Matrix Games Forums

Thanks,

Going pretty good so far.... I'm working on action cards and event code at the moment... I should have a pre-alpha availble sometime this week. Not sure if it'll be worth anyones time trying to play a real campaign at that point or not....but I'll upload it to the sandbox for folks to fool around with if they want while I keep working on it.

I've got the War Footing code and Action Cards working... War Footing controls a nations production and combat effectiveness. It's how I simulate things like the Western Allies and Soviets not being ready for war when it came to them...and not being able to stand up well against the Axis despite having large armies (At least in the case of the Soviets....Polands and Frances aren't all that small either) and large economies.
It's something you can increase over time by spending PP's on.

I'm working on the code and Action Cards for Neutrality and Activation right now. Essentialy rather then entering the War at a set time or in response to a specific event...nations have a somewhat random chance to enter into the War once thier Neutrality drops below a certain threshold. Neutrality will be effected by events in the game.... essentialy the more agressive the Axis is, the more everyones Neutrality drops as they start to realize that staying out of the War might not be possible....but players can spend PP's to influence various nations Neutrality through Action Cards.

So for example, Italy doesn't enter the war in response to Lillie falling or anything like that. Italy has a random chance to enter the War each turn after it's Neutrality drops to 70. It's neutrality drops in response to events Germany triggers (like capturing Warsaw, etc) but the Axis can also play Action Cards to lower it as well. The lower the Neutrality, the more likely it will be to join. This makes things a little more random and simulates the fact that leaders didn't always no for sure how countries would react to certain events or propositions. Of course, Germany can attack many of the neutral nations any time it wants....and this wil bring them into the war right away.

Bombur, in response to your question. French equipment upgrades to US built equipment after tech level 1. You are also free to produce British, French or US equipment from any Western Allied city.... I don't really see a way for the game engine to stop you from doing that. However, players could always make a House Rule about it if they want...to keep things closer to history.

ORIGINAL: Grymme

To be hones i personally prefer all black&white pictures or at least not a mix.  But i guess its a matter of taste. In any case the SFTsystem seem to shape up nicely.

I think you're right about that, most would agree. But then again I'm gratefull [&o] these old planes made it into the SFT system in the first place.

ORIGINAL: GrumpyMel

Bombur, in response to your question. French equipment upgrades to US built equipment after tech level 1. You are also free to produce British, French or US equipment from any Western Allied city.... I don't really see a way for the game engine to stop you from doing that. However, players could always make a House Rule about it if they want...to keep things closer to history.

-A good idea. Another alternative is to create "what is if" equipment, based on prototypes of 1940. But it makes no sense if all allied cities are to produce the same equipment. I liked the way you dealt with this. Will you include post 1945 equipment too?

Alright, as promised I uploaded what I had completed of the scenerio so far for people to take a look at and fool around with. You can find it over in the Sandbox area of the AT scenerio bank. Please be aware that this scenerio is incomplete and still being worked on. There are LOTS of things that haven't been implimented yet (Winter, Vichy France, about half the diplomatic options, VP's etc) and most of what is implimented hasn't been play tested yet...so it's quite likely you'll encounter some bugs.

In other words...play at your own risk...and I probably wouldn't start up a serious PBEM game yet. Nevertheless, I know some of you guys have been really interested in getting a look at this so I figured I would put it up, even at this early stage rather then keep you waiting.

I'll be working on this and posting updated versions as regularly as I can. So that being said...please enjoy....and feel free to post feedback here.

Uploaded a new version to the scenerio bank....


- Fixed some bugs with some SFT's not availble to the Allies that should be.

-Fixed air transport range.

- Added Winter Effects (Might need to do more here....will be interested in opinions)

- Added Activation Code for most countries in the game.

- Added a check to see if England has been invaded, vastly decreasing US neutrality.

- Added some reporting and better feedback for players.

Still quite a few things to do, but this version might be playtest-able. If anyone is giving it a whirl, I'll be interested to hear your feedback.

The scenario looks great. Do you intend to develop custom ships?

ORIGINAL: Bombur

The scenario looks great. Do you intend to develop custom ships?

No immediate plans for that, although that certainly is something that I could do once I'm sure that the basics of game-play are working well. At this point I'm play testing it against myself...and I'm relatively happy with how it's working out.

