Attack vs. Defense

[major0noob 246]

so it's not that x doesn't exist but any improvement to simulation genera gameplay has no bearing on the FPS... or the simulation gameplay has more draw even with a broken FPS gameplay model...

if a customer will not accept a minimum value for FPS gameplay, they won't sub. the game is skirting that minimum value, despite all thats been done for the sim gameplay, the situation hasn't changed. most of the rats are volunteers and they've never been able to reach their 300 hero goal. even the WBS didn't draw a crowd.

 

 

 

in this threads derailed topic, sacrificing FPS gameplay (gameplay balanced spawnlists) in the name of reenactment/simulation gameplay (real life $$$ spawnlists).

aspects of the tactical layer has been sacrificed by the new ToE; 8 matties and the removal of panzers from the axis inf flags while removing panzers from axis inf, and the complete dismissal of basic game functions, like axis need 2x the supply$  for half track, as well as ignoring the capabilities of every single unit. for the sake of a simulation based ToE

 

there are more examples of sacrificing needlessly and ignoring the consequences. this isn't the first time the devs sailed full speed into an iceburg a mile away. they've proven themselves blind man, saying there is no iceburg isn't helping their ship stay afloat.
 

 

7 hours ago, david06 said:

so all that is left is the combat, and how many kills one gets by going on attack vs. sitting on defense is addressing the core game, not some optional side activity

"thrill seeking" lol, you have no game if there are not players constantly spawning and shooting at each other

or the on topic, constant bogging down to turtling. it gets to psychological warfare: boring the other side to logging.

one side sucks too much to attack, that's acceptable (no scarcasm). making the threshold too high forces people into DO's though.

or worse, they log out sooner, then log in less, then question their subscription.

[major0noob 246]

here's just one example of the AO/DO disparity:

all but a fake ews mission is dead

 

https://imgur.com/oiGLfqK

https://imgur.com/tXzdh2R

https://imgur.com/f7tPnUZ

https://imgur.com/hJgBWNw

https://imgur.com/aL0ZFGN

https://imgur.com/kxIiB8I

[ian77 397]

9 hours ago, Merlin51 said:

get everyone that wants to be in the fight take a truck.
Have some of them go with the intent to try and get living FMS in place
Have the others go and just continually circle round the town at varying distances and paths, maybe drop off a few atg's in the process if the mood strikes.

Audio wise, it's chaos, trucks everyplace, can't tell whats coming or going.
More useful than people sitting at the spawn menu waiting for a green check mark to appear?

They don't read chat Merlin, they don't use discord, and they certainly don't drive trucks, nevermind coordinate with others to drive around an AO causing distraction. They want others to do the boring bits, the setting up of frus, (and if it is more than 400m to town they will probably just despawn MIA and complain about the fru placement!) . They want others to cap spawnables to let them have a depot to snipe from, or access to the surrounding buildings to snipe from, they want others to guard CPs to keep AO/DOs alive so they can kill eis running into town/past their building. They want and expect others to do what they consider the boring bits.

And thus, fewer and fewer of us are left to fulfil the roles that make the game work.

ian 

[Capco 1,195]

7 hours ago, BMBM said:

Your numbers would give the Axis a definite edge against the French and a major one against the British, to the tune of nearly 30%. The AB integer was just an example.

Ha that's ironic, since in my edit I slashed the Allied numbers a bit.  What if we added another Char, another Matty CS, and another A13?

 

I'm not sure what's an acceptable difference in your design philosophy, but I would be okay with a 10% edge.  30% is probably too high even if you budget isn't definitive.  

 

That's how I would approach these lists Bmbm.  Use the values as a guideline while incorporating player feedback within reason (i.e. budgets within 10% of each other).

 

I have a question in regards to how budgets are allocated.  Does each brigade get an overall budget, or do they get several separate budgets that are added together (a tank budget, an AT budget, etc.)?

[ian77 397]

10 minutes ago, Capco said:

Ha that's ironic, since in my edit I slashed the Allied numbers a bit.  What if we added another Char, another Matty CS, and another A13?

 

I'm not sure what's an acceptable difference in your design philosophy, but I would be okay with a 10% edge.  30% is probably too high even if you budget isn't definitive.  

 

That's how I would approach these lists Bmbm.  Use the values as a guideline while incorporating player feedback within reason (i.e. budgets within 10% of each other).

