Larger, longer scenarios

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

I understand people like these small, sharp, short scenarios, but is there any interest from other players for larger, longer scenarios? I'm thinking along the lines of say, take ES and the powers that be make a scenario for the Brit 1st para div in Market-Garden, start to finish. Then make another for the 82nd, 101st and XXX Corps and at the end tie them all together for a large team game if there are people interested in it. There are other areas to also do something along those lines like Bastogne or The Fortified Goose Egg at St. Vith.

Would also like to see scenarios covering the full operations by the French in Indochina in DBP. There are alot of possibilities with all the titles. They could be made to have ai for solo play if you want, but I am thinking primarily of HTH and team play.

I've also thought that having something setup where people could choose an actual div plus some supporting units like in Steel Panthers, but you get the actual division rather than a bunch of generic inf bns and you go into a large map for a meeting engagement. You don't have to use all your forces, but you only have access to your div plus support if you have any. One may only want to start with a recon bn scouring the map and end up only using an inf rgt with a tank bn if you think you can win with that. It's up to you how much you want to use. Points could be scored for causing casualties and maybe how much of the map you occupy, no vp hexes. Maybe even costing you vps for each unit you actively bring on the map. My mind is wandering again.

Anyway, let's hear from people for opinions.

[Wolfgang]

In advanced squad leader they had module called Red Barricades. It covered the battle of Stalingrad over many days. They had another for the Battle of the Bulge too. I always thought that was cool and would love to see something similiar in Sqb. I guess the issue is how to handle resupply, rest, etc.

Personally i'd love to see something like that that covers Operation Mercury - the air assault into Crete in ww2.

[TheBigRedOne]

Based on everything I've experienced with the Squad Battle's titles, massive scenarios just would not work in terms of solo play. The AI simply cannot handle itself adequately, even with expert scenario design, over the course of a long scenario. It struggles, oftentimes, with medium length scenarios. PBEM is a different situation, but even if you skipped the AI scripting, putting together a scenario like you're suggesting would take a someone a substantial amount of time just to input the units, then script them to enter a variety of time points. You'd have to find someone really, really dedicated to do this with an awful lot of time on their hands. I'm not going to speak for any of the designers I know, but I think most of them would prefer to craft a handful of really great small to medium sized scenarios than tackle something as enormous as what you'd like to see. Perhaps you should poke around at the scenario editors and try your hand at crafting something like this

Personally, I think the scale of the game itself is what dictates the types of scenarios that work the best. SB wasn't designed to be played on a operational type scale, that's for other titles to handle. To me moving hundreds of squads per turn in a massive scenario would be incredibly tedious and require way too much time, not to mention having to scroll up and down the map all day long to keep track of things. The game replay would take forever. Not my cup of tea, clearly.

Lastly, I hate to be the downer here (again), but any type of an alternate set-up situation similar to SP will never, ever happen with Squad Battles. It's really not even worth discussing, even in a hypothetical way because it isn't realistic. It's something that has been discussed on and off since I joined the SB community years ago and the answer is always the same.

Squad Battles has been around a good while now. Massive changes to the game engine aren't going to happen at this point in its development life. Instead, Tiller would simply create a new series, much like the Panzer Battles is probably going be, although there hasn't been much public discussion about this new series in quite a while. Not sure where that stands.

[Wolfgang]

Hmm... well lets see.

I mean we could experiment and try a homegrown pbem campaign length style scenario and just see what happens...
Large base maps exist for it in at least some of the games like RV and MW.
The Order of battle could probably be created to accommodate the quantity of forces needed.
Units do recover weapon effectiveness and I believe morale too, given enough rest (But the rates at which those occur may not be realistic over extended periods of time).

I'm not sure what the upper limit is on the number of turns that can be entered into the Scenario builder, but here are the stats:

At 5 minutes a turn:
1 hour = 12 turns.
12 hours = 144 turns
1 day = 288 turns
2 days = 576 turns
1 week = 2,016 turns.


We have no way to really block out large amounts of time (say... an 8 hour rest period and then pick up the game later) so that's a factor... (or maybe not).

* Basically 2 day operations would be at the limit of what would be playable. A 1 week op would probably take several years to complete in pbem mode lol. (An alternative is to further abstract game time - perhaps saying that each turn is actually 10 minutes rather than 5 but then that would skew a lot of other things in the game.)


Also weather would never change from what it was at the scenario start.

The terrain at the start of the scenario would never change either - so we couldn't build new fortifications over night for instance.

With the above parameters in mind, and the fact that the game engine was probably never designed to handle such large amounts of data (who knows how enemy AI actions would play out during a player's pbem turn) a test could be made. I'm sure we'd probably run into unforeseen consequences but it could be interesting to try it out.

