My Take on Battlefront

[larizona55]

I have been gaming for a long long time as have a few of the reply posters. I can certainly see the point that the interface color choices, resolution, etc. are problems for many people. I agree that tooltips would help a great deal. But I think the game even as is, is still very enjoyable. These should really be only minor problems in light of the great gameplay value in Battlefront. I am certain a patch or two will fix these issues. In the meantime, the nifty magnifying glass is good enough for me to keep playing.

Certainly the interface does not follow standard convention; and this is a problem for some folks. However, I feel it is rather ingenious if evaluated on it's own merit. Everything you really need to play is on just a few screens. I have found that if I don't worry about tweaking and understanding every roll, and rely on the max attack button, gameplay goes very quickly, and I can play market garden in an evening. Other games don't even come close to that ease of play.

[Roughtor]

it was hard to believe there wasn't... it sure isn't well documented... now that I see all the hotkey features I can't image how I've been playing without them... perhaps that explains the Red Devil's peril in the AAR... I just didn't see the weak link...

[redwolf]

ORIGINAL: BlackSunshine

I understand where you are coming from.

When I first bought Korsun Pocket (which Battlefront's "engine" comes from), I was overwhelmed as well. I had played TOAW:COW for a long, long time prior to this, and really needed another operational war game to play. I must have read the manual several times, and just basically played around until I started figuring things out. I still probably don't know everything!

This is exactly how I felt and where I came from. I think the SSG series has a compat system that occupies a sweet spot between realism and simplicity.

But for a person like me, with very bad memory, it was pretty much unplayable. There is no way for me to learn what a gazillion of icons stand for, and it wrecks a whole class of wargames for me. Apart from the SSG games it is a major reason I can't play ATF and Decisive Action.

Note that I don't say I'm stupid, my brain stores connections, mechanisms, very well, in fact I get highly payed for it. But for some reason it lacks the capability to connect funky little icons to what they mean. I lack the capability to follow the "obvious" connection between a graphic symbol and why the designer chose it. I guess I would suck at reading ancient Egyptian writings, too

TacOps for example is much better for me. Just because it uses text instead of icons, and because it uses pop-up boxes that have the useful items for a unit compined (but it has hotkeys to make the management of the pop-ups efficient and non-annoying).

[sol_invictus]

My only gripe so far, beside for the the small counters and lack of tooltps, is that I would like the engine to be less "loose". It seems much to easy for Artillery units to fire on any unit that is simply spotted. This is too flexible imo and Artillery units should only be allowed to fire on units spotted by friendly units within their command chain. Also, it seems too easy for units that are in close contact with enemy units, to leave their zoc, move several kilometers up the line, and immediately launch into an assault. With turns representing such a short amount of time, I think it should be very rare that a unit can achieve such flexibility. There needs to be a bit more stickiness once a unit is committed to the line, imo. Would these things be modable?

[Hertston]

On the positive side BF is a super wargaming system, it really is. Quick (relatively) to play, while being reasonably 'realistic' to boot, it reminds me of all those hours playing the paper and counters stuff all those years ago. Genuine fun in a way that TOAW manifestly isn't much of the time.

On the negative side; I'm no fan of the UI either, I think it could be (or could have been) redone to make it look both smarter and clearer with affecting the game adversely. It's also a little 'lite' as to the number of scenarios, IMHO. It could have done with another couple of meaty ones to pump up the value for money factor of the intial release. It really needs a tutorial scenario to be included, too; a comprehensive tutorial like the KP one would be very helpful to new players.

A question for anyone who might know the answer, why is the system tied in so much to WW2? As far as I can see there's no reason at all it couldn't handle stuff like the '67 and '73 Arab-Israeli wars, if not 'modern'. Modern wouldn't needed much in the way of additions, and could have been done without compromising the fidelity of the WW2 scenarios. Maybe a couple of scenarios outside WW2 might have broadened the game's appeal?

