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Frosted Flake posted:If you were to pick up a submarine study sim, is Silent Hunter III w GWX, Silent Hunter 4 w either Operation Monsun Dark Waters or Knights of Sea Depths II, Silent Hunter 5 with Wolves of Steel or UBOAT the better bet? I'm curious about your opinion on Command: Modern Operations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w62JAxH4d8E It seems dope, although I find the interface with 90s Windows dropdown boxes, as well as the complexity rather intimidating.
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Jul 14, 2022 12:24
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Order of Battle indeed owns
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Aug 11, 2022 12:48
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Regiments is really, really good. It looks a bit like Wargame, but it isn't Wargame. It's a distinct thing. The main thing about it is "operations". A really cool mutli-map, staged mission system that works really well. You fight under a time limit and try to push forward, positions of your and enemy troops stay inbetween, but based on capture points you get resources to repair, call in reinforcements, or build emplacements. Emplacements themselves are contextualized as things like dug-in BRDMs with Malyutkas, rather than a bunker appearing out of nowhere.
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Aug 18, 2022 15:20
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Re: Regiments Yes, Soviets are indeed playable. The alpha playtest they had a few months ago actually focused on the Soviets. It also is absolutely not a human wave type game. You will always be heavily outnumbered. Your troops "replenish" but that takes time, and you are extremely pressed for time. Each phase has a time limit, I think 20 min by default although you can check a difficulty box to make it 30 min. You need to be capturing objectives, always pressing forward, and defending against relentless counterattacks. At least on hard. Very hard is extremely hard, and mean you can barely afford tanks while facing Leo 2s. It is also very much abstracted. You don't enter buildings - your units just get a modifier for being inside of a city. I don't think terrain features block LOS. Your units will not get into traffic jams, and will clip through each other. During the beta my guys walked under a small lake, although I assume that was a bug. This is not a bad thing - it's a game of manoeuvre, and wants you to be able to rely on your units to do what you expect in about the time you expect. It's not realistic, but in a way it makes it feel much more immersive, because you don't focus on babysitting lovely AI and gaming the optimal LOS. In reality, the platoon commander would figure it out, so here it doesn't matter. You'll generally command about 6-7 platoons at a time, growing over the course of each operation. Operation being a mission chain, and I think there are 12 operations in the game. Each operation is divided into several phases, and inbetween phases you spend victory points ("command authority") on reinforcements and upgrades. It's a very neat system that's exactly what I was hoping someone would make one day. The other thing to note is the pacing is very deliberate. The maps are large, and combat takes a while. At max range, entrenched units might shoot at each other for minutes before inflicting meaningful casualties. Suppression and breaking morale is hugely important. Main firepower comes from off-map strikes of artillery and planes, which are on a cooldown timer, and you want to use them as often as possible. Overall, I think it is really good. It is not realistic, it doesn't try to be. But it feels believable. Story is very stupid, though.
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Aug 18, 2022 22:28
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It's actually really funny how the only way to make a capitalist system in a game is to wave a magic wand and not simulate anything Incidentally remember that time Sim City tried to make water and power be NPCs that walk around your grid lmao
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Aug 29, 2022 23:08
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I forgot this thread for a while but in regards to GHPC: I'm pretty good friends with most of the dev team and they are in no way "inspired" by War Thunder, in case anyone still gets that vibe. They all hate it. They're proper gear coomers but ultimate sim is not the design goal either. It's supposed to be a fun singleplayer game with enough sim to be engaging, not a sim with a game stapled to it. It's still very early on: for example the IFV gameplay is meant to be about commanding infantry squads and that's not in yet. Until the early access release it has just been 4 people with only one of them full time, this is not a big studio product with money backing. They refused deals from Epic and Microprose because they want to stay independent. Calling it a simulator is for marketing reasons because anything that's not Battlefield feels like a simulator to a casual player. Multiplayer is a "maybe if we can manage it" kind of thing. This will not be a microtransaction/DLC cash cow. The devs are also absolute communists so there's that too. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 15:52 on Oct 23, 2022 |
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Oct 23, 2022 15:50
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oscarthewilde posted:The most fundamental issue, and one that extends beyond Paradox into the whole strategy genre, is the apparent inability to program a challenging and interesting AI. The last big strategy game I can remember with an actually challenging AI is probably Civ 4 (Old World has a very good AI, so Soren Johnson's still at it, but I find the game as a whole less interesting and definitely less 'mainstream' and big than Civ), and it's completely insane to me that AI tech has essentially been stagnant for more than a decade. loving financial capital and its blinding focus on efficiency and profitability... I was puzzled by this years ago and spent some time thinking about it. There are actually strategy games with good AI! They just tend to be grog wargames. Often made by either a small team or just one guy. So why does a more complex game, made with no budget by a single dude, frequently have way better AI than AAA games? I think there is an actual simple reason. Turn processing time. The games I'm describing have turns in the mid-game take minutes. That's simply not an option for a mainstream audience. This finally clicked for me when I saw games start adding an option for how long you want to allow the AI to think on turn end, explicitly stating that faster turns = dumber AI. There's of course other aspects like difficulty tuning - most people are idiots but they want to feel like geniuses who win against impossible odds. But I think turn time is a key piece of the puzzle I used not to understand.
