How about rethinking reinforcements...

[barbarossa2]

Look...I like reinforcements just as much as the next guy...but...

I have NEVER liked the way they have been implemented. Not since I was a prepubescent teen playing Panzerleader in 1980.

Norm and Talonsoft got this kind of figured out for "The Operational Art of War" with a two page nudge from me several years back and if I recall, it became known as "Strategic Options". But how about this...

You never know in advance exactly WHEN your reinforcements are going to arrive.
You may not know exactly WHERE they will arrive.
Some units may never arrive.
Others may, but only if you beg and plead with your commander for access to his reserves.

When playing the old wargames which represented tactical or operational action, I was always disappointed to think that THE SAME REINFORCEMENTS ALWAYS SHOWED UP AT THE SAME TIME NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED ON THE DAMNED MAP. That is to say, that the people who made decisions as to where extremely limited forces should go didn't pay attention to what was happening in that 10 by 10 km area (or 100km by 100km area) to make the decisions. That is...crazy. That's like saying you, as the German commander of the East front, wouldn't consider sending additional reinforcements to Stalingrad if it were worth "25 VP" and was about to fall with a whole corps in it and the Fuhrer was ready to execute you if you lost it.

In my opinion, as a rule of thumb, the following aspects should be taken into account...

1. The more reserves your boss has to commit to YOUR sector, the less happy he will be with you.
2. The worse you are doing in holding your critical objectives from the enemy advance, the more likely you are to either get more units from your commander's reserves...OR be relieved.
3. In spite of these other two rules of thumb, no matter how badly or well you are doing, there are simply units which were planned to be sent to your sector before the fighting began...but you can almost never predict exactly when they will arrive. This is, in my opinion also VERY interesting problem in warfare...

Concerning Number 3. For instance...when Market Garden began, I am assuming most of the British general staff of the 1st airborne in Arnhem was hoping that XXX Corps was actually going to arrive in the first three days of the battle. They probably acted in a manner that reflected that. However, by day three it was obvious that it might not be by day 5 and by day 5...well, you know the story...

WAIT!!! THAT'S RIGHT!!! You do KNOW the story. Which is why you WON'T fight the way the British would have fought who believed in the early arrival of the reinforcements!

When I sat down to play my first Arnhem campaign battle in HTTR, I did KNOW with 100% certainty that XXX Corps wouldn't even arrive on the map for several days. And I completely changed my style of play to suit this fact.

Which is why, in my dasy as a Beta Tester for The Operational Art of War, I pushed for:

1. The ability to slightly randomize unit entries.
2. The ability for players (commanders) to BEG their superiors for additional reinforcements...AT A PRICE...usually, the cost of additional VPs. So, it would be like, "well, I know that I could possibly get that bridge if I had the 3rd SS Panzer Division at my disposal. The bridge is worth 50 VP...do I dare release the 3RD SS Panzer division for 20 VP (Or better yet, randomization...20 to 35 VP)? Are they even available to be released yet? How long will it take them to get here once I get them released (gee, I can't predict this with certainty!)
3. Of course, the ability to deliver reinforcements the old standard way...on a perfect time schedule.

The ability to call for additional units like this allows for all of the "what if" situations to be taken care of with simple rules. Most what if situations involve things like, "what if these reserves had been committed?" and what if this battalion, sitting on the airstrip at such and such an airport had been sent here? And, at Dien Bien Phu, what if the US had employed the Atom Bomb? Well, the answer to the last question is...tactical victory but strategic defeat. So...sure you could have used an A bomb and gotten your hills around the airstrip...but you would have suffered so much political fallout, that you would have "lost" in the world's eyes for having stooped to that level. Allowing players to "push" for unit release that costs them VPs is great in that it puts them on the horns of a dilemma every turn.

Perfectly timed reinforcements from one game to the next make things rather boring. And the above system adds ridiculous amounts of interest and re-playability.

Players who do more with less are rewarded for this ability. And things which are impossible to know...can stay impossible to know. I HATE replaying scenarios knowing exactly when I will meet the same damned enemy corps on the same damned road.

(By the way, in case you hadn't guessed I am also a fan of alternate setups) [;)]

-Chris

[wodin]

Sounds good to me.

[Agema]

I have issues with this.

We're modelling historical battles here. You can't have XXX corps, fos instance, not turn up on the particular road they do, because that's the only road they could or would realistically turn up on. Secondly, whilst your little area of operations might be progressing differently from the historical perspective, that's no reason to assume the forces back in Eindhoven and Nijmegen haven't performed differently. XXXth was going for the Arnhem bridge ASAP, so you can hardly ask them to turn up or be released sooner. The same goes for most other units. If the Germans lost the bridge, they're in deep trouble. Why would they hold back all those second-rate garrison troops when the ramifications of losing the battle could be so awful? They'd just chuck them in anyway.

You're querying the reinforcements on the grounds you know they'll arrive at a certain time and place, which affects your decisions, unrealistically, as 1st Airborne Division commander. Well, yes it does. However, you also happen to know that there are two refitting SS panzer divisions with plenty of armoured vehicles in the area which Montgomery chose to ignore and may not have told his men about. You know you haven't a cat in hell's chance of reaching and holding the main Arnhem bridge due to the distance and the amount of troops the Germans can bundle into the city before you. And you know charging across fields into those armoured vehicles bristling with machine guns will get your lightly-armed paras annihiated. You know all this because, well, that's the historical accuracy, and it affects the way you play anyway.

I think you've got a good idea, there, don't get me wrong.

