Historical Accuracy vs Playability

[Charles2222]

Vathailos:

Which brings up an idea I wish I'd had a couple of months ago.

That's pretty funny Vathailos. I did, if you didn't notice it. make some attempt at making the semblance of the operational, in case there wasn't an operational (thereby making it more complicated than SPWAW, but likely more rewarding), which is probably somewhat like wishing you had an idea a couple of months ago. My main train-of-thought seems to built around the idea of destroying certainty regarding SPWAW. Why should I be assaulting someone for example, and always know my force is so many times greater than his? Surely sometimes I should know, sometimes I should not. In SPWAW if the enemy's forces are pretty much the same price, you know pretty much when he has nothing left, or at least enough to where a counterattack is meaningless, so if you have battles unfortunately completely apart from any real operational aspect, you can at least fake it by various means, be that reinforcements (which I've never seen the AI use [I've never used them either]) and/or at least occasional undetermined force size going into a battle.

Granted, you can't do everything with any piece of software, but it does seem rather silly that if you're conducting a "meeting engagement" as AmmoSgt defines it, that is that the forces are unknown to one another, then just why is it that forces always meet engage with the same size force? How unknown is the enemy really, when you already know his material is costing the same thing every single time that kind of battle is drawn up? I think it would do a world of good for the game, or future games that is, to drop either partially or entirely this idea of knowing in advance the size of the enemy force compared to your own.

[VikingNo2]

The games were 5k, maps were 140 to 160 ( just could get takers at 200 ). I believe most bought extra arty with the reinforcemnet points, but then again it was buy what you want no limit so there you go.

Yes your right they did not have much to back up after buying arty, and I outmanuverd most, and won or was winning most but the simple fact was that it was boring. Most of the game was me purposely showing a recon force with one tank in it them moving as fast as I could either up down or back, after which about half the FEBA whould be turn into craters. This happend for several turns until I could get close enough to them so their arty wiped them out as much as me. I agree with you on the larger maps, I prefer 140 -160 with 6-8k less if there are no russians on the battlefield. I agree with you on most points, but the game has to be playable as well as historical, I hope 8.0 makes some tweeks in areas to expound on some of the US's advantage, I think the Russian are about right. UK needs some work, Germans are about right ( maybe some of there fancy stuff is underpriced ) But when I fight against the German's or with them. I don't want to go up against Gen HistorocallyAverage I want the commander who had a well equiped force that rushed to exploit the break through on counter attacked the opening. I would very much like to play a game where you pick the core forces and map for both sides. I will not pretend to have the knowlege of equipment or history you have, I'm not disputing anything you have stated in those areas, but I know people and learn what they tend to do quickly, there are many much better at tactics than me, I win often because I have always been able to guess what people will do( the only real talent I have ). If any game doesn't have a good portion of playablity then its just not going to be played. To answer the poll it should be both, leaning some to the historical side. The choices were kinda limited, Bernie is onle human after all.

[VikingNo2]

Just read some other post, the forces aren't the same size, Russian force always will have more stuff and the US will have more than the German's the German will have the least. That is why things are priced different.

[Vathailos]

How about this then Charles, since we're daydreaming/brainstorming.

Each player agrees to a set point total in a "meeting engagement", movement to contact, recon by force, whatever. Or hell, in any type of engagement.

Matrix adds a feature in Preferences called "Serendipity" or "Fates" or "Battle Impact" or whatever. It's locked as either ON or OFF prior to creation of the battle. Now, at the Purchase screen, if the option is turned on, a player on can choose to purchase units as he normally would with his known/agreed upon total, or he could click the new button.

When clicked (and it can only be clicked once, you get what you get, drive on), the button goes through a random number generation process wherein it arrives at a percentage between 50 and 200. That percentage is then multiplied by the original number of purchase points agreed upon by both sides. You now have somewhere between half the points you'd planned upon and twice the amount to build your forces with.