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Nov 5, 2022 02:36
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Mantis42 posted:Most grog wargames have terrible AI too, ime. I haven't played a lot of them, but off the top of my head I found the AI in Shadow Empires very challenging. Sure, it probably cheated since it tended to have a much larger and better equipped army than I could support, but I found it to be very merciless in exploiting gaps and missteps for example. It might not be absolutely good, but relative to, like, Civ and Total War and Paradox games I think its night and day.
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Nov 5, 2022 15:38
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What the hell kind of game did you guys play where the Germans were overpowered, because it definitely wasn't Company of Heroes 1 multiplayer. The balance overall was decent, but Americans were the real overpowered standout, by far. Massed riflemen were drat hard to beat, and they also had cheap Shermans and Calliopes that didn't cost fuel. Did you all play 4v4 annihilation or something Anyway the only moral way to play was Random because then if you ended up as Germans it wasn't like you chose to play as Nazis Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 23:45 on Feb 25, 2023 |
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Feb 25, 2023 23:42
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DoW: Retribution remains the peak of RTS and incidentally the last game actual Relic made before everyone quit when their corporate owners went bankrupt on an Etch-a-Sketch gamble. CoH2 was a new team using the Relic name.
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Feb 26, 2023 12:20
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I'm designing a card game! I'm starting off with Fulda 1986. Now it's true that Gorby was probably the least likely of Soviet leaders to actually go to war, the USSR was heading into rapid decline, and also an earlier time period would be way more interesting... Americans want to see an Abrams and an Apache and if I ever publish and sell it I gotta take that into account. I definitely love shitboxes though so the majority of armour is still M60s and T-64s, with some T-62s knocking about too.  The aim is to create a pretty flexible system that could apply to different theatres, time periods, or settings with fairly minor adjustments to the core rules, by keeping a lot of the theming to the card decks themselves. The decks represent different divisions\regiments, and are sealed, set decks - it's emphatically not a CCG.  Being Fulda, NATO defends and Pact attacks. We're starting off with two infantry divisions as the default, but I'm also pretty far along with designing armoured decks and support decks. Support decks will probably suck in 1v1, but I want the game to also be interesting in a 2v2 and 3v3 format. Currently, it's just Soviets and US, but of course there's plenty of potential for Germans, NORTHAG, Poles, Czechs, Yugos, Italy, etc.  There are unit cards and action cards. Units go on the field, occupy positions, move and fight. Action cards (except if they're fortifications or stated otherwise) return to your hand at the end of the turn. Thus, your artillery battery can shell the enemy every turn, unless it gets blown up by a counter-card. Actions and counter-cards an important part of the game flow.  Keeping the theming within the decks means there aren't many core rules to memorize, and also means that different decks move in very different ways. Units move and fight only when an order card is played. You might imagine the Germans might get some kind of Todesfahrt.  Cards have suits, which means you have a limited understanding of what the enemy has on the field, what is in their hand, and what is the next card to draw. This also applies to you. Are you desperate to draw a unit, and you have one space in your hand? Look over to your deck and see if the top card is one, and make an informed choice about whether to discard something from your current hand or not. Don't know whether to hang on to that fighter card? Look at the number of planes and helicopters in your enemy's hand. But beware: discards are permanent. Unlike most CCGs, you never rummage through your discard pile. If you don't use an asset, it's reassigned to another commander - it's a war, after all!  Recon is important, and so is countering it! You don't want to send an A-10 against an enemy position, only for the Pact player to reveal an Osa.  Being on the defensive, the NATO player has a number of fortifications. The game is meant to be quite approachable and quick to play, so rules are fairly simple. I don't model different weapon systems, or attack and defence values: units are rated by a simple combat effectiveness. I also resisted modelling a bunch of variants. To a field commander, a T-64 platoon is a T-64 platoon, despite the differences in capabilities of different variants. The grogs can look at the art and feel smart figuring out whether it's an A, B or a BV. Since this is an early prototype, the card art is completely placeholder and unlicensed as of now. My aim is for people with a basic interest in military matters but without a lot of knowledge of the theatre or weapons systems to be able to pick up the game, play and have fun. However, I'm trying to use core game interactions to gently nudge players into following doctrine. Even if a player doesn't know the doctrine, they will soon discover that using air assets to attack the Pact back line and stall their advance is a good play. And speaking of NATO doctrine...  Escalation cards are powerful, but cost you victory points to use, as well as lowering the maximum number of VPs you can earn. Because the escalation deck is small, your opponent also knows that with each card you draw, their chance of drawing The Big One is higher. If anyone is up for it, I'd love some goon playtest feedback. Currently, the game takes about an hour for a first-time player, and 25-30 minutes for someone who has played a few games. The current design issues are that 1. The board might be a bit big, although if I narrow it it might be too small. That said, narrowing it could help cut another couple minutes off of play time. 2. It's hard to fine tune balance without a lot more testers who have gotten a little bit of experience with the game. 3. Currently it's a no brainer to put terrain cards as next to your own deployment zone and score easy VPs. It makes sense of NATO, but not so much for Pact. I might simply make it so that you can't put down terrain cards next to Pact deployment zone. 4. Currently, NATO escalates a bit too willy-nilly. Now that is realistic, but for gameplay reasons I'd rather make escalation a more weighty decision.
