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mystic pimp posted:rise of the white sun isn't really a tactical game though that guys games are extremely funny, his game where you play j. edgar hoover and have to allocate FBI manpower to discover which commie cell put dog poo poo in front of your office door is amazing Sold
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Jan 31, 2024 19:25
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my dad posted:As a sidenote, the manual for Dominions 6 is freely available to everyone: this is real useful, thanks for sharing
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Jan 31, 2024 19:34
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https://twitter.com/JohnWakefieId/status/1753178580773896508?t=CCP3Ts3BKmzout1v61ZYpg&s=19
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Feb 2, 2024 06:24
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Update on the Cold War Kriegsspiel. Everyone liked my operational plan you guys helped me with, so I made a first draft of a fire plan. One of the issues is that, for reasons I find somewhat unconvincing, the Umpire decided that we will likely not be able to resupply artillery, although he might end up allowing that if he changed his mind during the game. It's a bit disappointing and very unrealistic to Soviet doctrine, but it's a game and not a real staff exercise, so I get it. It really puts a limit on how much I can achieve by fires. Each of my 3 152mm howitzer battalions has 720 HE, 36 Cluster, 54 Smoke and 18 Chemical, for a total of 2160 HE + 216 HE rockets in the Grad battery. Out of curiosity I checked the norms, and a suppression (not even destruction!) fire mission on the area of one ingame hex against a dug-in target is supposed to be... around 740 152mm HE. That's not great. It also means I don't think I can afford to expend ammo on cutting off enemy retreat routes except at really critical points. With this in mind, my approach to drafting the fire plan was to designate areas of responsibility and advice, rather than strict targets. Rather importantly, the weather forecast projects very limited visibility until 11:00. In my opinion, that means I don't need to worry so much about masking movement within the early stage of the operation. Thermals will probably see through it, but they'd see through smoke anyway. Fire Plan posted:The weather: The east looks pretty empty, because that's where our regiments will be entering the map from. Also, by the time the artillery shows up in the marching order, I expect forward recon will have cleared those areas. That said, looking at it zoomed out, maybe that's too optimistic and I need to put down a little more smoke or suppression by DAG in the north-east. As always, I really appreciate all feedback and help! Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 03:51 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 03:46
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:Update on the Cold War Kriegsspiel. Everyone liked my operational plan you guys helped me with, so I made a first draft of a fire plan. given 54 guns the way my brain immediately thinks of it is that you have about 40 minutes of shells. 10 minutes if they really dumped it as fast as possible. sure doesn't seem like a lot
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Feb 3, 2024 04:09
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Yeah that’s some weak poo poo. Good luck attacking without artillery.
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Feb 3, 2024 10:57
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I think some of that is down to the inherent game mechanics. A suppression mission by default in the game is, I believe, 30 rounds. You can tweak it but that's what the Flashpoint Campaigns thinks is reasonable. The game just operates on an American, not Soviet understanding of artillery. I only played it a little and it was a long time ago, but I seem to recall artillery being fairly effective within the game, so maybe it just considers each shell to be more significant than in reality. I'm not sure the umpire is totally convinced either. The two concerns he brought up were "Flashpoint Campaigns doesn't simulate real volumes of artillery well" and that he wants to "avoid cluster abuse". Like I said, those are a bit unconvincing, but he also said he will consider allowing rearming when a battery runs low on HE - it's more about preventing a resupply mission after every cluster strike, I think... but I still am coming into it cautiously with the mindset that I have to make do.
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Feb 3, 2024 12:38
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This is going to turn into "gamers don't like realistic depictions of artillery because turns out artillery is King poo poo of the battlefield and everyone else needs to bow down before it, but that doesn't generate great stories about tactical prowess and elan". Fitting for "Kriegsspiel" though. Very German-brained.
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Feb 3, 2024 13:47
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Orange Devil posted:This is going to turn into "gamers don't like realistic depictions of artillery because turns out artillery is King poo poo of the battlefield and everyone else needs to bow down before it, but that doesn't generate great stories about tactical prowess and elan". Yeah. I mean I sort of get it, "Soviets win effortlessly every time" does not make a compelling game, video or otherwise, for most people. I've been working on the umpire and he's relenting that he'll most likely allow resupply, just not to count on it to always be reliable. That's an improvement. I can live with that, especially considering Flashpoint Campaigns does not model logistics trucks, units just magically get ammo whenever they're on a resupply order.
