BFTB (Mini-Guide): Tutorial, AAR, and tips! (more or less)

[MarkShot]

An explanation of the Ambush Option by Dave:

If I want to infiltrate a force through the enemy lines and I plot a route through the edge of the woods, I would check Ambush to prevent them firing at enemy a long way away, thus ensuring they stay concealed. However, if they run into an enemy in the woods closeby they can still let loose.

So, in a way, it can be regarded more as a "stealth" option. Also, you should note, as I understand, this probably does not apply to indirect fire weapons which fire on call in support. So, my guess is that if you want total absolute surprise like for a human opponent, then you will have to manually take control of such units.

[MarkShot]

MarkShot stops waffling and takes a stand. The thread title has been reset!

[Tzar007]

Mark,

Regarding the ASSAULT setting: I guess if you enter a time that is too soon, i.e. before your force reached the FUP, the AI will ignore it and simply start the assault as soon as reorg on the FUP is complete. You have to input realistic START, END or ASSAULT times if you want to make it work I suppose ?

[MarkShot]

Ugo,

Exactly. And that is why I went into such detail of where the defaults come from and when the player may consider the defaults to be of use for planning purposes. Until there is some history built up in the game, the defaults will be totally unrealistic and if you use them for planning, you'll be sorry.

[emerson]

Concerning unit planning delays: in certain situations, Germans especially, it might be better suited if the default delay was accurate right off the bat. From what I've seen of the scenerios for the first couple days, albeit limited, the Germans are already in motion. Most of the units were issued movement and attack orders before the game time starts, and having unrealistic planning delays for units issued orders before the game/scenerio begins is just that, unrealistic. The Germans had plans in place well before 16 December across the entire front; they counted on the subterfuge and surprise. I think that operational planning should be represented, and for right now figure the best way to due that is through varible percent unit delay mentioned earlier and the actual unit/force delays displayed for scenerios in those first few crucial days. From the times shown above 20 to 30 minutes was the differerence between Kampfgruppe Peiper crossing the river and those "damned engineers" blowing bridges and forcing his units rerouting and those associated planning delays.

[MarkShot]

Emerson,

Those are good questions for Dave and Richard.

I'm the systems guy on the team; not a historian or military expert. The last time I commented on some issue with mortars Bil responded, "Mark, you got the right weapon, but the wrong ammunition!". It's important that a Beta knows his limitations!

Thanks for dropping by.

[MarkShot]

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon and I have finally cleaned up my INBOX, cleared my desk, completed business paperwork, ... now, it is back to the BFTB manual.

I must say that it is truly a pleasure to have a thick comprehensive manual to read for a game. I really hate it when I buy a game and there are a million widgets and the manual is 10 pages. Then an entire complex game screen with 50 data elements displayed and 20 control elements is simply explained at "this is the Social Services Widget Display where you may view Social Service information and use the many widgets". Aargh!!! I am not going to name any developers/publishers, but I am sure everyone has purchased one of these. For me, PG's doc set has always reflected Old World craftsmenship. I really like that. Personally, I have actually shelved quite a few games with lots of promise, since I wanted the game to be the adventure and not UI to be the adventure.

COTA clocked in with around 500 pages. Did you need to read all of that to play? Nah ... The series has a lot of depth. So, at the highest levels you could just MOVE/ATTACK/DEFEND and you would be playing the game. Then, if you wanted you can go quite a bit deeper and tune the parameters of your orders. You can go even deeper and carefully study the officers who report to you and their men; finding their strengths and weaknesses. It's really all up to you. It's all there and modeled.

For me, I feel a good plan is the most important thing you can do. This is by far more important than understanding the nuances of each and every check box. So, you could know the doc set by heart, but if you decide to FUP for an attack in day light in plain view of a dug-in enemy with heavy arty and air support, well there ain't a check box anywhere in BFTB which is going to save you from such stupidity. So, focus on the big strokes and don't sweat the small stuff. You'll be playing this game for years and will have plenty of time to master the fine details. Most of the defaults are fairly reasonable.

