Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Sarge

Tactical combat will always be abstract in grand strategic games.

Can you imagine trying to play out WWII division by division, company by company on a tactical level. Each turn would take a month with the AI turn lasting 24-48 hours to resolve.

HOI2 may indeed be a fun title, but the fact is, HOI was a complete joke and unplayable out of box. The war gamming community is very small and unforgiving (see: GI Combat), the whole HOI pay to beta has left a bad taste in a large percentage of the communities mouth .[;)]

Yup, I agree 100%, but, lately it's not just Paradox anymore, it's every damn publisher/developer out there and one of the main reasons I've just resorted to waiting for bargain bin pricing or at least a year after the game is released anymore. Once you grow out of that childlike nature of "gotta have it NOW", makes purchasing anything quite beneficial for the consumer. Everything gets cheaper and as far as computer gaming goes even better out of the box with the patches that take a year to a year and a half to complete. I got many games this year for the price many of you paid for just "one" game. Sure, they are six months to a year old or older, but, still same game and with patches, no frustrations trying to play them, no changing the whole game from what it was into something else. Nothing like getting a $50 game for $4.00 or less.

No Les, I think the general idea is you take something of a monster game (WIR for example) and you constantly have the option of going tactical with a battle. or in any case a closer battle than the strategic or operational. I once proposed this sort of idea with CL, where among other things you would have a seamless battle that could feasibly go on forever (the battle hexes could be active practically every turn and thereby you would have to decide whether you felt it worth the effort to fight it or let the computer do the operational/strategic calculations for that battle instead).

The key thing in any of these ideas isn't that you "have to" fight these lower level battles, but that you have the option. Most sensible people, for every turn of a WIR say, might want to fight one battle of the many at that lower level. I know there's a number of those opening Barbarossa battles that would ceretainly be interesting to fight. Also in the case of a WIR, there would be several weeks where I couldn't care less about doing any lower level battles. As far as any of these ideas goes it would even be a vast improvement if the computer selected a battle of the many battles every turn (no control of which one by the player) and then asked if the player wished to go lower level with it.

Suppose for example I attack 2 USSR inf divisions with 2 pnzr and 1 mot. For a SPWAW that would be too much equipment, but the computer could shrink all of that down into a much smaller force representing all of that, and then the results would stick. The other possible approach would be to play it literally, IOW, take the amount of equipment SPWAW or some other game could represent, maybe 200-300 units tops for each side, and deduct that from the true values of each side. Such that you would have 2 pzr and 1 mot divisions short 200-300 units in your charge. The computer would take your results and add them to the general Wir results of the rest of the forces you didn't command. So essentially it would allow you to see how much of a difference you could make at a lower level, whilst in large engagements having the greatest result from the rest of the forces still play out.

What would be even more bizarre, would be if you could fight a fairly large battle like that and pick and fight with each separate 200-300 units in separate battles. That would get a lot closer to micromanagement headaches, but it would be fascinating to control every single unit, no matter how long it took, if you were nutty enough to want to fight the entire thing, battle, after battle, after battle for just one typical battle which I described. Of course that will never happen, but being able to pick out one battle shrunk down in some way for each turn of the operational/strategic general game, would certainly be rewarding if it would also play out everything you didn't want to fight that way.

There have been and will continue to be games that work somewhat along these sort of themes. Star Wars Empire at War and also Space Empires III always give you options to fight every battle personally if you want. I never seen a game that had the possibility of a lot of battles that was lame enough to force you to fight all the battles at the lower levels, since most designers are usually smart enough to allow you to let the computer calculate it on just pure values or let your brain make the difference, so I think that's a pretty moot point.

If you still don't understand this reasoning, take the games SPWAW and WIR for example, assuming you have played both. Both can take a pretty long time to play, true, but if for every WIR turn you had a battle of SPWAW optional, then it wouldn't take any longer than playing WIR and SPWAW for the whole war, back-to-back, such that maybe you got bored with WIR and then for the first time started playing SPWAW. It could potentially be one of the longest games you ever played, but that would be entirely up to you. I have played a bit of SWEAW and I can tell you that as much as I pause it the tactical battles it can take well over an hour, such that I could see the game might take very long if I kept playing like that, but at least I have the option. Some things in any of these sort of games are worth fighting personally for, and others are not.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood
...one of the main reasons I've just resorted to waiting for bargain bin pricing...

