Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War Summer Tournament

[Tcao]

Oh, so your opponent decided to move Abrams at the beginning of the game and sit on your spawning point?

I took out my opponent HHQ + Arty, but I used a different approach. I had two CFV recon section hold fire, sit on the hill monitoring the valley. After I saw all sixty WP tanks transferred to the right side of the map I initiate my raid. I commit all my Abrams which were hiding in middle section. issue 6 waypoints orders with last two guiding the raiding party back to friendly territories.

I lost two Abrams , wipe out the NVA's HHQ + 18 x 2S1 SPArty, increase the WP's command cycle to astonishing 73min. Then Abrams get into new defense position right before WP side's tank formation started their assault.

[DIVM]

Yes, he moved at least 1x Abrams and 3-4 of the Bradleys to the hills overlooking the spawning area of the arty, it was ready for a butchery. I was lucky that I had sent a group of Tanks that way, and used a couple of my recon with HEAT weapons to present enough of a battle soon enough. At least I keep a full arty and the HQ alived, made the NATO lose over half of theirs between the counter attack and artillery strikes, and eventually won the match.

But again, ideally this wouldn't be even possible. I feel some scenarios should be tweaked for Pbem play.

[Tcao]

yes agree. And I hope in the future the game can allow us to choose where the reinforcement show up on the map

[Argyll]

Thanks for all the feedback, particularly on scenario selection.

These scenarios weren't designed with 'competitive' balanced gameplay in mind from the start, but I'm working on a strategy that we can rapidly generate symmetrical maps and create balanced scenarios that we can deploy for each tournament season. That way, we can mitigate the griefing gameplay, like spawn camping or artillery exploits.

If anyone has ideas for tournament-minded scenarios, please let me know here.

What I'm thinking is a progression of echelons scaling up as you progress:
Scenario 1: Company level skirmish on a small map.
Scenario 2: Combined arms Battalion level battle on a medium map.
Scenario 3: Combined arms Brigade level operation on a large map.

Or maybe we can do a consistent scale as a tournament theme? For example: light infantry company scenario, armored squadron scenario, and mechanized infantry company-plus scenario (with tanks and mortars attached).

[Uberhauskaninichen]

Thanks for hosting the tournament.

The first tournament's scenarios were great being Chance Encounter, Schlacht bei Deimelstadt, and Return to Fulda. From the Southern Storm tournaments Crossing the Waldnaab, The Heilbronn Gambit, Brothers in Arms, and the Great Escape are good tournament scenarios. I haven't played A Final Push in tournament so I'll reserve comment on that one. But the following are exploitable: Lesson of War (race the Soviets to the objectives, shell the roads that the WG will take (but disagree that is an exploit), An Autobahn to Far (WP can race to WG reinforcement area and even smash through the few PzGrens available to send to defend it, in CW the artillery coverage did improve to protect this area compared to SS).
I do like Panzers Forward but it can be argued if it is an exploit that the WGs drive to set up an ambush of the Cz reinforcements. The Armoured Fist and Go West Young Man have been discussed, but for Alamo at Soest, if the Poles attack through the northern riverbank road, not only is it the most protected route, the Texans don't have a lot, even with cross attachment to stop a breakthrough with and are in real trouble when the Poles don't attack in the open. The new scenario EA Knife, also with Texan M60s and the Poles, is a great meeting engagement and I think it will make a fantastic tournament scenario.

Also, any scenario with an immobile FARP setup in one hex only is highly exploitable.

[DIVM]

Also, any scenario with an immobile FARP setup in one hex only is highly exploitable.

This !

These scenarios weren't designed with 'competitive' balanced gameplay in mind from the start, but I'm working on a strategy that we can rapidly generate symmetrical maps and create balanced scenarios that we can deploy for each tournament season. That way, we can mitigate the griefing gameplay, like spawn camping or artillery exploits.

Although the ability to generate symmetrical maps would be great, I think that isn't a top issue as we are playing mirror matches. Maps can be exploited all the same in a mirror match if the starting positions and reinforcements positions are all known.
Best would be giving a much wider area of deployment hexes （especially for reinforcements) to make spawn camping unlikely or at least make it as a tactical decision rather than an exploit; and avoid artillery for the first few turns or that their location / range is so that cannot be used as an exploit. It is pretty much trying to portrait the same "unknown" feeling of the Single Player experience to the Multiplayer, where recon actually matters, where reinforcements could come in from several paths in, where the specific hex of the starting enemy units is very hard to guess. If the map or the scenario （small defense forces facing an attacking horde) is unbalanced, I think that's ok as long as it is a mirror match; what bothers me personally is the exploits, that although could be used by both players, take away the fun and "realism" of the game.

What I'm thinking is a progression of echelons scaling up as you progress:
Scenario 1: Company level skirmish on a small map.
Scenario 2: Combined arms Battalion level battle on a medium map.
Scenario 3: Combined arms Brigade level operation on a large map.

I agree the first scenario should always be smaller one. For the rest, I don't really mind the scale. However, something I really appreciate having during large scenarios is releasing units by waves of reinforcements (as long as they cannot be ambushed, probably best from the same side of the starting area) so the first turns don't take forever to coordinate and give orders and send to the opponent. This speeds up things a lot. I remember playing one large scenario during a FCSS tournament where the first turn took me like 90mins to do, and that's a lot of time when you cannot save in-between like in Single Player and the other player is waiting for you, so I usually have to wait for weekends when dealing with such scenarios with massive forces on turn 1.

[Budikah]

I wish I had more to add, but I can concur heavily with DIVM and Uberhaus.

I'm probably a bit of an odd duck, but out of the hundred plus hours I have in FCCW, I'd say 90% of that has been spent in PBEM matches. I've always enjoyed playing against people more; even if they're worse, or far better than the AI. In doing so, I think you notice quite a few things about the setup as DIVM and Uber mentioned. For the purposes of multiplayer/tournament matches, I'd say...

- No unit should be stuck only to a single hex spawn
- Spawn hexes that seem 'out of place' compared to the rest can be used to stack entire groups on, when it seems like they were meant mainly for recon forces.
- Artillery available during pre-planning can be absolutely catastrophic; best kept on a timer.
- Avoid placing spawn hexes too close to the enemy spawns, on a particular map I was able to deploy my tanks on a single hex spawn ridge and sort of end the game on turn one.

Much of it is smoothed out by the fact mirror matches are played, but these things would help smooth it out a bit. I'll keep an eye out in my games for anything else that sticks out, but these are the major 'pain points' we try and avoid when we select a scenario to play together. I appreciate that the game has plenty of narrative style scenarios, and me being a 'multiplayer only' type of player probably isn't really the target audience, but ya'll did a great job and we love it - so here I am

Looking forward to the next tournament you folks host!