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May 19, 2023 12:37
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Thank you everyone for your positive feedback! Means a lot. Some of you guys don't have PMs so I'm just going to put the stuff here for anyone interested in playtesting. Add me on Steam, code 10546921 The current version of the rules is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zUPZERcpFQBW0gqssHMIh-EvX0aCiyyq/view?usp=sharing Please also let me know your availability. I'll attempt to set up games between you guys.
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May 20, 2023 10:39
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Orange Devil posted:From the rules: Good catch. It's because I'm experimenting with the amount of terrain to use, so it isn't very consistent right now. It's supposed to be 8 total in the current playtest.
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May 20, 2023 16:22
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Megamissen posted:you need tabletop simulator to playtest right? Yep.
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May 20, 2023 20:17
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I've decided to put it on Steam Workshop rather than make you all add me on Steam. This is the first time I've done this so if it doesn't work, uh, I'll fix it.  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978803471 Would love it if you guys gave it a try and let me know what you think. Do keep in mind it's an early draft. Feel free to send it to friends if you think they might be into it, but not too many. I would like to publish it for real at some point and I'd rather not have it all over the internet beforehand. Also, you will probably feel like you don't have a lot of units. It's intentional. Most of the NATO deck is fortifications and action cards. Half of the Pact deck is units. At some point I would like to experiment with a board size that's 4 spaces long but only 3 wide, with bit less terrain. This would force more combat. If it plays well, I might also reduce deck sizes a little more and cut a few more minutes off of play time. In the future, I definitely want to do 2v2s and 3v3s as well. Frosted Flake posted:4CMBG should be the equivalent of a holographic charizard or blue eyes white dragon I would love to put them in as a deck in the future. I know next to nothing about Canadian doctrine, though. I'd need you to tell me how they should play, ideally in comparison to the US infantry division I have in game right now. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 17:11 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 21, 2023 15:15
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Cuttlefush posted:what the gently caress. did an economist sketch out the design of the game systems or what? It's even better. A lot of the devs are very proud and call it "Paradox's first materialist game". The reddit complaints about landlords have also reached the C-levels of the company, and the executive class is having a witch hunt for communists because they're convinced there's a cabal of communists using Paradox to spread evil communist propaganda. It is just genuinely stunning to me how completely and utterly they missed the point of colonialism. If you play as Indian minor, you end up only focusing on high end goods because that brings the most revenue and there is nothing stopping you, and you become the UK's main manufacturer of weapons\locomotives\etc, while it's the UK that ships raw resources to you.
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May 24, 2023 23:27
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Lostconfused posted:I think that's a joke? It's genuinely not. I know several Paradox developers and the C-level is absolutely mad. Apparently not mad enough to stop expansions cashing in on it, but mad internally.
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May 25, 2023 01:09
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God I can't stop thinking about what a completely fundamental misunderstanding of everything Victoria 3 represents. I think a hell of a lot of it stems from it lacking the concept of extractive capital. Like, mechanically, a capitalist is a salaried position in a factory. There is no class of people hoarding wealth in the game. It's just not a thing. If you don't have that concept, how the gently caress do you model anything about that century? It's all nonsense based on a child's understanding of the world. Victoria 2 was dumb but it was fun. Victoria 3's developers are very very proud of themselves and think they solved it. The game is also just... not interesting to play. It plays itself. Moreso than most Paradox games. I wanted to like it, I really did. I enjoy Victoria 2 a lot even though it's dumb, but even so it is much more representative of the zeitgeist. There is a very valid argument to be made about how uncolonized provinces being uncoloured and un-described other than as geography is racist, and it is. You could say Victoria 3 actually naming those cultures is better. And on its own, it is. But Victoria 2 accurately represented how white people of the time perceived Africa, and what they did with it. Victoria 3 runs on unicorn fantasy logic of benevolent colonialism and that's in my opinion worse, because it's more insidious. In Victoria 2, colonialism is a great power competition for resources and manpower to feed the war machine. In Victoria 3 you do colonialism out of the goodness of your heart (because it costs you a lot more than you gain out of it) and you improve the material conditions of the colonised people. It's White Man's Burden simulator. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 01:22 on May 25, 2023 |
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May 25, 2023 01:20
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The stuff in Shogun is pretty half-assed, and it's telling that this "fat guy" trait is by far the most common despite being one of the most negative in the game lol. The same trait and same phenomenon was in Empire/Napoleon too. I swear hardly anyone has heard of it but King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame was a far superior Total Warhammer, and it predated it by like a decade. Genuinely it was great. Slim Jim Pickens posted:Battlestations: Midway (NOT Pacific) gently caress that game was good. I'm so mad the franchise died. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 19:20 on May 28, 2023 |
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May 28, 2023 19:17
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Orange Devil posted:
Imagine my disappointment going from Medieval, in which sieges starved defenders and also attrited attackers every turn, to Medieval 2, where not only did that not happen, but also the AI would always force a battle on the last turn. Thus, the whole "siege for several turns" thing was an utterly pointless waste of time instead of a legitimate strategy.
