Operation Barbarossa - a mini-review

> Why not allow the player three more turns in which to approach the
> objectives methodically?  My suspicion is that players would quickly
> discover that beating the AI is *trivial* when you're not under pressure
> to use the least-turn-chewing approach.
>
> So in OB, we have scenario designers paring turns to the bone, and
> campaign designers doling out an ultimate, game-losing penalty for being
> one hex short.  Some folks might call this exciting.

So you've discovered that something which was the case in the PG games
(which you loved) and is also the case in many other if not most
wargames, is now a problem just in this one game? I agree with you in
general that wargame scenario victory conditions could be a lot more
interesting. A few games have done this well, most have not. But the
inference that OB somehow stands out as a bad example or is somehow
different/worse than the bulk of the others, especially in the PG
series, makes little sense. I think your original point that OB would
be better with dynamic campaigns is a fair one, but I think you're now
stretching it too far in trying to make a general point about wargame
scenario in this context.

> Anyway, in PG, you're only commanding a single army, you're not
> the high command. Even if you win, the high command might still
> not be impressed enough with your fighting to give you a new
> command after this one. Wasn't Guderian removed from command
> halfway through the war?

Bingo, I think it's the old rule of "if you're smart enough to realize
it's an abstraction, you should also be smart enough to rationalize it
and keep having fun". This is really nothing new in wargaming or PG.

> In the American Civil War, for example, there were long intervals of
> *weeks* between major battles that involved a lot of marching,
> replenishing, and generally lounging about.  Would achieving your
> objectives at Chancellorsville (May 1-6, 1863) a few days later *really*
> have had any impact on the amount of time available at the subsequent
> Gettysburg battle (July 1-3, 1863)?  

Using the ACW as a comparison for a game about Blitzkrieg warfare in
WWII, where Germany is in Operation Barbarossa, up against a serious
deadline, the Soviet Army, the Rasputitsa, Winter, etc. does not
strike me as an ideal analogy. I think if we did a Civil War General
it would be done a bit differently as far as timelines go.

smr <me DeleteThis @shawnritchie.com> wrote:
>
> I'd do the same for PZII/People's General. I enjoyed both systems,
> artwork styles, etc., on their own.
>
> PZIII... meh.

Really? I enjoyed PGIIISE quite a lot. More than PG2, which was broken
due to tanks being invulnerable to "rugged defense", I think. Not
sure if PGIIISE had rugged defense, but if it didn't I didn't miss
it as much as in PG2.


mcv.
--
Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool.
A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which
could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all
of human experience would be not-real. -- Zachriel

eddysterckx.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com <eddysterckx.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 15, 9:53?pm, smr <m....TakeThisOut@shawnritchie.com> wrote:
>> Gargoyle Sentry Brigade wrote:
>> > Vincenzo Beretta wrote:
>>
>> >> I didn't try "Operation: Barbarossa", but all this talk made me to
>> >> reinstall "Panzer General". It is not "nostalgia": it is a perfect,
>> >> timeless game.
>>
>> >> IMHO, in it's sub-genre only "Fantasy General" managed to reach the
>> >> same quality - and we are still talking mid-'90s here.
>>
>> > Maybe Matrixgames can pick up the rights to those games and re-tool them
>> > for modern OS and widescreen monitor?
>>
>> Just going on record to state that I would happily pay full freight for
>> this. $50 for, say, all of the content and campaigns of PG, Allied
>> General and Pacific General (I enjoyed it, *shrug*)? Absolute no brainer.
>
> Reality check - you're not going to like what UbiSoft is doing with
> the PG franchise
>
> http://panzergeneralalliedassault.us.ubi.com/XBLA/media.html

That looks a bit like a Memoir '44 computer game!

It also looks like a good example of using 3D graphics to make a game
look completely silly.


mcv.
--
Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool.
A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which
could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all
of human experience would be not-real. -- Zachriel

> Really? I enjoyed PGIIISE quite a lot. More than PG2, which was broken
> due to tanks being invulnerable to "rugged defense", I think. Not
> sure if PGIIISE had rugged defense, but if it didn't I didn't miss
> it as much as in PG2.

PG 2 is best....