The explanations for the variance could be any number of reasonable/plausible circumstances (and there could even be a saying drawn from a pool of responses): Overwhelming Friendly Success (the Commander North of you for example, routes the enemy there, the BDE CDR then attaches a portion of his force to yours; Enemy Sabotage (enemy has interdicted portions of your supply trains); Inclement Weather (similarly, some of your troops are stuck/damaged prior to arriving in the area of operation); Friendly Fire (your units have somehow engaged and destroyed some of their own); Allied assistance (the extra points can be spent on a historically friendly OOB); Equipment Capture (you find a cache of enemy equipment and its appropriate ammunition, buy from the enemy's OOB ); etc. All the above circumstances could also be reversed (ex. Equipment Captured, Overwhelming Friendly Losses, etc.).

Again, just a thought, but that'd sure randomize things a bit.

**searches for ghost to insert into machine**

Would that eliminate some of that predictability your concerned about?

[Vathailos]

Viking!

1) Good to see you back! No worries on the turn, when you can. Glad you're OK.

2) Good idea regarding raising prices on "special" items to increase their rarity. "Sure, buy the Uhu's, but one'll cost you as much as two Konstigers"

[K62_]

Yeah well why not just flip a coin? Heads I win tails you lose

The idea is to make the game such that it is the players' skills (tactical, outguessing the opponent etc.) that are matched. Luck has a part to play, but it shouldn't be the main one. I guarantee to you that if I get 200% points and you only get 50% in a meeting engagement you'll lose everytime - and that will be one boring game.

Nobody says that there weren't assaults with a 10:1 or a 1:1 force ratio. But they are boring, since it is not the players' skills that will matter. It will only matter who gets more forces than they need for their mission. The interesting assaults were those where each side had a reasonable chance of doing its mission.

[Charles2222]

Just read some other post, the forces aren't the same size, Russian force always will have more stuff and the US will have more than the German's the German will have the least. That is why things are priced different.

Perhaps you're talking about mine? I was talking about the cost of the force you're facing, not their individual costs. Knowing the individual costs, as easy as that is to get, and knowing how many points they have to spend, makes things a lot more evident as to what the enemy has than you would expect any commander knew. Shouldn't the style of attack not be so rigid as to be so predictable? If I'm fighting a meeting engagement and the enemy is 'unknown' shoulf I really know it costs in total just as much as mine (In other words a basically even match)?

[Bernie]

The poll is not a good indicator of what people want, very good discussion, and good points, but it would be borning to play strictly historical,

JJ! Welcome back, friend!

I know the poll isn't perfect, but I only speak a little "Pollish," I'm not fluent in it.

However, it had the desired results, which was to get people talking about what they want in SP:WaW regarding historical accuracy and being able to play it without falling asleep at the keys (I hate when that happens! You end up going around for hours with "POIUYTREWQ" imprinted on your forehead!)

Listen, about that 200X200 map... Any time you want to try it I'm game. I think I can at least promise you an interesting battle.

[Charles2222]

How about this then Charles, since we're daydreaming/brainstorming.

Each player agrees to a set point total in a "meeting engagement", movement to contact, recon by force, whatever. Or hell, in any type of engagement.

Matrix adds a feature in Preferences called "Serendipity" or "Fates" or "Battle Impact" or whatever. It's locked as either ON or OFF prior to creation of the battle. Now, at the Purchase screen, if the option is turned on, a player on can choose to purchase units as he normally would with his known/agreed upon total, or he could click the new button.

When clicked (and it can only be clicked once, you get what you get, drive on), the button goes through a random number generation process wherein it arrives at a percentage between 50 and 200. That percentage is then multiplied by the original number of purchase points agreed upon by both sides. You now have somewhere between half the points you'd planned upon and twice the amount to build your forces with.

The explanations for the variance could be any number of reasonable/plausible circumstances (and there could even be a saying drawn from a pool of responses): Overwhelming Friendly Success (the Commander North of you for example, routes the enemy there, the BDE CDR then attaches a portion of his force to yours; Enemy Sabotage (enemy has interdicted portions of your supply trains); Inclement Weather (similarly, some of your troops are stuck/damaged prior to arriving in the area of operation); Friendly Fire (your units have somehow engaged and destroyed some of their own); Allied assistance (the extra points can be spent on a historically friendly OOB); Equipment Capture (you find a cache of enemy equipment and its appropriate ammunition, buy from the enemy's OOB ); etc. All the above circumstances could also be reversed (ex. Equipment Captured, Overwhelming Friendly Losses, etc.).