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May 30, 2023 10:49
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I've been continuously playtesting and refining my untitled game. The biggest change has been narrowing the field - it's now played over a space 4 tall by 3 wide, rather than a 4x4 grid. I was initially afraid this change might make maneuvering around established defenses not viable enough, but it actually turned out great. The game is more focused, simpler, and faster. I still haven't figured out a name. Someone suggested DUALCOM, referencing military acroyms like SOUTHCOM or TACOM, and that most of the time it's a 2 player game. Someone else ran with it and suggested DUELCOM, and that's the best I have so far. Today I finished a new deck.  The 11th is the US' armoured deck. A 1st or 3rd Armored Division would probably make more sense. A regiment is considerably smaller than a division, and, being deployed on the border, means that in a real war the 11th would have probably been mulched in hours. On the other hand, they have a cool badge. The deck is, in many ways, the opposite of the 8th Infantry that serves as the US' default deck. The 8th is very balanced between all the game mechanics: it's got some strong infantry, plenty of helicopter and jet air support, strong artillery, and great fortifications. It fortifies strongpoints, and attempts to counter the Pact player. The 11th, on the other hand, focuses on constant maneuver with very tough units.  The starting hand packs a punch, with 2 platoons of scout Bradleys and 2 platoons of M60s, as well as the orders to retreat and counter-attack.  You have 2 more ground scout units available. You lack a Kiowa (yes, yes, I know the 11th would have fielded them, but the deck does need to have weaknesses), but your recon units can gang up on vulnerable enemies.  An armoured deck wouldn't be an armoured deck without more tanks. With a total of 4 M60s and 2 Abrams, you are very scary. The Abrams are an absolute bastard to take out. Remember, for speed of play, the game does not track partial damage. You either render a formation combat ineffective, or don't.  Your tanks are precious, however, so you still need to use infantry to delay the enemy. Supply convoys cannot fight, so they are strictly worse than an infantry unit, but they do count as units, allowing you to deploy your real assets further up the field. You also have an extra order card, for even better maneuverability.  And you need it. Without a lot of fortifications, you can't hold ground effectively with infantry against a real Pact assault. You will be shuffling your tanks back and forth across the battlefield all the time. The camo netting helps protect you against being revealed and hammered by Pact artillery until you commit to combat. The pontoon bridge lets your tanks cross rivers. It's unlikely to be particularly useful in most games, but you'll be grateful for it if you end up isolated too far up the board.  Almost all your strength is in your units, rather than your actions. You do get one counter-battery card to give the Pact player something to think about when he wants to hammer you with their artillery.  And finally, your air defence is weak. The 8th gets fighter support, but you just get a single VADS and a Stinger. MANPADS are played from your hand, rather than deployed on the battlefield, and it will cause an enemy airstrike disengage, but it won't shoot it down. And you only get one use. It will save you at the critical moment, but that's it. And on the next installment... 
Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 18:40 on Jun 2, 2023 |
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Jun 2, 2023 18:38
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Orange Devil posted:I don't understand why this is such a common spelling mistake, but it's Cavalry, not Calvary. Oops lol I swear I triple checked it!
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Jun 2, 2023 19:36
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Cuttlefush posted:you can link audio clips to card/whatever states. you should make any bradley card play the bradley theme when it gets flipped or comes into play or whatever I didn't update it with recent tweaks because there didn't seem to be that much interest. I'll update it tomorrow.
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Jun 3, 2023 19:26
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Cuttlefush posted:definitely caught my eye (and probably most of the other people who like this thread's kinda stuff) i just didn't post. sorta sounds like the fun part of some dune card game i once played except just the fun part Updated. Here is the link again https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978803471 Feel free to play with friends, but please don't share too widely as of yet. Rules and playing tips are in the notepad. Looking forward to feedback! The 8th Infantry deck has had a lot more playtesting than the 11th Cavalry, so it's a better starting point in my opinion. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 21:02 on Jun 3, 2023 |
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Jun 3, 2023 20:59
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Megamissen posted:the board for unnamed fulda game feel a bit cramped, reading the rules it seems like you are allowed to have multiple units on the same tile but theres only one 'slot' so you have to stack the cards which makes it a bit awkward Yes, you absolutely stack cards. It's a bit more awkward in TTS than with real cards. This is why the terrain slots\terrain cards are big, so that you can put several cards in the area. Don't worry about them being entirely centred or anything, as long as it's clear which zone they're. Orange Devil added me on steam and that's how we played.
