FITE playbalance

[philturco]

Is there any consensus on play balance as I've heard that two equally skilled players usually wind up with a WW I type stalemate with an impenetrable dug in Russian line in the general area of Smolensk. I am following the AAR with the northern thrust against Karri as Soviet that is a partial solution but I recall the Germans were able to achieve tactical superiority and force any line anywhere of thie choosing well into 1943. Perhaps some fine tuning to simulate this would help the game as something seems wrong that the games are decided well before 1942 in most cases. I for one would like to play much longer with some chance of at least a stalemate into 1943. This I think would breath new life into this scenerio.

[Fungwu]

Well I think zort is working more on his mod to make FITE more balanced, though I don't know exactly what he is coming up with.

I personally think that there are a few things that could be done to reduce Soviet strength, the real area we need to focus on is German strategy.

[Zort]

It all depends on how you define play balance. For FITE my attempt is to allow the average player to play the entire scenario with equal chances of winning by both sides.

Unfortunately most Axis players quit if they don't take Moscow before snow. But after snow it appears that the Soviets get real strong real quick and having a 1942 German offense like historically might be impossible.

Now if you know how to manipulate the game mechanics the Germans seem to be able to win most of the time, but most of us are casual players don't quite become super players like Fungwu and Karri [:)].

If, big if, if the game engine would allow for events in certain defined areas, ie increase of supply for the southern part of the board, bounded by something, then there would be lots more flexibility in game design. Or for events to be created for certain formations, ie again AGS gets a supply boost, then more flexibility.

Now supply has been talked about a lot. Maybe an easy program fix would be when a unit is out of supply, it's shock is lowered.

Balance for a big scenario it tough. The Soviets won historically and much of the fighting was in almost fixed lines, ie Leningrad area. Since the scenario editor doesn't give you the option to make changes on the fly, it makes it really hard to test. I have played several games to turns 35-48 range and found that I made a game stopping mistake in the events. So I had to start all over again. Made one in my current game but we came up with an agreement on how to continue playing without starting over...again.

I can see why there are numerous Barbarossa scenarios out there since they only go a "short" while compared to FITE. I don't seem too many if any scenarios on the Soviet drive to Germany from 43 on.

So the bottom line is I am trying to come up with some fine tuning to make it more balance for the average player without too many house rules. Game engine is the driving factor, lots of stuff we would like to do but can't do to limitations in the engine. I can probably come up with lots of house rules and micromanaging things to make the game more balanced but why have a computer game and not use it's engine.

[SMK-at-work]

I think monster scenarios like FITE must be very difficult to balance....you dont' actually control production and various other aspects of your forces (such as the makup of each formation) that you would do "in real life", so they're realy, ERALLY stretching th op art engine to its limits.
 
And if you did modify the engine to allow all the salient factors for a whole-of-WW2 scenario (which FITE might as well be, or EA, or WW1, etc) then it's a whole different game.
 
Compare this with "Advanced Tactics" recently released.....which has nothing to do with tactics, and isnt' all that advanced...[;)].....but which has a fairly good production and formation system, but lacks detail....now if we could jsut meld TOAW's detail with AT's systems there could be an even better thing happening....

[IronDuke_slith]

I'm unlikely to take Moscow but have Kharkov and may well get Stalino and Rostov.

However, reading the notes, am I right in thinking NOT taking the Typhoon strategic option will mean I don't go to 80 shock afterwards (although the Soviet Winter offensive option will still give my opponent a shock boost).

It's just that I can take a little more ground without Typhoon, but I've played as Soviet and destroyed the AXIS in Winter 41 after it overextended and the 80 Typhoon re-org shock for his AXIS combined with the Soviet Winter offensive shock bonus and re-supply bonus made my Sovioet counterattack unstoppable.

I'm thinking I can make the Winter much more painful for any counterattack if I'm not at 80% shock when he attacks.

Is this correct?

As for balance, the game engine will be your issue. The Soviet C&C and flexibility that the engine grants them will overly tax the AXIS in 1941 and 1942. I tend to think some of the Soviet units are too high proficiency at times given the scale and speed at which they put new armies together but I wish you all the best as this is a great scenario with this engine and the current game certainly won;t be te last time I play it.

regards,
IronDuke

[Fungwu]

"I'm thinking I can make the Winter much more painful for any counterattack if I'm not at 80% shock when he attacks.

Is this correct? "

80% shock not only leaves 20% of your army frozen every turn, but also reduces the fighting power of all your units by 20%. Don't pick 80% shock. -20 german shock and +15 soviet shock would soviet units a strenght bonus of 35% vs your troops.