scens and his Battle for France 1940 (not included in the game but still available from his website) are all superb and deserve attention. Forgive my ignorance on this, but how hard is it to finish the PO end of it on someone else's scenario? Is it simply a matter of assigning objectives? I know, read the manual and all that.

[*Lava*]

Hi!

From what I can tell the best thing, so as to not interfere with the titles of the games, is to put little symbols in front of the name on the game list.. (P) for example.

Ray (alias Lava)

[Der Oberst]

OK...IU've seen this acronymn for a bit now and I don't understand it and it's driving me WILD!!! [:)]


What does "PO" mean?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: jbunnelle

As far as major overhauls, Brian Topp's many EF scens and his Battle for France 1940 (not included in the game but still available from his website) are all superb and deserve attention. Forgive my ignorance on this, but how hard is it to finish the PO end of it on someone else's scenario? Is it simply a matter of assigning objectives? I know, read the manual and all that.

Designing a mediocre PO isn't hard, but can be tedious for a large scenario (say if you have to assign a dozen objectives to each of 150 formations). Designing a detailed PO would be more work.

[nemo69]

ORIGINAL: Der Oberst

OK...IU've seen this acronymn for a bit now and I don't understand it and it's driving me WILD!!! [:)]


What does "PO" mean?

Programmed Opponent aka Elmer, i.e. the TOAW flavour of Artificial Intelligence. It's been given some muscle (to say the least) in TOAW III.

[golden delicious]

Nemo beat me to it [:@]

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL:
. . . how hard is it to finish the PO end of it on someone else's scenario? Is it simply a matter of assigning objectives?

There are several huge obstacles to adding a functional AOwPI to the more complex scenarios: Theater Options & Events, simulating the ebb and flow of battle and formations, which do not begin the scenario on the field of battle. These three scenario requirements all contribute to a seemingly impossible task.

Often the objectives are influenced by activation (or conversely not activating) TOs and Events. Actions are taken by the players in response to how the situation is developing and the impact the situation has on long term strategic planning. AOwPI can be programmed with probabilities for activating TOs but you have no way of predetermining which TOs should be activated in response the player’s moves. The result is that formations are made to chase after objectives which have no fundamental value to the defense or attack.

I suppose that you could use one objective track for the Russian to fall back in the face of Barbarossa, and a second track to program their eventual counter attack. But how would know when to switch from defense to attack? Can you predetermine when the opportune time will be to switch? Will all the Russian forces go on the offensive, some of them, just the right flank, just the left flank? You have no way of knowing what the situation will be at turn 50 of DNO and no way to program an appropriate response.

Often formations, and individual units, are deployed at some time after the start. Usually these units have been removed from the map during the deployment portion of scenario editing. Therefore, before objectives can be placed you need to know exactly where, and when, the formations and units will appear. It certainly is not impossible to search through the deployment editor for information needed to complete this task. I just do not find it practical.

I used DNO as an example, but be assured, many less complex scenarios are equally difficult to program. These are only a couple of the reasons why scenarios are designed as PBM only, there are more.

Regards, RhinoBones

[Szilard]

I think probably the biggest reason for the increase in non-PO scenarios over time was just that the PO used to be so poor. People learned that there was actually no way to make it play a halfway plausible game in many/most cases, so stopped bothering to try.

From what I've seen so far, I think Ralph has managed to goose the thing over the huge hump between "functionally useless" and "adequate". Should be much more worthwhile now for people to put in the (still very large) effort required.

[Erik2]

Even in smaller scenarios there are a couple of problems with getting the PO to play properly,
even the updated Elmer.
1) Elmer won't activate Theater Options, TOs are one major way to make a scenario interesting
2) Elmer won't use airtransported units properly.
3) Elmer won't use seatransported units properly.
Due to TOAW's restricted usability on a few issues, ie naval matters, sometimes house rules are neccessary.

Erik

[Szilard]

ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

Even in smaller scenarios there are a couple of problems with getting the PO to play properly,
even the updated Elmer.
1) Elmer won't activate Theater Options, TOs are one major way to make a scenario interesting
2) Elmer won't use airtransported units properly.
3) Elmer won't use seatransported units properly.
Due to TOAW's restricted usability on a few issues, ie naval matters, sometimes house rules are neccessary.

Erik

For (1), there's a "PO Activate" event which will do the right thing - haven't noticed this not working in TOAW3? Not sure what you're referring to with (2) & (3) - has something changed?

[hank]

ORIGINAL: jbunnelle

The vast majority of PBEM scenarios are noted within the first few lines of the scenario desc. And a distinction should be drawn here between "PBEM only" and "PBEM preferably". All in all, I've only counted about six PBEM scenarios in the folders I'm interested in, which is anything pre-1945; I'm ambivalent about the modern stuff for a variety of reasons, none of which has to do with the quality of the scenarios.

Not to cause problems but I went through about a couple dozen or so scenario's last night reading the notes for each one and I don't see where they consistently indicate (in the same place) whether the Scenario is for PBEM only or PO only or a combination of the two.

I've seen a couple (and I'm at work using my feable memory now) ... that had a small note near the end of the scen notes about it being pbem only.

(I'm assuming at this point the scen notes are simple text files but correct me if I'm wrong) ... IF POSSIBLE, it would be nice for the next large patch to have somebody add a simple note somewhere consistently at the top of the first page identifying the sce as pbem/ OP/ or both.

