Rebalanced Scenarios

[Tazak]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

I tried to make a scenario but I couldn't find the PACT nuke units and I refuse to publish anything that doesn't have at least 5 mushroom clouds.

LOL, their under 'strategic assets' - wait until the AI learns how to use NBC weapons I have some evil scenarios in mind where players are swimming in chemical pools

[cbelva]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

I tried to make a scenario but I couldn't find the PACT nuke units and I refuse to publish anything that doesn't have at least 5 mushroom clouds.

No Excuses!!! Publish away.

[Alchenar]

Oh ok, the 'N' is for Nuclear.

[CapnDarwin]

If you double click on the unit in the selection window, the Sub-unit Inspector window pops up and you can see the units information. And yes, N = nuke, CP = persistent chemical. In 2.1 the AI will have the ability to use NBC weapons.

[Alchenar]

It turns out I'm terrible at map making. If anyone would like to offer to work me up a map for a quick set of scenarios I have in mind then I'd be very grateful (just PM me, I have the googlemap location already).

[cbelva]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

It turns out I'm terrible at map making. If anyone would like to offer to work me up a map for a quick set of scenarios I have in mind then I'd be very grateful (just PM me, I have the googlemap location already).

Hey Alchenar, I don't have an artistic bone in me. But I taught myself to do maps. Steve (Mad Russian) wrote an excellence piece on how to make maps using Hexdraw. It was very instrumental in helping me. I have done several maps to include a couple in the Golan area. If I can make maps anyone one can. Do you have Hexdraw? If you do, give it a try. Read Steve's map making guide posts (it is in the forum). You can post your work for critique and advice as you work on it. I am sure you will surprise yourself.

[CapnDarwin]

His info is the backbone of Mod Guide 1 as well.

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: Tazak
Scenario balance is very subjective, what may be very realistic to someone may be boring to someone else, likewise fun and engaging to one person may be unlikely/not plausible to someone else, and finding a balance between all the various factors is very difficult

FWIW, the US Army's National Training Center ran many many force-on-force exercises evaluating Bn Task Forces versus doctrinal Soviet OPFOR motorized rifle regiments throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A Bn TF vs reinforced MRR with a tank Bn was generally considered a fair fight.

Fairness can easily be adjusted by modifying the forces. There's the difference between M-60s or M1s tanks, versus T-72s or T-80s. M113s or M2/3s IFVs, versus BTR-70s or BMP-1/2s. Etc. The fun factor is basically in playing the different variations and seeing how things go. How "accurate" or "realistic" it may have been compared to a hypothetical WW-III will always be in the eye of the beholder.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

In any case talking about realism is nonsense. All scenarios are fictional creations set in a fictional war where things are already strange and alternate-universe (where is the Dutch army?).

They are coming. We could only do so much at one time. Historical accuracy is a large part of what I did for the game. To me personally realism is a huge part of this. I was 'Boots On the Ground' on that part of the planet for 3 years. It was my reality. It was for many of those that bought this game as well. While the battles themselves are hypothetical the force mixes are as close as I could get them. It's been my experience as a scenario designer that if you get the forces and the ground as historically accurate as possible the battles are often interesting and very hard fought. I used our original battle planes and WW2 battles as examples of the kind of fighting I expected to see, then I put in the correct force mixes and out came the battles you have in the series to date.

You can do whatever you like to set up an interesting scenario? Are the forces at 50% strength because they're arriving on the battlefield after several days battle? Sure. Did the Recon regiment take a wrong turning and is going to miss the battle? Why not? Did the Red commander assign corps level artillery to support the attack in this sector?

Few of my actions have full strength units vs full strength units. I don't believe that in actual battles that happens very often. If you read the briefings you will see that I have units t hat do take wrong turns. Army level artillery has been used to support some of the actions you have in the series.

Having been on that ground and practiced what should happen vs what often does happen has the scenarios be a bit different than most you find with other games. I'm a big believer in chaos rules. As such, my scenarios reflect a high degree of chaos for the battles I model.

Provided you don't break all constraints of plausibility then the only things a scenario maker should be concerned with are a) is it balanced?> and b) is it fun?

I hope I came close to hitting all three.

Good Hunting.

