Winter Tournament - 2020

[Celeborn]

That's helpful. I thought damage would slow down production but it is apparently only destruction that will do that.

In the future it would be kind of cool if they were recoded somehow as infrastructure so could be repaired or even rebuilt.

FYI I discovered that the oil production sites are apparently not considered infrastructure and cannot be repaired by engineers or Seabees. In the future it would be nice if these new (and cool) variants were accompanied by rules on how they work. (it is a mystery how a "production target" is met, whether damaged facilities reduce meeting production, what taking/losing a production site means, etc) This led me to do what I thought was the right thing by purchasing engineers to repair them which turned out to be a waste of RPs and more critically CPs. :-\

Have to say, I'd never considered that a unit could repair these structures! They're neutral units (as both sides can theoretically benefit from them), so I don't think that we can make them repairable in any way.

In general, if you hold the flag and the nearby production facility is alive, then you gain 1 point per turn. The target increases by 2 each time you meet the target, which spaces the reinforcements out more over the course of the scenario.

[Shards]

Are you sure points are calculated correctly? I sank the enemy support ship and I am not sure to have received the points
cheers

You get points for killing any Land, Naval or Air unit, so it Should have worked, I can't see any reason why the Support Ship would be exempt from this?

[blondus]

thank you Shards.
Can I ask what's the meaning of the sea fort in the nord? I can't figure how to capture it.
cheers Luca

[terminator]

infinit money crecent Bay
As American you are able to buy sherman tanks for 175, equip them with additional Armor and then sell them for 220 without deploying them. You are able to repeat this a unlimited amount of times. you gain 45 everytime you do this

Switchable units should always have the same price:

Capture d%u2019écran (1800).jpg (185.42 KiB) Viewed 1948 times

Same problem as with the M4A1 Sherman with the M4A2 Sherman :

M4A2 Sherman.JPG (144.33 KiB) Viewed 1949 times

[Erik2]

No comment on the mismatch between air command points and air supply in Crescent Bay reported earlier in the thread?
It affects both sides and is pretty annoying when you reform a dead air unit only to discover that you can' deploy it...

Other than that, this is a really fun scenario with lots of options for both players

[GabeKnight]

No comment on the mismatch between air command points and air supply in Crescent Bay reported earlier in the thread?
It affects both sides and is pretty annoying when you reform a dead air unit only to discover that you can' deploy it...

Other than that, this is a really fun scenario with lots of options for both players

Crescent Bay

There's not enough Japanese air supply to deploy the last 3 air command points. Intended?

air supply.jpg

Yes, buy a carrier if you want to use the extra supply.

[Shards]

What he said

And thanks for the data digging Terminator, we'll fix that one too

[Shards]

thank you Shards.
Can I ask what's the meaning of the sea fort in the nord? I can't figure how to capture it.
cheers Luca

If you hold the flag nearest to that Sea Fort (representing an Oil Rig in this scenario), then you'll collect oil for export as long as that building is alive.

[Celeborn]

I love the little nuances but wish this would have been in the briefing (which is in a sense the documentation for how VPs are awarded and how any variants on game-play will actually work)

I have long been an devotee of strategic warfare and was excited to see it represented somewhat with the oil production mechanic, but alas I wasted some CPs/RPs and time doing what I thought was consistent with strategic doctrine because I had to guess at how stuff actually worked.

Any thoughts on the next tournament?

thank you Shards.
Can I ask what's the meaning of the sea fort in the nord? I can't figure how to capture it.
cheers Luca

If you hold the flag nearest to that Sea Fort (representing an Oil Rig in this scenario), then you'll collect oil for export as long as that building is alive.

[Shards]

There's only ever so much room to describe rules in the briefing. There's usually more specifics in the objectives themselves.

As with Field of Glory, we need to upgrade the servers for pbem on OOB soon, so we'll pause tournaments for a short while whilst we get that upgrade done. Can't be doing it in the middle of a tournament!

[Celeborn]

Understandable. You could perhaps include a link to the tournament forum for additional details.

And fwiw while I do not much enjoy solo games I have bought an expansion for each tournament I have played in to show my appreciation for the time and effort you put into something that probably does not do much for the bottom line...

There's only ever so much room to describe rules in the briefing. There's usually more specifics in the objectives themselves.

As with Field of Glory, we need to upgrade the servers for pbem on OOB soon, so we'll pause tournaments for a short while whilst we get that upgrade done. Can't be doing it in the middle of a tournament!

[Erik2]

There's only ever so much room to describe rules in the briefing. There's usually more specifics in the objectives themselves.

I think it would help if both scenario briefing and scenario description was available during game-play, not only at start of the scenario.

[Shards]

There's only ever so much room to describe rules in the briefing. There's usually more specifics in the objectives themselves.

