CS Game Scale - Manual Style

[Herr Straße Laufer]

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.

From June 2008:

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

:chin:

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

Uh, scale? Parameters? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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

Hmmm ... Scale! :chin:

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.

Hmmm ... I know! :chin:

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

Single day. Two or three? Of course ...

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 :-)

I still agree.
Though I think 45 minutes may stretch the scale a bit more.
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Dang. There may have been a time when we were more civil? Even when we disagreed? :rolleyes:
I would still rather see a designer make a scenario based more on the "snippet" of the battle than a multi day condensed affair.
There is much to be said about making campaigns, multi-battles, and simple scenarios.
The difference between you and Herr Umbro is that Jonathan does not attack the poster to make a point. He addresses the point and sheds light at the same time?

With all that said, if we end up with fun, balanced, and playable scenarios we all win?:smoke:



RR