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Jun 4, 2023 16:19
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KomradeX posted:What do you think has been driving the resurgence in Cold War gone hot games over the past decade? In the 80s I get why they were popular it was relevant so you had things like Twilight 2000, The Third World War Seires, the Fleet series (which if theres somethinf lacking in this modern resurgence is ignoring is Naval combat), and so many more. The 90s into the 2000s saw that space dry up for obvious reasons, it was no longer relevant, hiatory had ended. Which I remember when I got into table top gaming in college in the mid to late 2000s thinking was a shame because it was something different different than World War II games, and more intrestingb at the time, than Iraq, or Afghanistan where it felt like there was no way for the opposition to win. Than I'd think starting with Wargame I think they started to slowly trickle back out more and more and now I feel like every time I turn around theres a new one. I just wonder what changed with that? Was it simply Russia being painted as a threat again after the Georgian war in 2008 just reactivating Cold War fears? I can't speak to the wider world, but in my social circle (constituting mostly audience but also developers) it's a result of being radicalised towards communism due to worsening material conditions. This then has the effect of learning more about communist states and their history, and, well, struggle against the west and spectre of war is a big part of that history. A lot of the people who were way into F-15s are now into T-64s and BTRs. This is a very small, left-leaning sample size, but I do think it's indicative of an audience for this kind of thing growing. Until, like, 2017 I've never even encountered another communist. Hell, until then I wasn't one.
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Jun 6, 2023 10:15
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I have to imagine the current political climate is ripe for people writing books "reevaluating" Axis\USSR capabilities again more in line with the current narrative.
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Jun 10, 2023 21:13
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I haven’t posted an update for my game for a while. I haven’t been working on it too intensively, as I’m focused on a job search. Still, there’s some progress. I’ve also had some nice playtest games with Orange Devil and Megamissen. I changed some things with terrain. None of the terrain features now grant VPs. I originally introduced it to make the end score more closely reflect close-fought games, but it actually had the opposite effect, as well as slowing down the game. It works better without them, and players already want to use terrain features to their advantage without an additional incentive.  Forests used to be pretty boring. Now they give a penalty to tanks. It’s not a huge one, since tanks positioned at the edge of a treeline is a pretty standard tactic, but it’s enough to deter tank attacks into forests. Towns now give you a double VP penalty for escalating on them. Gassing or nuking a town is a pretty bad guy thing to do. Now, for a deck. Do you like chess movement? Do you like wheels? Do you like ~elite operators~? Then the French Rapid Action Corps is for you.  It was designed by a friend rather than by me, so it isn’t quite as polished yet, but has some neat things going for it. Why a corps instead of a division? The corps itself was pretty small, and the units in it generally were not particularly well equipped back in the 80s. In the early 90s they were extremely tooled up, but in the 80s to get an interesting mix of equipment, you had to look at the bigger picture. This does mean that decks in the game range from a regiment to an army corps, but I figure only grogs would find that objectionable.  The starting hand already shows this is a very different playstyle to the others. Besides a typical mortar barrage, we have some interesting thing on. Paratroopers are on foot, and so cannot move between positions with regular orders. They’re simply too far away to march on the timescale a single match is supposed to represent. However, they can be deployed on any non-hostile position, even if you don’t have a logistical chain back to your deployment zone. Since FAR were pretty much colonial troops that would be redeploying to Europe in an emergency, they don’t have any particularly heavy gear. They rely on fast-moving recon units with a big gun. These units can advance into an enemy position, reveal what’s there, and then get to decide whether to fight or return to their starting position. The Mephisto is a tank destroyer. It does not have a high combat power by itself – because it is, after all, unarmoured – but it gives a penalty to all enemy tanks in the same combat. Finally, the movement order is a Flanking Action. It’s incredibly flexible, allowing you to move in almost any direction, except for directly forward or back.  Within the deck, you have another 2 ERC-90s, and two AML-90s – which are basically the same, but not amphibious.  You also get another Mephisto, and three AMX 10 RCs. With a little bit of armour and a low-pressure 105mm, it’s the most powerful ground recon unit in the game.  You also get another two cards of paratroopers, and the special Airlift order that lets you move them to any space. That can be used to attack, but that is very risky. Not only do they only have 1 Str. on the attack like all basic infantry, but while moving they count as helicopters and can be shot down by ground anti-air or by fighters.  