 

I have a question in regards to how budgets are allocated.  Does each brigade get an overall budget, or do they get several separate budgets that are added together (a tank budget, an AT budget, etc.)?

CC Capco, it is bound to take several campaigns to work out the kinks of 1.36 supply, to see what is being used and what is left to rot in the spawnlists, and to see how player numbers are shaping up, and how viable/workable spawnlist combinations are on attack and defence. As previously discussed the Matty Armies don't matter if there are not the 20 or 30 Tankers to spawn them and drive them to the AO, and on the defence, they cant guard/recap anyway.

Ian 

[Capco 1,195]

10 hours ago, Merlin51 said:

get everyone that wants to be in the fight take a truck.
Have some of them go with the intent to try and get living FMS in place
Have the others go and just continually circle round the town at varying distances and paths, maybe drop off a few atg's in the process if the mood strikes.

Audio wise, it's chaos, trucks everyplace, can't tell whats coming or going.
More useful than people sitting at the spawn menu waiting for a green check mark to appear?

This post makes me furious.  Very few people want to be in a fight that takes 15 minutes of their time when they have the option of fighting off an enemy attack without any wait time or personal effort at all.  

 

You think I haven't tried exactly that (and more, including PMing players directly and hopping from voice channel to voice channel) for the entire 20 minutes I have to set up an AO only to be the sole person driving an FMS in, sometimes for hours at a time?  I'll even do 2-3 trucks at once on my own and the rate of success is still abysmal.  People don't want to slam their heads against brick walls over and over.  

 

This is how most players will think (at least on the Allies right now):  

"Hey, I know what I'll do!  I'll spend the 10 minutes it takes for the AO to get hot by sitting at our DO and making it so frustrating for the other side's attackers that they themselves swap over to defense and overrun our measly attack setup before I even bother to spawn at our AO!  That's a lot more fun than waiting in the bushes for 10 minutes for CPs to get hot!"

 

When one personally does or tries to do everything right and they still can't find success, that's basically the textbook definition of frustration.  As @riprendsaid, the work for the few that actually try is multiplied because of the many that never even bother to respond to your attempts at communication, let alone try themselves.  

 

I'd try to make time to play more if my typical gaming experience wasn't exactly as I described above.  How am I supposed to have fun in a game that more often than not leads to perpetual frustration despite my best efforts to the contrary?

[nc0gnet0 89]

11 hours ago, ozsheila said:

Well said...

there is room for everyone in this game but long term subscribers are usually ones who care for the unique elements in this game not the FPS component alone which can be found in many other games often with better / newer quality.

that being said I think those that care about the overall result of map can also put the FPS players / killers in good use, motivate them and benefit from their skill set to help the cause. Fun is the most important element of the game and good leaders create opportunities for others to have fun as that’s how they gain their own fun of being able to role play as a leader and win the objectives whether in tactical or strategic layer.,

it is all about the relationships one cultivates.

I think the vast majority of these players are the new players to the game, and a couple of stat mongers. The trouble is, communicating with the new player base is almost impossible in game, they don't respond. 

[caydel 36]

1 hour ago, ian77 said:

They don't read chat Merlin, they don't use discord, and they certainly don't drive trucks, nevermind coordinate with others to drive around an AO causing distraction. They want others to do the boring bits, the setting up of frus, (and if it is more than 400m to town they will probably just despawn MIA and complain about the fru placement!) . They want others to cap spawnables to let them have a depot to snipe from, or access to the surrounding buildings to snipe from, they want others to guard CPs to keep AO/DOs alive so they can kill eis running into town/past their building. They want and expect others to do what they consider the boring bits.

And thus, fewer and fewer of us are left to fulfil the roles that make the game work.

ian 

Bang on. For many, many Allied players, DO's are instant action. AOs are work. Only a small portion of our playerbase cares enough to put in that work and that portion continually shrinks the longer the Axis roll goes on.

[nc0gnet0 89]

11 minutes ago, caydel said:

Bang on. For many, many Allied players, DO's are instant action. AOs are work. Only a small portion of our playerbase cares enough to put in that work and that portion continually shrinks the longer the Axis roll goes on.

Fighting on only the allied side, and almost always in TZ3 (possible exception on some weekends), your dealing with philosophical differences of what the priority should be. When underpop and low pop, any AO is a joke, and has no business even existing IMHO. It's not an unwillingness to do the work for an AO, rather a belief that is not were one's focus should be at that particular time.  

