A Playtest Too Far

[techumseh]

Fairline - glad to hear it. In fact the canal bridges DO blow 50% of the time. You just got the wrong 50%, I guess. Of the 5 along the route, usually 2 or 3 will blow. How has your experience been wih the major bridges, which use a very different system? Have you ever had any trouble killing the sapper before the Germans do?

Typhoon, it may be a week or two before this is ready to roll, so you hve time to get that sorted out. Try reinstalling.

[Dr Kellogg]

Wow, techumseh! This looks very promising! Can't wait to play this scenario!

But what has happend to your "Warlords of China" project?

[fairline]

Originally posted by techumseh
Fairline - glad to hear it. In fact the canal bridges DO blow 50% of the time. You just got the wrong 50%, I guess. Of the 5 along the route, usually 2 or 3 will blow. How has your experience been wih the major bridges, which use a very different system? Have you ever had any trouble killing the sapper before the Germans do?

Typhoon, it may be a week or two before this is ready to roll, so you hve time to get that sorted out. Try reinstalling.

The buggers managed to blow 5 bridges, thereby blocking all routes north

Finally got to Arnhem though on the 21st, so that was fairliy historical. I'd loaded up Arnhem with 1st AB and a couple of them were left by the time I got there. Pacing was right, liked the new unit stats but I found the crab to be a bit redundant; rather than wait for it to catch up I dispatched minefields with 25-pdr fire. It would be of more use if it was with the first wave of XXX Corps troops.

The glider events worked fine and I received all anticipated reinforcements this time. All in all I'd say Plan A event/research path was ready. I must admit to cheating: I had to reload a save when the last bridge across the Neder Rijn was blown by a sapper, although I could have used a bribed ferry to cross. I'd say the Germans get to them 75% of the time before I do.

[techumseh]

Here is an update on progress. I've been working on balancing the scenario. It's a matter of slowing 30 Corps down just enough to make the 1st and 82 airborne div's life exciting, without making it hopeless.

As Fairlane noticed, the canal bridges blow more often (50%) which helps a lot. They can be repaired, unlike the bridges over major rivers. I changed the base time to transform terrain to 4 from 20, so it now takes 1 engineer 8 turns to repair a bridge - about a day and a half. Otherwise it's far too long and frustrating. Sorry I didn't figure that out sooner.

I added minefield terrain, the mine units being dumb. I kept running into them with my Typhoons. This terrain is impassible to tanks and artillery and costs 6 mp for infantry. Units defend at half strength. It can be converted to plains the same turn by the Sherman Flail or an engineer unit. It helps slow the tanks down nicely.

Engineer units can transform unbridged canal terrain into bridged, allowing the passage of armor and artillery. The flail has only settler abilities so it can clear minefields (mining) but not repair bridges.

I added lots of randomized German reinforcements on both sides of "Hell's Highway", making it tough to defend. If you're not aggressive and on the ball, you can get into trouble quickly. German historical reinforcements were also bumped up 50%. Finally there are large reinforcements triggered by an attempt to cross the rivers along the series of bridges on the west side of the map. It's still possible, but difficult.

I balanced the random Luftwaffe reinforcements. The Allied player has to work hard to avoid German air superiority on the north part of the map from the 3rd day forward. This is historical, as allied fighters were redeployed to the strategic bombing offensive after escorting the paratroops lifts.

I've given the AA units the 'can attack air units' flag, and the '88' an attack factor, so the trick of protecting a big stack under a Spitfire just got a lot more dangerous. On the other hand, you can now use your Bofors SPAA unit to shoot down adjacent German aircraft. Overall, I think it really enhances the value of AA units in the scenario.

Events have been checked over, I've had some inconsistency in the arrival of airborne reinforcements. It's a pretty complicated events text, using lots of flags and masks so certain units arrive at certain times and places, depending on which of the 3 plans (techs) is selected. I have only 5.42 kb left of 100 kb in the available events space, so I'm pretty much done there.

BTW, if anyone wants any tutoring on ToT events, let me know. It's really kind of interesting - at least to me.

Next steps include writing descriptions for the units, improvements and terrrain, and making multiple scenario and events files to vary the arrival times of both airborne and German reinforcements. And then some final playtesting and it's done. I'm still on track for a Sept 17 release.

[curtsibling]

You have been hard at work, techumseh!

I like the sound of things now - Especially some of the reinforcement concepts.
This tactical scen will be one of the most technical ever seen in terms of events.

Actually, if you have time after developing this one, I would be interested to hear your
wisdom on things like random unit generation and the events triggers.

So are you still on course for the historical release of this one?

[fairline]

Any news Tech? I'm going to have a go at the other Plan research paths, unless there is now a newer version....

[techumseh]

I'll send you the latest version. I'm satisfied that it's working well, at least for Plan A. At least it's getting close to being hard enough.

I've finished the readme (always a struggle) and this morning mapped out the combinations of reinforcements for the alt. scn files. I'm planning 9 different scn/events files, one of which will be chosen at random when the scenario is launched.

My intention is to have 3 variations of starting locations of certain German units, specifically the 406 Landschutzen Rgt and the 19 PzGren Rgt of the 9SS Panzer Div and of the arrival time and entry location of the 107 Pz Bde. There will also be 3 variations on the arrival times of the 2nd and 3rd lifts of the 1st, 82nd, and 101st Airborne Divs.

So there are 9 distinct possible combinations, plus 3 airborne plans that can be chosen for a total of 27 different variations possible. (3 X 3 X 3 =27) The replayability aspect should be pretty good.

It will take me most of next week to finish this work. After that, we'll need to do final playtesting to sort out any bugs. I'd like to have 3 playtesters, one to test each of the airborne plans. Any volunteers?

[curtsibling]

*steps forward to stuffy Brit and Canadian officers at briefing table*

Count me in, sah!
Send me the latest zip and I will test out whatever plan you deem.

[techumseh]

It's coming much more quickly than expected. Making the 9 alt.scn and events files was straight-forward enough. But I've made an interesting discovery.

There doesn't seem to be any connection between the scn file that is chosen when the scenario is started, and the events file. So you could have scenario5.alt and events2.txt. Or whatever.

[curtsibling]

Will this cause problems with dedicated events for certain scn files?

[techumseh]

It means you can't fix a specific events file to a specific scn file. On the other hand, it increases randomness. So if you had 3 different set ups and 3 different event sequences and wanted to have a possibility of matching each one, you'd only need to make 3 events file and 3 scn files, not 9 as I originally thought.

[curtsibling]

A good thing for scens such as this!

[jim panse]

Say, Brian, would you send that scen over to me for a little playtesting as well?

I would be at stephUNDERSCOREsanderAThotmailDOTcom

[curtsibling]

I am at:

curtsiblingATfire-bugDOTcoDOTuk

[typhoon]

May I try it too?

sgnonameAThotmailDOTcom