Improvement proposal IV - Scenario design.

[Artur]

This time my requests are about scenario design. I worked a lot with the scenario editor tools recently I created a campaign for the design contest at SZO and have other project ongoing.
I also took part in the design of the Das Reich campaign in SPWaW at the Depot.

I state here that the map editor shipped with the CD version is excellent I express my acknowledgements for that guys. So is the clone function in the scenario editor.

There are some things that can improve the game play even more I list my proposals here.

1. Editing of start lines. It would help campaign creation very much is the start lines would be editable hex by hex like in SPWaW. In my camaign I had to give deploy instructions if I wanted the player to deploy in a corner of a map for example.

2. Setting a retreating hex like it is done in SPWaW. This way all unit can retreat towards that direction.

3. Increase the number of objective flags(or allow higher values to obectives.) Moder equipment is very expensive and objectives cannot be expensive enough to make a higher priority.

4. I have already mentioned the exiting at the north and south edge of the maps, if it is feasible to do it it would be nice to have.

[Captain_Cruft]

Artur said:
1. Editing of start lines. It would help campaign creation very much is the start lines would be editable hex by hex like in SPWaW. In my camaign I had to give deploy instructions if I wanted the player to deploy in a corner of a map for example.

Agree in principle. Fixed lines might be inherent in code though, don't know.

2. Setting a retreating hex like it is done in SPWaW. This way all unit can retreat towards that direction.

Disagree. This engine's retreat handling is superior to SPWaW IMHO.

3. Increase the number of objective flags(or allow higher values to obectives.) Moder equipment is very expensive and objectives cannot be expensive enough to make a higher priority.

Totally agree in principle. However, since the objective flag points seem to be 8-bit values (hence limited to < 255) increasing them would break backwards compatibility with existing scenarios and save game files.

[Mobhack]

1) The game uses fixed start lines - we added a variable one for user campaign scenarios, but the fixed lines and left-right nature is embedded right into the code. We added changes if the map size is altered - and that involved finding obscure hard-coded variables and constants, and changing these to a relative value of the map width (and sometimes height) system. Definately non-trivial.

Adding a wiggly start line system is again a decidedly non trivial item. You would need to add 200 x,y coordinates (twice, one for P1 and one for P2) to the scenario data, thus changing every save game's data, requiring a complete data massage of all scenarios, saved games (or just treat those as toasted), user campaigns scenarios etc. And that would just be for our stuff under our control. Third party scenarios would need conversion tools. And that is the simple bit.

Then - you need to rewrite all the AI deployment code, user deployment code (as it only looks at X coordinates so could not handle a "box"), all the AI route finding, pre game AI arty bombardments and so on and on..

SP3 handled the wiggly start lines extremely simply - it deployed everything in an advance precisely 2 (may have been 3) hexes back from the start line when advancing or assaulting. It probably used a similar displacement in X for defender placement. Artillery it handled probably with the inbuilt SSI "AI arty cheat" code we removed from the code long, long ago, that code gave the AI the average centroid of mass of your forces to shoot at. We don't - our AI arty plots a "guestimated" plan all on its own, with no cheat code telling it "he's deployed around about here"!

So - loads and loads of code, data massaging, therefore not going to happen to this game engine.

2) In SP3 (which is the game engine WaW was based on) - I simply placed that retrteat flag at the centre rear of the forces, as it was quite useless - they wanted to run that way anyway. Maybe if someone did a scenario top to bottom, it may have had its uses, but any such scenario is immediately violating the SP series concept that one player plays left and the other right.

North is wherever you want it to be, the top of the map is "Top" and not "North". Artillery comes from the left and the right side of the map. (may have been less of a problem on SP3 as arty was on-map in brigade level games ?).

3) Would require a change in all save files, whether you changed it to "more victory hexes" or to an unsigned 16 bit number (say) instead of a byte. Plus some code changes. requires complete change of the save game format, and possibly some scenario redesign work as well, so not going to occur.

Objective hexes in any computer wargame are really there to simplify AI coding. It gives the AI code (and casual gamers! something to navigate towards, simplifying the process. "Real" warfare is about the destruction of the enemy force, while not losing too much of your own. The WRG tabletop rules for example work without any on-map terrain objectives, and calculate victory on the ratios of destroyed on-map elements. That is more like the military would score theings, and for a game based on 2 humans playing each other, it is straightforwards (find, fix and strike at your enemy). Unfortunately - the latter is rather beyond the concept of any AI (probably to include classified military systems). An AI without the guidance of terrain objectives would probably just wander about the table bumping into things fairly randomly, especially if the human player used say a mobile defence strategy! .

The best way to play a human opponent really, is to set all the objective hexes to zero value. At the end of the game, calculate the ratio of on-map forces destroyed for both sides (ignore all off map artillery, air etc. That stops the sort of player who puts 9500 points into off map arty units and 500 into 5 AOP units - ignoring the off map points, if he loses 1 100 point FOO, he has a 20% force loss, and if his opponent realises his strategy, he can go on a hunt the spotter mission !. Agree beforehand what the exchange ratio will be a draw, win etc.

Some day I'll maybe post a set of rules for PBEM with no artificial V-hexes based on normal tabletop rule sets for discussion, when I find the time!. (I did discuss the concept before, but forget if it was in this forum, or the old dead yahoo! list)


Cheers
Andy

[Captain_Cruft]

One thing you can do if you are making a scenario and want the VHs to count - set all units values to zero or divide by 10 or something. Won't work for generated battles though.