In such situations the best thing one can do if not wanting to play defense is to work on FB management. But yet we are forced to have at least one AO. 

Edited March 8 by nc0gnet0

[Capco 1,195]

1 minute ago, nc0gnet0 said:

Fighting on only the allied side, and almost always in TZ3 (possible exception on some weekends), your dealing with philosophical differences of what ones side priority should be. When underpop and low pop, any AO is a joke, and has no business even existing IMHO. It's not an unwillingness to do the work for an AO, rather a belief that is not where one's focus should be at that particular time.  

While this is true to a point, it's also true that having an AO up is not a negative if it is drawing in a lot of defenders that would otherwise be attacking.  And with everyone's propensity to freak out at the first sight of light EWS, it frequently works.  Even if the AO has no attackers and just few defenders going to bust the FB, that's 3 fewer guys that could be capping at the DO.  

 

AOs always have a purpose imo, even if it's just the threat the AO itself imposes.  And Allied TZ3 players are some of the best guys to work with.  

[caydel 36]

18 minutes ago, nc0gnet0 said:

Fighting on only the allied side, and almost always in TZ3 (possible exception on some weekends), your dealing with philosophical differences of what the priority should be. When underpop and low pop, any AO is a joke, and has no business even existing IMHO. It's not an unwillingness to do the work for an AO, rather a belief that is not were one's focus should be at that particular time.  

In such situations the best thing one can do if not wanting to play defense is to work on FB management. But yet we are forced to have at least one AO. 

Yes, to a point. But we also have a lot of times where we have a DO with light infantry EWS and 15-20 defenders camped in it, and an AO with maybe 5 people attacking.

[aismov 600]

10 hours ago, BMBM said:

Your numbers would give the Axis a definite edge against the French and a major one against the British, to the tune of nearly 30%. The AB integer was just an example.

Not not sound disengenuous, but it is pretty tough to recommend spawn list numbers and then be told that it is "30%" unbalanced without knowing any of the details.

What makes the determination of balance? K/D? Production Cost? Battlefield effectiveness? Without knowing some more details this conversation is pretty moot. It's asking us to participate but saying we can't actually step out onto the field.

If it's unbalanced because Axis have 1 extra StugB die to its production cost I think many would argue that in WWIIOL combat, that wouldn't be all that imbalanced. But for example one extra Tiger may make a bigger impact.

EDIT: I understand a lot of the hard numbers are proprietary, so not asking for this to be released.

Edited March 8 by aismov

[BMBM 473]

1 hour ago, Capco said:

Ha that's ironic, since in my edit I slashed the Allied numbers a bit.  What if we added another Char, another Matty CS, and another A13?

I'm not sure what's an acceptable difference in your design philosophy, but I would be okay with a 10% edge.  30% is probably too high even if you budget isn't definitive.  

You cut Allied supply and added Axis panzers. That creates imbalance.

I'm OK too with a 10% edge but when it's 18% against the French and 37% against the Brits, it's unacceptable. That's how it's been for years, and the results are visible to all: an atrophied Allied side due to systemic (involuntary I should say) Axis bias. Thing is, although I grant  you that both the Char and the Matilda are tough beasts, they are dead slow, have abysmal SA (Char), are useless outside 1200 m (mostly the Tilda, Char is useful to some 1400-1500m IMO) and easy prey for 88s and sappers. The Tiger, in comparison, is pretty useless up close but awesome at range. Put either in inept hands and they're just chunks of metal. That said, such discussion pertains to assigning units a "combat value" based on K/D or general usefulness however you want to define it, and because it's situational (i.e complex, subjective and dependent on the operator) it can't be part of a objective, unbiased determination.

1 hour ago, Capco said:

I have a question in regards to how budgets are allocated.  Does each brigade get an overall budget, or do they get several separate budgets that are added together (a tank budget, an AT budget, etc.)?

Brigades have a total budget for all items. Infantry is pretty equal in cost except for LMGs and mortars, and dead cheap. Costs run amuck on heavy AT guns and anything tracked. WRT AA costs are pretty even too, especially since a German Bofors costs exactly as much as an Allied one. And as I've said previously, quality costs because quality kills.