Dave, would it be possible to make my TopTips doc from COTA available to BFTB buyers in the Matrix Members Area? (I think 97% is applicable and may just help the overwhelmed.)

Off to read ...

[MarkShot]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna
Re Basing. When this is checked, any supply depot or arty will be "based" or deployed to a good location for them to do their job ( resupply or fire support as appropriate ). When unchecked, any depot or arty unit will move and deploy in formation with the rest of the force. So if you want to ensure that your arty or depot stays with the main body, then uncheck the Basing option.

I have just been experimenting with the BASING Option. I thought that it might turn out to be an easier way to move a fire base. Perhaps, allowing the player to move the entire fire base with a single order. (See COTA Mini-Guide.) Due to the way arty units move in order to move a fire base, you must still give individual orders to each gun unit. Testing with this option indicates that behavior of all gun forces, fire bases, is not really impacted by this option.

[MarkShot]

Heard from Dave, I will have to update the information here. His implementation is, in fact, doing more than just changing how much it hands out the back end. I'll rewrite this tomorrow after looking more closely at what he has done. The key thing is that, the pipe can be enlarged up to 300% of what it was under the COTA implementation. This is done by upping the frequency of emergency resupply convoys. So, I would imagine that arty fire base could keep firing at ROF=HIGH until they drop from exhaustion. I think ROF=HIGH is 4X. So, the affect of this is some serious increase in fire power if you have the stocks to support it. Nice.

I think I am out here for today. I am now 50% done with the manual.

However, I wanted to touch upon the supply options for orders before calling it a day. Not too much is said in the manual as to how these work.

I have removed incorrect statements.

(7) I would use this in conjunction with the F7 key (Unit Info: Supply) to see what your actually supply requirements are.

(8) There is no way to stock supplies in anticipation of future events like an attack or a defensive situation where it is likely that the force will be cut off.

(9) Currently the PRIORITY settings seem to override the ROF settings and there is some Beta discussion why and should it be?

(10) I do see one other indirect affect of this implementation is that it should smooth out the fire engagement curve. (At MAX PRIORITY, you are getting 12 supply events/days as opposed to 4.) If you with recall under RDOA/HTTR, supply was fixed with no simulation of lines/convoys at 03:00 daily. This often resulted, particularly with arty, of a few hour shoot off of everything they had and the afternoons could be very quiet. Well, if you see what I am saying about BFTB and the way this system works, one could expect a lot of noise throughout the day.

[MarkShot]

Any side bets being placed? What type of odds am I getting?

Over the last week, me and the AI have been eyeing each other pretty good. I still got some more reading to do and some public appearances to make.

Can a tired old COTA Beta who hasn't fought for three long years go ten rounds with Dave's latest creation? Well, buy your tickets ... I plan to come out swinging ... I may be old, but I still got it ...

BFTB - you are going down!!!

[MarkShot]

Supply priority stuff will require modification. Tomorrow.

[MarkShot]

Updated supply priority comments.

[MarkShot]

A quick note about Order Options which we were previously discussing. They are subject to order delays.

This means that as you are playing and your Bde runs into a road block, you are not going to be able to modify the order and instantly tell them to BYPASS. The transition to BYPASS will require the orders to propagate as per delays. Propagation could be 30 minutes to hours ... so, the final result could be some badly mauled lead units.

Myself, I plan to probably set these options based on best intel estimates and planning at the time and then not mess with them.

If your plans are well constructed, then you should be issuing new orders as you see the the leading indicators of success. (For example, an attack going in with the those little info boxes showing green up arrows.) I act on the leading indicators in order to over lap expected results with order delays which will be incurred. In my opinion, the poor player is one who is constantly responding to failure by trying to issue new orders. Given the way the game system works, it is quite possible to exacerbate a poor situation. Remember: planning and spotting the key junctures in a fluid situation is everything.

[MarkShot]

Another aspect of poor play for this type of game is only to plan your next step when your current step has completed.

One thing CmdOps does better than most games is place an emphasis on time. If you can control the pace and time of the battle, then you are far more likely to win.