No, ravinhood. You're just a tight git![;)]

Ravinhood, I used to think similar to you. But over time, I have realised, the real problem is wargames have increasingly gotten more and more complex, and yet, we gamers have insisted they get released sooner and faster.

YOU are as much a part of the reason for games released needing fixing sooner than later.

Ideally, our wargames likely should take longer and longer to get released.

Charles, ever hear of the old game D-D the Beginning of the End?

I got it back on a wargame cd compilation around hmmm mid 90s. As it was a compilation, I assume it had it's day BEFORE 95. Anyway, it was operational, but, you could fight any battle as a miniatures fight.

Wargames CAN combine lower echelon tactical, with higher echelon operational. But, the programs of today, are also a massive amount more complex to design, and would NOT be a pretty task to arrange me thinks.

I am sure the design is like making two wargames as if they were one. And as wargames now (as they have always been) are not what you call "money makers", forcing a designer to produce two, as if it was one, would likely be even less thrilling economically.

That's why myself, I'd rather designers just pick a scale to simulate, and do a decent job of that. It's easier to buy two wargames, than wait for this dream design concept.

ORIGINAL: Les_the_Sarge_9_1

{snip}Ideally, our wargames likely should take longer and longer to get released.{snip}

I disagree,

Ideally the developers/publishers should wait till the beta build to open up public forums on a title. I understand why so many open the forum at times years before the release, but unfortunately this disposable culture we live in has a hard time exercising patients.

I think you mean "patience" there Sarge...but...

Being a member of a few BETA releases, I can , personally, suggest that the problem might be focus. I do feel, even if there is a dedicated team of beta testers, that a fresh bunch of testers are taken on prior to relase. Fresh eyes make a hell of a difference.

It's kind of like a multi-stage beta test routine. I know it costs money. I know it costs customers...beta testers would potentially buy the product. I know it would cause time and repitition because the same old questions would be asked over and over with each new wave...but they are the only people, I believe, who can get rid of those final bugs. The original beta testers have been setting it up and playing it so long, they, subcontiously, know the script.

ORIGINAL: Les_the_Sarge_9_1

He did actually mean Close Combat when he said CC correct?

Hmm, I would not even wish the turn based version of that thought process on a person.

Grand strategy good or bad, is just not realistically capable of having it's battles negotiated at the squad tactical scale. I wouldn't even wish to do it at the scale of something like Panthers games or SSG games.

I mean, in a game of Strategic Command, I characteristically will generate potentially 50-100 individual battle results EVERY TURN.
So, that would result in my having to play the equal of 100 games of Steel Panthers for every turn of Strategic Command.

That would take an appalling span of lifetime.

Have you not heard of "Combat Mission Campaigns" Les? It's basically just like what many are asking for. An operational campaign game and then tactical combat for each encounter on the campaign map. It's going to take a longggggg time to pay out one single game I'm sure, but, the PBEM aspects and the number of players allowed will make for some very interesting campaigns and battles.

@Les again "Ideally, our wargames likely should take longer and longer to get released"

I would agree with that if the challenge and the AI were improved, but, to take longer for merely a graphics update or reskinning, no I don't agree with. I'd just as soon have the same old graphics with a better challenging game/AI than the other way around. I've already seen it done in my 25+ years of computer gaming. When graphics took nothing to do, games were more challenging and the AI was at least decent. Highest difficulities would whip your butt, now the highest difficulties do good to be normal if that.

Games need to be made with more player options to improve the challenge. There shouldn't be a min and max settings imho. They shouldn't hardcode the difficulty of the games at all. "Civ IV" does an excellent job of this. I can barely beat "noble" settings where in the past I could do Prince and King levels pretty good. Once again Sid Meier knows how to develop a game for "everyone", not just the kiddies.

Have not actually experienced CM Campaigns, know of them though, guess I forgot about them though.

I have seen some games do this vaguely, I think there are likely a few others I am probably forgetting.

I think over all though, on the matter of game quality, back when board games were the thing, we didn't have as many releases, we didn't get as many releases from one source as rapidly either.

End result, more wargamers were playing fewer games a great deal more intensely, and they evolved that much more efficiently I suppose.
I can think on Squad Leader and Third Reich, two of my personal favs. Squad Leader I think went to 5 editions before it even made it to ASL, and Advanced Third Reich is basically 5th edition Third Reich.

I don't recall anyone bitching about either game being released 5 times come to think of it, or that it took several years to end up at the last edition.