You are all vain amateurs ))

eddysterckx.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com <eddysterckx.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> oh, and the developer of Operation Barbarossa has made a little
> tutorial on how to design a scenario - pretty neat stuff over at :
>
> http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2240057

That's a really great idea. I mean, of course the developer should
make a game with excellent content, but these days it's quite common
for modding communities to improve quite a lot on the limited content
in new games. A good modding community is worth its collective weight
in gold, and giving them good tools and tutorials will definitely
help.


mcv.
--
Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool.
A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which
could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all
of human experience would be not-real. -- Zachriel

On 16 sep, 14:39, Erik <er... DeleteThis @matrixgames.com> wrote:

> So you've discovered that something which was the case in the PG games
> (which you loved) and is also the case in many other if not most
> wargames, is now a problem just in this one game?  

In my mind Mr. Giftzwerg has used it as a hook, as an example, to
raise a valid point and that he was not specifically targetting this
game as the sole and only culprit in this regard.

So, not in just this one game, but a broader problem.

Did it get stretched too far ? Yeah, somewhat, as at some point you
need to measure performance and while you can debate about where to
draw the line, the win/lose line needs to be drawn somewhere.

The more valid point was that setting tight deadlines is often meant
to mask an iffy AI. Well, there are countless examples of exactly
that. Again, not targetting OB here, I didn't see that AI doing
anything stupid but the time limits are set in such a way that
exploring alternative routes is penalized making it more a puzzle game
than it should be. I encountered the "you lose - game over" thingie
while exploring an alternative strategy and was really pissed-off
about it at the time. Ok, I had gotten my "orders" to do it withing x
turns, but one more turn and I would have won that scenario with
absolutely minimal casualties. That wasn't a pleasant experience and
it's such things that a designer should make sure does not happen. You
finished late ? Well, "now the Ruskies managed to retreat in good
order to Eastgrad and you'll have to fight an extra battle there
general". Or "now the Ruskies managed to get some more troops in from
Siberia and you'll have more opposition in your next battle general"

It's all about trade-offs and giving the gamer choices - and this is
something which I'm very sorry OB doesn't have.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

In article <4ab0a20a$0$83248$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>, mcvmcv.TakeThisOut@xs4all.nl
says...

> > Let's get real. Lincoln would have left Grant in charge, and the Civil
> > War would have ended a few weeks later. History would have been
> > absolutely unaffected.
>
> For the final battle of the war, that makes sense. But for the invasion of
> France, for example, it makes sense that finishing early means you get to
> invade England, and taking too much time means France gets its act together
> and possibly reinforcements from England. In the Ardennes you also want to
> strike a decicive blow before the allies realise what's going on and get
> their reinforcements in place. In Russia you want to finish the job before
> winter. As western allies in '45, you may want to reach Berlin before the
> Russians do (and vice versa as Russians).

I'm not saying time is *never* important, I'm saying too many games set
*arbitrary* time limits are are far too rigid about penalizing players
who fall short by some tiny, anklebiting amount.

Use France, 1940 as our example. Let's say we're playing a corps-scale
operational game with 24-hour turns. So the scenario designer decides
that the German player needs to reach the Channel by Turn 15, or he
loses.

What if the Germans don't get there until Turn 16? What were the
British and French going to do with one more day? Were they going to be
any less defeated if they had another 24 hours to mill about?

Unless Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan were just over the horizon, this
15-turn limit is ridiculous.

> There are a lot of situations where timing is important and speed is
> essential, especially in a Blitzkrieg war. If you take too much time
> conquering Belgium, you'll still conquer Belgium, but you may lose
> the essential element of surprise with France, and the blitzkrieg as
> a whole is a failure.

Again, though, the question isn't *that* time is important, but how
important a specific *period* of time is, given the granularity of the
game.

And don't forget, this lazy design cuts both ways. I recall a Vietnam
scenario from STEEL PANTHERS: MODERN BATTLES where I was hacking my way
through jungle hexes and capturing VC positions. There was a last
objective I absolutely needed to take. And I had a lone Huey with an
infantry squad aboard. I sailed them over a bunch of enemy and plopped
them onto the objective, smack-dab in the middle of a VC battalion.

Game over. I win.

Never mind that five minutes later there would have been nothing left of
my squad and my helicopter but a jolly pile of souvenirs, I was moving
last, and I had taken the objective and I won.

Bullshit. Gamey bullshit.


