Matrix Games Forums

(Don't know if this has been answered already, but the game manual and a forum search both draw a blank)

I know the campaigns have persistence for the core units of friendly forces. Is there any similar persistence for the enemy forces being fought across the campaign battles?

I'm asking because I'm playing the first mission of the Hell on Wheels, and have driven the enemy to 70% losses. I'm pretty bruised, but have enough concentrated combat power rolling up with my 2/66th Abrams that I could inflict some serious losses on the rest of the enemy force. Yet I've discovered that Soviet artillery is off-board (meaning I can't do anything but just endure the steady attrition), and the remaining T-80BV battalions have the power to make me pay a price if I close.

If I'm facing a single global enemy force across the scenarios, then it would make sense to press my advantage now and inflict lopsided losses while I have the initiative, so I face less of the enemy later. However, if an entirely new enemy force appears every battle no matter what I do this round, then it makes no sense to endure any further losses (except for points).

Also, how is the campaign final outcome determined? Is it just an averaging of the results of the battles? So a Marginal Victory, a Contested and a Minor Loss would = Contested overall? Or is it done by total VPs accumulated, so that a great performance in one battle counteract weak performances in others?

Thanks!

Chris

No, enemy forces are not carried forward. Which forces are the side you control in the campaign are the only ones that are carried forward and even then only those core forces and nothing else is brought forward.

Good Hunting.

MR

He means "enemies" are not carried forward

Gotcha. Thanks for the quick response.

That persistence of larger organizations might be something to consider for future games in the series. It's one of the best things about Wargame Airland Battle. When two battlegroups would fight (e.g. 18th Panzerbrigade vs 365th Guards Motorized Regiment), they each had a fixed inventory at the start, and it often took several battles to reach a decision. Was fascinating to try to degrade particular capabilities of an opposing formation in early battles, then seek to exploit them later. Also created interesting decisions during battles - do I push harder and risk my forces in this battle to gain advantages in the next round?

(Sorry for the crosspost - two threads popped up at the same time on the same topic)

I'm planning to do this programmatically.

My plan is to create an operational combat framework that uses FC:RS as its tactical combat resolution engine. Players would command V Corps/8th Guards forces on a hex map of the combat area, and when forces moved into contact, a FC:RS save-game file will be generated. Once the combat is concluded or time limit reached, the game is saved, and the operational framework is updated, taking into account losses, terrain modifications, unit positions, logistic expenditures, morale effects, etc, etc, etc. Some out-of-FC:RS combat resolution will be required for tactical combat that both players regard as too tedious to play out in FC, or as inappropriate for that game. Combat map data in its roughest form will be generated by scanning in topo maps, binning the resulting terrain at 500 metre resolution - that data can then have diffs applied to it by any interested community member. Hex grid size will be 15km, time will be tracked in minutes, unit scale will be battalions/regiments with specialized companies, and the implementation language will be C#.

This will accomplish several goals: it will allow for persistent force state and location between battles, will serve as a scenario generator, will allow combat victory to be decoupled from the Victory Point system, will allow players to circumvent the sudden-death nature of scenarios, will create unpredictable combat between heterogeneous combat arms, and provide for persistent terrain effects such as fortification, minefields, blown bridges, nbc contamination, etc etc etc.

The main challenge at the current time is decoding the savegame/scenario file format. Savegame files are binary blobs with a magic number at the beginning and no discernible structure. They may have been deliberately obfuscated; in any case there is no documentation. I will either reverse-engineer them from first principles by creating scenarios with known configurations, or I will have to write a daemon that hooks into the game process and intercepts serialization. Worst-case scenario is I have to write a screenscraper, but that would be a nightmare with localization and Windows font settings issues, so I hope it doesn't come to that.

Anyway, I have a couple of paying projects to work through, and then I'll get cracking on it. If anyone has the actual sav/scn file documentation, or the serialization code itself, that'll dramatically speed this along

David Clark, you might check out this project.

tm.asp?m=3748801

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=11855.0

Good Hunting.

MR