Matrix Games Forums

The Age of Shadows on Distant Worlds starts now!Paypal System UpdateDistant Worlds: Shadows Final Teaser!Distant Worlds: Legends gets Updated!Recruiting Testers for Commander: the Great War on Mac!Armageddon invasion starts in 2014Command Rommels Panzers in Battle Academy!Servers UpdateThe Deal goes Fourth!Command Ops gets a Massive Update!		 Forums  Register  Login  Photo Gallery  Member List  Search  Calendars  FAQ 

My Profile  Inbox  Address Book  My Subscription  My Forums  Log Out

RE: Play balancing

 
View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest
Users viewing this topic: none
  Printable Version
All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Command Ops Series >> RE: Play balancing Page: <<   < prev  1 [2]
Login
Message << Older Topic   Newer Topic >>
RE: Play balancing - 8/10/2012 3:07:18 PM   
phoenix

 

Posts: 951
Joined: 9/28/2010
Status: offline 		Won't the problem just be another instance of the 'halting' issue? That's what it looked like when I last mailed you about this issue, Dave - bypass etc didn't really work due to unexplained halting.

For what it's worth I have found that the only thing I can do in FTMTTR and RDOA that is a successful strategy for the Brits is to really go for the Arnhem rail bridge. If you take that first then it's quite easy to take the road bridge from the sth approach. The pic I posted on the thread re 'halting...aargh!' shows that I was doing ok getting both bridges in this way before I (again) got thoroughly sick of the long lines of units just standing around doing nothing (or nothing explained) with 'halting' messages in their log. I have NEVER got near the road bridge by going for it from the nth, any route, with the new version (it was possible to do this no probs in old HTTR).

As has been remarked before, the Axis seems keen in the initial stages of FTMTTR (and, I assume, therefore RDOA too) to get units through Arnhem, over the bridge and down to Nijmegan. This seems to be their priority. Until I could work out a way of stopping this i couldn't take the Nijmegan bridges either (until XXX Corps got up there, I mean) - just too great an Axis force got through. If you take the Arnhem rail bridge then you can block the Axis advance on Nijmegan without taking the road bridge just by setting up a defensive force on the road down from the road bridge - somewhere east of Snodenhoek.

But I'm afraid I've never managed to finish RDOA or FTMTTR yet because I just get too frustrated by the halting behaviour. FTMTTR is slow enough anyway (and I have a good system). I can't imagine playing it on slow speed all the way through. It would take weeks, with little happening, I think. I really need that patch to fix the 'halting' behaviour!! Any news, Dave? Any ETA?

(in reply to Arjuna)
Post #: 31
RE: Play balancing - 8/10/2012 11:27:17 PM   
Joe D.


Posts: 3156
Joined: 8/31/2005
From: Stratford, Connecticut
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Try setting the Agro to Min. That should minimise the amount of firing they do.


OK, and after two tries, I managed to get Frost's Co B into Arnhem, but the unit didn't last long as the rest of the Bn was strung-out behind it along the road from West Arnhem.

Frost was able to shortly occupy West Arnhem until a host of Axis units soon swarmed the area like angry like bees.

Frost's Bn did better at bypassing and even changed direction twice, but the delays -- the halting issue? -- cost it precious time that it couldn't make-up before the rest of the Axis responded to the advance.

Despite the continued failures, I think this shows promise, but in the older HttR, it was easier for the Allies to get to its objectives.


< Message edited by Joe D. -- 8/10/2012 11:29:34 PM >

_____________________________

Stratford, Connecticut, U.S.A.

"The Angel of Okinawa"

Home of the Chance-Vought Corsair, F4U
The best fighter-bomber of World War II

(in reply to Arjuna)
Post #: 32
RE: Play balancing - 8/11/2012 3:23:37 AM   
Arjuna


Posts: 16456
Joined: 3/31/2003
From: Canberra, Australia
Status: offline 		Yes it could be useful but it will have to wait its turn.

BTW GoodGuy have you finally bought BFTB or are you still sitting on the fence?