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Feb 3, 2024 17:13
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on the bright side, running into the limitations of the engine being too wehrmacht-brained to keep up suggests you've grasped actual doctrine pretty well i'm amused that cluster abuse is something the umpire is worried about because that's 100% an artifact of the game system. two whole shells per barrel and it's supposed to be something of relevance at this scale haha e: distributing penny-packets of one shell of nerve gas to every single gun p sure is just actually against doctrine, as well. if i were you i would simply ignore them because i'm likewise p sure you shouldn't even have them. there would be a chemical troop company attached to the division for CBR recon, monitoring and decontamination both in general and especially if authority to fire had been released by the top level. if you were expected to fire chemical missions you'd have way more of them, and if not you'd have none of them rather than one silver shell sitting around to break and cause contamination casualties in the even that one specific supply depot gets hit atelier morgan has issued a correction as of 17:43 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 17:24
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atelier morgan posted:on the bright side, running into the limitations of the engine being too wehrmacht-brained to keep up suggests you've grasped actual doctrine pretty well You're right, it's really funny. As far as I'm concerned, it means I can fire one chemical mission per battery of howitzers, one with Grads, and one with Army-level Uragans. Each of those persists for a turn or two. But according to the game manual, using them makes you lose VPs, and the KS briefing mentioned they're supposed to be a last resort. But I fully expect NATO to hit us with gas or even tactical nukes, seeing as we have a whole division against a brigade. atelier morgan posted:on the bright side, running into the limitations of the engine being too wehrmacht-brained to keep up suggests you've grasped actual doctrine pretty well On Target Simulations LLC posted:Professional Services lmao I do at least give the game credit for giving Pact a good amount of anti-air, giving them more artillery batteries than NATO, and giving T-80s and T-64s good stats. That's better than average in the West. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 18:17 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 18:12
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Training my army wrong as a joke.
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Feb 3, 2024 21:58
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Orange Devil posted:Training my army wrong as a joke.  Plan looks great, though I agree you should at least be given resupply. If an operation was as important as an opposed river crossing, in hilly, forested terrain, and an urban area, HQ wouldn't ask you to do it without providing the means. I have the manual on Soviet Fire Plans here, but to chime in to the above discussion, the entire point of a plan is that it works. Because real life is not a game, and real officers do everything in their power to make sure an engagement is not "balanced", yes you would allot enough tubes and shells to blow a hole in the enemy line, because why the gently caress would you not?       
Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 23:41 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 23:34
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Frosted Flake posted:I have the manual on Soviet Fire Plans here, but to chime in to the above discussion, the entire point of a plan is that it works. Because real life is not a game, and real officers do everything in their power to make sure an engagement is not "balanced", yes you would allot enough tubes and shells to blow a hole in the enemy line, because why the gently caress would you not? Which goes back to games having to make up a reason why there isn't infinite artillery on the battlefield. Like take the Wargame series with their deck contrivance. You're just arbitrarily not allowed to field more stuff, and the better the artillery the more "points" (wtf are those meant to simulate, exactly?) they cost. Like, the whole thing is a game contrivance to try to make something fun and competitive. The only fun real war is a very non-competitive one, hence all the pip-pip-cheerio-roorah bullshit and epic poems about the glory of colonial police actions. Contrast with WW1 poems when oh poo poo now things are actually competitive and also severely suck. Some games zoom out further and give you a realistic battlegroup/regiment/division/whatever, which fine, but why can't I just mass more of those on my frontage? Because the game says so shut up and play. Some games zoom out even further and let you mass whatever you want on whatever frontage you want as long as you can produce it. Take Shadow Empire, for example. But any game that does that becomes a game where the industrial production and logistics side becomes the actual decider and the battle part becomes of secondary importance. Take Shadow Empire, for example. But then some gamers complain they're no longer playing a wargame. So in conclusion, industrialized war is decided by the competency of the state central planning bureau. If you find yourself in the armed forces of a state which doesn't even have a central planning bureau, then I feel real bad for you and I highly recommend desertion or surrender at the first available opportunity. Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 01:20 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 01:17
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tukhachevsky's reincarnation is cursed in this life to interact with neoliberals who love nothing more than constant affirmations of their individualist ideology
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Feb 4, 2024 01:33
