Making Barbarossa "Gameable"?

[governato]

Hopefully these changes will help with the first turns!

[keitherson]

18 out of 325 AFVs ready in the editor screenshot? Is the actual result on the right randomized based on this those numbers?

[Sammy5IsAlive]

I think this will always be an interesting, albeit much repeated, philosophical debate.

I don't feel like I'm replaying Barbarossa, but rather some generic wargame on the map of Russia.

This is probably the heart of it. In the end there is an inherent tension of game design between trying to model a simulation of Barbarossa and the EF and producing a game that is based on, but not restricted by, that context. The closer you get to a simulation the more restricted a players options become in game terms and visa-versa the more options a player has in 'gaming' terms the quicker things depart from feeling like a simulation. Either end of that spectrum will frustrate one set of players - the trick is to find a balance.

Personally I think that WITE1 has a good balance by that measure - the full campaign has enough flexibility to allow players to play 'their way' and there are the smaller scenarios available to play that give a more 'historical' feel. In the context of this debate personally I think the latter are underplayed - in the Roads to Leningrad/Kiev scenarios the Soviet player has to find a way to fight 'forward' in order to get a win, an Axis player trying to get a win in the Typhoon scenario can't afford to just shelter from the blizzard, in the Stalingrad scenario the Axis player doesn't have the opportunity to correct the historical mistakes and has to 'troubleshoot' their way through the scenario. To be honest I'm a little surprised that as far as I'm aware over the shelf life of the game nobody has ever tried (or at least reported) a series of PvP matches through those scenarios in chronological order.

In terms of WITE1 --> WITE2 I think all the signs are really encouraging. In particular it seems like things like the logistics system and the air war are much more comprehensive and robust so that the players that have an advantage in those areas will be those that better understand those systems on a holistic/intuitive level rather than those who are putting hours into trying to 'min/max' the mechanics.

In terms of the first turn, in an ideal world I'd agree it would have been nice to have had the possibility of more variation in the Soviet T1 setup. I'm not sure if I'm on board with fully 'player defined' setups but it would have been nice to either have some randomness in the unit placement or conversely having 3-4 predefined setups (chose at random at the beginning of the game) rather than just the one. Hopefully the changes Red Lancer has described above will go some way to mitigating against pre-planned 'optimal' openings.

My own view is that nobody has ever 'cracked' the game in a way that they have come up with a set of moves for the first few turns that was not defendable against by the Soviets. Pelton has been mentioned but I would suggest that whilst he was extremely successful that success was based not so much on having a 'chess-style' opening that always worked but more on a combination of him having an exceptional grasp on the way the mechanics worked for the Axis in the early turns and also if I'm honest an element of him often beating up on less experienced players who were not prepared for the extent to which he was able to squeeze so much power/mobility from the Axis side in turns where most players were reaching the end of the logistical leash. Sadly I think all his AARs have been deleted but from memory whenever he came up against an opponent who was at a similar standard the games tended to go the distance.

[Simon Edmonds]

All of the games start with June 22 and the Germans try to gain as much as possible out of their advantage and the soviets try to drag themselves out of the poo. I would like to the a scenario that starts on the second turn of October where the tables were turned.

[Sardaukar]

There is Stalingrad to Berlin scenario.

[No idea]

ORIGINAL: Meteor2

To avoid any misunderstanding, I am not proposing a conversion into DCB.
But the min/max strategy of the experts (after a serious time of play), drove me away.
If any deviation from the „best“ openings (think of all the well documented and in depth analysed openings in chess)
leads to a high probability for failure, then it’s not a game for me.
Pelton was a real expert in determining the absolut best strategy ([&o]) but that was to much for me.

Well, IRL, if you could start exactly the same campaign again and again, you would eventually find the optimal way to do things, so what Pelton and others did was unrealistically realistic.

[821Bobo]

Better option is to play equally experienced player than adding another layer of changes/complexity that will have no other purpose only make opening moves harder. Pelton's opening was not much help for him when he has been facing, lets say, MT.

[fsp1978]

So - if a full free placement is not possible (and I don't think that would be a good idea, as things would get too random), would it be possible with the current engine to have something similar to AGEODs WW1 game?

There you could choose one of three or four war plans before the game started, either an offensive one, or a defensive one or something in between.

Of course, with WITE you could have different scenarios, but then your opponent would already know which version you'd have. Would it be possible with the current engine to let both players choose at campaign start?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: fsp1978

So - if a full free placement is not possible (and I don't think that would be a good idea, as things would get too random), would it be possible with the current engine to have something similar to AGEODs WW1 game?

There you could choose one of three or four war plans before the game started, either an offensive one, or a defensive one or something in between.

Of course, with WITE you could have different scenarios, but then your opponent would already know which version you'd have. Would it be possible with the current engine to let both players choose at campaign start?

Some of this is naturally captured by the game mechanics. You can think of the entire German June set up as a giant deception operation and work out your own variants. Certainly in testing we are seeing successful use of the basic German plan (with operational tweaks) and pretty radical reworks.

the other bit is the game captures the debate the Germans never solved. Moscow/Leningrad as political/strategic targets vs tbe Ukraine as an industrial/agricultural target - we'll come back to how this is done in a later post.

In addition, at an operational/tactical level the game has far more trade offs than WiTE1 does. So a great opening that solves one set of problems may well leave you to exposed to a different one and so on. Red Lancer's showcase #1 starts to give a lot of information here. One is the importance of getting your infantry into clear corridors to advance (so they are not picking up fatigue/spending time active patrolling as they move). But to achieve that has implications for what the Pzrs are up to. There is an (un)holy trinity in the game of admin movement/CPP gain & retention/high mobility. Break one leg and the stool falls over (to mix in a new metaphor [;)]).

and thats before the much more subtle logistics system with its dynamics that again you need to solve - and every solution leaves a problem somewhere else.

So what I'm saying is I personally think that WiTE2 is less vulnerable to the perfect opening than WiTE1 became.

We'll try and show all this both as concepts and applied in AARs as we move forwards with providing the information ... [;)]

[wpurdom]

If there's really that much variance in the strength of the units CV of .8 versus 5.4, I can't see the opening move being as scripted as WITE1. It'll take at least a month or 2 after release to know for sure, but the problem may be solved!

[Jorgen_CAB]

Something that was mentioned in the stream that I don't think have been highlighted in here in regards to intentions are the way victory points seems to have changed somewhat. If the Germans don't spearhead to grab political (rather than tactical) goals they loose or simply don't get as much VP as they otherwise could which would then make it easier for the Soviet to beat the Axis as they can take more time before the push the Germans back.

So... some VP locations you gain more VP if you take them earlier rather than later and then the same is true for the Soviet which in turn pressure them to push the Germans back as quick as possible to win the game with VP.

So a very aggressive German player who manage to take all the political goals very early may win the game there and then even if the Soviets could eventually have pushed them back... or if the Soviets in return don't push fast enough the Germans win too I guess.

I don't know how the VP system work, but a more dynamic VP system seem like a way to promote political goals, even better if they were somewhat random and could change to some degree during a game due to events triggering. Would feel a bit more realistic to me that way.