The last two unit cards are Foreign Legion in VABs. They’re nothing special on their own. However, there is a card that makes them insanely dangerous. The Battle of Camarón (or Camerone according to the French) is a core part of the mythology of the Foreign Legion, symbolizing a fight to the death while outnumbered. Both of the French decks in the game have an Esprit card, because, you know, élan and all that. If you play Camerone on a French Foreign legion in combat, everything in that position dies, including friendly units. That can be a massively beneficial trade, however – for example if you take out a platoon of T-80s. On the other hand, such a sacrifice makes the ground important to hold. This position now grants +1 VP to the holder at the end of the game. In effect, this is an incredibly powerful card, but a very hard one to play. It’s a gamble: you only have two units of French Legion, and one Camerone in the deck, and you need to have them in your hand at the right time to take advantage. On the other hand, the enemy knows that attacking any position held by the Foreign Legion may end in disaster and will be hesitant to commit strong units.  Since most of your units are very weak, you’re very vulnerable to artillery. You have a single counter-battery card so that you’re not totally helpless.  You do, however, have significant air assets. First, you have a Mirage F1 CR, which you can play as a fighter, light strike, or recon card. This may be one of the most useful single cards in the game. You also have a recon gazelle armed with a 20mm cannon.  The Mirage 2000C introduces the mechanic of a modern (for the time), high-performance fighter. As of now, a fighter+ played against an airstrike cancels the airstrike in addition to shooting down the enemy jet. The Mig-29 will be the same. I’m also intending to have another level of performance to represent the flagship air superiority jets like the F-15 and Su-27. Those will be able to resist one enemy fighter. I might flip the fighter+ and air superiority mechanics, depending on feedback from playtesting. Anyway, within the FAR, the Mirage will help you achieve air superiority, and protect your vulnerable units from airstrikes.  And finally, the FAR deck has significant air to ground power with a Jaguar and two HOT Gazelles. Mechanically, jets and helicopters are the same as of now, and it’s only a flavour difference, but I might change that in the future. And that wraps it up. In summary, the FAR is a highly mobile force with a very large number of units (for a NATO deck), but those units are very weak. This is compensated for by significant air power, and the most – and best – recon in the game. Playtests so far have shown that it’s pretty well balanced against the default Soviet Motor Rifle deck, but might be too weak against a Soviet Tank division. It might need a small buff, but more testing is needed before I commit to that. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 13:49 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 4, 2023 13:31
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Yep, it might need a decent buff, the tank deck is a real challenge. So far only one playtest of that match-up though, need more data. We've had 4-5 matches between FAR and Motor Rifle deck and it actually turned out much more balanced than I initially expected. The weak units absolutely do die easily, but on the other hand there are a lot of them. The US 8th Infantry division has 9 units out of 28 cards. The 39th Motor Rifle has 14. The FAR has 16, and as defenders they do benefit from terrain more often than not. Orange Devil posted:
That's a very good idea. I want to do one or two playtests as is, then give that a try.
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Jul 4, 2023 14:07
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Orange Devil posted:I have some comments, even having never played it: Having done a bit more playtesting, there's actually a really good use case I forgot to mention. Sure, when you deploy them forward on the first turn, it doesn't matter if they're paratroopers. But! If you deploy them forward into good defensive terrain, Pact will generally go ahead and try to circumvent it rather than fighting. A normal unit would then find it hard to retreat. Paratroopers with an airlift, however, don't care, since they don't have to break an encirclement. They can just teleport themselves anywhere. This means you don't really have to hesitate to deploy them farther forward than you would normal units. The utility of paratroopers for NATO and Pact will be completely different, even though it's the same mechanic. I think that's neat. We're tinkering with a Polish deck but can't quite decide if a paratrooper division by itself would work. Polish paratroopers were a bit underequipped, and VDV have more ground vehicles, but on the other hand having the Pact mostly be Soviets is a bit boring. Might need to turn the Polish deck into the 1st Polish Army, which was expected to have airborne and marine assault divisions attached, kind of like how the FAR is also a corps.
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Jul 5, 2023 22:16
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Frosted Flake posted:Silent Hunter 4 is the best in the series, especially with mods. Take this with a grain of salt but friends who met the team said that the team really did not want to do German subs, but it was the only way to get funding. No money people wanted to invest in a sub game that wasn't about being nazis.
