ACW Supply

[2-81 Armor]

Fwiw, personally, I wouldn't touch that Overland scenario - and it would be unwise to use that as any sort of metric, largely because if one reads through its tons of house rules (relative to anything else), and the rules (that in my opinion most people might simple dive into and overlook) that is a work around to a replacement system that relies on the honour system .... well, it's just not workable. I think I might have mentioned that in the test for it.  Not a fan, so personally I would find the longest scenario in any other title than Overland...

When working on a M&P project intended for publication, it involved coding the PDTs, OOBs in a simple text editor. I preferred Notepad ++ (too cheap for UltraEdit which is nice, but well ... maybe someday ...), but also had to do some troubleshooting when I was testing out the last round of engine changes in Musket and Pike (well last round for me ... that was I guess about a year and a half ago) ... what happened was when introducing the additional numbers of sides the engine was still calling up the old numbers (which included Ammo Levels, A/I coding, and VPs (I think), in SCN files in a text editor as well.

There isn't any secret manual for it either, it was all trial and error (at least for me) even when doing some work for JTS.

As it stands right now, I am working on a personal project, and waiting on an updated build of the engine. The one I have is a development build that doesn't work with all of the optional rules making it impossible to put together OOBs and test out combat modelling without switching to the Renaissance title. As the sides are a bit different between titles, I made the executive decision not to code any additional OOBs in REN, as I was facing having to redo them all in another title (read that to mean that the sides from each title are not using the same slots) ... made a bit more confusing by the actual nation names are all aliases so you have to keep several sets of names straight (which doesn't always happen.).  I have been working on some things with a Wabash 1791 OOB; I have this habit of using 'non-standard' use of units (meaning it is allowed in the engine, regardless of if a published scenario designer had made use of it... learned some stuff too).

But sure- I will agree with you on documentation, but the thing is, it isn't hidden away. It doesn't exist. Not the manuals at least.

This is really a pretty useful discussion I think.

At times I admit I do get frustrated, and wish for tools and other things I doubt we'll ever see.

In the past I had a somewhat brief association with WDS, and when I was there I did see how stretched the tiny staff was (just one programmer who was part time, one person doing detail work on maps, and various designers with access to some but not all tools for a particular project. Then there were playtesters. That was about it.) to my knowledge nobody was getting a salary, and John Tiller needed to make any major game system changes to the source code.

I've been using Tiller products since the ancient times when he was with Talonsoft. The very first thing of his that I can remember was a very early sort of PzC/PzB clone that dealt with the Battle of the Bulge. The title escapes me though. There were also the very early renditions of the ACW and Napoleonic series. When HPS was his publisher I remember playing the first release of PzC, "Smolensk '41", and later on the very first ACW title "Campaign Corinth". I think I'm talking about things that were 20+ years ago now.

All these games/series have a somewhat common system, that with modifications can be adapted to just about any time period or situation. Sometimes with varied success, but it does work. This is nothing new really. There is another well known designer dating back to the 1980's (now with Matrix Games) who has been using the same basic system all along for mostly monster sized games, and with success.

Where I get frustrated is when it appears to me that the Napoleonic/ACW series get less attention than Panzer Campaigns, Panzer Battles, First World War, and even Modern Campaigns. Why this is so I don't know, but I do suspect that has to do with popularity, sales, and programming time.

I'll also admit that I can be somewhat harsh when frustrated. I just can't see why the Black Powder games can't have a rudimentary replacement system like PzC, or a supply system like that series has. As I mentioned, they seem to all be working from the same basic engine. If PzC, and other series have the ability to set a replacement % for units within formations using the OOB editor, I don't see why the Black Powder games shouldn't too. The same feeling extends to the supply system, and even nit-picky details like having "real" engineers/pioneers with real abilities rather than just a name.

So, I get frustrated when working with something as large and complex as the Atlanta scenario I mentioned. I got even more frustrated when some things being buried in the source code got mentioned.

Comment was made about that 1390 colossus from Overland. It's very true that it is pretty much unplayable without a lot of book keeping, house rules, work arounds, and player trust. The designer (I think it was John Ferry) made a valiant attempt working with what was available. He most likely could have gotten a lot further if he had the features I talk about two paragraphs above. I'd never attempt to play it myself, but it sure is something to look at in the editor. Sort of like what Richard Berg's old "Campaign In North Africa" game was to the paper/counter genre.

In closing, sorry about sounding antagonistic. I also know that the likely hood of ever seeing any of the features from PzC being transferred to Black Powder is about nil. That's just life, and in the end JTS/WDS is a business.