_____________________________

Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
www.panthergames.com

(in reply to GoodGuy)
Post #: 33
RE: Play balancing - 8/16/2012 3:17:43 PM   
Central Blue

 

Posts: 695
Joined: 8/20/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Joe D.

quote:

ORIGINAL: wodin

May also help if your struggling with a certain scenario or feel the AI may need alittle boost on others.


For some of the new HttR scenarios, the Allied AI needs a big boost; playing as the Axis in the old Red Devils over Arnhem scenario was more slaughter than game.

I was concerned that the greater accuracy in this remake would adversely affect the play balance, and it did.



I haven't started on the Arnhem scenarios. And I can't address the other issues discussed in this thread due to lack of experience. But I can say that for the Ardennes scenarios I have played so far, it helps a great deal to make sure that the Allies have all of their historical attached artillery. 4th Armored has a much better chance of relieving Bastogne if you add the 253rd and 274th AFA, 177th and 776th 155H, 559th and 561st 155G, and 578th 8H.


_____________________________

USS St. Louis firing on Guam, July 1944. The Cardinals and Browns faced each other in the World Series that year

(in reply to Joe D.)
Post #: 34
RE: Play balancing - 8/16/2012 8:34:11 PM   
simovitch


Posts: 3882
Joined: 2/14/2006
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Central Blue
4th Armored has a much better chance of relieving Bastogne if you add the 253rd and 274th AFA, 177th and 776th 155H, 559th and 561st 155G, and 578th 8H.


Except for the 253rd and 274th, my sources showed most of these FAB's deployed further to the East, some even as far away as 4th Infantry Division sector. I'll look into this a bit more, thanks.

_____________________________

simovitch


(in reply to Central Blue)
Post #: 35
RE: Play balancing - 8/16/2012 9:46:36 PM   
Central Blue

 

Posts: 695
Joined: 8/20/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: simovitch


quote:

ORIGINAL: Central Blue
4th Armored has a much better chance of relieving Bastogne if you add the 253rd and 274th AFA, 177th and 776th 155H, 559th and 561st 155G, and 578th 8H.


Except for the 253rd and 274th, my sources showed most of these FAB's deployed further to the East, some even as far away as 4th Infantry Division sector. I'll look into this a bit more, thanks.


I recommend Armor at Bastogne: A Research Report Lt Col. Robert R. Summers, et. al., General Instruction Department, The Armor School, 1949. A digital copy is on line at the Combined Arms Library. It led me to the 402nd Artillery Group. And it confirms the 177th and 776th (as well as the 253rd and 274th) listing in the order of battle published by the ETO Office of the Theater Historian. Great maps too. Their source for the artillery line up was the G3 journal of the 4th Armored.

The ETO OOB can be contradictory, and incomplete, so I always look for backup. For example, they show the 177th, 253rd, and 775th directly attached to the 4th Armored through December 31, but also as part of 193rd artillery group attached to the 6th Armored starting December 29. But that doesn't affect the Battered Bastards scenario.

Widening the Corridor is a bit of a jig saw puzzle though. I assign the assets to whom they ended up with, like the companies from 3rd Chemical Mortar going to the 134th and 137th; and then make arbitrary decisions on which of the two 155(H) battalions attached to the 101st is firing south, and which north.

BTW, CARL also has the original report by Marshall, et. al., that became Bastogne, The First Eight Days.



_____________________________

USS St. Louis firing on Guam, July 1944. The Cardinals and Browns faced each other in the World Series that year

(in reply to simovitch)
Post #: 36
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 1:55:10 AM   
Joe D.


Posts: 3156
Joined: 8/31/2005
From: Stratford, Connecticut
Status: offline 		Hypothetically, all I can say is that if FM Montgomery had this game, he would have never launched Op Market Garden; the Axis AI is too good for any chance of attaining play balance in the RDoA scenario.

_____________________________

Stratford, Connecticut, U.S.A.