The internet, and all things modern is sooo fast, hurry up go go go go though. If you miss a computer game release date even by a month the fans whine something fierce. Back in the 70's if a wargame was delivered within 3 years, it was considered rapid developement hehe.

We went from Korsun Pocket, hailed as one of the great wargames of our times, to BiN to BiI all within what, just a few years?
They were up and replacing "one of the greatest wargames of our times" within months hehe.

Sometimes we are all deserving of a hefty dose of shitty rushed ill thought out buggy crap on our computer.

ORIGINAL: Sarge

ORIGINAL: Les_the_Sarge_9_1

{snip}Ideally, our wargames likely should take longer and longer to get released.{snip}

I disagree,

Ideally the developers/publishers should wait till the beta build to open up public forums on a title. I understand why so many open the forum at times years before the release, but unfortunately this disposable culture we live in has a hard time exercising patients.

Yep exactly. Speaking from direct personal experience such a thing generates bad results. Matrix appears to have basically learned that same lesson as well though they are still quicker than most but then again they are primarily a publisher not a developer these days.

Its too bad but that is the truth of things. You can open forums the day you start on a game and assuming its generated genuine interest, you will still get 100 posts demanding a release date to every 1 with any sort of actual useful input. Then your game will start getting labeled "vaporware" six months into it since no developer in their right mind is going to post early-alpha screenshots and so on.....

Actually what have the guys at Matrixgames "developed" lately themselves?? I mean their own game designs and ideas? Have they just become the pigs of "Animal Farm" now?

I thought Matrix was primarily a publisher not developer.

Sure they offer a host of tools to a developer of a title ,but calling Matrix “pigs of the animal farm” is over the top

Even for you ranyhood [8|]

As usual, a good bit of worldly wisdom from Ravenhood. I do the same (usually). I also read Forums, reviews, and any thing I can get my hands on. Not that one comment or rewiew hold much water, but the general level of carpin and griping can let you know how popular a game is much better than sales figures.

Avoid turkys, wait till Easter.

I have to agree with Sarge. Come on Ravinhood, the only way you could top that slur, is to insult David's wife.

Somethings can't be made funny regardless of how you spin it.

It didn't work for Kramer either.

In defense of Ravinhood, he was making a reference to George Orwell's "Animal Farm," in which the supposedly egalitarian pigs end up being "more equal" than the other animals. So he wasn't calling anyone a pig; he was saying that Matrix rules the roost, so to speak. At least I think that's what he was saying.

I rush to add that I am a big fan of Matrix. They're helping wargames get to us, the consumers. That's a very good thing in my book.

Yeah I wasn't calling them pigs as in pigs, but, as Grotius said pigs of power as in the book "Animal Farm" didn't any of you ever read that?

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Yeah I wasn't calling them pigs as in pigs, but, as Grotius said pigs of power as in the book "Animal Farm" didn't any of you ever read that?

What is this "book" thing you refer to? I've heard that term once when I printed out a long document from my computer. Someone refered to it as a "book".

Oh well.. does anyone remember when a carbon copy was actually a "Carbon" copy?

hehe.

It's a book Veldor titled "Animal Farm", it's about a bunch of animals that take over the farmer/farm for oppressing them, then these pigs who are lazy beauracrats train these pup dobermans to do their bidding and they take over the farm from the other animals and oppress them again. You should get it and read it. It's an excellent analogy of the way things really are in many situations.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Farm-Georg ... F8&s=books

**Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. **

"Noooooo NOT ANIMAL FARM!!" Screams Jevvy

Sorry for the outburst chaps and chapesses.

I had to write soo many essays and reports about that little book in skool.[:(] When I left in 1976 I ritualy burried it, in a tin box under the house I was living in at the time.

Fortunatley the house was demolished about ten years ago and the book went with it. [:D]

Sigh... my doctor said I was cured... but.... now it has come back to haunt me, I just know that it's behind me.. dare I turn around....[X(]

I't did not help that most of my teachers were Communists of the Chinese flavour, all with their little Red Books, it made for some interesting discussions though.

We had a lot of em in Scottish Skools at the time.

Cheers
Jev

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

It's a book Veldor titled "Animal Farm", it's about a bunch of animals that take over the farmer/farm for oppressing them, then these pigs who are lazy beauracrats train these pup dobermans to do their bidding and they take over the farm from the other animals and oppress them again. You should get it and read it. It's an excellent analogy of the way things really are in many situations.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Farm-Georg ... F8&s=books

**Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. **

Actually my post was, apparantely, another failed attempt at sarcasm...