Artillery

[Ardem]

Is it just me or do people find AI artillery frustrating.

You start the round and I try and shift all my units out of LOS but guareenteed artillery will be falling on one of my unit to being with. I don't think i played a game where artillery is not falling on my units right from the word go.

Also having the artillery following your fast moving tanks, just seems out of place in big picture of and use of artillery.

Kharkov is a great game but the use of artillery really drags the experience down for me. If there was a way to turn off so no artillery is available I probably end up playing it more often.

I think this is my biggest bugbear with kharkov.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Ardem

Is it just me or do people find AI artillery frustrating.

You start the round and I try and shift all my units out of LOS but guareenteed artillery will be falling on one of my unit to being with. I don't think i played a game where artillery is not falling on my units right from the word go.

Also having the artillery following your fast moving tanks, just seems out of place in big picture of and use of artillery.

Kharkov is a great game but the use of artillery really drags the experience down for me. If there was a way to turn off so no artillery is available I probably end up playing it more often.

I think this is my biggest bugbear with kharkov.

It's been discussed that a good percentage of the scenarios have Soviet artillery start firing at the very beginning of the battle. That as in almost all cases the scenarios are German attack scenarios that is not at all what you would expect except in the Kursk campaign where the Soviets did fire their artillery before and during the German attack.

In an attack the defender shouldn't have the opportunity to fire first. They really shouldn't even for the most part know where the attack is coming from in the first minute.

PC's briefings and lack of map information don't help with any kind of tactical knowledge either. Something I'm hoping will be rectified as the map editor is perfected.

Until more scenarios are made without the pre-German attack Soviet artillery barrage you get to live with them in the CD supplied ones. I've not played them all yet but I get alot of comments about the Soviets almost always starting by firing artillery in the early phases of most scenarios. So it's a common enough event to catch the notice of alot of gamers.

Keep your eyes open in the Mods/Scenarios section for new scenarios that may not have that feature included in them.

I'm hoping they will split the Mods/Scenario section in two so each will have their own section as they are both growing and need more room for each.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Redleg]

I have good luck ducking the AI's artillery. By feignting one direction and veering off to the "real" direction. If you're the German side, the lack of the delay is a great ally.

But I normally play generated battles.... or I open up a scenario and change the artillery to my own liking in scenario editor.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Redleg
I have good luck ducking the AI's artillery. By feignting one direction and veering off to the "real" direction. If you're the German side, the lack of the delay is a great ally.

Yes, that is a good tactic. Place a diversion unit well out front and move it away from any of your troops. It should attract all available Soviet artillery if you keep the rest of your Germans quite and hidden the first turn. After that let them roll. Sometimes counting the turns to Soviet artillery fire helps too. If you know that they only get 2 turns of fire at the start. 3 turns to cool down and 2 more to call. So where your units are turn 5 should be a place they aren't turn 7 and 8.

Another option is to make a small change in the scenario. Change the 'T' number of Soviet artillery units from '0' to '1' in the scenario editior. They will then arrive off map the end of turn 1.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

ORIGINAL: Redleg
I have good luck ducking the AI's artillery. By feignting one direction and veering off to the "real" direction. If you're the German side, the lack of the delay is a great ally.

Yes, that is a good tactic. Place a diversion unit well out front and move it away from any of your troops. It should attract all available Soviet artillery if you keep the rest of your Germans quite and hidden the first turn. After that let them roll. Sometimes counting the turns to Soviet artillery fire helps too. If you know that they only get 2 turns of fire at the start. 3 turns to cool down and 2 more to call. So where your units are turn 5 should be a place they aren't turn 7 and 8.

Another option is to make a small change in the scenario. Change the 'T' number of Soviet artillery units from '0' to '1' in the scenario editior. They will then arrive off map the end of turn 1.

As a scenario designer that's not really a good answer for me.

I don't really want gamers to be going in and changing my scenarios. I'll have my own scenarios playtested and balanced enough that if you start using gamey tactics to trick the AI then you will more than likely lose. While all armies use diversions to draw off fire. A single unit when an attack is about to start more than likely wouldn't do it.

Counting artillery shells in real life to decide when to move would more than likely get you killed. That's a particularly gamey tactic to be using in PC.