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Jul 7, 2023 21:21
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Interesting to see discussion of that LP since just a few days ago I was toying with the idea of doing a forum game of the as of yet unnamed card game after I get back from holiday in about a month. I figured if it's hard to get enough people together to test a larger team game, having a forum version might be neat. Speaking of which, it's time to talk about every true tankie's favourite subject: red tank divisions. It took me this long to realize that if I can't get many cards in a screenshot nicely because of the snapping grid I made for actually playing, I could just, you know, use a different table without it. The 7th Guards Tank (Kiev-Berlin, Twice Order of Red Banner, Order of Lenin, Order of Suvorov 2nd Class) is, as you might guess, tank-heavy. They have a lot of strong units, but for balance reasons, less artillery and air support.  From the start of the game, you hit hard with two platoons of T-62s. 4 Str. is weak for a tank, but nothing to scoff at in the context of the game. It will win most early game combat, though will likely die in the process. One platoon of BTR-60s will hold the back line. Recon is done by two platoons of BRDM-1s. They are very weak, and are also the deck’s only recon units. With how strong your combat units are, you don’t have to be too precious about them. You will conduct most recon by driving directly into the enemy. You also have the standard Pact move order. Nothing very fancy there.  Your deck also contains two more of that same standard move order. This is strictly worse than the 39th Motor Rifle’s Company Attack, which lets you move two units with one card. You must consider a trade-off between how many units you can move a turn, and how many slots in your hand you take up with those orders. Even so, a wide advance by this deck is terrifying, and may be a little too good. One of these order cards may end up needing to be replaced with some kind of other, weak card.  Two more platoons of BTR-60 infantry and a supply convoy will secure your back line logistics. A pontoon bridge will let your tanks cross a river. You only get one, though, so if you lose control of it and it gets discarded, the river becomes a big hassle.  Two Konkurs BRDMs will help your T-62s trade up for more valuable tanks, or deter M60s and Abrams from counter-attacks.  The main event. 4 platoons of T-64s and 2 platoons of T-80s is an overwhelming force. The T-80 is equivalent to an Abrams, and immensely difficult to take out with just action cards.  On the other hand, your fire assets are lacking, with only a single battery of mortars, single battery of 152mm, and one counter-battery card. And one flight of Hinds. A grand total of 5 str. of action cards.  NATO air power will be your nemesis, and you only have limited assets to protect yourself. Two MTLBs with Strelas are your short-range anti-air. They are strictly worse than the Shilkas that the Motor Rifle deck gets. They have the same stats, but without a cannon, cannot contribute to ground combat. At least they’re amphibious. One card of single-use MANPADS will cancel a single enemy airstrike. Using this card at the right moment can save your T-80 and win you the game. You also get a single flight of Mig-23s. Playing the 7th Guards Tank Division is a race against time. NATO barrages and airstrikes will wear you down in the long term. You will not achieve air or artillery superiority. You must use your action cards wisely to degrade NATO’s superiority in those areas, and use your anti-air assets to set traps. On the other hand, NATO ground forces simply cannot stand up to your assault. This is, of course, very different if you are playing against the American tank division, in which case it's a fast paced game of manoeuvre warfare. Overall, the deck is pretty close to balanced, but may be a tad powerful. I might end up swapping one of the order cards for something else, or one of the T-64s for a T-62.
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Jul 8, 2023 23:40
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I played some Jagged Alliance. Man. If I was a video essayist I would absolutely make one using this game as an example. The game is fun. I'd give it a 7 or 8 out of 10 if that was the only factor. Smaller quibbles are that the interface is a bit clunky, it's a bit crashy, and the mercenaries are very annoying. Remember how they were stereotypes in Jagged Alliance? Now imagine if those concepts were written by a 12 year old brought up on Marvel movies. They talk constantly and are never funny. But the big thing. Oooh boy. Remember how in JA2 you were hired by the deposed leader of a nation, and were fighting that nation's army? Yeah. Here your client is ostensibly the daughter of a kidnapped president, but that's not actually true. She is not the one paying you. You are in fact hired by a mining company to reclaim their diamond mines. A mining company ran by someone who seems Spanish at first glance. Not black. The country is very black. A former French colony. Every single enemy is black. Every single one. Whereas in JA2 your enemies were an army, with enemy types such as "recruit", "regular", "veteran" and "elite", here you are facing "goon", "marauder", "brute", "raid leader". Where in JA2 they wore uniforms, here they wear stereotypical "tribal" warpaint, headdresses (which count as armour, somehow), and leopard skins. You are, of course, almost only white people. There are a few token non-white mercenaries. The only black mercenary I hired so far makes frequent references to crack pipes. The only Chinese mercenary is a doctor, but he does martial arts, wears a Tang jacket, is into spirits, and constantly spouts fortune cookie wisdom. It's OK though, because the game opens with a "just don't get offended bro" graphic. I think we should consider not allowing Swedish people to make games anymore. It's a pain because the game is fun overall. I really wish someone would take the core structure of Jagged Alliance and make it about a people's revolution, rather than capitalist resource extraction. But I guess that would be Political in the way mowing down shirtless Goons and Marauders decked out in face paint isn't.