Again, just a thought, but that'd sure randomize things a bit.

**searches for ghost to insert into machine**

Would that eliminate some of that predictability your concerned about?

Oh yeah. Only one flaw I can see straightaway though. You'd have to organize it by virtue of the player, IOW the solo player. If you're campaigning, you already know what your force size is, the only question is what will the AI force "cost" be like, which of course you should not know. If the parameters are 50-200 (probably should be 33-300 since assaults are 3X) then I could be attacking a force that could either be 1/3 mine or up to three times mine irrespective of what the type of mission I allegedly have.

[Vathailos]

K62,

Adding the "war randomizer" does not equate to flipping a coin, that's a bit of over-simplification. If you don't think it is useful, certainly your perrogative. But try reading it in a little more depth. It does, IMO, add a sense of realism.

And I can all but guarantee you that there are some players out there that I could beat/tie, in a meeting engagement with 1/4 their points.

But notice how included an "ON/OFF" switch in the preferences? You would choose "OFF" if you sincerely saw the feature as unfair. Problem solved.

The direction of the thread seemed to be a free-flowing discussion of what areas could be improved, and which, if improved, could improve "historical accuracy". The intent of my post was to offer an idea to incorporate some of the chaos that is war, and remove some of the predictibility. I think my idea is one way (out of many) of doing that.

If you disagree that it would perform that function, please state how. Personally, I think playing a smaller force vs. a larger one is exciting.

In the propsed "randomizer", you wouldn't KNOW you had a larger force, or a smaller one. Only YOU get to see the results of your "dice roll".

If you're getting creamed because you took the chance and pushed the button, your opponent got 200, you got 50. You can't come up with tactics to fight to a draw, then simply push the F9 key. Get a rematch, and either turn the preference "OFF" or don't take the chance and click in your rematch.

Charles,

Good point about the total +/- mod. percentage. Although, you could do the calculation the same for each type of mission after the points are awarded. In other words, you're given the 3X points for your assault, but you could then click the button to randomize it... Just kiciking it around.

And vs. the AI, I think you're saying that the only random element you'd have would be your own point total's variance? Am I correct?

I hadn't considered that, thanks for bringing that up. The AI could automatically, in instances where the "randomizer" was turned "ON", roll the dice every time. That way, if you didn't want the possibility of facing a far-numerically superior AI force, simply keep the preference "OFF".

But yes, you'd not get to see the results of your opponent's dice roll until after the battle.

As far as the % bonus/subtraction of points, I really just pulled the 200/50% out of thin air. Not sure what the best numbers would be.

[Charles2222]

Bernie:

I hate when that happens! You end up going around for hours with "POIUYTREWQ" imprinted on your forehead!)

It would appear you have a keyboard for the sight-impaired. Either that or your key lettering is made by Earl Shives.

[K62_]

No he doesn't :p It just gets printed in reverse on your head (try it, it works ) What he forgot to mention though is that the letters appear mirrored, so the first P will look like this:

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[K62_]

Adding the "war randomizer" does not equate to flipping a coin, that's a bit of over-simplification. If you don't think it is useful, certainly your perrogative. But try reading it in a little more depth. It does, IMO, add a sense of realism.

And I can all but guarantee you that there are some players out there that I could beat/tie, in a meeting engagement with 1/4 their points.

Oh boy... Ave, deep one, us shallow people salute you

In a meeting between two equally skilled people you can tell a difference of 25% between buy points and it will quite spoil the game. If there is any merit to your idea, 300% is a really wild exaggeration. How about you play me with just 2000 points against 3000 (that's 50% advantage for you mathematicians out there ) and the loser will eat his hat :p

But notice how included an "ON/OFF" switch in the preferences? You would choose "OFF" if you sincerely saw the feature as unfair. Problem solved.