A better answer is more playtesting and better artillery modeling for either a patch or later versions of the game.

I'm not here to step on anybody's toes about the way to defeat Soviet artillery in PC. For anyone that's never tried to make balanced scenarios for the release of a game while the code is still being written don't criticize the designers until you've tried that yourself.

What PC artillery needs is not gamey work arounds but a bit of an artillery remodeling and it should work just fine. How the artillery works now isn't as much a problem as the Soviets starting German attack scenarios with their full complement and on spot fire capability on turn one. There should be some kind of a reaction time for the Soviet artillery before it can respond to an attack that it more than likely didn't know was coming.

I don't condone anyone going in and redoing another designers work.
If anything, the designers of the scenarios on the CD's might want to revist and re-release any updated versions themselves. I would much prefer that to my doing anything with their work.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
I don't condone anyone going in and redoing another designers work.
If anything, the designers of the scenarios on the CD's might want to revist and re-release any updated versions themselves. I would much prefer that to my doing anything with their work.

"redoing another designers work"?
It's not like they are going to sound proof the Sistine Chapel.
If they want a more fair start go for it. It's their game.

On some of my scenarios I have off map artillery randomly arriving as reinforcemants. So there is no way to know if when or if it will arrive. But the standard PCK campaign missions don't have this feature because the offmap reinforcement function was not available when they were created.

[Redleg]

MR: Seems to me that including a statement of how you wish the scenario to be played might be good to put in the description.

But I figure it is my game, I'll play it however I wish. For example, I have created some custom infantry units and I see some custom armor mods being created. Someone may decide to mod artillery.... the combinations are nearly without limit in this game.

Will you object to someone using mods to play your scenarios?

[Ardem]

Well in that case I think it go back on the shelf and hope they do something about it, it really just destroys the game for me that artillery is modelled without a delay from turn 1.

Hell I even be happy to play it without artillery it be 100% more enjoyable but I want to play random campaign games but I can't even get pass the first turn cause it annonies me that much even if the artillery does not manage to disable a vehicle

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Redleg

MR: Seems to me that including a statement of how you wish the scenario to be played might be good to put in the description.

I have included in my briefings a statement of how I think the scenario plays best. For most of the CD scenarios they seem to play much better for me as the Germans. But thats just how I see them play out. That may be because most of them are German attack Soviet defense. There is little to do as the Soviets in those but to sit back and take the pounding.

But I figure it is my game, I'll play it however I wish. For example, I have created some custom infantry units and I see some custom armor mods being created. Someone may decide to mod artillery.... the combinations are nearly without limit in this game.

I'm not talking about mods here. I'm talking about going inside the scenario in the editor and changing up my OOB's and arrival times for reinforcements...etc....

I'll play PC however I want as well. What I won't do is go inside another designers scenario and make changes to the way it plays.

Once we get some sites that support custom made scenarios and they start getting reviews that will be important.

Will you object to someone using mods to play your scenarios?

Of course not. What I object to is making changes to my scenarios.

Who put all the research and playtest time into that scenario? And who will get the review when it comes time for the game to start getting scenario archives and scenario reviews?

Will my altered scenario then be played against other gamers who think that it's unbalanced and I get the associated review for it?

I don't condone ANYONE changing a custom made scenario. No, matter whose it is. [:-]

Of course, mods of all types are different. They change the look, sound, and feel of the game, but not the balance.

IMO, you want to do random then do random. You want to play custom made scenarios, that someone has worked long and hard on, then you don't make changes without discussing it with the designer, and at the very least asking permission to make changes to it.

That's how the CM community does it and it works very well. I see no reason why that needs to be different for the PC game system.

Or maybe we are talking about two different points of view or issues.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Mobius


"redoing another designers work"?
It's not like they are going to sound proof the Sistine Chapel.
If they want a more fair start go for it. It's their game.

Yes, it is their game. It's also my time and effort that goes into my work. The CM community dealt with this issue long ago. The standard answer is that you don't change a custom designed scenario without the consent of the designer.

You may not think it's much like sound proofing the Sistine Chapel but until you have spend more than 6 months working on a single scenario to get get the map details correct, the order of battle as close as you can get it, playtest it so that it plays out with some semblance of balance, then you may not know what that feels like to have a gamer whose played the game one time decide it sucks and change it for you.

