Tactical Rounds - or Saddling a horse from behind
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:50 pm
Well, basically the idea of Tactical Rounds to balance some unrealistic elements of IGO-UGO games is a good one.
But sadly the way it is implemented in TOAW3 is... sub-optimal [:(]
The Tactical Rounds try to deny players abuse the IGO-UGO limitations and use their furthest units to move up front - kill the opposition and then use the front units - which still have full movement - to exploit the breach. So basically front units start moving at their first day of the week through a hex which is 'liberated' at the last day of the week by an other unit.
Still the way TOAW implements this allows units to encircle and thus deny retreat of units on their 'individual' last day - while the front units kill them on their first day, bridge engineers can show up at the river with their last movement points and allow to other units to cross the river with their very first movement points.
Even worse - units that have used but one of their movement points can still 'passively' support an attack (i.e. it shows up in the detailed combat log).
Even worse is the fact that combat can 'burn up' those tactical rounds like a short fuse. Not only is it more then often next to impossible to determine how long a single battle will take - even with very light losses/excellent chances (of course except for the AI which knows all the facts and the mechanics, only Tactical Reserve can 'steal' its well planned rounds) - it takes too much control away from the player.
This round burning is unrealistic too - why should Army Group South 'burn' its rounds because the Finns are in a hard fight?
Personally I think the 'proper' way of implementing Tactical Rounds is by giving each unit 10% of their movement points at the start of the turn and each time the player advances one round each unit gets another 10% of their MP.
Units can engage in combat - and are locked in combat as long as the fight continues; but now the player can 'add' units to the fight that just moved in range (basically in the way Tactical/Local Reserve does but manually). Maybe players could even be given to break off the attack.
And of course supply could be modelled a tad more realistic this way - instead of both players getting a 'batch' of supply at the start of the turn they get only a part per Tactical Round too - maybe even implement the 'supply' command - it burns 5 MP and gets X% supply - because the same is true for supply, a fast unit cuts the opponents supply with his last MP and gets removed with the first MP of the other players unit, basically the unit was out of supply for one, maybe two Tactical Rounds (in bigger 1 week/turn scenarios this means less then a day) but the unit still suffers maximum out of supply damage.
A simple approach for supply could be 3/40 of the current supply system per Tactical Round in the moving players turn(which would allow units to move one their first round into a better supply location in the second round - realistic, nay? especially in week long turns) and 1/40 per round in the ther players turn (of course units out of supply get the same partial reduction per turn).
Increasing the MP per round instead of reducing the MP per 'burned round' would remove many of the 'unrealistic' side-effects the current implementation still has and allow the player to control the action much better.
murx
But sadly the way it is implemented in TOAW3 is... sub-optimal [:(]
The Tactical Rounds try to deny players abuse the IGO-UGO limitations and use their furthest units to move up front - kill the opposition and then use the front units - which still have full movement - to exploit the breach. So basically front units start moving at their first day of the week through a hex which is 'liberated' at the last day of the week by an other unit.
Still the way TOAW implements this allows units to encircle and thus deny retreat of units on their 'individual' last day - while the front units kill them on their first day, bridge engineers can show up at the river with their last movement points and allow to other units to cross the river with their very first movement points.
Even worse - units that have used but one of their movement points can still 'passively' support an attack (i.e. it shows up in the detailed combat log).
Even worse is the fact that combat can 'burn up' those tactical rounds like a short fuse. Not only is it more then often next to impossible to determine how long a single battle will take - even with very light losses/excellent chances (of course except for the AI which knows all the facts and the mechanics, only Tactical Reserve can 'steal' its well planned rounds) - it takes too much control away from the player.
This round burning is unrealistic too - why should Army Group South 'burn' its rounds because the Finns are in a hard fight?
Personally I think the 'proper' way of implementing Tactical Rounds is by giving each unit 10% of their movement points at the start of the turn and each time the player advances one round each unit gets another 10% of their MP.
Units can engage in combat - and are locked in combat as long as the fight continues; but now the player can 'add' units to the fight that just moved in range (basically in the way Tactical/Local Reserve does but manually). Maybe players could even be given to break off the attack.
And of course supply could be modelled a tad more realistic this way - instead of both players getting a 'batch' of supply at the start of the turn they get only a part per Tactical Round too - maybe even implement the 'supply' command - it burns 5 MP and gets X% supply - because the same is true for supply, a fast unit cuts the opponents supply with his last MP and gets removed with the first MP of the other players unit, basically the unit was out of supply for one, maybe two Tactical Rounds (in bigger 1 week/turn scenarios this means less then a day) but the unit still suffers maximum out of supply damage.
A simple approach for supply could be 3/40 of the current supply system per Tactical Round in the moving players turn(which would allow units to move one their first round into a better supply location in the second round - realistic, nay? especially in week long turns) and 1/40 per round in the ther players turn (of course units out of supply get the same partial reduction per turn).
Increasing the MP per round instead of reducing the MP per 'burned round' would remove many of the 'unrealistic' side-effects the current implementation still has and allow the player to control the action much better.
murx