Matrix Games

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ORIGINAL: morleron1

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ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

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ORIGINAL: Karri
I guess you could combine some of the german air units...they are considerably smaller than the soviet ones.

Yes, Soviet air units typically number in the hundreds of aircraft and German squadrons are about 42 assigned. I say "assigned" instead of authorized because most German squadrons operate at less than authorized strength. That's a good idea.

Another thing we might do is eliminate the partisans. That way we could do away with the MP and security units.

And another thing: we don't need the garrison units until late in the game when the Soviets are pressing toward Berlin. Maybe we could invent an event trigger thing to make the garrison unit appear in the threatened hex(s) just before it's needed. This scheme may need more events than we have so we may need to have ALL the garrison units appear when the first threatened hex is threatened, so that only one event is needed.

And do we really need the Italians to be represented? Do we need the Slavic units?

One thing to consider is that amalgamating the German air units would, I suspect, limit the German ability to project airpower in the interdiction mode, if nothing else. I tend to keep almost all of my German bomber units on interdiction and move them around as needed to inhibit Soviet movement in areas that I consider important. However, it is rare that I will leave some area totally denuded of interdicting units as it's hard to tell where the Soviets may be coming from and it's nice to be able to hold up the rail movement of units from Gorki to Kiev without leaving the Soviets with a free hand around, say, Leningrad and Finland. That said, if we could make significant gains in others areas of the game by making this change I'd support it. My main concern is that the Axis player may end up having a useful weapon, albeit one over which he doesn't have full control so far as effects are concerned, removed or restricted without some offsetting gain in another area.

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
So far as removing the Axis MP units, with the thought that this will make it impossible for the Axis player to use them as spearhead units I'd suggest holding off on that until 3.4 comes out so that we can evaluate whether or not Ralph has solved the "ant unit problem".

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
Another possibility would be to establish a house rule along the lines of "No MP unit or Security Division unit may be voluntarily moved forward of the main battle area."

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ORIGINAL: morleron1

So far as the Italians are concerned I suppose it depends on whether or not we come up with changes to FiTE that make the Axis side viable into 1942. It was only the presence of Italian, Romanian, Slovakian, etc. units that allowed Fall Blau to get as far as it did. Without those types to guard the flanks there will not be enough German units to adequately handle that task, while at the same time opening them up to the type of disaster which ultimately befell the Wehrmacht. I know we're not talking about removing the Romanians but I think the point still stands.

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ORIGINAL: morleron1

I just finished uploading the results of a project that I've been working on for a couple of months: mods to the Buzz mods for FiTE.  The files - FITE Rons mod v1.1.1.eqp and FITE Rons mod v1.1.1.sce are the game files.  I've also uploaded the notes that I've made as I went through this process "FITE Notes" (which also incorporate the original Buzz mods house rules - which remain unchanged).  Those are available in both Open Office and M$ Word formats (the Open Office version is native).  Bear in mind that this project is on-going, though that may change depending on what goes on here.  If our combined efforts come up with a better result I will be the first to cheer.  If anyone does decide to either playtest these mods or simply load them up in the editor and look through them I am definitely interested in your comments and observations.  As I'm just getting used to the Event Editor I won't be at all surprised if I've inadvertently hammered something there.  I've tried to avoid mucking about with the original events, instead adding my own if possible so as to lessen the chances of contaminating the original.

Have fun,
Ron
P.S.  Thanks to Larry Fulkerson for making the file upload space available.

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ORIGINAL: Panama

Too bad there's no way to delay reconstitution in a scenario to something more reasonable.

Replacement 9.1.8 When units are Reconstituted, there is a one to four week delay in their appearance.

Forming, getting the pieces together and training a division to fight as even a somewhat cohesive unit takes alot longer than one to four weeks unless an existing unit was given the destroyed unit's number.

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ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

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ORIGINAL: Karri
Well, the problems is that one camp wants it historical and the other wants it playable. Personally I think that history has to give way to gameplay.

I'm pretty sure we're doing this ( changes to FITE )to improve the gameplay. So anything that tends to give historical results is a bonus and not the goal in my opinion. So I'm in favor of changes that improve game play also.

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ORIGINAL: Panama

Either this is a very popular scenario or there are a handful of very crazy FitE'ophiles. I've seen several people modify parts of this scenario to make it 'work' better. There are a lot of man hours put into it. This is not counting the huge amount of time the original designers must have burned.

I quite agree that unless this thing is fun to play then it's not worth the effort. The greatest challenge is to make it fun and historically accurate at the same time.

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ORIGINAL: Panama

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
So far as removing the Axis MP units, with the thought that this will make it impossible for the Axis player to use them as spearhead units I'd suggest holding off on that until 3.4 comes out so that we can evaluate whether or not Ralph has solved the "ant unit problem".