At some point, hopefully in the very near future there will be sites where the scenarios start getting reviews, AAR's and comments/discussions. When that happens how do you propose that the reviews be done if the scenarios are commonly being changed up by the gamers?

On some of my scenarios I have off map artillery randomly arriving as reinforcemants. So there is no way to know if when or if it will arrive. But the standard PCK campaign missions don't have this feature because the offmap reinforcement function was not available when they were created.

Randomly arriving reinforcements make a scenario extremely difficult to balance. If it's in a campaign where it's not meant to be balanced as closely as it might if it's a stand alone battle that's different.

In CM I long ago discovered that the more random the reinforcements the less control the scenario has in the outcome of the battle.

There are several key areas in scenario design.

1) Skill of the designer. This seems obvious but the designer has no idea of the skill level of those playing their scenarios. And as the designers/gamers get more skillful it is often a good thing for the designer to go back and update the scenario. I've done this with about half of my CM scenarios over the years. I've also deleted about 10% of them completely.

2) Skill of the player. With PC most gamers aren't that skillful with the system at the moment. As the years go by and more games in the series come out that will change.

3) In games where the AI is involved there is a certain expectation from the designer as to how the AI will respond in the battle. A widely random occurring event, such as a reinforcement grouping, while making the scenario play different each time loses too much for lack of control in how it plays.

It's been my CM experience that few gamers play a scenario more than once. Unless that scenario is exceptional they get played and then the gamer moves on. So the value of the extremely random reinforcements to produce a widely varying result each time is very limited. The loss of control of the outcome of how the computer will respond is also lost. The end result is a scenario that plays very different each time and may one time be a walk over and the next time be unwinnable. That's not an answer I'll accept in my own scenarios. HSG scenarios are pretty well known for the ability of the scenario to deliver a good fight. With each side having the opportunity and ability to win the battle.

I will often stage my reinforcements to keep the game intense and moving. If the random entry is set too high then you lose the ability of having the scenario help with the intensity of the battle. What you get then is unpredictability. I'll put unpredictability in the game but as the designer I want to control just how unpredictable things get.

Since my scenarios/battles/campaigns are all set on historical events they will, for the most part, have that predetermined by when they arrived in the original battle. But each designer has their own way of seeing the action and there are a myriad of small details we don't know for certain about each action that the designer makes judgment calls about. That's why I call most of my scenarios "semi-historical".

4) The time scale is also key. I like my battles just a little short. I want the commander to feel some of the pressure of actual battlefield command in the comforts of his own home. Nice chair in an airconditioned or heated room...nice lighting...hopefully nobody shooting at them. To make up for that I playtest my scenarios to a level of a comfortable win then I subtract some time. Just enough that you have to make some choices you don't want to have to make.

Just like real battlefield commanders under tremendous stress.

You may make a mistake in your haste. Like they do when they fight.

So, in answer to your comment, if they want a fair fight the game has the ability to modify the scenario to a greater or lesser degree by choosing the level of difficulty you want.

In my briefings I put at what level I playtested the difficulty. If you find my scenarios too easy I suggest you have the computer add more difficulty.

I don't recommend you going inside and changing my, or any other designers, settings.[:-]

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
You may not think it's much like sound proofing the Sistine Chapel but until you have spend more than 6 months working on a single scenario to get get the map details correct, the order of battle as close as you can get it, playtest it so that it plays out with some semblance of balance, then you may not know what that feels like to have a gamer whose played the game one time decide it sucks and change it for you.

I spent over a year getting the Trans-Siberian RR scenario right for Railroad Tycoon. Over the course of five years I made quite a few scenarios and original maps for that game. Many people used the maps for the basis of their own scenarios.

The RRT community dealt with the issue too. If someone changed a scenario or map and posted for download for others to play then they should ask permission from the author. Otherwise they could change it all they wanted if the scenario was just used on their own computer or played with their friends. (It was a multplayer network game.)

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
You may not think it's much like sound proofing the Sistine Chapel but until you have spend more than 6 months working on a single scenario to get get the map details correct, the order of battle as close as you can get it, playtest it so that it plays out with some semblance of balance, then you may not know what that feels like to have a gamer whose played the game one time decide it sucks and change it for you.

