The role of the player, fog of war, and all that

[Bloodybucket28th]

A post in the "Direction of Retreat" thread got me thinking about this old issue with traditional map and counter games - the perfect control (well, almost perfect) that the player gets compared to what a real commander would have in most of the scenarios covered by TOAW.

The issue was giving the player more control over how units retreat, one of the few areas where the player doesn't get to call the shots.

Is there room in TOAW for any randomness beyond the way combat is resolved? I think some events can be percentage based, and there is optional FoW that depends on recon ability. The player can leave air ops up to the staff assistant. Other than these areas, is there some substantial portion of the game that I'm missing where fate plays a heavy handed role?

Certainly the TOAW commander enjoys substantial advantages that a real commander would only dream of. The luxury of time, the reliability of intel (even with FoW), the hindsight of some knowledge of the historical OOB and course of the fight (in most cases), the lack of life and death stress, the knowledge that all orders will be carried out without the friction of communication foul-ups, no incompetent or disobedient subordinates, the freedom from micromanagement by higher headquarters, all are advantages a commander would gladly give his XO's right arm for.

Should there be a random element in how units behave when the battle plan goes south? Should all retreats be optimal, or is the current behavior a little more simulative of what can happen when a unit takes a beating? If there were options that would let chance upset some of your plans, would you use them?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

Is there room in TOAW for any randomness beyond the way combat is resolved? I think some events can be percentage based, and there is optional FoW that depends on recon ability. The player can leave air ops up to the staff assistant. Other than these areas, is there some substantial portion of the game that I'm missing where fate plays a heavy handed role?

Early turn endings.

Appear... Appear... Appear...!

Certainly the TOAW commander enjoys substantial advantages that a real commander would only dream of. The luxury of time, the reliability of intel (even with FoW), the hindsight of some knowledge of the historical OOB and course of the fight (in most cases), the lack of life and death stress, the knowledge that all orders will be carried out without the friction of communication foul-ups, no incompetent or disobedient subordinates, the freedom from micromanagement by higher headquarters, all are advantages a commander would gladly give his XO's right arm for.

Various suggestions have been mooted from time to time- some of which can be applied in TOAW III as it stands, at a stretch. For example;

No longer possible in PBM, but the player could be prevented from directly controlling his forces, but rather only allowed to set the formation orders for the PO to use, opening the scenario in the editor every couple of turns to update them.
Using a rather ugly bug which allows players to switch forces in the middle of the turn, force 1 could be allowed to disband a unit of his choice from a particular colour set in force 2. So that questionable native levy disappears at the critical moment.

For future development, I'd like to see a limitation on the available information on friendly forces. This could depend on how long they've remained in a particular hex for. There has also been a suggestion that some formations could be placed under the control of the PO, but this presents problems with the round system.

If there were options that would let chance upset some of your plans, would you use them?

Being a designer, yes.