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Orange Devil posted:So in conclusion, industrialized war is decided by the competency of the state central planning bureau. If you find yourself in the armed forces of a state which doesn't even have a central planning bureau, then I feel real bad for you and I highly recommend desertion or surrender at the first available opportunity. Yeah, exactly. You did a great job explaining it. Why would you commit a force that would have to struggle to achieve its task if you had more forces available? Sure, there can be bottlenecks in air and sealift, but those ultimately come down to the same factors you talked about. So, when the British have a small force in North Africa because they are also defending the British Isles, fighting in East Africa, Greece, Crete, Malaya and Burma, and the UK has a limited industrial base compared to the entirety of occupied Europe, yes you see some dramatic movement back and forth. Those swings diminish as the Germans get more bogged down in Russia, and even Italy commits major forces to the Eastern Front. By the time the Americans deploy forces in the theatre, they have effectively already won the campaign for the British by supplying the 8th Army in a way that had never been possible before. Torch is sort of the icing on the cake. From the moment the Americans get off the beach, the campaign is a foregone conclusion, which the Germans and Italians know as they very conservatively trickle forces into Tunisia. People focus on Kasserine Pass, and I get it, but even in that battle the fact that the Germans were low on gas and the Americans had no shortage of artillery tubes or barrels basically decided there was going to be no real lasting effect. That kind of summarizes the whole theatre, and whole war. When the Allies land in Sicily, the outcome is already determined when the Germans can't throw the Americans into the sea at Gela. Once American artillery and supplies start building up on shore, the Germans are toast, and start pulling out. From then on, the Germans only want to slow them down, the drama is the Race to Messina between Patton and Monty. When the Allies land in Italy, the Germans come the closest to achieving something at Salerno and Anzio, again, in that window before American logistics and artillery are actually ashore. In Normandy, same thing, only by then the Germans are so industrially outmatched there are no panzers available to counterattack the Americans at all for the first several days of the campaign. Their response is crippled by no trains to move the panzer divisions, they can't move on the roads by day because of Jabos, and of course there aren't enough panzer formations to be forward positioned within a short march of the entire French coastline. So, when the Allies land in southern France later on, there's not even an effort, the Germans start retreating, mostly on foot, up the Rhone Valley within about 24 hours. But the thing is, if you wanted to make operational or tactical games covering those scenarios, the fact that they're all foregone conclusions is a problem. Because they had the industrial means, like you said, the Allies were able to commit enough forces to secure victory in their plans, reinforce them and resupply them, there's no place where things really hang in the balance and definitely not where there's a German advantage. The Germans had significantly more forces in Italy than the Allies in 1944-45, were defending a mountainous country, and were still continuously losing ground. The only Allied reverse after 1943 I can think of where they decisively lost and had to quit a theatre is the Dodecanese campaign, where the Allies were not able to maintain a logistical lifeline and build up forces, and so were outnumbered and out supplied by the Germans - only because they thrust themselves into that situation, but still. So, before the scenario even starts, your state really determined the outcome. Like you said, why would you attack with less forces than you require if you have a competent, centrally organized, state.
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Feb 4, 2024 02:01
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You know who gave artillery the proper respect? Ground Control. Once you unlocked arty in the campaign, you could slowly crawl across the map, using the stealth infantry as spotters, and blow everything to shreds with arcing indirect fire.
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Feb 4, 2024 02:15
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I always liked how the (surprisingly interesting) Axis & Allies Bulge game had a note in the rulebook that the German victory conditions are just doing better than historical and the actual objectives aren't actually on the map. Or how Japanese victory in Empire of the Sun is just "don't have an unconditional surrender before 1946"
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Feb 4, 2024 02:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:You know who gave artillery the proper respect? Ground Control. Once you unlocked arty in the campaign, you could slowly crawl across the map, using the stealth infantry as spotters, and blow everything to shreds with arcing indirect fire. I loving loved that game and yeah, artillery does the killing, infantry does the spotting, armour defends the artillery. The only time you had to actually risk frontal assaults was when the enemy had those little point defence units that could stop artillery entirely.
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Feb 4, 2024 02:58
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Frosted Flake posted:So, before the scenario even starts, your state really determined the outcome. Like you said, why would you attack with less forces than you require if you have a competent, centrally organized, state. Unity of Command 1 and 2 get into this. 90% of the scenarios are trivial to win - the actual challenge is in taking all the objectives according to HQ's timeline and keeping your losses manageable.
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Feb 4, 2024 03:42
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Unity of Command 2 did a great job by showing how logistics won the war for the Allies.