I spent over a year getting the Trans-Siberian RR scenario right for Railroad Tycoon. Over the course of five years I made quite a few scenarios and original maps for that game. Many people used the maps for the basis of their own scenarios.

The RRT community dealt with the issue too. If someone changed a scenario or map and posted for download for others to play then they should ask permission from the author. Otherwise they could change it all they wanted if the scenario was just used on their own computer or played with their friends. (It was a multplayer network game.)

Good, then we agree entirely.

I once spent 5 years doing a Vietnam campaign for TOAW/COW. That's the longest I ever put into a computer project.

I put more time in some tactical armor games I made but thats a different story.

What I actually see as a bigger issue, in playing the PC battles/campaigns, are the mods that each scenario may be using. If you don't have the correct mod pack for some of these they won't work. The building packs come immediately to mind.

If I don't have the right mods I many see an empty map where there is a building when you look at it. I may see your guys just floating in thin air when I look at it and you see them in the building.

That's just an example. Not picking on building mods here.....

Good Hunting.

MR

[benpark]

If I don't have the right mods I many see an empty map where there is a building when you look at it. I may see your guys just floating in thin air when I look at it and you see them in the building.

You won't see any map at all, I believe. The way it works is that you will need the entire custom map, containing the buildings. That's the way I intend to release them (due to the nature of the maps I'm working on), but in my book-any way to get new content in there is a-okay.

We can't change the way the game was made, only adapt to the openness of it's modability. Some may see this as a beast that needs structure. Others will exploit the openings.

Back on track- the artillery needs a reasonable delay to simulate the technology of the era and doctrines of the respective armies. It's also far too plentiful for all but the most supplied offensives. This is a design area that needs improvement in my eyes. The barrage on the first turn should really either be left out or given as an option only to the attacking side, with extreme FoW restrictions (possibly not seeing ANY enemy during setup-a rule that might be carried over to the entire game at large to good effect).

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: benpark

You won't see any map at all, I believe. The way it works is that you will need the entire custom map, containing the buildings. That's the way I intend to release them (due to the nature of the maps I'm working on), but in my book-any way to get new content in there is a-okay.

We can't change the way the game was made, only adapt to the openness of it's modability. Some may see this as a beast that needs structure. Others will exploit the openings.

I agree. The game is what it is. So a map must be complete with all mods or you see nothing? What about infantry and armor mods? Especially to the unit ratings themselves.?

Back on track- the artillery needs a reasonable delay to simulate the technology of the era and doctrines of the respective armies. It's also far too plentiful for all but the most supplied offensives. This is a design area that needs improvement in my eyes. The barrage on the first turn should really either be left out or given as an option only to the attacking side, with extreme FoW restrictions (possibly not seeing ANY enemy during setup-a rule that might be carried over to the entire game at large to good effect).

There's been alot of discussion about the artillery model. I would expect to see some sort of model thats more detailed than what it looks like now.

Most tactical wargames and this includes both CM and PC only portray the artillery observer that is on the move. CM tries to take into account the artillery that is pre-plotted but it has a response time that is universal.

Artillery responses are subject to a couple of things. First and foremost is if the connection between the land unit and the artillery unit is by land line or radio. Most games have the radio option only. That is where all the randomness of connectivity comes in and the very fragile model for handling artillery spotting and fire correction.

If the spotter is directing artillery by a land line most of those issues are greatly reduced if not eliminated.

The other thing that is missing in PC and was to a large extent in CM as well is the availability of artillery.

Only mortars are an immediate on-call weapons system for small units. The larger the weapons system the higher up the chain of command you have to go to access it. The higher up the chain of command you go the longer it takes....per level....

Unless, the artillery is dedicated. Then all bets are off and the land line call can be direct and almost immediate.

The Soviets weren't nearly as bad as most games make them out to be. Only in fluid situations was that true. And in fluid situations the Soviet answer to artillery fire was the SU/JSU line of assault guns for direct fire. In positional warfare situations the Red Army artillery earned it's nickname of the "God of War".

Delay times should be modified by both dedication to the on-map units, the amount of pre-plotted target selection available and the type of communications used for the targeting link.

I'm hoping all this is included in the next game in the series if and when the series does an improved infantry combat model.

Good Hunting.

MR