umbro Wrote:Basically, IMHO, the "six minute scale" is for the "action sequences", the "flexible time scale" covers the "down times".

umbro Wrote:For what it's worth (probably the paper it's not printed on), here is another interpretation (borrowing heavily from what has gone before):

"We need a scale for weapons ranges and visibility" - Okay 250m per hex
"How fast does stuff move around?" - men can move on roads at 4mph - that's 40 hexes per hour. Jeeps can move on roads at 25mph, that's 250 hexes per hour. So, let's divide by ten and have a turn be 6 minutes.
"Great, now how much damage can a weapon system do in 6 minutes?"...

After this conversation comes "What about all the boring bits we skipped over? Waiting for orders, tea breaks, getting POWs back to the MPs, getting wounded back to triage, waiting for the ammo truck to get up here,...." "Let's ignore those, who would want to play a scenario with more than 10 turns anyway?"

Turns out folks did, and do. It isn't that there is a sliding timescale, but rather that the boring bits actually begin to matter. I don't believe anyone truly believes that after a 6 minute turn everyone sits around for an hour. However, after some number of 6 minute turns units do sit around for a number of hours. This "flexible" time scale allows for numerous firefights and recovery periods. It also allows for some of the newer engineering functions as it becomes possible for an engineer unit to make use of these "downtimes" to erect a wooden bridge, or lay a simple minefield.

Basically, IMHO, the "six minute scale" is for the "action sequences", the "flexible time scale" covers the "down times".

umbro

Alfons de Palfons Wrote:Thanks Umbro you just said exactly the same thing that I have been saying for over five years now. Apparently it matters more WHO says it more than what is said.

Alfons de Palfons Wrote:You should look at COTA or airborne assault series for intelligent timespans, although they are non turn based, their fatigue and order delay sytem is very realistic. I use common sense to determine turn lengths. Nobody ever has been able to tell WHY the CS turn is a given length, other than that someone who doesn't know what he was talking about put it in the old Talonsoft CS manual and probably regretted he did that once scenarios had to be made. Let's see if we can get that sentence out of the ME manual for 1.04.
If said this many times before: without a proper order delay and fatigue system in the engine you cannot have a fixed turn length. So it would not be nice to have a turn clock, unless the designer can set the parameters (time) for it.

Huib

Alfons de Palfons Wrote:COTA gives you a good idea what for example a company of infantry can accomplish in a day, because all elements are present: fatigue, waiting for orders, preparing to move out etc. If you translate that back to CS you'll find that the 6 minute turns can't be applied without reservations (like in the huge Market Garden scenario of 400turns and even here the timepan was widened), since these turns equal to full action. If one wanted, one could calculate an average of action time that is possible in a day (using COTA). As a rule, the more different orders a unit gets, the more time they will spent preparing and the less time there is for action.

To Ed: please explain why a turn is 6 minutes and why it was intended to be that way and how it tranlates back into scenario designing?
The only way I can place it is that the 6 minute turns only represent the actual action/movement, while the rest (sleeping, waiting for orders etc) is simply not represented/skipped by the game engine.
Thus the designer is forced to make his own interpretation of the time NOT represented by the game engine. In doing so he will come on a different # of turns than 240 turns for 24hrs of real time. I usually look what the historical units achieved or could have achieved on a given day and use that to determine the length of the scenario. Most of the time I succeed very well in this I must say.

Huib

Alfons de Palfons Wrote:I don't really see why one would cling on to the six minutes rigidly, as even the old TS stock scenarios depict nearly only historical battles that would have needed 100+ turns. Still even the "old designers" such as Bevard chose to represent these battles in less than 20 turns. Taskforce Lovelady for example, was historically a much longer engagement than 1,5 hour (it actually was a battle of more than a day), yet Bevard put it in 12 turns.
The 6 minute sentence in the manual has never been backed up by anyones scenarios actually other than by the accidental fact that a few battles may have been really exceptionally short. I can't think of even a single one apart from the one Osiris mentioned in the previous post.

I still stand by my point that the turns should be seen as a linear sequence where all the "non action" is simply skipped from the game. If each turn is just representing 6 minutes of "action" the game is fairly accurate and fits into Ed's description of space and time.
I agree that you can not make endlessly long scenarios. For example replacements are not integrated in the game engine, which would be needed in really long time battles. But a scenario of a few days is possible IMO simply because on most multiple day battles the actual action could still be measured in hours. There is no need to dedicate 5 turns to the Brits drinking tea.

Huib

Alfons de Palfons Wrote:

Mr. RoadRunner Wrote:Amen! My friend.
I think I will probably "cook off" before I get tired of it.

And, I can always just make scenarios true to scale until then? ;)

Ed,
I don't think there will be any alterations to the game scale ever by the current developers. We differ a bit about interpretation of the time in the actual game, but not about size, space etc.

Alfons de Palfons Wrote:

Mr. RoadRunner Wrote:This game was never designed to cover every minute of every day in the life of a battle? It was designed to give "snap shots" of what happened during various battles.
Those that never understood that, designed scenarios that have 400 turns and really do not "recreate" the whole battle or even pieces of the battle.

Very true. I don't think we disagree that much... really
Most scns I made are single day battles. Sometimes 2 or 3 days. Sometimes I break them down into separate scenarios, sometimes I leave the "snippets" in sequence in a single scenario of 25-50 turns or so, whatever I think will produce the most fun scenario.

/H

Von Earlmann Wrote:Guys,
All I can say is in my campaigns a daylight turn is equal to about 24 mins and a night turn is equal to about 45 mins.It usually breaks down to about 45 to 47 turns per day and having run a few campaigns I can comfortably say that's about right.Players can do bout what was historically done....sometimes a little better and sometimes a little worse. About the way of any good game.............and by damn this is a good game :-)

MrRoadrunner Wrote:Make changes to scale and you get engineers that can build a bridge, clear a hex of wrecks, or sow a 250 meter hex with mines, ... in six minutes. Unless there is no downtime for the engineers, while everyone is resting? :chin: ;)

MrRoadrunner Wrote:Though, the "flex" crowd seems to think that the units on the map and the map itself can be "something other" than 250 meters and platoons?

K K Rossokolski Wrote:MrRoadrunner Wrote:
Make changes to scale and you get engineers that can build a bridge, clear a hex of wrecks, or sow a 250 meter hex with mines, ... in six minutes. Unless there is no downtime for the engineers, while everyone is resting? End Quote

This is a red herring!! What is the big deal re "scale" here. Ever since I have been playing CS, the sappers have been able to clear a minefield in one turn. And with laying mines, they don't have the problem with finding them first!! 6 SP sappers or 1 SP...... same time. Fit as many Eng platoons in a mined hex as you can, still takes one turn to clear*.
Live with it.
* For a one click minefield, undisrupted troops.
BTW who are the ""flex" crowd." I have seen nothing here advocating changing linear scale or platoon size.

umbro Wrote:Also, bear in mind that the "bridge" is really two ropes strung across a river that infantry can clamber across, that clearing wrecks means moving the wrecks a couple of meters so that they don't block the road, and that the minefield is level one which means they basically sowed the road at one bottleneck point...

umbro Wrote:Of course, there is the issue that these guys get to do more than anyone else (as they can often be combat units too!), but I think that is a small price to pay for the extension to game play offered by these new guys.

umbro Wrote:But, I admit that I am biased in favour of larger scenarios with more options - except when playing online H2H :-).