The direction of the thread seemed to be a free-flowing discussion of what areas could be improved, and which, if improved, could improve "historical accuracy".

I'm sorry, I didn't know you were in the programming/design team. Or else we're spending time in vain discussing your solution since it will never be implemented.

[Bernie]

No he doesn't :p It just gets printed in reverse on your head (try it, it works ) What he forgot to mention though is that the letters appear mirrored, so the first P will look like this:

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I think what Charles is getting at is that keys do not have a raised imprint on them, hence the only thing that would imprint is the key outline (sort of like Chiclet Chicken-Pox). What he didn't take into account is that I'm a professional writer, and I tend to wear out keyboards pretty quickly. The one I'm using right now is only a year old and already I've worn through the EASDW keys (holes in them...and a groove in the spacebar) Since I never could get the hang of touch-typing (took all the classes, failed every one) I rely on seeing the keys as I type. To compensate for the worn out keys I've had to draw the letters back on with a Sharpie marker. Sharpie marker + drooling in your sleep = letters on the forehead.

Oh, and I did type them using a reverse font, but unless you have that font installed they display normally.

BTW, anyone wanna good deal on a bridge?

[Paul Vebber]

I just wanted to comment on some of this and how it relates to Combat Leader.

I am no longer involved in SP;WaW so I really don;t know what will be coming in SP;WaW v8.0 - though my impresion is that it is primarily OOB changes and code changes will be pretty limited.

A lot of the issues discussed here are being addressed in CL, becasue for most of them, you really need a "clean sheet of paper" approach.

Game premise - an important issue brought up is to define what the "design goal" of the game is. The underlying premise of CL is that iti is leadership that wins battles, and leadership decision making that enables that to happen.

The equipment is important, the troops are important, but if you don't have good leaders, or you make poor choices regarding leadership decisions, then superior forces can be beaten by inferior forces with superior leadership/leadership decision making.

What does this mean in game terms? well rather than "rally" being the only thing for your leaders to do, you have several other competing leadership activities, and only a finite amount of time in each turn to spend doing them. This is represented either by only having a limited number of "failures" before you use up all your time, or the more explicit allocation and expediture of command points - up to you to chose which you use.

It also means that the game is "manuever formation- centric". What's a 'manuever formation' its either a platoon or company (could be an entire battalion but that is rare) that is operating as a "single tactical unit" - assigned a single phase line objective. You see the game through the eyes of your manuever formations, you activate a single manuever formation at a time and move all its units before going on to another one, and the leader of that formation is critical to its combat success.

Equipment/Unit Modeling - CL greatly expands the unit model from the "6 slab" armor model to one where there can be up to 40 distinct loactions coded for a vehicle. There are 2 wheel drive (road bound) and multi-wheel drive (off-road) wheeled vehicels, and three different ground pressure categories for tracked vehicles. Horse/bicycle/motorcycle units are seperate from the infantry units they "carry". Small arms and MGs are modeled on a "firepower" basis, not a "chance to hit an enemy soldier" basis. Artillery does not "come swooping in the end of the turn" but interdicts beaten zones the entire turn - making it an "area denial" weapon, not just a "get lucky hits on what happens to be there at the end of the turn" thing.

The hit probabilities are not based on "accuracy ranges" but on the general ballistics of the weapon coupled withthe crews ability to estimate range and 'lead' - and those cpabilities vary with fatigue and suppression.

