HIGHWAY OR CONQUEST

[Nauticus]

Seems I started an interesting debate.

I have now had HTTR for a couple of days, and it seems a great game.

When I moved little cardboard counters around a board 50 years ago, this is what I really wanted.

I have also played turn based computer games for years and years, and frankly I have not got the patience for that now.

Real time pause is the answer I can plan and then watch, intervening where necessary. Just the job.

What other sequels are planned for the Airborne Assault system?

[Bil H]

Nauticus, glad you are enjoying HTTR, I'm happy you are seeing the game as it was intended, as the most realistic game system available outside of the military (perhaps even including them). 
 
Try COTA too when you can, it is a step up with mixed mode movement and a detailed supply system (to name just a few of the additions). 
 
The plans in the works are very exciting, the next game is scheduled to be Battles From the Bulge (BFTB); after that (in no particular order) there are teams working on a North Africa game, another team working on East Front, one working on a Pacific game, and finally there is a Modern warfare team.
 
Some of these will have significant differences, for example the Pacific and Modern game will both go down to Platoon units.  Hopefully these games will be released on a 6 month schedule... that would have BFTB being released around Christmas (knock wood) or at least before the new year.
 
Bil

[DuckofTindalos]

ORIGINAL: Bil H

Ravinhood, have you even tried either game? 

Very unlikely...

[ravinhood]

[[Now I await the rebuttals, but, the TOPIC and question was about which game I would get. So, if yah don't like my choices, oh well you'll get over it. ]]
 
Quoted again for truth.

[Rainbow7]

You may enjoy tooting your own horn, but most of us here recognized that the original poster was actually requesting game suggestions for HIM to purchase.

[Arjuna]

Nauticus,
 
Welcome to the Airborne Assault series. Don't forget to drop into the HTTR and COTA forums, say Hi, peruse the discussions and participate if you like. We'd love to see you there.

[Arjuna]

Ravinhood,
 
You are certainly entitled to your opinion.
 
However you are wrong in calling our games click-fests. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our games are not like your typical RTS Command and Conquer clones. This misconception is fairly common amongst those who have played traditional turn based wargames ( TTBWs ) for years and then tried one or more of the RTS clones only to be bitterly dissappointed in their lack of realism and the ridiculous tank rush tactics which predominate them.
 
Rest assured HTTR and COTA are not like that. Also be assured that when it comes to realistically simulating what it is like for a commander to manage a battle at the operational level no other wargame comes close. From a purely technical point of view a good real time simulation provides greater fidelity than your traditional turn based wargame ( TTBW ). Hence it can more realistically simulate subtle differences over time, like the effect on orders delay between units with different staff quality and commander efficiencies. There are a whole host of reasons why a real time engine is superior to a TTWB for simulation. I have discussed these in depth on the forums and the war-historical newsgroup. Check them out.
 
Your other criticism about

"watch the movie" like a Mad Minute game

is valid if you don't spend the time to know the system and you don't change your perspective on playing. This has been one of the biggest hurdles for us - ie changing the way your traditional turn based wargamer approaches the game. It's all about involvement and in particular about what the player manages. A paradigm shift is required for most tradtional turn based wargamers. It's not easy to break years of habit micromanaging every detail and instead to focus on the big picture and macromanage.
 
At the root of this is the issue of TRUST. So far few wargames have had sufficiently powerful AI to manage subordinates in a reasonable manner. There is a whole host of reasons for this, but we can leave that for another time. Suffice to say that the AI in HTTR and COTA is powerful enough to do a reasonable job of managing your subordinates. You can trust it to do a reasonable job. This then liberates you as the senior commander to focus on the big picture.
 
But this does not mean you should just sit back and watch. That's not what a real life commander does - well not a good one anyway. First off a RL commander develops their plan. In doing so they identify those courses of action that the enemy could undertake which would negate their plan. They monitor developments continuously, assessing the intel reports trying to discern if one of those triggers has occured and if so then reacting or replanning as required. This requires constant involvement, not sitting back and watching.
 
In COTA we have provided an Advanced Tutorial which addresses this issue. It is a primer for operational commanders, advising on how to plan, react, reassess and replan - in short on how to manage the operational battle. It helps to re-orient your perspective, to get involved and get the most out of the game.