The ant problem's solution has already been explained. It has only to do with the little trick of a very small unit attacking with a mass of artillery against a larger unit. That's about the extent of it.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Panama

Too bad there's no way to delay reconstitution in a scenario to something more reasonable.

Replacement 9.1.8 When units are Reconstituted, there is a one to four week delay in their appearance.

Forming, getting the pieces together and training a division to fight as even a somewhat cohesive unit takes alot longer than one to four weeks unless an existing unit was given the destroyed unit's number.

But elimination in TOAW doesn't represent the complete annihilation of the unit - after all, only the forward combat elements are usually modeled. It only represents a temporary loss of "cohesion" - the ability to function as a effective unit. Units can recover that relatively quickly.

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
I think that to some extent we can do both. As was pointed out in the FiTE Opinions thread that Bibbo began a couple of years ago the big problem seems to be that the Soviet player has more-or-less perfect knowledge of what happened historically and what works in the game. This has resulted in the development of the Russian strategy of simply retreating immediately and establishing a two-deep defensive line that is just beyond where the Germans can realistically expect to be able to get reasonable supply levels. Since the mechanics of the TOAW game engine make it virtually impossible to create a breakthrough of such a line: the Soviet player may have to retreat but he should be able to avoid a German breakthrough on a scale large enough to be dangerous.

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
It seems to me that at least a partial solution to this problem to remove as many of the original FiTE "house rules" which limited the options available to the Axis player as possible. As I've mentioned in our private correspondence I think that the single best feature of the Buzz mods is the removal of limitations on what can be done with the Finns - including limits on how many German units can be sent to that front. This change means that the Soviet player can no longer safely strip every unit from the Finnish front for use elsewhere as the Finns are now capable of doing damage to Soviets. While some may, rightly, decry this as being an ahistorical option this change goes a long way toward re-introducing the uncertainty which confronted the Soviet high command in WWII. This is a case of using an option which was not available in reality to produce a more realistic result in the game.

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
It seems to me that allowing the Turks to join in the fun (as a Theater Option in the Buzz mods does) is another way of forcing the Soviet player to have to pay attention to other areas of the front and not be able to simply pile all of his units in front of the German drive on Moscow. Perhaps what we need to concentrate on is figuring out ways to eliminate the advantage of hindsight that the Soviet player has in the original FiTE. While it would definitely be non-historical allowing the German player an option to "declare peace" with the British and thus free up a lot of units and resources for use on the Eastern Front could be worked out. I would think that an Axis player taking advantage of such an option would need to achieve a higher level of victory or have some other sort of penalty attached. As Panama has mentioned in relation to the "ant problem" the difficulty is not so much how TOAW works as how players act - so we need to figure out how to change the way the Soviet player typically reacts to the German invasion

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ORIGINAL: Panama

When I have a unit encircled and my combat report shows the defending unit as having lost everything, in other words, the on hand column and the lost column are the same, do you mean to tell me this is not fact? That in every case the encircled unit has survived and simply needs a large number of replacements? If that's true then accept my apologies for my misunderstanding.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Panama

When I have a unit encircled and my combat report shows the defending unit as having lost everything, in other words, the on hand column and the lost column are the same, do you mean to tell me this is not fact? That in every case the encircled unit has survived and simply needs a large number of replacements? If that's true then accept my apologies for my misunderstanding.

Game-wise there's no difference whether the unit was surrounded or not when eliminated. Elimination represents the unit being unable to continue to function as a cohesive combat unit. Total annihilation is not modeled. Units usually evaporate long before all equipment has been destroyed.

After all, only the frontline combat elements are usually modeled. A division may have 18,000 men in it, yet be modeled by about 400 squads or so. I sometimes try to account for this a bit by modeling some of those rear-area elements. But the game is not designed to handle it, so it can't address all the issues that total annihilation would encompass.

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ORIGINAL: desert
Is the ability to choose which units reconstitute in the wish list?

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ORIGINAL: Panama

Divisions can be reduced to battalion size and still function as a cohesive combat unit. But I guess the line has to be drawn someplace. I still feel four weeks is far too short of a time. But that's simply my opinion. Thanks for your side of it.

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
I don't know if an equipment file saved under 3.4 will work under 3.2.  If it doesn't feel free to send me an email and I'll send you the 3.2 version of the equipment file.

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ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

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ORIGINAL: morleron1
I don't know if an equipment file saved under 3.4 will work under 3.2.  If it doesn't feel free to send me an email and I'll send you the 3.2 version of the equipment file.

I don't think they changed any between versions.

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ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

You need to either remove the _ from the eqp file name, or add them to the actual scenario title inside TOAW. I ignore the actual file name when looking up the eqp file.