[bos]

Artillery does seem too good. I would argue that successful artillery should cause a temporary one-turn step loss of a unit (or maybe all units?) in the target hex. It could be recovered at the END of the opponents' next turn, with no cost to timed replacements.

If the strike would have removed the last step from a unit, the penalties could be harsher, but not so harsh as complete destruction. Options include flagging the target as "isolated" for the remainder of the attacker's turn, clearing all its attack bullets, giving it no new attack bullets on the opponent's turn, clearing its defensive bullets, subtracting some number of OPs or all of them, limiting supply received on opponent's turn, giving the targetted hex an op-penalty for one turn. Or all of the above [8D]

[sol_invictus]

To be honest, I am really tired of doing the WW2 dance and have been for a few years. I only bought TOAWIII because it had several WWI battles in it and I never even considered playing anything post-WWI. I certainly hope that several people create some pre-WWI scenarios for Battlefront. Let's face it, SSG's games and TOAWIII are the only games in town and they are by far a monument to WWII. A perfectly fine war, but I am just a bit fatigued by fighting it all these years. It seems like Battlefront could possibly work for The Wars of German Unification and certainly WWI. One can dream.

[cesteman]

Arinvald
 
 While I applaud your opinion BF was not created for WWI or Pre-WWI games. I am not saying that the game engine can not be used to create Pre WWI games or WWI scenarios I am just pointing out that the creators wanted to focus on WWII. I know that BII has a scenario that does not involve WWII in fact I think there are two, one for WWI and another from the 16th century? I could be wrong but I just wanted to make a point that anyone can create a scenario to cater to their needs or ideas. Why not try working on something from WWI? I for one would be willing to give any support that I can taking into consideration RL needs. Just food for thought
Christian
 
 

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

My only gripe so far, beside for the the small counters and lack of tooltps, is that I would like the engine to be less "loose". It seems much to easy for Artillery units to fire on any unit that is simply spotted. This is too flexible imo and Artillery units should only be allowed to fire on units spotted by friendly units within their command chain. Also, it seems too easy for units that are in close contact with enemy units, to leave their zoc, move several kilometers up the line, and immediately launch into an assault. With turns representing such a short amount of time, I think it should be very rare that a unit can achieve such flexibility. There needs to be a bit more stickiness once a unit is committed to the line, imo. Would these things be modable?

There is no direct way to make spotting be tied to unit. Some units need this limitation, some shouldn't have it... so another approach can be done... By setting HQ artillery resupply bullet area smaller, you can de facto cause this to happen. All units have to be close to the HQ to resupply attack bullets, so the net effect is that if an artillery unit is getting resupplied its close enough to its own front line units.

As far as units moving back and forth this is totally a factor of scenario design. By shortening turn length (lowering available movement OPs along the way) this can easily be done. SSG scenarios are set at 24 hours per turn... lots of time to send a detachment here or there and still have the main unit back in the line. If turn length were dropped to 8 hours, this would become very difficult to achieve. Lots of other editor settings that can be tweaked to prevent back & forth movement.

[JSS]

@ Arinvald,

Pre-WWII will work really well.  Just need scenario design, designer, and some community interest.

@ Hertston,

Might be interesting to see how model combat works.   Think it will do well thru Korea 53.  Missiles and longer range systems of later battles would require some thought.  In the end I suspect you're right and it would simply take a little applied design thought to get it right.

[sol_invictus]

Thanks for the feedback all. Just to be clear, I think Battlefront is a fine game and a very solid engine. I am just getting fussy as I get older. Since this is a newly tooled engine, I am sure it will be refined and improved through patches, mods, and further releases. It is certainly a good game as is, I just hope that it developes in a way that suits my personal desires. Now if someone would make a Napoleonic battle with the engine, I would be in wargammer heaven. Not sure how the interaction between Cavalry and Infantry would work, but one can dream. Since the Crimea was done with the earlier engine, I guess a talented and dedicated desgner could pull it off.