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Jul 17, 2023 06:29
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There are references to communists also being rebels. I'm looking forward to meeting them and seeing that, presumably, they are bad. Also the country is called Grand Chien. Which means... tall dog? Oh and there's a town called Fleatown. Edit: Correction. Devs are Bulgarian, not Swedish. They are just published by THQ Nordic. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 10:09 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 07:53
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double nine posted:would it be moddable to create a tankie conversion mod? Technically, probably, the game does seem set up for mods. But it would be a total conversion. You would need to change: -the story -the mercenaries, though you could probably get away with just cutting the shittiest lines and not replacing them, and adjust skills to not be stereotypes -the enemies, which would require new models -voice acting if you wanted to have any, but I guess you could get by with text But yeah the gameplay systems are solid. It's a very fun game. In a way that makes it a bigger shame than if it sucked overall. It's so interesting how no one, that I know of, has ever attempted to do a commie revolution game in this vein. I mean, even from the cynical perspective, if you cared about profit more than about your ideology - Che t-shirts are famously popular!
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Jul 17, 2023 18:38
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Wasn't that way out of scope? They sent tanks and all. Meanwhile Cuba was overthrown with 14 people.
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Jul 17, 2023 20:10
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Frosted Flake posted:I feel kind of silly for the Good Place being the absolute first place I landed lol. What are you supposed to do at the Docks and the Dump? Has anyone figured out how to actually stealth smoothly, or is the workshop mod for active pause the way to go? I haven't played as much as others, but for stealth I think the best approach is to break it down into different pieces. If you get caught, only the guy seen gets caught. All your other dudes remain in stealth even in turn based combat. That makes silencers really good. If you have a silenced sniper with a good vantage point, they can get the stealth kill bonus damage for the whole fight. Real time stealth IS very clunky and awkward. You just kind of have to resign yourself to it. If you want to achieve a lot with it, you will end up savescumming. The most effective strategy I found so far is to get someone who is good with a knife and has a lot of AP, and just use them. Leave the rest of the squad in decent overwatch positions, and just focus on moving one dude. If you click on someone far away while having a melee weapon equipped, you can "prepare a stealth kill". This will cause your merc to stab them as soon as they are in range. Then you can walk up. You do need to be quick about this, because the enemy will keep walking around and might run into you before you finish clicking to tell the game you want to stealth kill the guy. If you get spotted, it's not the end. If the guy is alone, you can run up and do a "brutalize". If they die before they can call for help, they won't alert anyone else. Even if there is more than one dude, if you kill them quick, they won't always alert the whole map.
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Jul 22, 2023 08:33
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Incidentally the computer version of Twilight Struggle on Steam is really good.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:04
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Orange Devil posted:Vicky 3s problem isn’t that the simulation makes communism too good, it’s that it doesn’t simulate the filthy lucre you can amass for your upper class by going balls deep into imperialism. Also doesn’t simulate said upper class owning the state all that well but that’s always going to be the Achilles heel since that’s the whole job of the player. It's so funny how "capitalist" in Victoria is a job, with a salary, and employing capitalists increases efficiency. It's also genuinely incredible to make a game about a period defined by rampant, brutal colonial exploitation, in which... colonialism sucks to do, but it's actually great to be someone's colony. The absolute concentrated liberalism required for that is really something. In certain ways, Victoria 2's colonial mechanics were far more representative of the ideology of the great powers, and of capitalism. stumblebum posted:vicky 3 doesnt have any communist or capitalist ideology, it's straight from agrarianism to perma-fascism. once you've industrialized, there is no class conflict between the capitalist and the worker, because the capitalist and the worker want nothing more than to spend 36 hours a day working at their job. btw being a capitalist is exactly as much a full-time job as being a laborer in vicky 3. anyways, since everyone's happiness is derived solely from how much they work for the good of the nation (as organized through a great nation-geist i.e. the player or ai), the only "class division" after industrialization is the class conflict between Providers (capitalists and laborers who make everything society needs) and Eaters (unemployed welfare queens whose demands for free money will eventually destroy the entire world). you can have oligarchic liberal fascism or horizontal broad-dispersed populist fascism and that's it I think this is very well put. Edit: I know a few Paradox devs, though they're usually more on Stellaris, and the team behind V3 is... very proud and calling it "Paradox's first Materialist game". How. How do you not understand what colonialism is and how it functions and call yourself a materialist lmao. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 10:43 on Aug 22, 2023 |
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Aug 22, 2023 07:45
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FirstnameLastname posted:i totally get what you're saying This is a good post and I think it is worth broadening the discussion with another perspective. A lot of my friends do fencing, and they often remark at the parallels. Tempo, pressure, distance, are all super important concepts in games, and it feels like hardly person playing games can even see them, much less understand them. When playing basically any multiplayer game - from Starcraft through Halo and even World of Tanks - if you develop a sense of it, you can really easily feel enemy focus and weakspots, and you can feel when a push will have an outsized effect, and when you're better off doing a little prodding and poking. I often notice that outside of really high level play, people in games tend to be extremely passive. To tie it back into Soviet doctrine, it was highly tuned to make those decisions simpler. I was very impressed when I learned that even the spacing of different elements of a regiment on the march was tuned to give a commander the right amount of time to figure out what to do with the next arriving element during a battle. Through trying to make war a science, communists gamified it. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 01:36 on Sep 28, 2023 |
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Sep 28, 2023 01:25
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