Have a few more options that I need to put in (Vichy as well as finnishing up a couple activations I haven't done yet). Also I think I may need to do something graphicaly to represent Winter terrain...so far I'm just using readiness loss by zone...and that seems to be working ok from a game-play perspective...but I may want to add in winter terrain types to give the players a better graphical feel (could also do funky stuff like the swamps to light forest that WAW does...and maybe even frozen lakes in Russia...I know that was a pretty big deal in the Lenningrad campaign historicaly.)

Anyways, at this point I'm really hoping to get some people play testing the scenerio...so I can get some feedback on play balance.

I volunteer for playtest, but I noticed that USSR cannot be chosen by players...

USSR starts asleep like in WAW, it wakes up during the course of play. At which point it is availble to be played

But in this case you should keep the USSR active in order to allow the players to choose regime and the sleep the country in turn 1, right?
Also I feel it´s unfair to keep the USSR asleep because they will be unable to research and to build up their forces. And there was also the Russian Finnish war....

ORIGINAL: Bombur

But in this case you should keep the USSR active in order to allow the players to choose regime and the sleep the country in turn 1, right?
Also I feel it´s unfair to keep the USSR asleep because they will be unable to research and to build up their forces. And there was also the Russian Finnish war....

Bombur,

I'm not real sure what the difference would be...since it's designed as a human only scenerio. I can't even imagine how the AI would be able to deal efficiently with the map and army sizes.

As far as Russia being in from the start. It would likely be an auto-loss for the Axis player if the USSR was allowed to play from the start and even a half-way competent player was allowed the freedom to organize thier production, research and forces as they choose.

I think I would probably have to find a way to place so many restrictions and handicaps on what the Russian player could do for the first year or so of the game that it probably wouldn't be much fun to play.

Basicaly my thinking is that the Soviets should wake up some-time between the start and when the Axis is ready to invade. They'll wake up to a large but completely FUBAR Army and Economy.... and it'll be a race for them to turn things around before the Germans are able to do enough damage to push them past the point of no return.

For the Axis side, they won't know exactly WHEN the Soviets are going to wake up...but they will know the longer they wait...the more chances the Soviets have to wake up and start getting ready before the attack.

So they'll need to balance the need to attack quickly with the need to incapacitate the Allies strongly enough to allow them to finnish the Russian operation with minimal interference....and the need to build up a strong enough army to deal the Russians a critical blow when they do attack.

That's the way I'm hoping it'll play out anyways...I definately want the Soviets to be a winnable position. If they turn out to be too weak...then I'll either ratchet up thier starting strength...or increase the odds of them waking up so that they wake up earlier.

Honestly, that's the only reasonable way I see to go for things.

[/quote]
I'm not real sure what the difference would be...since it's designed as a human only scenerio. I can't even imagine how the AI would be able to deal efficiently with the map and army sizes.

-Ok, I understand...

As far as Russia being in from the start. It would likely be an auto-loss for the Axis player if the USSR was allowed to play from the start and even a half-way competent player was allowed the freedom to organize their production, research and forces as they choose.

-Well, you could start with their army in a miserable state (to simulate the purges). Historically, there was a big expansion of the Red Army from 1939 to 1941. If the Germans are allowed to expand freely and the Russians become frozen, they will be in a very poor position.

I think I would probably have to find a way to place so many restrictions and handicaps on what the Russian player could do for the first year or so of the game that it probably wouldn't be much fun to play.

-Why not to play with Staff? Make staff more expensive and less efficient, Give the Germans a lot and the Soviets almost nothing. And then there is still the surprise invasion....(or maybe not...I don´t know how you organized events)

Basicaly my thinking is that the Soviets should wake up some-time between the start and when the Axis is ready to invade. They'll wake up to a large but completely FUBAR Army and Economy.... and it'll be a race for them to turn things around before the Germans are able to do enough damage to push them past the point of no return.

-Ok, this could be funny....

For the Axis side, they won't know exactly WHEN the Soviets are going to wake up...but they will know the longer they wait...the more chances the Soviets have to wake up and start getting ready before the attack.

-Good idea. Well, I´m ready to playtest if you want. As I´m a horrendous player, I could start with the Germans. If I manage to defeat the Soviets then the game needs a new balance....[:D]

Sure,

Let me post something up in the Looking for Opponents section and see if we can get a 3rd...or maybe if we get 2 people...I'll bow out and let the other players duke it out as I watch. Sometimes I think it might be helpfull as a scenerio designer just to watch others playing... so you don't influence the course of play with your own preconceptions.

