The Vietnam War development thread

[McMonkey]

Spell checker

I just realised I spelt impassable wrong before
What the hey, I probably spell a whole lot of things wrong!

Cyrion
I will have to think about the implications of this impassable terrain then. If I make US / Neutral units unable to cross it but VC ones able to do so I can save a hell of a lot of time editing out the border graphics as I can change it to jungle with a little border post and make it impassable. This will also mean I save hundreds of spaces by not having to create loads of border post units! + I will not have to edit them all to no support or whatever! I'm chuffed to bits, especially as I have already made the borders. Happy days!!!

Re: Civilians. I know there must be a way to do this. It would be good if you could just waste them if they got in your way and count them as VC! But seriously, I think there is a good idea there somewhere, just need to work out how best to use it!

Agricola
This is another idea in its infancy. I think it has potential but obviously the 'No more units' route seems like a non starter. There must be another way of making this whole public opinion idea work!
I have not worked out non-disbandable units yet or unbribable units. I really need to finish the map so I can start experimenting with ToT properly!
House Rules are not my bag man! The only ones I intend to include are regarding Neutrality!

Re: Allies
I think the potential for a completely different type of scenario must be explored. I will have a play around with these ideas. If worse comes to worse I will ditch them. I intend to make the Communists pretty agressive, I do not want a US walkover!

I have included an almost complete screenshot of the map with some labels so you can see which way up its ment to be!

[Boco]

Re: Spell checker

Originally posted by Werd100
There must be another way of making this whole public opinion idea work!

You can rig the US cities to not make a lot of arrows, so that they rely on happiness WoW's and improvements. Give them several happy WoW's at the start, then make their expiration techs the preqs for some very desirable techs. Eventually, the US player will need to devote several citizens to Elvi (perhaps redrawn as hippies) in order to avoid revolts. You can also make the maintenance cost of happiness improvements exorbitant.

Similarly, you can link ChangeTerrain actions to various triggers, such as ReceivedTechnology, UnitKilled, or CityTaken. These would change high-shield squares in city radii to low-shield ones. Remember, the ChangeTerrain action eliminates terrain improvements such as mining. Eventually the super-producer cities will stop making units. This can work with a no re-homing rule (easier) or even without it (tricky).

Perhaps the meanest way to do this would be to place the Nuke Power improvement in super-producing US cities. Rig things so that they are essential. This will force the US player to keep these cities from revolting, which would cause a nuclear meltdown with lots of pollution. Both the nuclear explosion and pollution gfx could be altered to look like anti-war demonstrations.

Probably only Techumseh and Exile will remember "Chicago, Chicago" in S&T #21, a hex 'war' game that pitted the Chicago police and national guard against demonstrators for control of several downtown parks during the 1968 Democratic Convention.

[Von Bert]

Werd100.. u got a storm for new ideas in your brain!
very good ideas indeed!

CIVILIANS? sound very good!
and the fact they can block roads is realistic.. as kilometers of refugees did when escaping from war..

IDEAS?
I will put here a new one..

USA CITY on the Vietnam map.. can be ..HEADQUARTERS of Armies ?
so, not town with a name .. but "8° army headquarter".
The USA player will have ONLY few colonist (maybe just with tech/events) .. and with those colonist he will then create "army-base" in the area he wish to defend better.
(giving some strategic choices to be taken by player.. )

[Case]

An alternate, and perhaps more historically accurate, approach to modeling war weariness in the US would be to have negatives triggered at certain time periods. Historically, the fall in US support for the war had more to do with it dragging on for years with few aparent results than the misbehaviour of American troops (which was pretty rare and the Vietnamese Communists weren't exactly middle America's favourite people at any time).

Alternetly, you could set up a system where the US 'buys' units with the cost being increased discontent.

[McMonkey]

Boco
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Nice one! Happyness WoW expiring would effect all US bases and cities and would help represent the decline in troop morale as well as discontent at home. This effect would be increased if the US government is set to democracy! Losing Women's Suffrage would be a kick in the teeth! I like this idea a lot.

The production denial idea is interesting too. The trigger could be Hue or Saigon falling (maybe during Tet Offensive) and would mean less funding for the war effort!

Nuclear meltdown and pollution = Flower power and hippies! Far out man!

I think I will trial a combination of all of the ideas so far and see which work best. Should make the game more interesting than a straigh forward wargame!

[McMonkey]

Von Bert
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Civilians blocking the roads would represent refugees and also the fact that the war was not fought over any fixed front! I will have to see how it works but I think it could add some colour to the game. These refugees would also help reduce the role of ground troops such as Armour and mean that Airborne troops were more essential (I will post info on them next!)

