Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Currently, only the defender can purchase defensive features if the battle is an Assault/Defend battle.

During force selection – in Assault Defend battles - the defender can purchase:

• Fortifications
• Bunkers

the defender can also purchase points for:

• Mines
• Trenches
• Barbed Wire
• Dragons teeth

which are spent during the deploy phase to place these features on the defenders side of the map.

Also during the deploy phase (of an assault/defend battle) the defender may choose to:

• Entrench All Units

Why not allow both players to purchase these features for Meeting Engagements?

I think it would sometimes be fun – and realistic - to have to equally sized forces facing one another over a no-mans-land, where both sides have some mines, barbed wire and other defensive features, and they need to try to attack and capture objectives.

This would be particularly interesting for PBEM campaigns, where encouraging a little stagnation in the front lines would be healthy.

I’m not suggesting you have no limit to defensive feature purchasing. Every PBEM battle has pre-game agreements, and defensive feature purchases would obviously just be a part of that agreement.

Personally, I would keep the purchase of defensive features in a PBEM Meeting Engagement to far less points than I would accept in an Assault/Defend battle. I may choose to allow very limited mines and barbed wire, but not allow the ‘Entrench All’ button to be used. It would be nice to have to worry about mines in a meeting engagement, once in while.

No one would be forced to agree to allow the purchase of defensive features. But having the option would give the choice to those who are interested.

There could even be a preferences button could even turn this ability off or on, for playing against the AI.

Any thoughts?


cheers,
Cross

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

My initial thought is a whole new game would have to be made, it's just not the way the current game works.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

I have to be honest, that I don't know how difficult it would be to implement this.

But let's pretend that it's not a ridculous amount of coding, and Andy thinks it's worth while :D

Would you use it?


Cross

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

You can do it when designing a scenario. I do think you can do it in a "battle" set-up.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Possible workaround

If you pregenerate the maps you can place
• Trenches
• Barbed Wire
• Dragons teeth
then save it.
These will be present when reload admitedly at no cost, if have CD can use remove damage function or whatever to clear them if need be.

As an idea at start of the campaign once chosen opponents both players generate say 3 maps & pass to opponent for approval.
You could use them say every other battle, decide order at start or allow a certain amount of "timeouts"
Loser of previous battle only is allowed to call & select the next map.
Could also be allowed to place XXX points of fortifications on it or trust them to not spend that many support points.
Use as a balancing aid to keep the campaign going if one side got beat up.

A second note on campaign balancing
Either dont allow expanding core or restrict to XXX points per game.
Reason the winner is already in better shape & gets more R&R anyway so unbalances.
The other player is still in big trouble if happens a few games in a row the winning player has a nice pool of points. Never occured to me to do vs AI but go for the crushing blow & convert them all to support points if he wont concede.
First time did this had a lot of air available so I bought an airforce for a laugh about 30 planes, caused some surprise judging from the return email which I could note quote here:D.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Interesting suggestions, but for this to work like I imagined, you would need to deploy these features during the deployment phase.



Cross

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Why would you pretend that? My thinking is anything new and exciting would require hidious amounts of fresh coding.:eek:


But I wouldn't be against deploying some mines in a meeting.:cool: Even just something like claymore charges.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Yes scenario's are the way to go on this, you can basically do anything you want across the board.

I tried just now doing it in battle mode, but it doesn't work,
hardcoding auto sets 0 build points, and of course removes all the stuff from the buy menu's.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Claymores are cool :)

But this suggestion isn't only about making temporary or quick and easy defensive features available for Meeting Engagements.

I was thinking about any WWII front line position that's been static for a couple of days, soon has a no-mans-land with all sorts of defensive positions built on BOTH sides of the no-mans-land. Barbed wire, trenches, mine fields, bunkers, etc. The longer the stalemate, the more sophisticated these defenses could become.

Both sides - often evenly matched - would try to attack/counter-attack and gain ground from the other side.

'Meeting engagements' didn't only take place in a mine/trench free environment.

In other words, I think defensive features could realistically be made available for both sides, and the forces could be evenly matched.



Cross

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

One thing I just thought of, is the start lines.

Currently, start lines are too far apart - especially in Meeting engagements - to take full advantage of the placement of defensive features.

Unless you wanted a huge no-mans-land, start lines would have to be adjusted, or be made adjustable.

On a 100 wide map, ME start lines are 29 from the edge. It would be cool if you could go as close as 45 from the map edge, or a no-mans-land of 500yards.

In fact, even if it wasn't possible to buy defensive features for MEs, it would still be great to have adjustable start lines.:cool:


Cross

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Perhaps another possibilty is to create a 4th battle type. It could be called 'Front Line Battle' or something.