Vehicle equipment does not add "to-hit modifiers" but have specific effects:

range finders reduce the crews inherent ranging error

fire control systems reduce the crews inherant 'lead' errors and enhance the ability of the crew to improve hit probability with consequetive shots.

stabilization reduces the increase in range and lead errors caused by firer movement

accuracy is based on the basic general dispersion properties of the gun and is ammo specific (AP rounds have less dispersion than HE rounds)

The characterisitcs governing the behavior and capabilities of the units are greatly expanded also. Instead of "experience" and the imposition of "suppression" (with morale level automatically indexed to suppression) and a leaders "rally" units have:

experience - combat involvement and the knowlede derived from it.

training - "book learning and practive with their country's weapons systems, also resistence to the effects of fatigue

elan - the "fighting spirit" and self-sacrifice in the face of the enemy, also resistence to the accumulation of suppression

morale - high morale will mean a unit will tend toward the 'berzerk" end of the morale state spectrum and in smaller jumps, while low morale means tending toward rout in bigger jumps - though "jumps" from one side of the scale round to the other can happen.

Combat effects seperate "suppression" and '"morale state" into seperate effects:

Suppression is a reduction in ability to combat apply small arms and MG firepower, or increases the errors in range and lead when using direct fire from heavy weapons.

Morale state - a "two end scale" going from "berzerk" at one end to "routed onthe other with "normal" being in the middle. Combat effects can casue units to move up or down the scale depending on the situation and leadership.

Formations now have characteristics as well - disruption and integrity. Disruption comes from units failing suppression and morale checks. Integrity is based on the proximity of the formations units to each other and enhance unit morale and elan, and the effect of leader attemtps at reducing suppression and disruption, but at the risk of increased vulnerability to fire.

Formations all have a disruption limit which exceeding brings a risk of "dispersing" - the unit dissolving and the individual soldiers high tailing it for the rear (or surrendering)

Leaders have additional characteristics as well - you can read more about all this at the CL homepage in a pdf posted their. The weighting of these characteristics will tend to make the "historical tactics" of the various nations come not from being imposed by rules, but being driven by the strengths and limitations of the basic characteristics of the units and leaders.

All in all the moodeling of the units in CL is based on a self-consitent "combat model" that uses a consistent level of abstraction to portray tactically critical elements, without trying to "over engineer" the tactical details. Its the effects and decisions stemming from the effects that are important. In many cases the historical "indications"are there, but the detailed data to support it is not - EG the details of penetration - so I've to teh degree necessary "abstracted" certain aspects to the available data to achieve the historical "EFFECT" even in the absence of detailed datat. For example the tendencies of certain projctiels to shatter in certain circumstances is well known, but the exact reasons and data supporting it is not available for ALL cases, so I made a sysem that recreates the "principle" historical cases (37mm ineffectiveness against T-34 for example) but will have "artifacts" that other rounds will also have shatter problems in certain circumstances that players will come to know through encoutering those situations repeatedly.

The idea is that while its impossible to determine the shatter tendencies of each and every round, by producing a "game physics" that includes the most famous examples, together with some "randomness" and puts the players in the situation of their historical counterparts - knowing some cases, but not knowing exactly which related cases also exist.

In the context of the "historical vs playbility" - in some ways to recreate the historical situation too explicitly - and thus allowing the player who knows in hindsight what to exploit, can iself be "ahistorical". In CL, the game attempts, by being in some small ways 'ahistoric" (at least by using "best guess data with some variability" where historical data is lacking) to make the player face and overcome the sort fo problems his historical counterpart had to.

Environment - another area where we have tried to uuse "variability" to present the player with problems that similar to his historical counterpart is in portraying the environment and terrain.

Terrain is represented not just by a movement point cost and combat modifer, but by distinct veicular and infantry characteristics; and seperate cover and concealment.

firmness or traficability can range from "concrete slab" (low chance of boggin down) to "swampy bog" and an almost certainty of bogging down. in addition to the chance of "getting stuck" and ending your turn in a hex becasue of ground firmness issues, "vehicular difficulty" assess MP penalties randomly for having to negotiate various impediments in a hex.

Firmness doesn't effect infantry very much, but infantry difficulty also imposes MP penalties on infantry units moving through hexes thick with brush, limited LOS and no landmarks (dense forest) etc. The result being that you will find vehicles are MUCH more restricted in movement and "getting from A to B will not be as "sure a thing" as it is in SP:WaW.

Smoke and fog are local phenomenon to a hex and act as LOS obstructions, not blocks - so you are free to fire through smoke and fog, but the effect will be that of "firing almost blind" - suppressive but not likely to cause casualties.

