Matrix Games Forums

After many hours of Red Storm and Southern Storm, I've now tried Cold War.
I've only played one scenario so far, too early to form an opinion.

As with Southern Storm, I'm having significant trouble understanding how the VICTORY STATUS AND VICTORY POINTS DISTRIBUTION works in Cold War.
I'd like to explain this using three tables:

Table 1: Game Start:
1.) Why are the Scenario VP Location Points subtracted from the Scenario Initial VPs for NATO?

2.) Only the two Scenario Initial VPs are added together to form the Scenario Total VPs. What about the Scenario VP Locations? Shouldn't the correct Total VPs be:

Scenario Initial VPs (NATO) + Scenario Initial VPs (WP) + Scenario VP Location?

Table 2 End of Game:

Current % of Starting Forces WP at 44% is correct
(Initial VP 12,704 - Claims 7,089 = 5,615 = 44%)

Current % of Starting Forces NATO at 76% appears to be incorrect
(Initial VP 12,458 - Claims 2,368 = 10,090 = 81% and not 76%)

Why are the 2,500 Location VPs being subtracted from the 10,090 NATO Surviving Forces?

As I understand it, the final calculation would be as shown in Table 3:

Table 3
It would still be a marginal win, but closer to a tactical outcome, and above all, it would be easier to understand.

Where is my mistake? What am I doing wrong in my reasoning?

Thank you for any clarification.

The game is calculating VP based on what's "on the board" at the time the game is ended. The main thing to take into account is that as you lose forces, the VP value of those units is lost for good (i.e. you don't "gain" VP by destroying unit, but prevent the enemy from having them count towards their VP total at the end of the game).

Edit: Also, % of forces is specifically your units; you have to remove any VPs you are getting from locations, then use that number to calculate % of forces. So the equation is actually Final % for NATO = (9090-1500)/9958 (the amount of forces you had at the start) = 7590 or 76%
Final % for WP = (6615-1000)/12704 = 5615 or 44%
Edit2: Would this look better? Please note I'm not a dev and this is just my suggestion. I get why the unit losses are in in the columns they are in, but on the other hand calculation wise they really should be with the side that lost those unit VPs. I'll make a suggestion on the Discord as well.

Thank you so much for this very detailed explanation.
Now even I understand it, but I wouldn't have come up with this method of calculation on my own, that doesn't seem logical to me.
But that's how the game is and I have to live with the rules.
Your tables are a little bit easier to understand