But for the time scale and size of HTTR/COTA it's not so practical. If you're running the battle of the Bulge, and you're steamrollering the allies, you might persuade Hitler to release a few more panzer divisions to complete a rout, but those panzer divisions would have to get there and get ready. In essence, it would take a long operation, and also where there actually is an off-map strategic reserve pool to make it justifiable.

[RayWolfe]

ORIGINAL: barbarossa2
(By the way, in case you hadn't guessed I am also a fan of alternate setups) [;)]
-Chris

I guess then, that you are delighted that HTTR and COTA has them ... [;)]
and, of course, alternate entry points.
Ray

[MarkShot]

I believe reinforcements modeled as para/glider drops can have variable locations. And as you know, time windows for reinforcements can very tight or very wide.

More certainly could be done with reinforcements as well as many other aspects of the game. That's why Dave gets paid the big bucks as he has to make the hard decisions on all these potential features!

[RayWolfe]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
I believe reinforcements modeled as para/glider drops can have variable locations. And as you know, time windows for reinforcements can very tight or very wide.

Not just para/glider Mark, any reinforcement can be entered into the Scenario Maker to arrive anywhere and you can make infinite (?) numbers of alternate schedules. However, when the game loads and selects one of the schedules, you, as the player then know from your reinforcement tab where those reinforcements are going to enter the map. What you don't know is the exact time but you do know the parameters that the designer has set, which, as you say, can be tight or wide.
Ray

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: RayWolfe
What you don't know is the exact time

Oh yes I do - with my luck it's always at the last possible minute of the time-frame [:(]

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[RayWolfe]

With the quality of your generalship, surely you have no need of reinforcements ...
or do I mean that with the quality of your generalship, surely reinforcements are pointless?
Ray

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: RayWolfe
With the quality of your generalship, surely you have no need of reinforcements ...
or do I mean that with the quality of your generalship, surely reinforcements are pointless?

You know that message that says the AI is willing to surrender, click "accept surrender" ?

I get the reverse : The AI is willing to accept *your* surrender, click "accept to surrender" [8|]

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[barbarossa2]

To Agema,

I agree that there are several missions in which there simply isn't time to deploy a whole panzer division on a whim. And your other points are well taken. I even agree on many of them with you.

And I even think that there are situations in which no matter how much you beg and plead with your superior officer that you won't get the reinforcements you think you need. That could be easily modelled by making the request, having a (scenario programmer determined) percentage checked. If it passes the check, the unit is released at the VP cost. If it fails the check, then the unit is not released, and your officer says, "dismissed" or whatever...and sends you back to face your overwhelming odds. Maybe there are two or three units available in "area" and the player is only allowed to ask for one unit once. After the first no, he can forget it. I don't know.

But randomizing entries somewhat would add tremendously to replay value (for me...and for a lot of others out there).

I would love to NOT know exactly how many enemy units I am facing in every single replay. Or when I am playing against another player. And even though HTTR does have alternate setups, by definition, I have to select the scenario, so I know which one is coming at me.

[MarkShot]

Spit it out - you want an a random scenario generator!

[barbarossa2]

No. I actually don't want a random scenario generator.

But that is interesting.

I would rather slightly randomize unit entry.

And in cases where historical documentation indicates that there were units operating in the area which potentially could have been deployed, allow the player to perhaps request them and get them AT A PRICE, but also possibly be turned down and have that be the end of the story.

Of course, there could also be a AS IS HISTORICAL scenario for players who want just that...100% historical deployments every friggin' time...with declining replay value at every sitting because the AI is struggling againt your human learning curve.

P.S. Mark Shot, how do you overcome the "launch time" coordination problem I posted in the "CotA New Features" section. Is there a way to plan sufficiently to get around this problem so every one attacks at the same time??? I want to start a thread on this problem out here, on the "home page" where it belongs.

[MarkShot]

I posted your answer on the COTA mini-guide thread.

[Fred98]

I have suggested this with other games. When you play a scenario, it has EXACTLY the same make up of troops for both sides, no matter how many times you play that scenario.

This leads to players making gamey moves because he KNOWS with 90% certainty the location of ALL the enemy forces and that the enemy CANNOT counter the move.

The solution is that there be an option. The option being a 20% variation at random. One side or the other side or both sides have their force strength increased, or decreased at random.

A player will know whether his force has changed up or down but he will never know whether the opponent’s force has changed up or down or not changed at all!

The uncertainty takes away gameyness and adds to the excitement.

-

[JudgeDredd]

I had an issue with reinforecements on Combat Mission games (sorry for kind of "off topic".

I made a mission in the mission builder where I had a landing zone and some troops for the user to use (lets be honest here - I was trying to "kind of" recreate the Landing Zone X-Ray). The user had to use these to hold the current location and fan out and grab 2 other locations - these were the other drop zones. What I wanted to do was this - if the drop zones were overran by the germans, then the user had to use his meagre forces to grab them or his reinforcements would not turn up.

Unfortunately, with the game engine the way it is, you couldn't do that. The reinforcements were either going to turn up or not.

It was a shame, 'cos it could've been a good scenario.

[Arjuna]

Good discussion guys.

Just for the record, there is nothing preventing a scenario designer creating multiple reinforcement schedules with completely different force mixes, entry points and arrival times. In fact many of the Battle for the Bases scenarios do just that. At game start you don't know what force you will have, where it will come in and when it will arrive. Nor do you know those of your opponent.

If this this is what you want in a scenario, then all you have to do is cxreate one in the ScenMaker. You can start with an existing historical one and modify it, if you like. These are best done with no units on map at game start. In other words every force arrives as a reinforcement. At least one unit from each side must have a scheduled arrival time at scenario start. Apart from that everything is free reign.

Have fun.[:)]