There were also some other suggestions as to organizing them into subdirectories for PO or PBEM only. This would also be a viable option. BUT, I do think something needs to be done. I've started a couple of scenario's that I skimmed the scen notes; started the battle; found the OP somewhat lacking; to find out after going back to read the notes more closely ... a small note buried somewhere that it was for pbem only. Not a big deal but some consistency or organization would help tremendously for US NEWBS who don't know all there is about these scenarios.

Thanks

[hank]

ORIGINAL: Szilard

I think probably the biggest reason for the increase in non-PO scenarios over time was just that the PO used to be so poor. People learned that there was actually no way to make it play a halfway plausible game in many/most cases, so stopped bothering to try.

From what I've seen so far, I think Ralph has managed to goose the thing over the huge hump between "functionally useless" and "adequate". Should be much more worthwhile now for people to put in the (still very large) effort required.

For me, the PO is a usefull tool for learning and for familiarizing oneself to a scenario. I don't expect most PO's to be too challenging. Most scenario PO's are good for one play through. After that, the human knows fairly well what's going to happen except where conditional statements force optional actions by the PO. I used to build sce's for steelbeaasts (which is quite a game in itself) ... but on most my sce's I described in the sce notes that the sce was only playable one time (possibly twice if different strategies were used to initialize the conditional statement built into the PO logic).

I wish all the generally recognized TOAW sce's had good one time through PO's. They make a good sparing partner for pbem play.

my 2 cents ...

[Captain Cruft]

There are also some scenario briefings which omit to tell you the hex size ...

I think, for all "official" scenarios (i.e. those which come with the game) there should be a standard header in the briefing.

[geozero]

Some scenario descriptions just go on and on and on... okay already. Just tell us briefly what the battle is about, date, which sides took place, PBEM or PO/AI, etc. There should be a defined convention on how to describe the convention. Perhaps an area which can easily be filled in that tells us above stuff.

You don't really need to tell us that General x ordered 3rd Div. to pull out, when the 5th Regt...blah blah blah. If you need to say this do it farther below in the description after you tell us the important stuff. We can pick up a history book if we want to read about the battle.[:D]

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: hank
Not to cause problems but I went through about a couple dozen or so scenario's last night reading the notes for each one and I don't see where they consistently indicate (in the same place) whether the Scenario is for PBEM only or PO only or a combination of the two.

You're not causing the problem. We did, by neglecting to do this, when we were reviewing the scenarios.

ORIGINAL: hank
I've seen a couple (and I'm at work using my feable memory now) ... that had a small note near the end of the scen notes about it being pbem only.

(I'm assuming at this point the scen notes are simple text files but correct me if I'm wrong) ... IF POSSIBLE, it would be nice for the next large patch to have somebody add a simple note somewhere consistently at the top of the first page identifying the sce as pbem/ OP/ or both.

The location of the notes, when the original scenario designer had taken to include them, varied. We did do some reworking of the scenario briefing files, in an effort to make them more consistent in appearance. You really should have seen the hodge-podge of briefings that had accumulated over the years.

The scenario briefings are not independent of the scenario files, unfortunately, and when we do rework these briefings, the entire scenario folder directory structure will likely need to be re-downloaded.

ORIGINAL: hank
There were also some other suggestions as to organizing them into subdirectories for PO or PBEM only. This would also be a viable option. BUT, I do think something needs to be done. I've started a couple of scenario's that I skimmed the scen notes; started the battle; found the OP somewhat lacking; to find out after going back to read the notes more closely ... a small note buried somewhere that it was for pbem only. Not a big deal but some consistency or organization would help tremendously for US NEWBS who don't know all there is about these scenarios.

We are busy contacting the original designers on how robust they felt their PO work to have been on their creations, and for which sides they programmed Elmer to play. For those who we can't get in touch with, we will have to do a brief review on our own, to determine whether Elmer is sufficiently enabled to be able to make the claim that he is indeed "there". When we have determined this, we will amend the briefings on all of the scenarios, so that the information on "PO-ability" is clearly displayed on the scenario briefing. We are NOT going to change the file name for the files, to indicate this, as that would also entail changing file names for all the BMP files, scenario documents, and scenario-specific graphics folders, and would really gain nothing over a clear, and consistent, message in the header of the scenario briefing, for each scenario.

Thanks for your understanding on the matter.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

There are also some scenario briefings which omit to tell you the hex size ...

I think, for all "official" scenarios (i.e. those which come with the game) there should be a standard header in the briefing.

I agree, and believe it or not, we did actually do a decent job at "standardizing" them. As I mentioned in the above post, you really should have seen the...variety...that we were dealing with...[X(]

[hank]

Thanks JAMiAM !!  Its great to see these comments are being addressed one way or the other.  And yes, I understand.  There's some things that are easy to fix (of course it may be time consuming and meticulous but easy)  ... then there are others that are not.  I'm happy with any improvements we can make to this great wargaming engine.
 
have a good one ... later
hank
 
[&o]

[Steely Glint]

I'd like to see all of the PBEM scenarios clearly labelled as such.

[nemo69]

ORIGINAL: Steely Glint

I'd like to see all of the PBEM scenarios clearly labelled as such.

That's going to be addressed in the shortest possible order.