Matrix Games Forums

Marshall, are you really lowering LS build cost to 6$ and 9 months? On which base, if I may ask?
HOW MUCH PLAYTESTING have you done before altering a basic game mechanics?

Now, realize that France DOES NOT NEED TO BUILD MUCH HS to tackle GB: GB has already a +1 in combat, so HS
superiority is irrelevant. With current rules, it suffices for France to have a single HS and a lot of lights not to
get a -1 in combat, so what you will see is just a rush to buy more LS. HS are actually pretty useless to France.

Right, the maximum number of LS is lower then the maximum number of HS, so in a serious arms race France will be forced on buying HS, but realize it will do that only when LS will be completely filled up.
All in all, France will be able to boost very quickly his fleet just buying a lot light ships, thus altering game balance in a way I doubt you can foresee...

So, please, just not to ruin running pbem games, either:

1) Make the change in building cost optional.
2) Or, more simply, change the combat rule so that you get -1 to die roll whenever your fleets have more LS then HS,
or even better, if LS are more then half of HS (LS are not done for the first line of combat, and they should
appear in the EIH ratio of 10 LS for 20 HS). With current rules is OK to have a fight with a single HS plus 40
LS...
3) Cancel it altogether, its a bad idea.

Otherwise, thumbs up for evasion and pursuit, this is already limiting GB superiority over the seas

Ashtar,
Your whole concept is based on miss information, the rules that are in place for naval combat are wrong to start with, Lights V Heavies never happened in fleet battles period ![:o] [:o][:o]

Also it was a unwritten rule that Heavies would not engage Lights unless the light was stupid enough to attack the heavy in the first place,plus the fact that the light could out manouver and out run the heavy.

Lets put this idea of lights v heavies to bed it is a bad option,as per this example from history.

FRIGATE V SHIP OF THE LINE.
A frigate captain who avoided battle with a ship of the line would certainly not be accused of cowardice,as the force of the larger ship was totally overwhelming . In fleet actions ships-of-the-line did not normally fire on frigates,unless the latter fired first.For example,at the battle of the Nile the 74 gun Goliath was manoevering into postion alongside the french line when the frigate Serieuse opened fire on her ; the Goliath fired back ,and with a single broadside dismasted her,shattered her hull,and caused her to drift away and sink.Even several frigates were not normally expected to take on a ship of the line.

So please stop saying that it is ok for a frigate to take on a heavy,because in planet real it is not.They are not designed to combat heavies and the rules need to take this into account.On land you would not expect an Infantry soldier armed with a riffle,to take on an artillery cannon because that is the same comparison.

This games whole naval system is based on fantasy, fiction in the extreme. Heavies never ever fought lights unless in very rare circumstances the light attacked the heavy, in which case it was doomed. Lights in fleet actions were there to fight there opposite numbers ie other lights, but there main purpose was as an early warning system for the fleet, and to assist crippled heavys by means of towing them when dismasted.[:o]

This game either needs to get the naval side right or just ignore the naval aspect altogether.

Your whole concept is based on miss information, the rules that are in place for naval combat are wrong to start with, Lights V Heavies never happened in fleet battles period !

Hellfire, I know LS should not be of any good use in battle, but as a matter of fact with current rules they are almost as functional as HS, and now they are going to be ridiculously cheap.

I just proposed a quick fix to reduce they impact in battle and avoid current games to be messed up, do you have any better and readily implementable idea?

Ashtar,
I apologise if I'm coming across as being personal,that is the last thing on my mind. [:)]
I can only hope that the naval rules will be altered in future updates or as a minimum requirement an option choice,as I have never played the original board game, I'm looking at this with an open mind but My interest is in Naval aspect of the Napoleonic era means that, ALL THESE ERRORS STICKOUT LIKE AS SORE THUMB.[:o]

EIA gamers as far as I can see have been missing out on the possibilites available via improving the Naval aspect of the game.

Lights and Heavies should be treat as seperate battles within any combat,and not as now select all loses to the light fleets.

As for your concern about games already in progress, all these changes can and should be available as gamers option's.

Hellfire, no need to apologize for being personal (you were not).
This said,

I have never played the original board game

quite shows part of the problems here. A successful game - like EIA - is a careful combination of playability
and feeling of realism. Playability means an awful lot of playtesting and a reasonable command over
game mechanics, which sadly seems to be lacking here around. Just adding more and more right looking detail
only since they seem realistic, is not going to work, I am sorry. Most of the time it just makes a game unplayable.