Alternatively - An operation could be broken up into 'pulses' of say... 1 day each covering a certain number of hours of that day. Of course this wouldn't take into account the results of the prior day of battle as far as forces at hand, disposition of those forces, etc since there is no dynamic tracking/forwarding of that data. *But* a set of scenarios could be made up for each day and the actual one chosen for the next pulse of the operation would depend on the Victory point level of the prior day of action and final disposition of forces on that day. i.e.: If the U.S. had a draw and controlled area XYZ of the map then play scenario B. If they had a major win and controlled area ABC, then load scenario Z for the next day.
That is a lot of work though lol!

[Dog829]

Gentlemen,
I noticed in ES that there is an add on scenario called Screaming Eagles that was designed by Charlie Cutshall and it is 180 turns long. I have tried to start and play it a couple of times but I have not managed to move through one turn yet. Red is right, that's a lot of units. However, I still believe that deep down we all want to be able to fight D-Day all over whilst we micro-manage the 1st or the 29th division. Or maybe the Brit Para's or our own 82nd or 101st at that. At least I do anyways. Here's the scenario description. Have any of you guys attempted playing this one? And Red, the problem isn't the number of units involved, its the AI becoming incapable of managing the units over a lengthy time frame correct?

South of Bastonge - Screaming Eagles vs. Panzer Grenadiers - December 19, 1944. This is a hypothetical battle for those who want a really large battle. It takes place south of Bastonge and pits a reinforced battalion of the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" Division. The paratroopers of the 101st have augmented their strength by commandeering some retreating units during the Battle of the Bulge. They have added a hodgepodge platoon of armor along with a mixed bag of artillery. Additionally a reinforced tank company has been detached to assist their defense of the town. Opposing the Screaming Eagles will be the better part of an SS Panzer Grenadier Division. The paratroopers will be hard pressed to hold of the attack. They will be assisted somewhat by the staggered arrival of the elements of the SS division, some well placed mines and the beginnings of a dug-in position. In addition to snow on the ground there is some still falling, the sky is misty and visibility will be 30 hexes.

Could be done pbem I assume. It is a large, large scenario.

[Wolfgang]

wow! 180 turns - that's pretty cool. I myself don't mind digging into a scenario of that length and breadth. I think I'd enjoy it quite a bit.

(The longest one I played was in RV: Leibstandarte at Kursk 30 turns and in Pacific war: Sheer Massacre 36 turns.)

When I finally pickup a copy of ES ill definitely play that one pbem with ya!

[Dog829]

All right, we shall.

[TheBigRedOne]

To add on to IW, the visibility would also not change over the course of a day. If the scenario started in the daylight, that's what you'd have the entire time, regardless of how long it is.

---

And Red, the problem isn't the number of units involved, its the AI becoming incapable of managing the units over a lengthy time frame correct?

The AI, in general, struggles to adapt to the situation. Units, if scripted to push towards a certain objective, oftentimes do so without regards to the losses they take or how badly they are getting hit by fire. They just keep on charging forward if they can, usually until they are so smashed that they end up Demoralized and wander off the battlefield. Forget any rest-and-refit to aid in a very long scenario as well.

I've found in my playing and playtesting that the AI on the offensive just isn't very good. Unless the scenario is horribly imbalanced towards the offense, the AI typically can be ground down and defeated fairly easily.

The AI can handle the number, it just won't give you a very sound fight most of the time, at least on the offense.

As for the 180 turn scenario. I figure that two unreal players can probably turn out the equivalent of a half a turn a day, given how huge that scenario must be. So a total of 3-4 completed turns a week, which means that it would take what I'd consider to be a super-human pair around a year to complete that game. For me, that's an awful long time to keep track of things, and to be honest, interested in the scenario. Too many individual units with sight-lines to check, morale to monitor, rallies to accomlish, op fire to organize, Hold Fire to toggle on and off, arty and mortars to sight and fire...

[Dog829]

Valid points each and every one but undoubtedly we will give it a go..
Sadly the father of AI, John McCarthy passed away Oct 24th at the age of 84. Began working on the idea in 1955. Wanted to note that since I feel we owe the man some respect and his passing was so over shadowed by Jobs death that not many knew about it.
Thanks

[TheBigRedOne]

Valid points each and every one but undoubtedly we will give it a go..
Sadly the father of AI, John McCarthy passed away Oct 24th at the age of 84. Began working on the idea in 1955. Wanted to note that since I feel we owe the man some respect and his passing was so over shadowed by Jobs death that not many knew about it.
Thanks

I think you guys should definitely try. I'd like to see how long it takes to finish that game, and more importantly, if you have the stamina to do it!



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