[ravinhood]

You seem to keep missing my point Arjuna,  I do not like most games where the AI plays the game and I spend more time watching the "simulation" instead of playing it. I don't want to be IKE or Patton or any of those others. I want to be ME and I want total control of the whole simulation, just like I have total control in a chess game. Can you imagine chess pieces playing the game and I interact only at proportional times? Or I tell a pawn to move to a position and it's DELAYED?? lol Now someone did sort of a chesslike game years ago called Archon and you played a little kiddie arcade game every square with every piece that came in contact with each other to see who actually took control of the square OR you could let the AI play out the battles. Well I didn't see ole B. Fisher jump on this and it move to the spotlite as some glorious CHESS GAME. Same way I feel about real time/continuous time socalled wargames, they just don't muster up to what classical/traditional wargames are.
 
That's the problem with these fangled abstract socalled wargames. They aren't wargames they are just simulated or animated pieces moving around the map in real time or continous time doing their own thing. Mad Minutes does it and your games do it also even Combat Mission does it (nothing is more frustrating than when I tell a unit to fire here and for the remainder of the turn it fires THERE). That may be a flavor of game some people like, but, I do not for the most part. Not when it it suppose to be a "wargame". Tradition has it that a wargame is turn based. I was able to accept a wego system since it is also in turns and I don't have to think faster than I want to during my turn of play. Even the wego system of Combat Mission is not as well liked as SPWAW where I have "total control". An AI can never play as well strategically or tactically as I can, why in heck would I want it controlling the vast majority of my army? You use words like "sufficient" AI performance. Well what may be "sufficient" for you is not sufficient for me only total control is sufficient for me that way if there is a mistake made it's MY mistake I won't be blaming the stupid ai.
 
Your games and Mad Minutes and Paradox games like the HOI's and EU's and Vickys are "Command Decision" type games. And the more you want to interact with them the faster you have to think and the faster you have to click around the maps. Of course there is a "pause" feature or a slow time feature. Well if you're going to have a pause feature or slow time feature you might as well just make it turn based to begin with. That's just more button pushing I have to contend with to pause the game, start the game, pause the game again, start the game again over and over and over. All that starting and pausing just takes away from my concentration of what I want to do in the game. It's just like rts games, it's just a hassle and unnecessary.
 
For over 50+ years the boardgame turn based style of wargaming has dominated, it still dominates today. Only in the computer portion of wargaming do designers and developers attempt the thwart that which has been established for years. They try to turn wargaming into some clickfest or movie of graphics and glitter and take out of the hands of the gamer the reason they play them in the first place (the reason I play them anyway); the TOTAL CONTROL of the combat situaltion. I just don't understand the philosophy of hey lets let the computer play the game and we'll just let the player watch and interact sometimes or if he wants to interact a lot well he'll just have to PAUSE the game or play like a kiddie clickfester game.
 
So, no I am not wrong in calling your games a clickfest. If I have to use a pause feature then it's a clickfest to me. The young wargamer may be changing, some of the older ones may as well, but, this one is not. I will stick to and BUY traditional classic turn based wargames and might pick up a game like yours out of the bargain bin if the price is low enough. I played HTTR long before I bought it (local friends support you and like the handsoff approach). I did pick it up out of a bargain bin for $17.99 and it still remains packaged and only the MANUAL did I take out to read. heh sorry, just not my type of game.
 
The other reason I don't support your games is that they are in regions of the war I don't care for. I even stated in your main thread that when you produce a "Battle of the Bulge" and a "Land Based Pacific Battles" I will be looking into those, merely for collectors reasons though. I will probably play them once. As long as they have that real time/continous time aspect and the pause again off again feature and command decision instead of total control they just won't give me any enjoyment playing them.
 
One last thing of note. I have never said your games suk or are bad or anything of the like. I have just said what they are to me. Everybody is not going to like your style of design that's just a fact of life. Everybody doesn't like every game I like either. That's just a fact of life also. But, everyone is entitled to their beliefs and opinions and they are not wrong in "their own eyes/mind", so therefore shouldn't be stated that they are wrong. An opinion cannot be wrong since it isn't a fact. I've written the definition of opinions and facts before, but, it seems people don't ever look them up or read those parts of my posts. They just wanna jump on ole Ravinhood! lol But, I just sit back and get a good laugh out of it. When someone like you posts "rational" statements and comments and opinions I will respond to them. I will not respond to kids minds or arrogant chest thumpers. There can only be one arrogant chest thumper and that is ME! >:)

[Charles2222]

ravinhood: I'm not so against these games as you seem to be, mostly because I don't see a real difference between their timing and turn-based. I haven't bought either game for the same reason you have in that they're not my area of interest. I prefer something grander and was thinking of suggesting that very thing. I'm also not interested in airborne actions. They're fine as part of a grander scheme, but not as the entire point of a small battle IMO.