It now seems to me that since a small subset of people on the forum has been feeding data on historical ship build costs without any regard for playability, Marshall decided to change them without any playtesting. The result being that we now will have something formally called "light ships" which - due to present rules - is almost as effective as heavy ships in combat but much more cheaper and quick to build. I do not care about their name, I care about the game effect of the new rules about "light ships" which is going to be quite bad.

Well how about the fleet with the most light ships gets a die roll bonus for it's improved ability to evade,in doing this the lights are serving there purpose within the fleet,there sighting is enhanced giving an improved odds chance via the new Evade /pursuit rules, and as for combat like the transports they play no part in any fleet action that has heavies, and only the heavies are taken into account for combat results.[:)]

This being a more accurate scenario of what actually occurred, and the heavies are used in the roll they were designed for, IE combat with other heavies.

Combat light v light is perfectly feasiable if 2 light fleets meet each other, but otherwise if fleets contain heavies + lights then only the heavies are taken into account and the lights are treated as transports as per the combat rules.[:)] This highlights the difference between Heavies & Lights and gives them there place within the fleets, and the reason why heavies should be built.

ORIGINAL: Ashtar

Your whole concept is based on miss information, the rules that are in place for naval combat are wrong to start with, Lights V Heavies never happened in fleet battles period !

Hellfire, I know LS should not be of any good use in battle, but as a matter of fact with current rules they are almost as functional as HS, and now they are going to be ridiculously cheap.

I just proposed a quick fix to reduce they impact in battle and avoid current games to be messed up, do you have any better and readily implementable idea?

Combat light v light is perfectly feasiable if 2 light fleets meet each other, but otherwise if fleets contain heavies + lights then only the heavies are taken into account and the lights are treated as transports as per the combat rules. This highlights the difference between Heavies & Lights and gives them there place within the fleets, and the reason why heavies should be built.2 Lights don't equal 1 Heavy, for combat they should never I repeat never be used against heavies![:)]

MARSHALL IF YOU READ THIS CAN YOU PLEASE AT LEAST THINK ABOUT USING THE ABOVE AS A BASIC NAVAL COMBAT OPTION OR SOMETHING SIMILAR LIGHTS AND HEAVIES ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT BEASTS, ITS LIKE A TIGER FIGHTING A TABBY CAT AND THE TABBY WON'T WIN[:)]

hellfire...

Hellfire, your proposals could be sensible but as a matter of fact they would require a lot of tweaking and testing,
basically making LS useless for combat (unless no HS are around) and just good for piracy/antipiracy and evasion/interception.
This is not something you could throw easily into the game without seriously testing build cost/time and, most of all,
initial strength of major powers fleets. And for 1.06 I wont a reasonable solution which does not completely destroy
balance in existing games.

LS are a present of EiH, which changed the originally unspecified 30 factors strong fleets
of EIA in single EiH fleets with 20 HS + 10LS capacity.
Now, to make things worse, EIANW decided to split EiH single fleets in two separate ones, 2O HS and 10 LS fleet.
So fleet numbers have been doubled, but their maintenance cost (1 in port, 5 at sea) and political points value in a battle (1 per fleet) has not be changed
accordingly (i.e. halved). Personally I do not understand why THIS has not been corrected but people had to start messing with build cost/time ??

Now, you advocate making LS ship completely useless in combat with HS, but you would understand (I hope) that this cannot be done overnight
without seriously rethinking initial forces (not to speak of sudden sea-power shift in existing games)

A more simple approach to avoid the too cheap LS to become dominant in 1.06 patch would simply be to extend the -1 combat malus from "no HS at all on a side"
to "more LS then HS on a side" or even to "LS are more the half the HS".
This - I repeat - is badly needed since the +1 bonus for having a HS advantage on your opponent is useless to GB (they already have +1 and cannot have +2)
so that France or Spain have no interest in building anymore HS until their LS roster is complete.

Even simpler, would be to make new build cost optional, but I fear this will not be listened

Ashtar, I understand were you are coming from and your concerns, but as far as lights go they were indeed best suited to blockade duty, piracy & anti-piracy and early warning lookouts for the fleet evasion & interception, how they managed to get involved with naval fleet combat action is a mystery, I assume it was easier to do.