[xanthus 231]

On 3/2/2019 at 6:24 PM, david06 said:

ATTACK:
I can decide to support the HC and drive a truck to a new attack. After seven minutes driving and setting a halfway-decent FMS, about five minutes walking to and through an empty town, a little over 10 minutes waiting for the AO to drop and the radios to go hot, and few minutes watching the actual capture timer go down a defender casually strolls in and kills me. It's pretty predictable, basically rolling the dice to see how bored the other side is. 24 minutes of basically wasted time.

DEFENSE:
Or I can decide to sit on defense and snipe infantry coming in to town. 19 kills in 18 minutes. And I literally did not leave the spawn building, just spend the entire time either shooting from the windows or on top. I actually did a significant benefit to my side because I took out a bunch of auto weapons for the loss of a bolt-action. 

 

Why would anyone ever drive and set spawns in this game? This is why you have so many dead AOs and so much low pop, no one attacks = no content

 

 

 

Depot-spawning was one of the worst things that ever happened to this game.

[BMBM 473]

3 minutes ago, aismov said:

EDIT: I understand a lot of the hard numbers are proprietary, so not asking for this to be released.

Nailed it.

WRT budgeting, it's like trying to trade one Rolex for 150 Swatch watches, a limp cow and three loaves of bread.  I assure you it's not easy.

[aismov 600]

12 minutes ago, BMBM said:

You cut Allied supply and added Axis panzers. That creates imbalance.

I'm OK too with a 10% edge but when it's 18% against the French and 37% against the Brits, it's unacceptable. That's how it's been for years, and the results are visible to all: an atrophied Allied side due to systemic (involuntary I should say) Axis bias. Thing is, although I grant  you that both the Char and the Matilda are tough beasts, they are dead slow, have abysmal SA (Char), are useless outside 1200 m (mostly the Tilda, Char is useful to some 1400-1500m IMO) and easy prey for 88s and sappers. The Tiger, in comparison, is pretty useless up close but awesome at range. Put either in inept hands and they're just chunks of metal. That said, such discussion pertains to assigning units a "combat value" based on K/D or general usefulness however you want to define it, and because it's situational (i.e complex, subjective and dependent on the operator) it can't be part of a objective, unbiased determination.

Brigades have a total budget for all items. Infantry is pretty equal in cost except for LMGs and mortars, and dead cheap. Costs run amuck on heavy AT guns and anything tracked. WRT AA costs are pretty even too, especially since a German Bofors costs exactly as much as an Allied one. And as I've said previously, quality costs because quality kills.

 

Just have to say that this direction worries me very, very much. You can very easily flip the argument around and say that it is very easy for an average tanker to jump in a Matty and do serious damage. Place an average player in an 88 and most won't last more than 5 minutes on the battlefield.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this model. It leads us into these silly situations we have seen the last few campaigns. I won't belabor the point since I've said it before, but I can't stress the importance that production costs are not the same as WWIIOL combat effectiveness.

[choad 560]

7 minutes ago, BMBM said:

You cut Allied supply and added Axis panzers. That creates imbalance.

I'm OK too with a 10% edge but when it's 18% against the French and 37% against the Brits, it's unacceptable. That's how it's been for years, and the results are visible to all: an atrophied Allied side due to systemic (involuntary I should say) Axis bias.

Even after hearing you argue this .... i am still struggling to understand it. How do you arrive at a 37% edge for Axis vs Brits for example? Are you simply taking the old TOE sheets and calculating the unit cost for each piece of equipment ... and adding it up? Are you saying all countries are assumed to have the same GNP as well as the same percent of their budget  going towards national defense, etc. Historically Germany had a larger GNP than both UK and France. I would bet the spent a larger share by percentage towards their militaries as well (prewar and early war).

The point being .... why does the game care that a Stug IIIG cost 50,000 whereas a Matilda cost 35,000? Especially when none of the other factors like each countires strength of econony and military budget are taken into account (as i understand it). Foget about the fact that technically once the war starts .... we are kind if rewriting history anyways.

[BMBM 473]

4 minutes ago, aismov said:

Just have to say that this direction worries me very, very much. You can very easily flip the argument around and say that it is very easy for an average tanker to jump in a Matty and do serious damage. Place an average player in an 88 and most won't last more than 5 minutes on the battlefield.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this model. It leads us into these silly situations we have seen the last few campaigns. I won't belabor the point since I've said it before, but I can't stress the importance that production costs are not the same as WWIIOL combat effectiveness.

