The Next War - Expanded (Beta 1.0) hotseat

[Hellen_slith]

US seems to be forming up better ... more Marines have arrived.

[Hellen_slith]

Soviet Special Forces slip into Salzburg while the 106th Airborne destroys bridges at Branau and Burghausen. The US Air Force has been effectively destroyed. Will the Austrians surrender now? Or will they wait for the inevitable fall of Graz and Linz? Or will they soldier on?

[mussey]

ORIGINAL: Hellen_slith

Soviet Special Forces slip into Salzburg while the 106th Airborne destroys bridges at Branau and Burghausen. The US Air Force has been effectively destroyed. Will the Austrians surrender now? Or will they wait for the inevitable fall of Graz and Linz? Or will they soldier on?

In the final release (soon!), I tweaked Austrian surrender as: 5% upon initial WP war (the Chamberlain option); 5% chance for Soviet occupation of each major city of Vienna, Linz, and Graz; and 20% for Salzburg. So unless the others trigger surrender, Salzburg will be the key. Any Austrian units able to successfully retreat to the redoubts of Fortress Alps is a huge win for NATO.

[Hellen_slith]

General Louis pulls a big fat hairy rabbit out his behind.

[Hellen_slith]

here is the crash msg we got (at least I hope this time it works ... )

[Hellen_slith]

trying a gain

[Hellen_slith]

The game has ended! The intrepid Gen. Louis retires with yet another medal to be expected for his surprise attack on Praha. The world breathes easier.

Summary: we purposely limited our "front" to Austria, so as not to get too involved w/ a broader front and risk losing efforts due to any beta issues, and also to be able to cycle through the game quicker. North of Austria / Czech, we only moved forces to the borders and noodled around w/ the air units.

The naval units are very "jerky" when we moved them, and the game once CTD during a big naval move, so we 86'd naval also as part of our house rule (although we allowed use of US naval air power that was based on carriers in the Channel)

Observations: US Marines did not defend AT ALL. They *always* automatically retreated before combat, dug in or not. Not sure if that is by design. They did fight well on the attack, but were useless as defenders.

The Czech surrender resulted not in Czechs being withdrawn, but the Hungarians, so that was weird, but it didn't make much difference b/c the game ended two turns later and the Soviets easily put reinforcements into their place.

NATO will have a very hard time defending against an aggressive WP player (looking at you, Larry!!). Also, the news briefing reported that the game was scheduled for full 34 turns or so, but the event engine correctly ended this game at 17 turns following declaration of hostilities (ended after NATO turn 18.)

We had a lot of fun playing this scene, and can't wait for the alpha and gold versions. I hope you enjoyed our reporting. I think we'll play another quick one, and this time will limit our scene to a Fulda Gap type throw (no Austrians, no Danes) w/ tension of a few moves.

Thanks for reading!

[Zovs]

The only odd thing in your play test report is that if Czech surrender that the Hungarians are withdrawn. I don't quite follow or understand that one. Plus I know a lot of Jar Heads that would say the game is broken and flawed because Marines never retreat, they retrograde move, lol.

[mussey]

Hellen, thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback. I will begin addressing these one-by-one so that we can determine if any future changes need to be made.

[mussey]

The CTD is alarming. Did you forward any logs to Ralph? Since I have little experience with these matters I am relying on the kindness of this community that can help alleviate this. This map is large, and over 500 events, maybe it is a source of the problem(?). Surely, there are larger maps and scenarios than this one. I wonder if they have experienced this...

[mussey]

Here is the equipment of a Marine bde. The Proficiency is set to 85% (while regular Army is 72%). If anyone has feedback, let me know. I don't want to make enemies of the Corp!!:

[mussey]

As for the Czech's, they hired substitutes to do the surrendering for them...

Kidding aside, this has been fixed as well as a few more Events that I previously broke when adding more formations. For Beta, the odds of WP non-participation was turned off so that we could see the full onslaught of naked, brutal Soviet aggression. The new odds of allied non-participation will look like this (note that each Formation for each nation is checked for a go, no-go. If they fail, they will be garrisoned. This can tone down the full bite of invasion.):
- Poland - about 10%
- E. Germany - 5%
- Czechoslovakia - 8%
- Hungary - 8%

- France - 20% that land/naval units inside France will not participate (I and III corps. Remember they were not a full NATO member.)
- Italy - 50% that they will not move unless Austria is invaded. (Politics, and maybe they will be needed to help NATO members Greece and Turkey in the Mediterranean.)
- Austria - see notes way above

Much of this is speculative and each of us has opinions on what these percentages can be. ANY feedback is appreciated!

[Hellen_slith]

Unfortunately, the only crash log I saw created and managed to save was that last one that came during combat resolution, with the message to send to Ralph. I'll forward that to the tech forum, along w/ the two sal files that were created (I think they are called mx_debug or something like that).

The other "random" CTDs (that came during movement) were, I thought, on my video card side or a CPU heat issue, but Larry also mentioned that he had a CTD during his move in the game we're just now starting.

Over the course of this game, it did that to me maybe three or five times, all prior to move 10, and it seemed to go away after a while. Not sure, but it may have been related to scrolling around the map in "small" view. I just started saving the game every so often, esp. before and after any big rail or air unit movement, and, of course, prior to and just after resolving any combats. It was only a minor annoyance, not a game killer. But you def. want to make save points in such a big scene so as not to have to re-do a lot of moves. I also stopped using the scroll around function so much (instead, using "left click" on the mouse to "center" the map on the cursor finger thing location. Seemed to work a lot better, and was easier that way, too.)

US Marines: not sure what the deal was w/ them. Every time WP engaged them, they "advanced to the rear". The French 11th airborne also seemed rather squeamish about engaging. Czech forces chopped them to bits early on.

Well, kudos to Gen. Louis for that last surprise move he made into Praha ... he managed to squeak a mech division right through a seam along the EG border, with BARELY enough movement points to get there practically unopposed, so that was my bad as WP player for overlooking that little seam he found (and his good move, for finding it at the last minute.)

Anyway, this is a great scenario, and for being so huge, it is a challenge for both sides b/c there are only 17 or so combat turns before the game ends, so you've really got to get some kind of strategy besides slogging through the front lines ... those airborne and SF units are really key for capturing essential points (by the same token, that makes air units and SAM / AAA esp. important, to try to shoot down those guys.)

Well, Larry and I have started our game. I just got his second WP move, combat has started, so it is now up to me to try to come up with a NATO strategy to try to hold him back. OK, well, thanks again for the great scene and for reading our AAR!!

[Zovs]

Approximately when will you post an update Mussey?

I'd like to give the next version a go.

[Hellen_slith]

I second the question, it has been a long time w/o any communication from TPTB. Last I saw, there was some grafx update to garrison towers in EG, and some talk about poas. adding Yugoslavia to map, but it seems the project has been 86'd