"The Angel of Okinawa"

Home of the Chance-Vought Corsair, F4U
The best fighter-bomber of World War II

(in reply to Central Blue)
Post #: 37
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 3:03:09 AM   
Arjuna


Posts: 16456
Joined: 3/31/2003
From: Canberra, Australia
Status: offline 		Joe D,

I have been running through a saved game Richard Simonitch sent me on RDOA. In particular he drew my attention to an attack he had ordered the KOSB to undertake and that had stalled. I have been paying close atention to the units as they attempted this attack and have discovered a few anomolies. First off the lead assault company changed facing as soon as it halted. It shouldn't do this in an assault as this decreases its cohesion and wastes valuable time. Next thing I noticed was that the KOSB mortars were firing at targets away from the objective. Upon investigation these mortars were supporting an adjacent formation because the ArtDirectFireOnly option had not been checked in the attack order. I have since made it default to be checked for attacks and probes. So this got the mortars now firing at those pesky German light flak units that were suppressing the assault companies.

However, the mortars were lucky to put in one minute of fire before they lifted. So I stepped through the code and found that it was because the vast majority of the five mintes of bombardment time alloted was being used to register the target. I have now ensured that the fire time is increased by the remaining registration time. So now the mortars get to pound the German lt flak and forced them to retreat thus enabling the assault companies to continue their assault. Yee ha!

But then I noticed that the mortars ran out of ammo just as the assault units got to the objective. This was very unfortunate. Now the code called for a standard bombardment time of five minutes per oncall shoot. Most arty has an allotment of 45 minutes of fire per day. So this would see around nine shoots, which should be enough for an attack. But the glider units don't land with a full load.

So what needs to be done is to reduce the bombardment time by the ratio of available arty ammo to estab arty ammo. I started to do so on Friday but ran out of time as this solution necissitates adding data to several classes ( ie we need to store the estab arty ammo for a unit ). Hopefyully I will complete this on Monday and then we should see the KOSB attack succeed.

Here is a list of the fixes I have done so far:

  • Prevent face changing for assaulting units and those moving in road column
  • Default the task settings for ArtyDirectFireOnly to true for attacks and probes
  • Added the registrationTime to remainingDuration in bombardment events. This ensures that the arty unit fires for at least the specified number of minutes.
  • Now cap maxSuppression to 75% for direct fire and to 85% for indirect fire when the target is in covered terrain.
  • Reduced max registration times from 15 to 5 minutes and increased the range denominator from 200 to 500. Rego time = min( 5, range / 500 ). The overall effect is to reduce registration times for arty fire. Fatigue and training can increase time by up to 56% to a max of 8 minutes.


I will also take a look at the initial orders delay imposed upon the Germans at scenario start.

_____________________________

Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
www.panthergames.com

(in reply to Joe D.)
Post #: 38
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 3:05:08 AM   
Arjuna


Posts: 16456
Joined: 3/31/2003
From: Canberra, Australia
Status: offline 		Oh and one other thing I forgot to mention above was that I have placed a cap on the amount a unit can be supressed if they are in covered terrain. this ensures that if they do Halt they can stiull return some fire.

_____________________________

Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
www.panthergames.com

(in reply to Arjuna)
Post #: 39
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 8:45:41 AM   
phoenix

 

Posts: 951
Joined: 9/28/2010
Status: offline 		This all going into the patch which is due out any minute now, Dave?

And - since you're playing all this on an already patched version with THE HALTING ISSUE fixed, right? - is it the case that you don't see any of that halting behaviour now - ie has that worked?

< Message edited by phoenix -- 8/19/2012 8:47:11 AM >

(in reply to Arjuna)
Post #: 40
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 10:57:26 AM   
Arjuna


Posts: 16456
Joined: 3/31/2003
From: Canberra, Australia
Status: offline 		I believe I have fixed it but that's why we test it. The things holding us up right now are a memory leak, getting the game to run under XP and the sidebar text font issue. Once these are solved we can then test the scenarios thoroughly. I'm sorry for the delay.

_____________________________

Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
www.panthergames.com

(in reply to phoenix)
Post #: 41
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 1:24:45 PM   
Joe D.


Posts: 3156
Joined: 8/31/2005
From: Stratford, Connecticut
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Joe D,

I have been running through a saved game Richard Simonitch sent me on RDOA. In particular he drew my attention to an attack he had ordered the KOSB to undertake and that had stalled. I have been paying close atention to the units as they attempted this attack and have discovered a few anomolies ...


Could any of these anomolies be happening in BftB as well?

