Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Alchenar


It doesn't offer choices though? When has it ever offered you a choice?

In any of the game scenarios you have to make do with what you are given. Oh, my battalion commander lacks aggression? Tough. There's nobody else and I need that objective so off you go.

What would actually be useful from a user perspective is something similar to that which Sid Meier's Gettysburg! (surely we've all played that) did at the start of the scenario: "This is your best brigade" "These are veteran troops" etc etc.

When the stats aren't going to change over the course of the scenario and everything is pre-set, don't make me dig through tab after tab of raw stats to work out what my units are like, give me a quick 'these are elite shock troops' 'these guys are green and will run if someone sneezes at them' 'these guys are good but their CO tends to fuck up'.


e: this is a complexity vs depth pit that many wargames fall into. It's like when WitE rolls for every rifle squad in a corps v corps combat when all that really matters is that one side's CV is twice the other's. Complexity is all well and good, but if it isn't actually adding any depth then it should in general be tucked away where it can't disturb the player from the choices they actually have

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Good discussion guys. Sorry for not responding earlier but I have been preoccupied elsewhere at the moment.

The doctrinal differences between the Allied and Axis forces were most pronounced in the earlier part of the war where British and French armoured warfare doctrine lagged behind the German use of combined arms. By late 1944 all Western Allied forces had embraced the combined arms approach. The Brits were the last to make the change. It took the disaster of Op Goodwood in the Normandy battles to finally shift them.

The Soviets, however, had embraced combined arms early but had adopted a different approach to conducting offensive operations. They did so primarily because of the limitations within their own forces. Lack of effective radio control meant they were more fixed in terms of assigning objectives and phase lines. They lacked the means to react and reassess dynamically as the battle unfolded. This is what led to the decapitation and defeat in detail of their offensive forces post Stalingrad. With our current engine the Soviets would be able to reassess more quickly and thus avoid the headlong rush by their Tank Corps which so often left them vulnerable to encirclement and hence destruction. So reducing the abilities of Soviets forces to reassess plans is pretty essential in my book.

Further, the Soviet attack doctrine relied heavily on prepared bombardments. They just did not have the means to flexibly allocate arty on the fly as the battle progressed. So we need to reduce their ability to request and provide on call support and to add in a new prep bombard task within the attack.

Also they would often attack in ledge formation, either ledge left or right. For a Bn of three companies this would see two companies up front in line with the third company directly behind either the forward left or forward right companies. So we need to model these formations.

The use of Soviet cavalry formations also needs to be modelled. We currently do not have any dedicated doctrine for modelling the use of cavalry.
Furhter

ORIGINAL: jimcarravallah

Perhaps choices is a poor word.

It offers data to make an informed decision.

Hitler was loath to consider that data.

Based on his ultimate success, I choose to avoid Hitler's methods.

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

Hell, the fact that it took so very long for someone to notice "Oh, infantry companies shoot through all their rifle ammo by 10am every day, this has obvious consequences for the pacing of all combat in the game" indicates that supply is something that the UI needs to display differently in some way.

Even if it was just a bar in the unit info box that showed a weighted percent of ammo supply to the most prevalent weapons in the unit.

ORIGINAL: Perturabo

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

Hell, the fact that it took so very long for someone to notice "Oh, infantry companies shoot through all their rifle ammo by 10am every day, this has obvious consequences for the pacing of all combat in the game" indicates that supply is something that the UI needs to display differently in some way.

Even if it was just a bar in the unit info box that showed a weighted percent of ammo supply to the most prevalent weapons in the unit.

Have you tried using F7?

The fluid, lifelike war depicted in Command Ops is accessed through one of the best interfaces to ever grace a war simulation. The menus, buttons, icons and tabs of the interface are easy to understand and use. There is no user operation (i.e. issuing an order or retrieving some data) that would require more than 3 or 4 clicks on the interface. In addition to this, the physical strain of moving every single counter in the map is absent if the player lets himself to issue orders to headquarters instead of micromanaging every single company or tank platoon.