Hi John,
... I am enjoying it even more than Napoleon, and that's saying a lot as that's the scenario that convinced me I absolutely had to build HoF. I have an Operation Downfall I've been working on, and I think this is going to be a massive inspiration for that.
I imagine, like most designers, I also tinkered around with the idea of doing an Operation Downfall scenario but it never went beyond looking for a map and units selection. I'm glad to see someone else is actually working on one. Let me know if you ever need a play tester.
I'm looking at Sicily as being kind of the tutorial almost (and a hard one at that!) I do think that if you're sitting on the sidelines biting your nails about this one, you should just jump in and start playing.
I actually thought about suggesting that players use Sicily as a tutorial. There is a lot of game information and mechanics to absord in the first couple of turns, that I felt were necessary to provide given their importance to playing the game and in that sense there is definitely a steep initial learning curve (not because its complex but simply because there's are a lot of different pieces). But the truth is that once you become familiar with them they should very quickly become second nature.
As such, I also highly recommend you print out 'Appendix C: Hot Keys' of the ReadMe guide as a very useful reminder.
Plan on redoing it, but see if you can at least capture Sicily as by the time you do that you'll have a very good grasp of many/most of the game mechanics.
There is a lot of random placement of units and events done throughout the scenario. So though there may be some basic disposition done to maintain Axis defensive front cohesion you will all the same
never play the exact same scenario twice. Sometimes you will come across a vital position that is relatively lightly defended and easily overrun and other times the opposite will be true.
I played through 10 turns, because this is what it took me to conquer Sicily on the first try (and I already lost 50+ units doing it). I know the game suggests getting through it in 8, and I think I have a plan for how to do that next time though I won't spoil it now.
Losing 50 units in the first 10 turns is heavy losses for sure. You have to be mindfull of your casualty rate for certain because it can become expensive in lost supplies otherwise.
You also have to be aware of the time factor, not only in your time limit for launching your 2nd invaision (no later than October II) but also in the potential increase in Italian Fascist forces that might remain to fight with the Germans (and a possible other nasty surprise).
I am annoyed at how well you can design these in secrecy and just release them with 99% of it working fine
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Though I had done a lot of preliminary work beforehand, I really only began to work in earnest on the project back in April of last year. Of course, as I indicated on post #2, the Prof. helped a great deal in answering not only my very many lua questions but in providing code solutions to some of my more complex features.
Otherwise, there is no magic solution, it all comes down to extensive play testing (probably 1/3 of the last 19 months was spent on it).
-The sea supply system is interesting but in Sicily at least it's basically just a minor annoyance. The main issue of course being that the Battleships when out of supply can only fire once per turn rather than twice. It's a bit random of a system and RNG really but I guess that'll help replays. I was always planning on doing something similar to it in Cold War but I think I'll adapt what I was going to do based on what you've done. .
This more than anything was an experimental feature I wanted to try out. I've always felt that it was unrealistic for naval units, in Civ 2, to be able to remain at sea indefinitely and this was equally true historically. Reading up on the naval aspect of the campaign, I quickly discovered this equally true of Allied naval forces (destroyers in particular, had a very limited operational range and frequently had to return to port for refueling).
Since there are only a limited number of naval units in this scenario, I felt it was an ideal time to introduce the concept and get some feedback on it.
In terms of the scenario itself, it most certainly plays an important role, as you have to carefully manage and time not only your invasions but, as you'll discover, your ability to transport your replacements and some reinforcements to the mainland.
-The air (and terrain) stacking prohibition has problems when you use a goto command with a mouse. Not the end of the world but I'll have to remember it. I can see why the air one is a must have. I'm not sure I like the ground one just because I really prefer to use the goto command and on several occassions the computer has picked a path that puts it in a conflict tile. Lua then moves it out, but it doesn't reset the command, so it gets stuck in a loop and you effectively lose the unit for the turn. Would suggest figuring out a way to end this loop or consider if there is some other penalty (maybe supplies) that makes sense because this is going to be a big scenario with transporting units quite some distance and I don't know that I'm going to want to manually move them all. I like the idea of the feature but it started giving headaches by turn 3. .
I'd been pondering about a stacking feature ever since Agricola told me, 11 years ago, that he had landed his entire invasion force on a single beach tile in my Battle of France scenario.
Stacking limits, is of course, not only historical but entirely accurate. It's simply impossible to stack an entire army in your back yard. Armies need room to operate and maneuver, otherwise units simply begin to become a hindrance to one another and become increasingly ineffective as a result. How many times have we read in history books of traffic jams occuring because too many units were trying to use the same road.