_____________________________

Stratford, Connecticut, U.S.A.

"The Angel of Okinawa"

Home of the Chance-Vought Corsair, F4U
The best fighter-bomber of World War II

(in reply to Arjuna)
Post #: 42
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 1:37:09 PM   
Joe D.


Posts: 3156
Joined: 8/31/2005
From: Stratford, Connecticut
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

I believe I have fixed it but that's why we test it. The things holding us up right now are a memory leak, getting the game to run under XP and the sidebar text font issue ....


I'm not sure if this is the same sidebar issue, but I recall that after applying an update to the game, my text size was suddenly too large for the sidebar such that it couldn't accomdate all the info; apparently the problem had something to do with my BtfB pdf manual magnification being set very high, and when I reduced it to about 100%, the sidebar text issue was resolved.

BTW, I am running this game under XP; is that part of the problem?

_____________________________

Stratford, Connecticut, U.S.A.

"The Angel of Okinawa"

Home of the Chance-Vought Corsair, F4U
The best fighter-bomber of World War II

(in reply to Arjuna)
Post #: 43
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 4:50:31 PM   
simovitch


Posts: 3882
Joined: 2/14/2006
Status: offline 		HTTR and BFTB use the same engine so any anomalies/fixes will be the same.

While we wait on the patch I am going back through BFTB and HTTR scenarios and making some adjustments that should be both more historical and provide better balance.

_____________________________

simovitch


(in reply to Joe D.)
Post #: 44
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 6:04:06 PM   
Joe D.


Posts: 3156
Joined: 8/31/2005
From: Stratford, Connecticut
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: simovitch

HTTR and BFTB use the same engine so any anomalies/fixes will be the same.

While we wait on the patch I am going back through BFTB and HTTR scenarios and making some adjustments that should be both more historical and provide better balance.


I thought the problem was that we couldn't have both history and balance, and I do recall some of the "halting" issues with Axis advances in BftB, esp. in the Battered Bastards scenario.

_____________________________

Stratford, Connecticut, U.S.A.

"The Angel of Okinawa"

Home of the Chance-Vought Corsair, F4U
The best fighter-bomber of World War II

(in reply to simovitch)
Post #: 45
RE: Play balancing - 8/19/2012 11:57:03 PM   
simovitch


Posts: 3882
Joined: 2/14/2006
Status: offline
quote:

I thought the problem was that we couldn't have both history and balance

For example I'm picking on the Fliegerhorst, Fortress, and other 3rd rate units in the German HTTR OOB to make them more likely to surrender or otherwise be less of a threat. I'm finding that many of these types of units were withdrawn from the front as the battle progressed. This should make things easier for the Allies in Arnhem and Nijmegen. More historical - better balance.



_____________________________

simovitch


(in reply to Joe D.)
Post #: 46
RE: Play balancing - 8/20/2012 1:53:52 AM   
Arjuna


Posts: 16456
Joined: 3/31/2003
From: Canberra, Australia
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Joe D.
I'm not sure if this is the same sidebar issue, but I recall that after applying an update to the game, my text size was suddenly too large for the sidebar such that it couldn't accomdate all the info; apparently the problem had something to do with my BtfB pdf manual magnification being set very high, and when I reduced it to about 100%, the sidebar text issue was resolved.

Yes thanks. We've tried that remedy already but still in a very few cases we still get a scaling problem. See this thread: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3115727&mpage=2�

quote:

BTW, I am running this game under XP; is that part of the problem?

No it's not part of the problem. The issue we have with XP has been introduced by some change we have made here over the last few months of development. It currently prevents us running our debug version of the game which we use for testing. The version you have does not have these changes and hence should not be an issue for you.

_____________________________

Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
www.panthergames.com

(in reply to Joe D.)
Post #: 47
Page:   <<   < prev  1 [2]
All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Command Ops Series >> RE: Play balancing Page: <<   < prev  1 [2]
Jump to:





New Messages No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages Locked w/o New Messages
 Post New Thread
 Reply to Message
 Post New Poll
 Submit Vote
 Delete My Own Post
 Delete My Own Thread
 Rate Posts


Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI

0.164