What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Flashpoint Campaigns Southern Storm is a grand tactical wargame set at the height of the Cold War, with the action centered on the year 1989.

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byzantine1990
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What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by byzantine1990 »

I would like to play a PBEM after I get some more practice in. I have some experience with PBEM's in Combat Mission but that's about it. What are the usual house rules? In Combat Mission the defender is not allowed to do preliminary bombardments.

With FCSS I could look up the enemy starting positions and hit it with artillery. Is that frowned upon?

What about sending a scout helicoper on the edges of the map to search for the enemy artillery?

Is there anything else that is considered gamey?
WABAC
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by WABAC »

byzantine1990 wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:06 pm I would like to play a PBEM after I get some more practice in. I have some experience with PBEM's in Combat Mission but that's about it. What are the usual house rules? In Combat Mission the defender is not allowed to do preliminary bombardments.

With FCSS I could look up the enemy starting positions and hit it with artillery. Is that frowned upon?

What about sending a scout helicoper on the edges of the map to search for the enemy artillery?

Is there anything else that is considered gamey?
Never done PBEM. But in answer to your first question, most setups allow a lot of room for options where units are placed. Consider that your opponent may have already played both sides of the scenario; just like you.

It's worth considering what each side knew about the other through the Military Liason Mission system, and other means. In addition, they knew the geography, knew the avenues of approach and defense, and probably had excellent ideas about line of sight from most prominent points of elevation.

Make a thorough study of the lay of the land. Then consider whether you should unmask your artillery hoping for a lucky shot. The AI does, from time to time, take shots at likely points of defense and/or observation.

You can send your helos wherever you want. Is the edge of the map the best route? Have you knocked out his air defense units? The edge of the map is just as visible as the rest of it.
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kevinkins
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by kevinkins »

Map edges provide the wargamer the same benefit they provide the football player running down the sidelines. In both, your concern is limited to 180 degrees not 360 degrees when you are in the center of the field. While the Combat Mission PBEM rules are easy to enforce, use of the map edges is not and would be an extreme restriction on the player wanting to use them like a running back. In football and games like chess, the playing field is bounded. Wargames play on a subset of the entire area of operations and are bounded by water and other impassable ground. Bounding a/c and choppers would require huge maps where the edges are outside the fuel range which are usually outside the scale of the scenario being played.
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IronMikeGolf
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by IronMikeGolf »

kevinkins wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 12:24 pm Map edges provide the wargamer the same benefit they provide the football player running down the sidelines. In both, your concern is limited to 180 degrees not 360 degrees when you are in the center of the field. While the Combat Mission PBEM rules are easy to enforce, use of the map edges is not and would be an extreme restriction on the player wanting to use them like a running back. In football and games like chess, the playing field is bounded. Wargames play on a subset of the entire area of operations and are bounded by water and other impassable ground. Bounding a/c and choppers would require huge maps where the edges are outside the fuel range which are usually outside the scale of the scenario being played.
Adding to the football analogy, there's another field abutted to the sideline. And players in the other game can tackle the running back dancing along the sideline.

We do model off-map artillery. We don't model off-map air defense. However, both players know this, so that makes things more equal. Both players can account for map edge dynamics in their planning.

So, I think there are two regimes in PBEM to consider, those being high trust and low trust. In a low trust situation, I'd insist on a scenario without reinforcements for either side, just to help keep both players honest. If you examine a scenario, you can find when and where reinforcements arrive. Even if it's so far away you can't put artillery, helos, or CAS on the arrival locations, you know where combat power is delivered and when, so that contributes to possible courses of action.

Fuzzing that, both in time and location, is a lot of work and a lesser payoff for game development than a lot of other things.

The other aspect is by examining the scenario, you can know exactly how much and what type of kit each side has. But, both players can do that. Of course, if one player has more experience with the game and actually knows the values and how to examine scenarios, there is a definite offset.
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JacquesDeLalaing
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by JacquesDeLalaing »

Deployment zones are specific to formations/HQs. And yet you can de- and re-attach units to your liking during the deployment phase.

