Forum > Theater of Operations: World at War
Counterattack at Belle Fontaine
choppinlt:
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---Hey it's nice to see some folks reading this stuff!
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My sentiments exactly! 8)
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---I don't know that I necessarily want to re-fight THIS battle, but I do want to fight a bunch more battles to increase the sample size. Battles like this will happen, we need to know how to handle them. In fact, as I think I mentioned, I'm not too concerned about how the actual battle fights, I'm far more concerned about determining the before and after, and how that interacts with TO. Not to say there aren't issues about how the battle works, but a lot of that comes out of starting conditions, and should be fairly easy to adjust.
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Well in fairness, it would be pretty simple to start this one over! ;D
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---This is really the heart of the matter right now, balancing our desire for realism in terms of tactics based around force preservation against our very real need to make a system that produces fun, challenging, meaningful tactical battles. Interestingly enough, I had a fellow on the GS ASL forum basically say that he would not consider trying a system that would not forecast which engagements would be good battles and which not. I take that with a grain of salt, there are lots of crappy unbalanced ASL scenarios out there, and even a few campaign games that are not well balanced, and are prone to the snowball effect. I think that it will be fairly easy to pick out battles that are worth it, and recognize those that are not.
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CK, I agree with everything you said here that this is the heart of the matter. This is also were the beauty is in the eye of the beholder! The way I see it is players are free to make their own interpretations and create their own house rules. We provide as much guidance and context as possible and different considerations like we are doing now. But when it comes down to Jim playing Bob, they can resolve things however they wish. If they wish to take the literal translation of casualties and disregard persistence altogether, there is nothing stopping them. Just as long as there is some understanding between players before any tactical battle is played out. In my biased opinion, I think this is part of the beauty of TO: flexibility to suit individual player tastes. ;D
Let it be known that persistence considerations will be part of the translation algorithm back to TO if/when I hand over a tactical battle! ;)
Furthermore CK, I agree that I think players will quickly develop a feel for whether a battle is worth fighting out or not. That being said, I think I can easily produce an indicator to players like Cat has suggested. Definitely not a critical item to have, but I think it can be easily implemented.
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---I would increase the defender persistence as well though, by the same ratios. This would create longer lasting battles that are hopefully more interesting, i.e. don't end in the first 2 turns. I would compensate for this by adjusting the lazarus odds, basically. So battles last longer, and have more casualties, but more of these are recouped at the end. It should be possible to find a balance that allows for persistence to be meaningful, but not overly constricting, but then not lead to unrealistic attrition. As mentioned, the squad resolution of ASL casualties makes this really easy to justify.
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Yes, and it will be interesting to see it play out and the data collected!
--- Quote from: A Canadian Cat on June 20, 2017, 08:50:54 PM ---Yes, for sure but inside the framework we discussed about ending vs. continuing and how far the advance continued. So instead of doing what the typical CM player would do - run E and F Cos into the ground and use G Co to continue as deep as possible. Instead E and F Co are setting up defensive positions to hold the ground they gained and G Co is flanking the fortified position to consolidate the battalion's advance.
For sure we are just playing for fun and your system already did something sensible with the results. I'm just seeing how one possible resolution would go in CM.
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Yep, as soon as I saw that you replied about this, I recalled that conversation! Keep me honest ;), but mostly this is another good experiment with parameters and "normalizing" results. By the way, I got a system set up back when we talked about this, but I am just waiting for an excuse to test it out!
Cougar11:
I read these regularly, but most of the time I do not have any input into. Keep it coming, always a good read with the battles.
Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
choppinlt:
Great Cougar11! Well feel free to chime in any time and offer your thoughts. We want to hear from the community! :)
A Canadian Cat:
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---This is really the heart of the matter right now, balancing our desire for realism in terms of tactics based around force preservation against our very real need to make a system that produces fun, challenging, meaningful tactical battles.
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Indeed. I like the discussion around this actually. Very interesting. One thing that I would like to see come out of this for my CM games (applies to other systems too) is more realistic desire to withdraw and disengage. As in become more built into the way I play. One fear I have is that too much massaging of results might remove the lessons that the tactical players need to learn - that fighting to the death = operational failure. What I am getting at is that I might want to play the hard way and force CM players to learn to stop pushing until the bitter end. And by learn I mean by getting the backsides kicked because they spent the force guarding an important location totally and let the enemy take advantage of the gap in their lines and therefore ended up loosing.
