Time Scale

[Osiris]

HI

I ve been looking at a few games, from Avalanche press, panzergrenadier board game and they have a very cool turn clock for the game..based on 15 minute turns..It would be nice to have a turn clock in CS with an actual time of day or night! check it out at this website,
its a PDF file

http://www.avalanchepress.com/pdf/RTBTurnChrt06.pdf


SPWAW Brigade command also uses a 15 minute turns unlike CS series which is based on 6 minute turns which seems a little short..

osiris

[Huib Versloot]

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

[Herr Straße Laufer]

Gosh, I hope they do not do that!

I think the six minute turn was, and is, the way to go. :smoke:

I just think that "some" scenario designers tried to "kick it up a notch" and make the game what it was never intended to be.

In my most humble opinion, of course! :rolleyes:

I'll resist that change! :hissy:

[Osiris]

Hi Huib

Unfortunately I have not played COTA. Non-turned based???...Cool idea after having read the article on COTA..I think it would require a complete rebuild of the CS game engine to do that feature which seems unlikely..

I wonder if Matrix should just take the CS idea and concept and create a totally brand new engine for a completely brand new game because you can patch the game to death but in the end you still are working with a game engine from the original talonsoft series which is now approaching almost 10+ years..by IT and gaming industry standards this is a very old product..Its like putting a ferrari body on a 1936-T-ford engine..

Osiris

[Tide1]

I never took the 6 minute turn thing serious myself but in my simple minded state. Why would you want to set a specific time limit on a cs scenario anyway:conf:

Tide1

[Herr Straße Laufer]

Gary,

Every wargame has a scale. Meters and time.

Ed

[Tide1]

Hi Ed

I guess you have to gauge fatiuge and other aspects of the game with something. I suppose I could do more reading on the subject :rolleyes:

By the way Ed did ya know the 1.03 has random weather events also ?

Gary

[Huib Versloot]

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

[Osiris]

HI

I think Huib makes a good point: 6 minutes equal 240 turns to make a day..Let me illustrate how the 6 minute rule cannot work. From reading accounts at Kursk, On July 8-43..SSDR and SSLAH fought a 70 minute battle with 40+russian tanks and in the end they knocked out something like half of them..It is almost impossible to recreate this in CS..That would be a 15 turn game against a single Russian tank brigade! and it would have to suffer only 50% losses...On July 8, 2 SSPZ Corp destroyed 82 russian tanks in a 24 hour period..so in 240 turns, to recreate this battle the Russians could not lose more than 82 tanks..good luck doing that in CS.. In 10 turns in CS you can wipe out an entire Tank Corp.

Talosnsoft/MCS is based on the orginal board games from Avalon Hill. The designer of those games was one of the orignal creators of East Front from Talonsosft. The reasons for the original 6 minute rule are found in the original manual for Panzer Blitz and Panzer Leader. Its a simple engineering mechanics calculation that simply looks at how time does it take to cover a certain distance and does not factor in combat. Factors such as order delays and faitgue, supply etc are not factored into this equation. One can consider themselves lucky if an armored formation can advance 20 km a day.

From Panzer tactics a book which I bought, a german tank regiment on the march is supposed to stop every 30 minutes for 1-2 hours for maintanence and supply, thats when they had Pz IIIs and Pz IVs. When it came to Tigers they had to stop every 5-10km! Some blitzkrieg!

I think the 6 minute idea needs to be tossed. Maybe in the long run replaced with something else that factors in additional values such as supply, combat, fatigue, supply, order delays weather etc...


Osiris

[Tide1]

Thanks gents I get the idea now.

Gary