Read again. Combat effectiveness (QV) isn't factored in because it can't be objectively defined. Production costs IS impartial and objective, and funnily/bizarrely enough also to some degree reflective of what we as general players (subjectively) perceive as a unit's combat effectiveness. 

23 minutes ago, BMBM said:

That said, such discussion pertains to assigning units a "combat value" based on K/D or general usefulness however you want to define it, and because it's situational (i.e complex, subjective and dependent on the operator) it can't be part of a objective, unbiased determination.

 

[aismov 600]

2 minutes ago, choad said:

Even after hearing you argue this .... i am still struggling to understand it. How do you arrive at a 37% edge for Axis vs Brits for example? Are you simply taking the old TOE sheets and calculating the unit cost for each piece of equipment ... and adding it up? Are you saying all countries are assumed to have the same GNP as well as the same percent of their budget  going towards national defense, etc.

That's exactly how they do it. Scotsman looked up historic data and found how much these things cost to produce. Each side has an equal "budget" to spend, so things like a Tiger are more expensive than a Panzer II, hence you can't have as many of them.

On its face it's a very good and equitable system. Where it breaks down and where many players are having big concerns is that equal production costs do not necessarily equal WWIIOL combat effectiveness. The classic example is the Matty vs StugIIIB: very similar production costs but 5 Mattys against a town will mop the floor while 5 Stugs will have the defenders laughing as sappers stroll up to them and take them out.

[jwilly 1,576]

15 minutes ago, BMBM said:

...because it's situational (i.e complex, subjective and dependent on the operator) it can't be part of a objective, unbiased determination.

Heh. Two part response:

1. You folks are on the wrong end of a classic logical failing in science and engineering: "we don't have metrics and an analytical framework for parts of this problem, so we'll assume that they don't matter and that we have a solution based only on the parts we can quantify."

My wife does cancer research, and gets NIH R01 grants. That's the most important level. If she proposed a study for NIH funding on that basis, the peer reviewers of her grant application would have a fit.

2. How many PzKpfW IIs are equal to one Churchill, or Vickers to one Tiger? How many riflemen are equal to one Sherman? How many Opels are equal to one B29-delivered Hiroshima bomb? The problem as a whole as presently handled includes comparisons of non-comparables. You're presently skirting around that by assuming that historical production-and-TOE ratios should apply in-game...but they were developed for the real world where there are types of conflict that this game doesn't have mechanics for. A proper solution has to compare only comparables, and has to consider ratios and relevancies only in regard to the existing game mechanics.

Otherwise it appears to me, regrettably, that the customer dismay and rejection of the design as obviously invalid will continue.

[BMBM 473]

I think you'll have to backtrack and read Scotsman's postings on the matter. 

We have to assign SOME value to our kit in order to measure balance. Production value, as Scotsman have explained, is arguably the most objective and unbiased value we can use, since perception or K/D are arbitrary, subjective and situational.

[aismov 600]

4 minutes ago, BMBM said:

Read again. Combat effectiveness (QV) isn't factored in because it can't be objectively defined. Production costs IS impartial and objective, and funnily/bizarrely enough also to some degree reflective of what we as general players (subjectively) perceive as a unit's combat effectiveness. 

And that's my very concern. We are only looking at hang of the equation. You *have* to take into account how weapons are used ingame and how WWIIOL combat works.

[BMBM 473]

2 minutes ago, jwilly said:

Heh. Two part response:

And you'll get a one line response in return: come up with an alternative that is better than the current and the previous ARBITRARY model.

[jwilly 1,576]

Just now, BMBM said:

I think you'll have to backtrack and read Scotsman's postings on the matter. 

We have to assign SOME value to our kit in order to measure balance. Production value, as Scotsman have explained, is arguably the most objective and unbiased value we can use, since perception or K/D are arbitrary, subjective and situational.

Oh, I assure you I've read them all at least twice. 

In my experience of the science world, "arbitrary, subjective and situational" is just another way of saying "we haven't figured out metrics and an analytical framework for this, so even though a cross section of practitioners tell us it's important, we're assuming it doesn't matter."

But good luck. I've put a few thousand hours into this enterprise, partly from the semi-inside as you're doing now, so I do hope it doesn't fail.

[BMBM 473]

1 minute ago, aismov said:

And that's my very concern. We are only looking at hang of the equation. You *have* to take into account how weapons are used ingame and how WWIIOL combat works.

Define it.