USA CITY
The city at the base of the map will be industrialised and represent the US and its bases in Japan, Korea Honolulu and so on. The US will start with just a few Special Forces bases and Advisors in Vietnam plus some CIDG's (Civilian Irregular Defence Groups) such as Montagnards and Nungs + some air support. As the war progresses the US will recieve some engineers through events to construct a few main bases and then the player can choose where to build bases to tackle the VC! I may make the gap between the US and Vietnam uncrossable until a certain date and then create a static aircraft carrier to complete the 'carrier bridge' so more air support can be flown over.

One idea I liked from the old Vietnam scenarios was downed airmen who were created through events when a US plance was shot down. These helpless sods had to try and slip back over the border before they were grabbed by the enemy and ended up in a tiger cage playing Russian roulette!

[McMonkey]

Case
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I guess I could represent war weariness by using the tech tree to trigger unit obsolescense and expiry of happyness WoW (as suggested by Boco). These techs could show up later on in the tree so they were developed nearer the end of the historical US involvement.

This would make sense and as it would be hard to try and make the US player commit atrocities this method would be preferable!

Could you explain a bit more about: "Alternetly, you could set up a system where the US 'buys' units with the cost being increased discontent."
It sound interesting but how would it work, roughly speaking.

[McMonkey]

Airmobility

This is my concept for airmobility, the Air Cav!

There will be three main unit types:

Helicopter Transport - Essentially an air engineer who can fly into the combat zone and build Landing Zones (airfield) and Bases (cities).

Helicopter Gunship - The airborne artillery used to escort the slicks and harass the enemy.

Airborne Infantry - These troopers can be dropped in by chopper (parachuted) and then flown back out of LZs or Bases when an Operation is over. They will be the main combat element of the Air Cav.

Concept:
The Gunships can scout an area and then the Transports can go in and set up defences (Forts), LZs (Airbases) and Fire/Hill Bases (temporary cities).
The Airborne Infantry can use this new base to conduct its mission and then when finished move on. The LZs and bases can be raized once they are no longer needed.

Fire Bases and Hill Bases: These temporary cities can be founded in dense jungle on top of hills by a single Transport Chopper. They do not need to grow beyond size 1 as they are for tactical use only. If they are intended to be permanent then fortifications can be built and airbases constructed so heavier equipment can be airlifted in and out. When they are no longer required a new Transport chopper can be built which will disband the base!

Well thats the idea. As much of the map will be hard to get at with conventional troops and air power will be expensive the airborne will become a leading arm!

What do you think?

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Werd100
One idea I liked from the old Vietnam scenarios was downed airmen who were created through events when a US plance was shot down. These helpless sods had to try and slip back over the border before they were grabbed by the enemy and ended up in a tiger cage playing Russian roulette!

To make it important for the player to get them back, you could either:
- give a huge penalty to the player when 1 is killed (enmy creation, loss of money, ...); you would then need to make them undisbandable
- or to give them a huge "shield" value, which means they could provide a lot of production if disbanded (but for that, you would have to bring them back to a base first... )

[McMonkey]

Or both!
I liked this idea very much bit the old maps were a bit small! My map is HYOUGE!!!

Thanks Cyrion, were getting some good ideas together here!

[AGRICOLA]

Re choppers:

Check out Eivind's excellent The Norwegian Campaign for a possible troop carrying h/c. I thought that his troop carrying Ju-52 was really neat when I played the scen.

[McMonkey]

Troop carrying chopper

HOW! I am impressed
I have just been testing out the Ju52 transport and it is a work of genius! I think I will stick with the units I already have and make this unit a heavy lift chopper such as a Chinook or Sky Crane that can be used to fly in Mortars and Artillery. That is so cool!!!
This will also be a worthwhile unit to research on the tech tree.

I have just finished the map and I am about to start placing the cities. Is it best to design the game in Deity level? Thats what I did with WWII Europa and it seemed ok!

I am going to have a play around and see what problems I come up with before I start properly! I may well have a few more questions

The USA/World will be added while I build the game!

[McMonkey]

Slight problem. I have been playing around, placing a few cities and then saving the game as a sav. and scn. file in my Vietnam folder. When I try to load the game or start the scenario the folder is empty. What am I doing wrong? If I do not get to grips with ToT soon I will make the damn thing for MGE! HELP!

[AGRICOLA]

1. Any chance that you have 2 folders with the same name.

2. Are the .sav and .scn files in the folder when you open the folder with explorer?

3. TOT moves in mysterious ways. Jan 30 happens to be one of its black hole days.

[McMonkey]

1. I have checked this folder and the one I had in MGE version and it is not in either.
2. I have looked in the folders on the hard drive and all the save and scenario files are there!?!
3. Could that be the reason my monitor is levitating?

HELP!!!