Your Map is beautiful

Do you think the games will play such a big map in non-geological time periods? I've gave up on a big map when I play tested it (but I must say I had 6 opponents which slows things down alot!)

Posting the link to a "sleeping project" I worked on with Bartheart some time ago. Maybe you can get some ideas from there. Not the latest build, but I'll see if I can find the files for that somewhere: http://www.kodapa.com/development/kodap ... build1.zip

Widell,

Thanks, I'll take a look at that when I get a chance.

Maddoc, I suspect roughly it'll be the same sort of time investment as GPW or War in Russia to play....which certainly is a significant investment...but those seem to get a fair amount of play.

With a PBEM game, I think guys are generaly ok with a turn taking a couple hours to play, as they know they'll only be playing it once every few days. The real kicker, I've found seems to be turn around time, the more players you have the longer a turn sits in some-ones e-mail box waiting for them to get home from work...or find time to play it. That's what really seems to make for games that seem to play out in geologic time.

It's a shame because (IMO) games with alot of players are more fun.... as they create room for cooperation, coordination, diplomacy, back-stabbing and all that other fun stuff.... but they definately make for a much slower playing game.

It's my hope that the 3 sides (Allies, Soviets, Axis) works out to be a good compromise number for this scenerio....It fits nicely historicaly and leaves some room for diplomacy/cooperation while still keeping turn around time reasonable.

Also the AT Engine doesn't really have alot of built-in support for close cooperation among allies... things like basing and passage rights and drawing supplies from allies, etc. That's something I hope Vic will be able to beef up a little bit in the next version of AT.

On a side note, one of the things I've seen done in some games of the larger scenerio's is a team of players sharing one regieme. So one will play AGN commander for example, another will play AGC, etc... You have to take the game off the PBEM setting so that you can save during the turn...and send it on to the next player on your team...but it can be a real blast to play that way.... It DOES however, slow down the game quite a bit.

On another note, I'm trying to think up a good mechanic for simulating the Murmansk convoys.

What I was thinking about doing was creating a bunch of sea zones along the route and when the Allied player plays an Action Card have the event code calculate what the Russians get based off of the smallest number of Cargo Ship SFT's in any one of the zones. The idea being that if the Axis wanted to to disrupt the convoys, they'd send stuff up to sink the cargo ships and break the route....and if the Allies wanted to keep the route open they'd send cargo ships up along with escorts to protect them.

What do folks think? Has anyone found a good way to simulate these convoys in thier scenerios?

One idea would be to have one hex in Murmansk region that belongs to the West (lend lease offload area). And a special SFT called leandlease (or normal SFTs). Each round you check how many of the special SFTs are in the area (or how many of each normal SFT). Then it removes all SFTs from that area and instead add that many SFTs/supply/whatever to the Russian player.
 
It has the advantage of realism, so you really have to freight the aid and the germans really have to push it through.

Uploaded a new version to the sandbox. Lots of updates..

- Many Bugfixes
- Completed all Diplomatic functions
- Increased costs for Improving War Footing and Techs
- Added WAW style Winter terrain with Combat and Movement Penalties. Alpine units are unaffected.
- Reduced readiness loss caused by Winter.
- Changed many Finnish troops to Alpine Units
- Added functionalty for Vichy
- Reworked Halftracks to be more balanced
- Hvy Fighters (i.e. BF110-C) now use Fighter type rather then Strike Craft
- Fixed Carrier Capacities to be more realistic and to allow only aircraft designed for carrier service to be carried at full capacity.
- Added many Naval Air Sft types
- Added Escort Carriers
- Increased Build Costs for Naval Units to be more realistic
- Added functionality for Lend Lease and Murmansk Convoys.


Hope folks enjoy the changes/additions

Uploaded Version 1O11 to sandbox....
 
- More bugfixes
- Tweaked Hawker Hurricanes to be a bit more effective in Air Combat
- Halved cost for building Light Flak to make air a little less dominant.
- Adjusted Italy's Activation and Neutraility numbers to make them more likely to come in quickly
- Upgraded Production for Stettin and Kiel to give Germany more naval production capacity.
- Reduced Costs of Destroyers, Subs and Cargo Ships
- Reworked Naval Units... ships now have different speeds..and these increase with Tech. Cruisers less deadly AA (especialy early war) but are now faster then other ships with good recon. Other ships have slightly increased AA but still vulnerable to naval air, especialy in early war.
- Tech now costs double if researched before year of historical availability
- Soviet starting War Footing tweaked up to 30