It is far better that you arrive in the neighborhood while the enemy is still pouring in and deploying than 24 hours later when he is dug-in and waiting for you. Since so much of this game is caught up in the movement of appropriate forces and the processing of orders, it is not the raw speed of your units that knocks the enemy off balance. Rather it is the intellectual and analystical capabilities of the commander that does that. Once you have done that, then the troops are merely the tools towards the ultimately realization. Yes, Sun Tzu meets CmdOps.

[MarkShot]

If those little green arrows and a nice tight formation on the attack is a "leading indicator" of success, then what is a "trailing indicator"? That little message you get that "XYZ is now securing the objective". If your task in the scenario is to gain ground, and only then you are saying, "Now what should I do?". You are too late; probably by about 3-9 hours.

[MarkShot]

Dear Readers,

I don't know what some of you think regarding speculative writings; meaning that there are things I am not sure about but instead speculating. On one hand, this may seem somewhat shoddy of me. On the other hand, this is helping to drive discussion for both refining the manual and reviewing the mechanics of features. I do promise to go back and correct anything I write that is clearly wrong or misleading.

Like many game development efforts PG's cycle goes like this:

* Initial design spec (documents and/or forum posts)

* Coding

* More coding

* Even more coding

* End user documentation

Thus, it may well take quite a bit of questioning and silly speculation to ultimately reach a point where important distinctions are covered in the manual. Only by having a place to throw things up on a wall and see if they stick, do we get more to what needs to be in the manual for you.

[MarkShot]

Alright back to some more thoughts on supply priorities:

(1) I don't think you can cut rear area defender's water rations (BASIC supply) in order to keep front line units fully hydrated in the heat of battle. Why? These priorities seem to only apply to emergency requests. So, it would seem that everyone is guaranteed to get two regular supply requests per day. As I understand it, those requests should be sufficient to keep an unengaged stationary unit adequately supplied.

(2) Some uses for boosting supply:

(2a) When you are heavily engaged (pretty obvious).

(2b) When you have a force which is likely to have its supply intermittently cut. At MAX that force can make a supply request every two hours. Thus, if the roads are only going to be open for 5-7 hours, then this gives you the best chance getting them adequately supplied to hold out when cut off from time to time. NOTE: We are having some discussion as to the coupling of supply priorities and ROF. I will keep you posted when I know more.

(2c) A lot of modern combat come down to the fire power. In theory, a small force with more fire power should be equivalent to a large force with less fire power. I've heard it said that when we speak of "mass", we do not necessarily mean acheiving a concentration of units, but rather a concentration of fires. So, a well stocked side may then use AMMO Priority to compensate for smaller forces with which to engage.

(2c.1) One of the advantages of doing the above is that a smaller force is more nimble. The delays and order processing is quicker. You may be able to strike with the same affect, but faster by boosting AMMO priority.

(2c.2) Disadvantages of such an approach is that a smaller force is less robust when facing returned fire, due to dispersion and relative lethality of fire. The smaller force to achieve the higher ROF sustained engagement will also tire quicker.

(2d) I could see ROF=LOW and AMMO=MAX for various type of bombardments. I believe engaged units do not rest as quickly as those who are not engaged. Thus, even though doing little to attrit an enemy this may add to his general fatigue state. Various locations on the map function as natural choke points: crossings or a road through the woods. By laying down a continuous barrage, you can slow enemy movement even if you cannot see it. (BTW, I've used the bombard a crossing to very good effect to slow an enemy crossing by many hours. Not only is the technique very effective, but it does not require the blatant sacrifice of units to make a desparate stand at the Alamo.)

[MarkShot]

I will be on reading duty this afternoon.

I think you have already been exposed to much of the new UI features. However, it is important to realize this is only a fraction of the total AI and modeling improvements which have gone into the engine.

I know that Dave is working on documenting these, and he is by far the best one to present them.

[MarkShot]

What follows is an illustration of resupply events occurring at a greatly accelerated rate.

[MarkShot]

The events ...