A 'Front Line Battle' would have:

• Close to centre start lines
• Even points for both sides
• Defensive features available for both players

Sorry for the multiple posts. I should have thought through the idea before posting it. :doh:


Cross

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

The way I see it it's more the forums fault than your fault.The tiny lttle editing window they give you to modify a post is unacceptable. If that didn't exsist you wouldn't have to post again.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Assume you mean time period here, can understand why they do it some people will abuse & change original post tis the way of the world.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Cross I can sort of see what you are going for but I think much like several of my ideas the time to implement vs the time it saves the end user is a factor. OK you cant do it in a campaign but you could do it in the editor.
If they would be willing to put the time in for new deployment perhaps some thought on what exactly so one change covers all.

Example off the top of my head
New meeting type called user which allows you to adjust points for fortifications start lines etc. No idea of the ramifications of moving the start line which currently can only be done in a user campaign, may need some serious work on AI deploy routines.

In an AI campaign you could do this by creating one (requires work) but a PBEM campaign no to my knowledge.

Lets assume the majority of play is vs the AI so that has to take priority then adapt if possible for PBEM whats needed as a one stop fill all the holes engagement.
The ability to toggle on off the abilities you want as in this thread.
Perhaps the ability per battle for players vs AI to switch buying for AI side to human computer or allow you to buy part of its force & it finnishes it. Perhaps the ability to choose the next battle type or set probablities based on outcome of previos battle sure there are others people would like sorry garbled but posting on the fly here. Realy I suppose a campaign that allows you to do a sort of user campaign on the fly.

My thought is to make viable to even be considered has to be a one stop shop look at the problems which occured giving us PBEM campaigns this is bound to happen with any tinkering I feel, bit diffrent to adding another thing to "the list"

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Sorry that was clear as mud meant define it precisly plus any other ideas. No real idea when it would occur but my thoughts more happened at specific time frames theatres like city seige otherwise uncommon. If this is the case half of your fortifications could in fact be out of position as in overun at the start of the battle as the lines have shifted.
Possibly a more common occurence is to allow both sides to dig in only as in fox holes. In both cases map generator should probably add a liberal sprinkling of shell holes, never as straight forward as initial thoughts:)

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

i do not think allowing to buy mines and other defensive units in other battles as the defensive ones is a good idea.

simply this does not fit the idea behind such battles.

however i think more variety in the types of battles would be interesting.

for examples corridor type battlesn when all units of a side have to escape from the battlefield.

or decisive victory hexes: you would have 1 to 3 victory hexes with huge point values so that anybody controlling them is guarantee to win decisively the game whatever its losses...

or defensive battles when the defenser is surrounded...

many other ideas could be developped, and as well many man hours time of coding would be required...

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

This idea is cool to have some extra def and adjustable startlines. I'm down with that!

I think for PBEM games we should organize some design for online play. Somehow we should simulate the "frontline" online

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

the flyingstartline idea is great! I think that would be cool.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Interesting! But it's good the way it is now. What I think the game needs is unit graphics that are at the same scale as the rest of the map. Perfection! That's what we need. Actually, the scale works just fine, it just takes awile for it to become second nature. I wonder how things look at diferent resolutions? Or how about with mass amounts of memory? Like on a main-frame computer?

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

I pressume that was a joke my eyesight is good but finding a tank would be difficult & as for Mr Snipper he would be 1 pixel very good at hiding even from his owner. Things would not look any better with huge memory the graphic overheads are small for this game but yes you should buy the CD for this if no other reason.
Look at your map fully zoomed out its a mess, now look at it fully zoomed in not bad. Buy the CD & fully zoomed out is as good as what you get zoomed in so seeing arty puffs of smoke is easy, zoomed in is crisp no eye strain.
Note to designers showing this in store or guide might boost sales dont think most people appreciate the huge diffrence in quality. To such a large extent that once bought MBT would not play WW2 till I bought it.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

We'll be releasing the next patch for winSPWW2 in December and there will be a full list of changes issued then but one thing we are adding is a new " demolition " class that in WW2 will be represented by booby traps, Demolition charges and Inciderary bombs. These can be command detonated or act like mines. For winSPMBT this will expand into IED's.

We'll be issuing more info on this change in December.

Don

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

Wow somebody has been thinking did not think you could get units to interact like that. Now I think about it could do something using bombard screen possibly with engineer class as controler. Give them a weapon with a range of say 2-6 that can fire using bombard screen only. Would work if somehow could make him only person that can call it & would mean would have to be stationary to do so, of course he could magicaly place it in the hex. Just suggesting things might not have thought of to see if come up with any other innovative ideas.
Damn another patch cant wait for last time it was the arty changes this time something new, awesome many thanks for keeping on developing this game.

Re: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements
 

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! A new patch! Can't wait till I get it. I wonder what new things will contain