--
Giftzwerg
***
"Preventative care does save lives, but it costs more money, not less.
Nothing costs less than a dead patient. Don’t forget that. Ever."
- Stephen Greene

In article <4ab0a479$0$83248$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>, mcvmcv.TakeThisOut@xs4all.nl
says...

> > Personally I prefer not to have a fixed ending time - if you've
> > carefully husbanded your core troops and by doing so are a day late
> > achieving an arbitrary point you shouldn't be punished for that.
>
> If you husbanded your troops at the cost of failing to achieve the
> objective in time, maybe you should.

But the operative question is, "what does 'in time' mean?" If the
Germans take Buttfukkoyan a day late, does it matter? Or is it just
historical trivia?

Sure, there were instances where being one turn late would be a big
deal. The question for scenario design is *is this one of them*.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"Preventative care does save lives, but it costs more money, not less.
Nothing costs less than a dead patient. Don’t forget that. Ever."
- Stephen Greene

In article <10b000b4-1d94-49ea-b27d-8ba797280ff9
@g1g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>, eddysterckx.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com says...

> oh, and the developer of Operation Barbarossa has made a little
> tutorial on how to design a scenario - pretty neat stuff over at :
>
> http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2240057

Interesting.

But here's my question about the scenario design already existing; how
many scenarios are tons easier to win if you have three more turns?

And what does that say about the AI?

--
Giftzwerg
***
"Preventative care does save lives, but it costs more money, not less.
Nothing costs less than a dead patient. Don’t forget that. Ever."
- Stephen Greene

> I said at the outset that PANZER GENERAL had exactly this problem - but
> that it was greatly mitigated by the fact that PG has a branching,
> dynamic campaign structure where non-perfection isn't necessarily
> rewarded with "GAME OVER."

Ok, agreed on that.

> My point is that pared-to-the-bone victory conditions, where the player
> has zero latitude for imperfection, *coupled* with a totally linear
> campaign structure, is a sort of deadly embrace.  

See, here I disagree that OB is "pared-to-the-bone" any more than PG
was. It also has various side objectives on some maps that you do
have time to take while completing the main objectives. I've also
been able to complete each scenario with a Brilliant Victory if I just
push to the end, which means that as far as being able to continue the
campaign, I certainly have leeway for alternate strategies that would
still achieve victory before the scenario ended. In most cases,
achieving a Brilliant Victory doesn't leave much room for exploring
though and that's as it was in PG as well.

> PANZER GENERAL dodged this deadly embrace with a dynamic campaign
> structure.  Other games avoid it with more liberal estimates of victory..

I think if you said that your definition of victory in OB was
"Brilliant Victory or nothing" I would agree that there's little room
to maneuver. But you earlier said that your main complaint was that
the victory conditions meant you could barely complete the scenario at
all. This may just a be a difference of play style or level of
practice.

Fundamentally, I can agree with the point that "dynamic campaigns are
better". Given that OB does not have dynamic campaigns though, which
is really the root of what's bothering you about the victory
conditions, I think expanding this to try to make it a poster boy for
victory condition issues doesn't make sense. I mean, I can argue
against arbitrary victory conditions as well as anyone and this is
widespread across virtually ever wargame I've ever played, including
those I've enjoyed greatly. A scenario has to end at some point and
victory has to be evaluated somehow, it's something that I thought was
fundamentally understood and accepted by wargamers.

Regards,

- Erik

> And it bears mention that "tight" timeframes are especially annoying in
> very simplistic game designs that don't allow stacking; you run into the
> "full parking lot" syndrome where you run out of turns because you can't
> get by your own units fast enough!

I have never actually had this issue in OB. The unit density for the
maps is such that traffic jams are not an issue, in my experience, as
long as you plan ahead a little. You have to do the same thing in PG,
for example planning to get two attacks on an enemy in one turn from
the same hex by attacking with an adjacent unit, moving it back and
then moving in a reserve unit to attack again.

On a philosophical note, I would argue that the "tight" timeframes in
the original PG for victory conditions were actually a key part of its
success. They served to turn many of the scenarios into strategic
"puzzles" that you had to figure out how to solve within the given
time. I think this is moreso in OB, since you also have more
constraints in terms of fuel and ammo in many cases.

Regards,

- Erik