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Feb 4, 2024 03:49
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Command: Modern Operations is 50% off along with all its DLC and Tacview, and I am still blown away at how one-sided the scenario design is if you take CMANO into account it's been a solid loving decade of development and there's still basically jack poo poo for scenario options if you don't want to play as the United States I am pretty sure I have made almost this exact post in this thread before, but it never stops being frustrating how limited the singleplayer wargaming experience is, most post-WW2 games that do not have a fully dynamic campaign limit you to one side and in the overwhelming majority of scenarios that side is the US. I am still kind of annoyed about Combat Mission: Shock Force literally having no red side campaign at all, when they were always more than happy to let you play as the Nazis in all their previous WW2-era titles Mister Bates has issued a correction as of 05:36 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 05:21
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I laboriously researched the Cold War French and Italian Navies and replaced US forces in scenarios with equivalent forces that would be used for that sort of overall mission, and were available. So, instead of replacing carrier with carrier, which would be absurd, I'd look at "what's the overall goal here?", would find out what kind of task forces they used, and what land-based aviation supported them. It worked out pretty well. Then I lost that hard drive. I haven't had the heart to do all of that work again. Mister Bates posted:I am still kind of annoyed about Combat Mission: Shock Force literally having no red side campaign at all, when they were always more than happy to let you play as the Nazis in all their previous WW2-era titles Even CM game is like this, with the rockstar long/huge campaigns in Normandy, Italy and the Russian front titles all revolving around German forces. Meanwhile, entire countries are unused - Free France, Canada, Poland and India are all present in Rome to Victory and don't have a campaign. I find it so loving obnoxious.
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Feb 4, 2024 05:34
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Frosted Flake posted:Unity of Command 2 did a great job by showing how logistics won the war for the Allies. I played the Hurtgen Forest scenario a while back and it was hilarious Feint attack, feint attack, artillery bombardment, set piece attack - one pip destroyed from the entrenched German infantry Next turn Feint attack, feint attack, artillery bombardment, set piece attack - German infantry retreats, armored division takes the one hex Each Corps takes one hex this way every other turn, and eventually the Germans run out of infantry Then you break into the operational space, so to speak
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Feb 4, 2024 06:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:You know who gave artillery the proper respect? Ground Control. Once you unlocked arty in the campaign, you could slowly crawl across the map, using the stealth infantry as spotters, and blow everything to shreds with arcing indirect fire. Ground Control loving rules; I need to reinstall my GOG copy
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Feb 4, 2024 10:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:You know who gave artillery the proper respect? Ground Control. Once you unlocked arty in the campaign, you could slowly crawl across the map, using the stealth infantry as spotters, and blow everything to shreds with arcing indirect fire. Killing your enemy from a range where they can't even hit you back has been the dominant strategy in warfare ever since someone had the bright idea to use a long pointy stick. Fair fights are for suckers. - Sun Tzu StashAugustine posted:I always liked how the (surprisingly interesting) Axis & Allies Bulge game had a note in the rulebook that the German victory conditions are just doing better than historical and the actual objectives aren't actually on the map. Or how Japanese victory in Empire of the Sun is just "don't have an unconditional surrender before 1946" I think this is the best place in design to insert the arbitrariness to create a fun game. Try to simulate, to whatever degree of realism you are going for (obviously not a lot in case of Axis & Allies), the actual workings of the forces involved, and when you then conclude you are simulating an utterly lopsided foregone conclusion, create fun gameplay by inserting victory conditions that are arbitrary from the point of view of realistic warfare but create a fun challenge for the players. Even that isn't perfect, because it might, for example, force the Americans into assaults against the Germans when in reality they'd just blast the fuckers for an extra month and who cares if the war ends in June '45 rather than May '45 if it means a whole bunch less GIs die? But at least you are giving the players the actual tools available to the actual forces and allow them to use them in their actually intended way. And if then the Allied player is less competent and the German player more competent than their historical counterparts then yeah welp you might get behind on the timeline and then have to take desperate measures to correct which might snowball into catastrophe but at least the whole situation originated from your own lack of competence to start with, rather than being parcelled out a laughable amount of artillery and shells for an opposed river crossing. Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 14:06 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 13:56
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Orange Devil posted:Killing your enemy from a range where they can't even hit you back has been the dominant strategy in warfare ever since someone had the bright idea to use a long pointy stick. I think Order of Battle: WW2 actually is a great example of that. In most battles, you have enough forces to achieve your main objective fairly easily. Doing it within the turn limit, however, is hard, especially on harder difficulties. And achieving all the side objectives in time is a real challenge. There's an extra layer in that your force is persistent throughout the campaign, and so are your resources you spend on buying new units and reinforcing existing ones. This also makes the easier missions interspersed throughout the campaign still be engaging, because if you play well they'll allow your to build up resources you'll absolutely need in the future. It's not perfect because one of the things the difficulty scaling does is just make the enemies arbitrarily stronger than your maximum. Your dudes can have 10 in a stack. This is both hitpoints and potential to do damage. On normal, the enemy also starts with 10. But on the hardest difficulties, they go up to 13. But overall I really recommend the game. It's also got a whole bunch of non-German campaigns.    I'd also gently contest your point about not caring how long the war takes. The Race to Berlin was definitely a real factor, and some generals absolutely made their fame based on their speed rather than keeping men alive. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 15:26 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 15:24
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Panzer Corps 2's lack of non-German campaigns kills me. Is Order of Battle good now? The reviews used to to be all over the place.
