Shoot & Scoot & Pet Hates

[Digger]

A well thought out reply there from BT...I hadn't really seen it like that maybe because I am too busy doing it.

The real problem I think is that when Talonsoft designed the original EF way back when. It was designed as a 2D game with the 3D option thrown in. It has all those bad habits of board wargaming with a few 3D icons thrown in. Perhaps it was designed with play against the AI primarily in mind as only a few scenarios are rated as H2H play. The AI certainly doesn't know anything about shoot and scoot that is for sure.

I expect that when the game was first designed and built on what now is by todays standards an aging engine these factors were not taken into consideration. As the game has developed from EF - WF - RS - EFII things have improved, concealment, unit icons, diverse terrain and those night rules which change the whole feel of the game. These were all things that were able to be changed within the context of the game engine. They worked and improved the game as a whole. (I only wish those night rules were backwardly compatible). I remember playing WF for the first time and was blown away but the unit colour schemes not to mention the fact that I did not automatically seem to spot everything.

What hasn't changed is the scale of the game and the ability of units to fire and move in the same phase. This one fact is the basic structure of the game, which makes tactics such as Shoot and Scoot wholly possible. This is not like those ACW Talonsoft games of even ASL where Movement is automatically followed by a defensive fire phase. (Unless the unit moves though a fire lane and incurs an immediate 4SP attack with a -2 mod and you roll snake eyes..but I digress). The game mechanics attempted to counter for that absence, and lets face it added length of play, by inventing OP fire. But as we all know this is a totally random affair. Perhaps the designers should have made all units OP fire when they could if you had it enabled for that unit. (Even if I knew units always would I would still leave many set to off). But then again this may favour the defender as, the game engine can only spot units at the beginning of a turn, and in reality it should be possible to spot units as you move, and as you are unable to without bumping into that company of Js-II's in that open field, we are left with the uncertainty of OP fire.

All this is a result of the abstraction of a turn based wargame into a single phase for each player, the game uses the turn start to calculate everything, with the exception of combat results..I would be nice if spotting was dynamic and those M20 AC's could move onto a crest of a hill and the game engine would calculate immediately the chance of spotting a target. This alone would change the game massively. A calculation is already done for OP fire each time a unit expends AP's in sight of a unit why not apply that in reverse, as well as making OP fire more certain. Alas no we are left with a game which is essentially turn based with some other actions allowed in the opponents turn.

Like any wargame there is a certain degree of abstraction, if there wasn't then I guess we would all be playing Combat Mission in First Person mode. I have tried that game and I like it but I get too confused when I play it. I don't want that degree of realism. I like looking at the bigger map and consequently the bigger picture.

I accept the abstraction because this is just that an attempt to present a playable platoon based game system that is 10 years old this year. 10 years ago I had a piece of junk 586 100Mhz with 8Mb of RAM that barely ran the original EF. Considering how groundbreaking this game was when it was first released, it is surprising that it is still going..Which is a testimony to the dedication of the players and designers..We can only hope that Matrix games don't just put this in a shiny new box and actually look at what can be done to the game, considering the power of the average PC or notebook these days. We can only hope

Matt ~Digger