So, if you attach a tank unit to a recon formation, you can deploy the tank unit in the recon formation's generously large deployment area. I consider this quite gamey and would use a house rule/gentlemen's agreement to prevent it.
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by 22sec »

JacquesDeLalaing wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:49 pm Deployment zones are specific to formations/HQs. And yet you can de- and re-attach units to your liking during the deployment phase.

So, if you attach a tank unit to a recon formation, you can deploy the tank unit in the recon formation's generously large deployment area. I consider this quite gamey and would use a house rule/gentlemen's agreement to prevent it.
Nothing prevents that from happening in a real world situation. The advancing forces never knows everything about the opponent it faces. The scenario designer intended for that force to be deployed in the area designated. When I design scenarios I envision boundaries and phase lines, draw them, and then fill in the area to allow for deployment, so if a cav unit gets some tanks attached they would deploy those tanks.

I suppose maybe from a game sense it might throw the carefully crafted balance out of whack. In my opinion, that is the downside to playing a wargame that keeps an actual score.

For the record this is a wonderful question. I don't think we talk about how this game really shines when playing against a human opponent. The AI and battleplans are wonderful, but nothing beats beating an actual thinking opponent.
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byzantine1990
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by byzantine1990 »

JacquesDeLalaing wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:49 pm Deployment zones are specific to formations/HQs. And yet you can de- and re-attach units to your liking during the deployment phase.

So, if you attach a tank unit to a recon formation, you can deploy the tank unit in the recon formation's generously large deployment area. I consider this quite gamey and would use a house rule/gentlemen's agreement to prevent it.
That’s a good rule. If the designer intended the tanks to be deployed farther up they would have changed their deployment zone.
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Radagy
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by Radagy »

May be this could be fixed on a patch, by preventing hq reallocations during setup
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cbelva
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by cbelva »

I disagree with the ability to task organize in setup as being "gamey". It is by design that a player can do that. In fact, militaries do that in real life all the time. We trained to task organize before every operation. It is part of your job as a commander before the battle to 1) position your forces, and 2) organize them for success.

I'm not saying that someone might not try and game the system, but I think there is a greater chance that he could be hurting himself. First, if he has a unit or units outside of its HQ, then there are some pretty stiff penalties those units would suffer. Namely longer movement delays and the inability to resupply and recover morale and readiness.

The ability to task organize is by design and is not a bug. To eliminate it or hamstring it would destroy an important part of the simulation. In the military we would move units and entire formations around to better suit the mission. The game assumes that you have had the time to move the new unit to its new HQs location. Thus, the unit acquires its gaining HQs deployment zone.
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byzantine1990
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Re: What Is Considered Gamey in a PBEM

Post by byzantine1990 »

cbelva wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:39 pm I disagree with the ability to task organize in setup as being "gamey". It is by design that a player can do that. In fact, militaries do that in real life all the time. We trained to task organize before every operation. It is part of your job as a commander before the battle to 1) position your forces, and 2) organize them for success.

I'm not saying that someone might not try and game the system, but I think there is a greater chance that he could be hurting himself. First, if he has a unit or units outside of its HQ, then there are some pretty stiff penalties those units would suffer. Namely longer movement delays and the inability to resupply and recover morale and readiness.

The ability to task organize is by design and is not a bug. To eliminate it or hamstring it would destroy an important part of the simulation. In the military we would move units and entire formations around to better suit the mission. The game assumes that you have had the time to move the new unit to its new HQs location. Thus, the unit acquires its gaining HQs deployment zone.
The issue is not task organizing. Issue is the scenario is designed around a tank being a certain distance from the enemy. If you game the system to move that tank right up to the enemy spawn then it breaks the scenario. I hope they fix it and make it so starting location is per unit rather than per HQ.
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