Originally, I planned to make the stacking feature optional to players, but as I play tested the scenario more and more I quickly began to realize it was a
vital component of the game play and flow.
So I was aware of the issue with the goto command, having experienced it myself, but before suggesting an alternative I wanted to get some feedback Personnaly, I tried most of the time to follow these simple techniques:
- For the long goto commands move you units near the front line first and in the back second.
- This is especially, true during non-summer months, where you will want to move your active air units next to the airbase or city, before flying them off to their attack destination, to prevent them from being grounded. Don't temporarily place them on the road/highways, since 80-90% of the time in the scenario you move your ground units along these routes of communications
I had played with the idea of other penalites, like inflicting damage but that didn't address the loop problem.
Of course, the primary delimiter here is that, as far as I'm aware, I can only check for stacking limits at the moment that a unit enters a tile (through the onEnter function), i.e. it
must enter the tile for the code to be able to check.
As such, the only other solution I thought of applying is again to return it to the previous tile but impose a
full stop on the unit (currently I'm only imposing a 1MP penalty, which means if you weren't using the goto command the unit could still be able to move). Therefore that would resolve the loop problem but the player would no longer be able to move the unit at all for this turn, which I felt might be too severe a penalty.
Which do you prefer, a 1MP penalty with the oft occasions will you get the loop or a full stop with no loop?
-Also, the stacking in general makes Catania a giant PITA but I suppose it was in real life too. There just isn't a good visual indicator reminding you what tiles have what available in the stack so it can be frustrating, but it is on me and just means I'll have to plan more. It's definitely going to fundamentally change the tactical element of the game.
This is not only entirely realistic and historical, but intentionaly done by design, and there are many other times when you will be confronted with similar circumstances during the campaign (think Gustav and Gothic defensive lines).
-The mine removal length is tough but probably makes sense. I didn't plan well for it or realize just how important it is to bring support staff along my campaign. That's on me.
The sea mines, in the game, should only be seen as the symbolic representation of the Germans efforts at denying the Allies acces to ports. As such, its not just that they may have mined the entrance to the port but its also that they would have destroyed its infrastructure (cranes, warehouses, docking installations, etc) and often placed time delayed bombs.
Therefore the fact that it can take up to 3 weeks to free a port of obstacles is entirely realistic and historical (sometimes it even took longer before the port could be made even partially operational).)
-Most issues I had were "on me" for not reading correctly. Maybe all of them, honestly.
It's understandable, there is alot to absord initially. But as I mentioned previously once you know them it quickly becomes second nature.
-I love how you don't have house rules and rely on lua to stop players from doing what they shouldn't.
Yes, I didn't want the player to have to be concerned with remembering house rules in addition to the other features. I wanted the events to handle all those little details in the background so that the player could just concentrate on playing the game itself.
PENDANTIC SUGGESTIONS / MINOR ERRORS
-Is it by design that Canadian infantry can't be supplied by UK trucks? I know that US infantry need US trucks and UK need UK but shouldn't the Canadians have a way to resupply too? And wouldn't it make sense that be with the UK stuff?ss
-The Allies start with 1x P-51D but this wouldn't enter service until 1944. I disbanded it at the start and played the game without it. I thought it might be an error? Unless I missed something in the readme.
- The UK Truck can replenish any British unit but only tank type units for the Commonwealth nations. Why did I do that? Other than India most of these nations had small populations and some of them didn't even have conscription, meaning that it wasn't so easy for them to make up for combat losses. As such, it‘s slower for them to rebuild their units to full strength in the game. It's a similar concept for the US Truck which can replenish any Amercian ground unit but only tank units of the FF.
- As per the niehorster.org site the P-51 was already operational with many wings in 1943, though as you indicated not the P-51D. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I should name specific air types during the design process precisely because some of them might be seen as out of place. I guess for most of them I should have just limited the naming convention to the aircraft itself P-51, P-38, B-17, Me-109, etc.
That's all for now - the goal tonight was to get my feet wet and make this scenario fell less daunting.
Contrary to Prime Minister Churchill's assertion that this was the 'soft underbelly of Europe', the Italian front was an extremely difficult campaign, very costly in lives and materials.
Your battles in Sicily were only a small precursor of what is yet to come. The battles to be fought along the main defensive lines, as was the case historically, should be seen in terms of months with you making small but incremental gains here and there. An important tip, this is very much a battle of attrition, i.e. the more Axis units you destroy the harder it will be in the long run for them to be replaced.
