Creating a balanced scenario

[thedoctorking]

Discussion brought over from the game balance thread in War Room:

What would it take to create a scenario that was balanced for higher skill players in 1941? And later?

Increase Soviet manpower production.
Redeploy Soviet starting units to make Lvov and super-Lvov pockets harder to accomplish.
Increase German manpower production in 1943-45.
Other ideas?
Anybody skilled with the editor want to create a scenario?

[Dreamslayer]

How about this ? It's ruins many things. You can add ground elements to units or make other changes but because we have this rule all wil be in vain.
Similar story about exp. Overall exp and exp of replacements and how fast exp is growns.
You can add 2-3 millions to manpower but because exp too low it has no point.

[Dreamslayer]

So in overall there is need complex of various things for balance fix:
1) Various changes in game mechanics that affects both sides
2) Reductions some "extra" bonuses for Axis
3) Remove some penalties from Soviet side and give them something to present ability to be treat before blizzard.

[56ajax]

Frozen units - unfreeze all those units that can be overrun before they become active

[Aufklaerungs]

Scrub and adjust leader leader skill values. Many leaders on both sides have inflated skill values from 1941.
EG, soviet commander initiative in 1941. Demonstrating any initiative was suicidal in 41. Peers would denounce you and purging was almost sure to follow. Career officers were cultivated to be obedient, not innovative.

[thedoctorking]

@Aufklaerungs, are you saying that Soviet leaders should have lower initiative values in 1941? How would we adjust them back to the proper level afterwards?

[thedoctorking]

Dreamslayer, do we have any power in the editor to change that rule? I suspect it is coded.

I'm basically OK with the idea of variable morale/exp ratings for front-line Soviet units. I think that higher manpower levels will have a significant effect on play balance. Soviet units come in with miserable exp levels but if you have the luxury of leaving them behind the lines for a couple of turns they can get respectable. Or alternatively you send them to the line but with better-quality units where you can have them participate in a couple of successful attacks to build exp. Beating up on Romanians is good practice![:D]

[thedoctorking]

Ajax, on frozen units I think we can change the turn they are active in the editor. I don't know about adding a condition for activation like the guys down in the Caucasus who become active when the Axis captures Kiev or Kharkov or something. It might be good to have the guys closer to the front in Ukraine be active when the Axis captures one of several towns in western Ukraine.

[Aufklaerungs]

DocKing- The program increases the leader ratings based on consistent improvement in combat commander performance. Ratings increases are reported/recorded in the end of turn log.

I guess the only suggestion I'm offering designers striving to balance new scenarios is to use the editor to adjust one or more of the leader trait values during play testing.

[Dreamslayer]

ORIGINAL: thedoctorking

Dreamslayer, do we have any power in the editor to change that rule? I suspect it is coded.

I'm basically OK with the idea of variable morale/exp ratings for front-line Soviet units. I think that higher manpower levels will have a significant effect on play balance. Soviet units come in with miserable exp levels but if you have the luxury of leaving them behind the lines for a couple of turns they can get respectable. Or alternatively you send them to the line but with better-quality units where you can have them participate in a couple of successful attacks to build exp. Beating up on Romanians is good practice![:D]

Problem is that variable morale/exp ratings can be too variable.
In the one game you can get unit with 60 morale/exp and in the other start the same unit can be with 30.
Anyway we can do nothing about it with editor.

[Dreamslayer]

If about frozen units.
Again because of the game rules we can't change actual frozen status for some units of Leningrad M.D.and Odesssa M.D.
Probably we can avoid it by relocating some units out of the frozen zones.

[thedoctorking]

So who knows how to use the editor feature to create a new scenario? The manual is pretty uninformative.