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---Interestingly enough, I had a fellow on the GS ASL forum basically say that he would not consider trying a system that would not forecast which engagements would be good battles and which not. I take that with a grain of salt, there are lots of crappy unbalanced ASL scenarios out there, and even a few campaign games that are not well balanced, and are prone to the snowball effect. I think that it will be fairly easy to pick out battles that are worth it, and recognize those that are not.
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Indeed. I have my grain of salt right here :-) Sounds like @choppinlt does too. Just because an idea is good does not mean it is an immediate requirement.
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 21, 2017, 02:49:46 AM ---As to your question, persistence is a TO effect for which I blodged together some ASL rules. ASL does have a somewhat similar mechanic whereby a side's ELR can drop during play due to losses. I don't know anyone who uses it, and it doesn't really meet our goal of limiting losses.
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Cool thanks for the info.
choppinlt:
--- Quote from: A Canadian Cat on June 21, 2017, 03:15:31 PM ---Indeed. I like the discussion around this actually. Very interesting. One thing that I would like to see come out of this for my CM games (applies to other systems too) is more realistic desire to withdraw and disengage. As in become more built into the way I play. One fear I have is that too much massaging of results might remove the lessons that the tactical players need to learn - that fighting to the death = operational failure. What I am getting at is that I might want to play the hard way and force CM players to learn to stop pushing until the bitter end. And by learn I mean by getting the backsides kicked because they spent the force guarding an important location totally and let the enemy take advantage of the gap in their lines and therefore ended up loosing.
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Good, I am glad that people are finding this interesting. And this is something I am happy to engage people with, because I want to know what people are thinking.
Cat, I agree wholeheartedly. This adds a new dynamic to otherwise static tactical results. I say 'static' meaning battle results don't mean anything unless they are applied to a bigger storyline. I believe that players have their individual preferences on how they want results to be applied, and these preferences will vary widely. Furthermore, a player may want to experiment with difference preferences on how tactical results are applied, and this can even vary from battle to battle within a given operation/campaign. My only point here is that as long as players are in agreement with the process of how battles are to be executed (including the transition process to and from TO) then all players should find satisfaction. So if you (as the operational commander) want to have tactical battles in CM where 'the results are the results' then that is fine as long as the other players agree and understand.
Here are some reasons I can see value in massaging tactical results (in no particular order):
* Less potential risk to the operational level when playing a battle out tactically, especially for unbalanced battles
* Fundamental differences between how different tactical systems resolve battles (e.g. CM and ASL)
* Experience/talent differentials between tactical opponents that could lead to overly lopsided results
* When a TO player hands over the resolution of a battle to a 3rd party that is only doing the tactical side. The implication being the 3rd party is careless and grinds his forces to nothing, then hands these results back to the TO player to input. This is my personal nightmare scenario :)
The last bullet above illustrates all the battles we have done so far in this TO scenario. None of the people doing the tactical battles are the ones commanding at the operational level. Without some assurance that reasonable results are going to be produced, TO players may forgo handing over tactical resolution altogether. Does this make sense?
Lastly, let me explain what I mean by 'massaging results'. Certain parameters would be established for each battle that would allow for significant latitude in terms of battle result variability. Nothing would be 'massaged' if final results fell within the parameters, but the further the final results fell out of the established parameters then the more the massaging would be done. That is the basic explanation, but what we need is a real example to better illustrate this. When you are done with your current CM battle, then we can use those results.
An extreme example would be a battlegroup attacking while sustaining 90% casualties, but they managed to finally take control of the map from the defender. If I got handed those results as the operational player from my tactical resolving player, I would not be happy if I was expected to take those results at face value. Massaging would take place by inputting say 10% casualties (still really high) in TO, but the distance advanced would be say 200m. IMHO all players would come away satisfied. The tactical player got to achieve his objective fully (damn the casualty list), and the operational player still has a unit to command!
Hopefully I don't sound like I am way out there on this explanation...I hope I am providing some clarity on the overall concept... Or am I missing the point?! :eek My bottom line is that I am leaving up to the players to use their own preferences on battle resolution and transitioning, but I want to give them some solid mechanisms/guidance to use if they choose to. So CK is doing all his great work with ASL, while we are doing more with CM to provide the mechanisms and guidance.
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