One thing I do have to say though about this pause-time sort of game. I definitely don't see any problem going through all my units as I would with turn-based and I definitely enjoy a "limited" amount of intelligence on my troops part. Take for example one of the differences between SPWAW and winSPWW2. In winSPWW2 it is possible that as you try to pull out a badly damaged tank, being practically the only thing holding back an entire 2 platoons of enemy tanks in a weakened sector, that as the first hex is pulled out, one of the enemy tanks reacts and fires at it (common to SPWAW at this point), BUT, the other tank you had further back reacts to that reaction and fires on it destroying it, freeing up the badly damaged one to get away. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Some sort of reaction somewhere beyond the stiff reaction of a single unit moving/firing and every unit gets to fire only on it and it alone. Something that shows they have something of a mind of their own. It can be quite entertaining like that at times, as the enemy might again react to the tank that fired the return fire, whom then might have another unit of mine react to that reaction. Sort of a ping-pong match at times. It's nice to, on occasion, have something occur that yanks the game slightly out of your control. Sort of something that happened between orders that you couldn't tell them quick enough. Of course part of the whole deal is that we want to command and be the driver/gunner of every unit both, but having a small departure as I explained is a welcome respite in my eyes.

The one sort of pause-time game, or whatever you call it, that I cannot stand, is, like you said, seemingly becoming more popular in wargaming circles. I played a game like that once, I think it was called Firefight. Awful graphics, but then it was basically supposed to be, but the guys running around like crazy totally beyond my control, seemingly without reason, was just too much for me to take and I deleted the game. It's true, if I wanted to spend maybe 10 hours grooming that game I might have found some reason to see a method in the madness, but letting my input be only very minimal, instead of their self-reaction being very minimal (if any) is pretty pointless to me. Something like that does have something of a point though, though grogs like us might end up controlling everything anyway. What I'm talking about is if you actually had a really massive army to control, and you couldn't possibly play the entire game giving every single order to every unit, so instead you might give every single order to an entire corp, or division, or what not, and then let the others be set to something of a minimal control on your part with you giving them a basic guideline. Clearly in our minds this sort of thing being the essence to an entire small scale battle is rejected, but being able to have total control to at least a good number of the units is key. If it's entirely a free-for-all then who cares?

One danger I do see, however, with the pause-time sort of game, even if you equivocate that with real-time as I try to, is that since the game can go endlessly without you doing anything, the temptation is to let it do just that. IOW, you can get lazy with it quite easily. Instead of living for the best placement of the units for a start, you live instead for the idea that they will go out and do this or that and that you will intervene only when they get really stupid or get in trouble.

I don't think you have a problem with units totally losing the ability to hear your orders, as we have seen this sort of thing with many common computer wargames (such as routed units being unable) but when you start off a game as I did with Firefight and they're going looney you're about as well off as watching someone else play a turn-based game, as the units do only what somebody else programmed them to do. Unfortuantely such a thing is even worse than watching someone else play turn-based, as at least watching the player of the turn-based he might latch onto a suggestion of yours now and again, but with somebody programming unit reaction largely indifferent to what you told them, you're not even playing the game really.

[Arjuna]

You seem to keep missing my point Arjuna,  I do not like most games where the AI plays the game and I spend more time watching the "simulation" instead of playing it.

And that is a fair enough preference on your part. However, you seem to keep missing my point ravinhood, you should not be spending more time watching instead of playing. That you do is because you're not playing it as it was intended and have not made the effort to find out either. As I said it requires a different approach.

And point of order, of course I can say that your opinions are wrong. After all, am I not entitled to my opinion. [:'(] You know for someone who states things in very emphatic terms you are hyper senstitive when challenged. It would appear that "the whole simulation" is not the only thing you "want total control" over.