Hopefully this gives an indication of the desing differences between SP:WaW and CL (and why its required a "clean sheet" design and hy its taking so long...)

One last thing is the addition of the ability for multiple players to use core forces (or subsets of their core forces depending on game size) together with "supporting troops" in multiplayer games online or pbem - with a "post scenario reconstitution phase" that collects stragglers and recovers damaged vehicles based on how well you fared. Thus a "Campaign" series of battles can be fought between human players a couple different ways.

and point values are used in a different way as well, so there is a consideration of more types of battles, and the effect of the type of battle on point values (which can be different from victory point values - a truck can be cheap to buy, but a serious blow in the big picture to lose...)

IF you want to knwo more about CL - please check out the websight and the PDF file and provide your comments on the CL forum.

[Charles2222]

Vathailos:

And vs. the AI, I think you're saying that the only random element you'd have would be your own point total's variance? Am I correct?

I think I know what you mean by that, but in case I didn't get it right, I was talking about only the AI's force total working off yours. The reason why, with the current state of things, campaign-wise, why you wouldn't want to make the campaigner's force variable too, is because you would lose most of your core in various battles, which, if you got them back for other battles wouldn't be so bad, but we are used to playing with a solid core, such that soem of them being left off for various battles might not be to our liking. If I'm used to playing with 3000pts. would I really want to play with only 1000? OTOH, particularly in the PBEM world, having both sides be possibly variable would probably be preferable.

Now that I think of it, you would only need one side to be variable, because the variable player always vary between 33%-300% of the player that doesn't vary. There must be a situation where you would want all players to be variable, but it seems as though somebody needs to be a constant to achieve some measure of stability. For example, if everyone were variable, I'd suppose what you'd have is maybe player 1 in this case gets 1000pts. and then the other players vary off of that. The problem is that if player 1's amount is undetermined, you have no idea, without some brakes, of any force being out there. If player 1 had 1000 through variance, would player 2 play if player 1 ended up with 3X player 2, thereby making player 2 play with only 333pts.? It's not so much a question of player 2 being brutally overmatched, as we're used to being down 3-to-1 for defending aginst assaults, but that the force might just be too puny for player 2 to be interested.

As far as the % bonus/subtraction of points, I really just pulled the 200/50% out of thin air. Not sure what the best numbers would be.

Yes, I used those numbers to try to be as SPWAW-centric as I could be.

[Charles2222]

No he doesn't :p It just gets printed in reverse on your head (try it, it works ) What he forgot to mention though is that the letters appear mirrored, so the first P will look like this:

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Great graphics there K62!

Are you telling me that flat characters on a key will show up on a forehead? I'd believe on an ear, but never on aforehead :p

[Charles2222]

Bernie:

To compensate for the worn out keys I've had to draw the letters back on with a Sharpie marker. Sharpie marker + drooling in your sleep = letters on the forehead.

Like I said, a paint job by Earl Shives .

Oh, and I did type them using a reverse font, but unless you have that font installed they display normally.

The lengths some people will go to, to get their ideas off their foreheads and out to the masses!

[K62_]

In the context of the "historical vs playbility" - in some ways to recreate the historical situation too explicitly - and thus allowing the player who knows in hindsight what to exploit, can iself be "ahistorical". In CL, the game attempts to make the player face and overcome the sort fo problems his historical counterpart had to.

Leaders have additional characteristics as well. The weighting of these characteristics will tend to make the "historical tactics" of the various nations come not from being imposed by rules, but being driven by the strengths and limitations of the basic characteristics of the units and leaders.

Great post Paul! CL must be indeed an excellent game. I especially like these two points in the context of the running discussion here

[K62_]

Great graphics there K62!

Are you telling me that flat characters on a key will show up on a forehead? I'd believe on an ear, but never on aforehead :p

Why thank you! :p (I actually tried hard to make that tail fit but the forum won't let me ) So you're into music, heh?

But who th is Earl Shivers?!