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Feb 4, 2024 15:28
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Frosted Flake posted:Panzer Corps 2's lack of non-German campaigns kills me. I liked it a lot. It's a bit wargame-lite, it's not very groggy, so if that's what you need you won't get your kick, but it definitely requires strategic thinking and I think the systems are pretty well designed, though a bit counter-intuitive at first.
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Feb 4, 2024 15:32
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I'd consider OOB to be better than Panzer Corps. Besides avoiding all the wehraboo poo poo (though it does still have a fair amount of Axis content), the zone-of-control and supply mechanics allow for real kessels and operational art. I was completely sold when the Soviet campaign not only has you at the Battle of Khalkin Gol, it absolutely let's you do what Zhukov did.
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Feb 4, 2024 15:50
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OOB is Panzer Corps with logistics and without sloppy blowjobs for nazis. The naval parts are still not great, and different campaigns have different quality, but overall it's very very good and a must play if you ever liked Panzer General or Allied General back in the day. Zeppelin Insanity posted:I'd also gently contest your point about not caring how long the war takes. The Race to Berlin was definitely a real factor, and some generals absolutely made their fame based on their speed rather than keeping men alive. I'd say that has less to do with how long the war takes and more to do with the virulent anti-communism that has infested the west for over 150 years and counting. Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 16:45 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 16:42
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pitch: a Cold War wargame where you play the NATO side and literally all of the intelligence you get about enemy forces is wrong because you're constitutionally incapable of objectively assessing your enemy's capabilities all of their counters show them as way weaker than they actually are, with worse morale, shittier equipment, and less ammunition the UI tells you that you have air superiority in every battle regardless of the actual state of the air war you could even focus harder on it and make it a game about playing a brigade-level intelligence officer, using evidence gathered from the field and deductive reasoning to figure out where the enemy in front of you actually is and what their actual strength is
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Feb 4, 2024 17:51
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I do unironically want a ww2 wargame where you're only playing as the intelligence agencies and the military side of things is out of your hands
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Feb 4, 2024 17:53
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Mister Bates posted:pitch: a Cold War wargame where you play the NATO side and literally all of the intelligence you get about enemy forces is wrong because you're constitutionally incapable of objectively assessing your enemy's capabilities Just in time logistics game
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Feb 4, 2024 17:57
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StashAugustine posted:I do unironically want a ww2 wargame where you're only playing as the intelligence agencies and the military side of things is out of your hands tbh this has the exact same 'the nazis are so outrageously outclassed the outcome is never in doubt' issue as military ww2 games but it's a good place for singleplayer strategy
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Feb 4, 2024 18:15
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i'm shameless so i'm gonna continue to plug my GTS LP but there are victory conditions in the game that are basically "hold X place by Y date or you auto-lose", and there's no real historical reason why you would have such a deadline, but the effect is that it forces the Allies to defend those places much more strongly because otherwise the winning allied strategy would be to evacuate all of their units immediately design for effect in wargames is unarguably a good thing
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Feb 4, 2024 18:25
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Is there a digital version of this GTS or how are you doing this LP?
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Feb 4, 2024 19:20
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im using vassal, a free program originally created so that grogs could play ASL, the module for GTS is quite well coded and does (almost) everything for you vassal and the modules needed to play are free
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Feb 4, 2024 19:22
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Oh yeah I know vassal. Haven't been able to get anyone to play Paths of Glory with me yet though :'(
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Feb 4, 2024 19:50
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Orange Devil posted:Oh yeah I know vassal. Haven't been able to get anyone to play Paths of Glory with me yet though :'( every field of glory 2 battle ive played has been me trying to keep my troops in a nice line but instead it devolves into two seperate messy brawls
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Feb 4, 2024 21:18
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