We can agree to disagree. You passionately believe that our products are clickfests and not wargames while I and thousands of users think otherwise. Fair enough. You want to hold onto the past while I want to blaze a new future. There should be room in this big beautiful world and this forum for both. Shot over, splash out!

[Rainbow7]

And just to further those points:  by any rational metric, turn-based games are far more 'clickfests' than HttR/CotA.  Now, I love turn-based games, but I'm definitely doing a lot more clicking of every unit, for every destination, on every single turn.
 
Finally, I too think it fair that everyone gets to state an opinion on these public forums.  But it's also quite nice that it's so easy to recognize the uninformed ones.

[Nauticus]

A paradigm shift is required for most tradtional turn based wargamers. It's not easy to break years of habit micromanaging every detail and instead to focus on the big picture and macromanage.

I am really getting into the system of play now with HTTR.

The point is that a Division or Brigade leader does not micromanage, he gives his subordinates orders and hopes they carry them out to the best of their ability. I think HTTR captures this concept very well and it certainly is not a click fest. You do more clicking in turn based games if there are a lot of units on the screen. Perhaps I am a bit lazy [as I said I spent half a century moving units] but I don't mind the A1 playing for me, if it follows my General instructions.

I will have a look into the HTTR forum, and will certainly buy COTA soon, and Battles from the Bulge when it comes out.

Thanks for the advice.

[ravinhood]

Ok let me rephrase the term click fest. I can take my time clicking in a turn based game. I don't have that time in an rts kiddie clickfest game like HTTR or COTA or any of the other clickfest real time games. I didn't think anyone would get so technical and not know what clickfest meant as far as rts, but, now they do.

[Rainbow7]

Oh, I understood what you were trying to get at, but that opinion still shows no insight into HttR and CotA.  They are as cerebral as strategy games come, and do not require firstperson shooter-like reflexes, as you seem to want to suggest.  And while a few posts back you claimed not to be putting down CotA (just that it was not to your taste), how could anyone not interpret 'kiddie' as a straight-up derogatory descriptor, especially on a forum of wargame grognards?

What is that line from Elvis Costello?  I used to be disgusted, but now I try and be amused.

[Trigger Happy]

That guy just doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

For over 50+ years the boardgame turn based style of wargaming has dominated, it still dominates today. Only in the computer portion of wargaming do designers and developers attempt the thwart that which has been established for years.

I hate to state the obvious, but its only the computer portion of wargaming where anything other than a turn-based style is even possible. In that context, talking about what is "established" is nonsense, there was just no other way to do it. But who would take a Sherman into combat in 2006 when they could have an Abrams?

They try to turn wargaming into some clickfest or movie of graphics and glitter and take out of the hands of the gamer the reason they play them in the first place (the reason I play them anyway); the TOTAL CONTROL of the combat situaltion.

I disagree on both counts. Firstly, with motivation. Having spent an awful lot of time with the Airborne Assault games and the Prosim games ("graphics and glitter"?!) it seems clear to me that their purpose is in fact to produce the most accurate simulation of warfare for the entertainment market possible, subject to the constraints of ending up with a game that is still enjoyable to play. Secondly, I don't believe "total control" is what most wargamers require, or even particularly want. War isn't like that, and anything that attempts to move the boundary from 'game' to 'simulation' can't be like that either.

I just don't understand the philosophy of hey lets let the computer play the game and we'll just let the player watch and interact sometimes or if he wants to interact a lot well he'll just have to PAUSE the game or play like a kiddie clickfester game.

I wouldn't understand it either, but I just don't recognise that in any of the games we are talking about. PAUSE is only necessary for two reasons. The first is when the game is being played at an accelerated rate (scale permitting) simply as a practicality. If I had a week to play the Arnhem campaign 'live', PAUSE would not be necessary. The second reason is to allow the player if he chooses to exercise just the sort of control you state you require... not necessarily "total", but that way beyond the capacity of a real commander in the field.

I guess turn-based games do still 'dominate', and there will always be a place for them at the operational and strategic levels. For tactical level games, though, it is my very humble opinion that they are dated, and due for replacement. Games like CotA and Armored Task Force - not to mention the computer Harpoons - are the vanguard of that. They will push aside turn based games because they are far better simulations of the consequences of decisions of real-life commanders in the field, and in my very humble opinion (again) THAT is what the majority of wargamers want. If they didn't, they might as well just play Chess.