Another option and I'm talking about option's here gamers choice, is for Marshall to somehow be able to have heavies v heavies & lights v lights have there combat results calculated seperately within fleet action's for as now alocating losses to the light ships is a cop out and over simplifies the conflict, I stand by my prefered option of lights being treated as transports as far as combat with heavies goes, for they are out matched in all aspects of battle, there hulls could not with stand the guns of a heavy, and there guns were of little use against heavies.

I suppose what should happen is to copy EIA as per the board game as close as possible to please all the original gamers, and have yes/no option selection for players choice concerning other matters, I believe the EIA scenario is planned ?

Well hopefully with 1.6 we can go back to EiA naval rules, thus this discussion becomes moot.

thus this discussion becomes moot.

No. This discussion is about light ships and the EiANW naval system, which will continue. What may become moot is hardcore EiA players trying to argue about EiANW computer game features. Once they have a classic EiA game, they can go off to their corner and enjoy themselves. These rest of the EiANW customers will continue to discuss computer game options, which is a healthy thing to do. Marshall and Matrix are willing to make improvements and enhancements. It's just a question of what adjustments are needed and how to implement new game options. AFTER the bugs are resolved and the classic EiA campaign is made available, of course.

Well, the game is titled Empires in Arms. If it gets "modded" to the point of no longer resembling EiA at all anymore then what's the point? Why not just call it something else?

Ultimately, this is what I am lobbying for... I'd really like Matrix Games to stop using the title Empires in Arms to sell their Napoleonic Era Wargame product.

And before you say it... I don't really give a rat's ass what Rowland has to say.

ACTUALLY... if I really had my way (which I won't) Matrix could start a new game for all you EiANW fans and apply all those "cool" mods that you guys want.... then they can abandon EiA and give it to the community via open source.

AH.... one can dream!

I don't really give a rat's ass what Rowland has to say.

This is just pathetic. You obviously don't care what anybody has to say, be it Harry Rowland himself, or Marshall Ellis, or Matrix staff. This is madness; the light ships issue is trivial by comparison. [8|]

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

I don't really give a rat's ass what Rowland has to say.

This is just pathetic. You obviously don't care what anybody has to say, be it Harry Rowland himself, or Marshall Ellis, or Matrix staff. This is madness; the light ships issue is trivial by comparison. [8|]

It was a "light" post... though I knew you'd flip out about it, as you always do. LOL. Great stuff!

He probably feels the same way about your opinion Neverman...

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

Well, the game is titled Empires in Arms. If it gets "modded" to the point of no longer resembling EiA at all anymore then what's the point? Why not just call it something else?

Ultimately, this is what I am lobbying for... I'd really like Matrix Games to stop using the title Empires in Arms to sell their Napoleonic Era Wargame product.

And before you say it... I don't really give a rat's ass what Rowland has to say.

But only after ones is done complaining for the day...

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ACTUALLY... if I really had my way (which I won't) Matrix could start a new game for all you EiANW fans and apply all those "cool" mods that you guys want.... then they can abandon EiA and give it to the community via open source.

AH.... one can dream!

Hey guys it's called EIA so the game should follow as close as possible the original rules,duplicate the board game classic for all the hard core players, I feel this is only fair and I have not even played the board game. But then again this is the cumputer version and a great number of a new generation of player wants options, so give the customer what he wants simple.

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

thus this discussion becomes moot.

No. This discussion is about light ships and the EiANW naval system, which will continue. What may become moot is hardcore EiA players trying to argue about EiANW computer game features. Once they have a classic EiA game, they can go off to their corner and enjoy themselves. These rest of the EiANW customers will continue to discuss computer game options, which is a healthy thing to do. Marshall and Matrix are willing to make improvements and enhancements. It's just a question of what adjustments are needed and how to implement new game options. AFTER the bugs are resolved and the classic EiA campaign is made available, of course.

I agree 100% I never played the original so have nothing to compare this too, The hard core players should have the Board game duplicated as close as possible, that been said this is the pc version and offers the opportunity to experiment with new ideas, the editor hopefully will be able to tweak most things to suit each gamer. Other than that I see no reason for not having a load of yes/no option's at setup simple.

Hey guys:
 
The build costs are changing in 1.06 and it is too late to change now. Guys, I'm sorry but I must quit circling back to change things that many wanted changed. At this pace (I cannot keep up with Mantis as it is) we will never get to 1.07! I don't mind the changes but the undos can be expensive!