MR

[budd]

just wanted to inquire how the rebalancing of the scenarios is going, any ETA on completion?

[Alchenar]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

They are coming. We could only do so much at one time. Historical accuracy is a large part of what I did for the game. To me personally realism is a huge part of this. I was 'Boots On the Ground' on that part of the planet for 3 years. It was my reality. It was for many of those that bought this game as well. While the battles themselves are hypothetical the force mixes are as close as I could get them. It's been my experience as a scenario designer that if you get the forces and the ground as historically accurate as possible the battles are often interesting and very hard fought. I used our original battle planes and WW2 battles as examples of the kind of fighting I expected to see, then I put in the correct force mixes and out came the battles you have in the series to date.

I totally understand you and I get that there's issues of resources (pointing out the absence of the Dutch was more to show how the game deviates from history by default rather than a criticism).

My point really is that I'm simply unimpressed whenever I see someone complaining about a lack of realism or historical accuracy when we're talking about a war that literally didn't happen. As a debating tactic on wargame forums it almost always appears as a means to assert the authors own bias as truth, and most harmfully shifts the discussion to 'is this really plausible?' when first and foremost it should always be 'is this good for the game?'

[Ginetto]

No.
That the war never happened - thankfully - is irrelevant in designing a game such as Flashpoint. It could have broken out and all the pieces were ready "on the board".
A game such as this one has to be realistic. If there is a huge superiority in numbers of the Soviets, the game must show it. If the West has better C&C, ditto.
If you simply want a playable entertaining game, Call of Duty or World of Tanks or something will fit the bill.

[Jafele]

ORIGINAL: Ginetto
If you simply want a playable entertaining game, Call of Duty or World of Tanks or something will fit the bill.

By definition every game should be playable and enternaining, simply because they´re games...

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=ga ... in_frame=0

[Ginetto]

Too superficial and an excuse for dumbing down. There can't be a single standard. It's like poker versus bridge.
CMANO is realistic, even though most of its scenarios never took place in the real world. Read the forum threads on that game. Does anybody there complain that realism is irrelevant or that the game isn't playable? Look at the lengths the developers go to update its database and improve its algorithms. Flashpoint must be the CMANO of late 20th century land warfare.

[delete1]

A like the "easy to play and hard to Master" flavor of Flashpoint. CMANO seems an incredible game, but its simply too much for me. Not because of the complexity, but because the lack of time to get into. Real life consumes me almost entirely. Had to give up CMANO. I dont want to quit my job, stop sleeping or abandon my family, hehehe! Nor to get a PhD in military equipment specs. I am exaggerating, but you got the idea. At least, whenever possible some difficult and complexity should be scalable by the player. That way you can reach a broader audience. I know this balance is often hard to reach. Cheers!

[CapnDarwin]

The plan is to tweak the scenarios to deal with the number of changes in the game engine over the past 9 updates. Having challenging, as realistic as we can provide scenarios that follow Mad Russian's WW3 timeline is still the primary focus.

As for an ETA, once he done is the best answer right now. When we get a better feel for a release window we will let you know. All of us are busy right now with family items including vacations and most of us still have a pesky day job to do in order to pay the bills. We are also spending time working on Southern Storm. Lots of irons in the fire.

[Ardi]

Realism and balanced scenarios are not contrary to each other. Even if we consider that Soviets are heavily superior in numbers and firepower, still the scale of war is very large compared to the level of Red Storm battles. In some points Soviet command could miscalculate the situation, be too eager or NATO forces could respond more swiftly and heavily to the threat on that actual part of the front. Which will lead to more equal and balanced scenario.

My wish is that the would be at least few balanced scenarios for PBEM games. While I perfectly understand that most people play vs AI, still it would be nice to have at least scenarios labeled as Head to Head being balanced around multiplayer.

[Mad Russian]

The goal is to rebalance all the scenarios.

Good Hunting.

MR

[CapnDarwin]

My confusion is what is balanced? The game already skews the results versus the victory levels based on VP deltas.

[ivanov]

Currently I don't really see any difference between the head to head and human vs AI versions of the same scenario. Looking at the victory conditions, there's on 1% difference between the victory calculations of the H vs H and H vs AI versions of the scenario, which doesn't make much sense.