I think it would help if both scenario briefing and scenario description was available during game-play, not only at start of the scenario.

I know what you mean.... just not sure where we'd put them!

One for the list...

[Erik2]

Briefing and Description short-keys?
The txt could pop up in a message.

[Pinkelephantis]

Hi there all, Just played in my second tournament and I love the idea of a tournament but I really do not like the whole point score thing. I see some talk about modeling after chess tournaments. I've never played in a chess match where I won or lost by score. Some one wins and someone loses or there's a draw. Perhaps OOB tournaments should have scenarios where you simply capture the enemy's capitol or HQ and you win. I also don't understand why there is no play off at the end.

[conboy]

Shards,
We have mentioned this several times both as designers and players -- it would be great to access the briefing and also the pop-up text messages during the game.
I like Erik's idea of a shortcut to get to the text files. But I think I see how it could be a complicated issue -- releasing only the texts that have appeared so far in the game.
I played a Matrix US Civil War game that you could do that in (Second Bull Run). It's great to be able to refer back to the texts.
So we humbly resubmit the request, in anticipation of the usual alacrity from on high.

conboy

Also, I concur with Pinkelphantis about the scoring of the tournament games. It would not hurt to have one winner-take-all game now and then. I also think that if there's no winner in such a match (draw), the players would split the points. I will get back to tournament play eventually, I have been busy with other OoB stuff and duck hunting...

conboy

[stevefprice]

I'm torn over the scoring as I understand in a 3 round event it's hard to separate players but equally each round is not equal and does not present the same scoring opportunities. Consider round 3 game scores are currently very close. This suggests the scenario is more forgiving if you mess up and more balanced.

Net result is if you did not win big in round 1 and 2 you will never be in with a chance even if you won round 2 big as round 3 will never provide a massive win with the Crescent Bay scenario.

That said I'm having a blast and had 2 great opponents, 3 if you count the ditched round, my other was a no show but real life happens.

[Celeborn]

Very good points...I have done fairly well in every tournament game but in this one have not achieved the margin of victory required to get into the top 10. That this is the case is as much a testament to the quality of my opponents as anything.

So I would like to believe that a win/lose/draw format would at least benefit me but admit it may not be best in terms of giving players who lose in the first round a reason to keep at it. Perhaps alternating between points and w/l/d is the way to go?

Re the next tournament I would love to see a survey of some sort on what kind of theme it should have. I think that could generate some amusing discussion

I'm torn over the scoring as I understand in a 3 round event it's hard to separate players but equally each round is not equal and does not present the same scoring opportunities. Consider round 3 game scores are currently very close. This suggests the scenario is more forgiving if you mess up and more balanced.

Net result is if you did not win big in round 1 and 2 you will never be in with a chance even if you won round 2 big as round 3 will never provide a massive win with the Crescent Bay scenario.

That said I'm having a blast and had 2 great opponents, 3 if you count the ditched round, my other was a no show but real life happens.

[conboy]

Shards, some additional thoughts on win-or-lose scenarios. Instead of swiss scoring, we could have a double-elimination style tourney with these win-or-lose games.

Everybody plays in the first round, obviously. Then then winners go into the winners bracket, and play another winner, and the losers go into the losers bracket and play another loser. If you win your match in the winners bracket, you stay in the winners bracket and play another winner next round. If you lose your match in the winners bracket, you go to the losers bracket and play another loser in the next round. if you lose your match in the losers bracket, you are out -- Double elimination.

The last rounds will be the last remaining player in the winners bracket and the last remaining player in the losers bracket. If the winners bracket guy wins, tourney over. If the Winners bracket guy loses, the loser bracket winner still has to beat him again to achieve the two-loss elimination.

It's used in Baseball a lot for playoffs in Little League and Junior Major League where there are a lot of teams. You can seed the players to start with.

whatcha thank?

conboy

[Shards]

This is all good stuff. The reason why we have the style of scoring we have at the moment is that it scales up to 100+ players quite cleanly and will almost always give a single victor.

I think that there's merit to running an invite only swiss/knockout tournament with a limited number of players, but that would need to be run manually rather than using the automated system. As such, it's probably something that we'd have to run in parallel?

Stevefprice makes a very salient point, and it's something I'm always looking to address. I'm looking to balance the maps so that the expected range of scores is about the same, but they need a bit of playing in this environment before I can see what does and doesn't work (e.g. the double base capture points in Sandstorm made for excessive scoring in situations where one player gained an early and overwhelming advantage).

Crescent Bay seems to be doing better, score balance wise, but that may also be because people haven't figured out a "trick" yet Two Bridges is older, and the scores were mostly okay, but there were a couple of outliers that I'd like to take a look at to see whether a bit of score adjustment is needed for some elements.