Any coders out there want to help with FOG?

[IainMcNeil]

We're working with HexWar at the moment to find an exit strategy for them but its still all work in progress right now. When we have news we'll let you know.

We do not plan to layer complexity on the design. We'll be improving the game in other ways not by making it more complex. We'll still very much drive the course of development from here so features wont be going in that we don't agree with. This will be part of the deal for anyone who signs up to help on the project.

[stockwellpete]

1. Small tweaks and polish? Far as I can figure, we're talking about a wholesale change to the combat-system.
(which, since this is a war-game is kinda important )
Granted, we could start with changing the D6 system to something a little less random, but it'll still leave horde armies insanely powerful.
We also need (off the top of my oddly-shaped head): Some way of dealing with the attrition making Superior troops worth the points, some kind of Command/Control rules linking BGs into larger units moving together (making hordes harder to control), improvements to the missile-casualties (making massed arrows actually effective), Army morale (so that units no longer fight to the death until some arbitrary BP line is crossed)........
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. Hell, fixing just some of the idiosyncrasies would probably bring me back into the FOG fold.
I'm just not sure it'll be merely tweaking.

Hello Lars. Yes, I know what you mean here. I think quite a few of us would be very happy if just some of the apparent randomness of the melee and shooting results were toned down a bit. So there would be a lot more 10-10 and 8-8 melee results (%) and far fewer 23-1 and 15-0 type outcomes. Also the overlap in the casualty bands could be reduced or removed altogether. Apparently this would be quite a simple thing to do and, in my view, would improve the game enormously without really affecting the gameplay at all.

I think there are good arguments for some of the other things you mention too but they might be more difficult to implement. I would certainly like to see mass archery fire so the power of the longbow is increased - and I also agree that the command and control issue is important - maybe tougher movement penalties for troops out of command radius, for example. The problem here though is that we are starting to move outside of what is currently included in the TT game. Whether some of these ideas might be included in a later version of the game is something to ponder. I do know that a version 2 of the TT rules is being tested right now, but that does not seem to include any particularly radical re-structuring of the game.

EDIT: ah . . . Iain has posted while I was wittering on. Just to say, Lars - I do think we have the skills among us to make the new "support group" viable, but obviously we will have to work under the direction of Slitherine - and quite right too as far as I am concerned.

[stockwellpete]

2. Will we lose some of the target audience?
One huge advantage of FOG over e.g. HPS' Ancient Wars is that it plays easily and fast. That, and the graphics are 10 times better.
What worries me a little is that Slitherine/HexWar has a market for WargamingLite.
This isn't meant as a snide remark, it's simply the way it is, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with entry-level wargames.
So when we add this rule, and that rule, and have phalanxes moving one hex right when in mêlée to cover their exposed flanks etc. etc. we should perhaps be aware that the game is designed as a Tourney game (hence the point-sized armies), and as a fast-playing one.
One of the reasons TT FOG is so popular is (or so I believe) because it doesn't get bogged down in combat-tables and 'chrome' rules.
One way to circumvent this particular problem would be to have Optional Rules, making it possible to play with the level of realism the players are comfortable with. Though this makes scenarios a lot harder to balance than they already are.

My take on this point is that there is scope to make the game more historically "authentic" without making it more complicated or more difficult to play. I actually do think the game is complicated enough anyway and the beauty of it is developing tactics for all the different circumstances that can occur. So there are not too many things that I want to see changed - just the casualty calculations above anything else; and then massed archery fire (so the longbow is more of an "explosive" weapon, rather than an attritional one) and then I think there could be a useful discussion about the command and control rules (mceochaidh's ideas about this and how they would impact on "horde" amies were superb, I felt). But this last item - and issues such as weather rules, buildings, stamina (maybe), supply (maybe) - might well be beyond the remit of the "support group". I would imagine that such radical new elements as these could only be introduced by Slitherine as part of a new updated version of the game (maybe years down the road).

And the other area that is really interesting for me, apart from the rules, is the actual images of the figures. For example, I still haven't got everything I need for my WotR scenarios (e.g. foot knights in plate armour and retinue billmen without shields) - and I am currently blundering around eastern Europe discovering all sorts of chaps that constituted late medieval armies there e.g. Ottoman yayas and Serbian vlastelincici. So if the "support group" could have an input into the aesthetic aspects of the game then I think that would generate a great deal of interest in the development of the game).

[CheerfullyInsane]

We're working with HexWar at the moment to find an exit strategy for them but its still all work in progress right now. When we have news we'll let you know.

Understood. Doesn't stop us from dreaming, at times out loud.

We do not plan to layer complexity on the design. We'll be improving the game in other ways not by making it more complex. We'll still very much drive the course of development from here so features wont be going in that we don't agree with. This will be part of the deal for anyone who signs up to help on the project.

About what I figured. Not that I disagree with any of it, I just think it's helpful if people have considered these things before jumping in.

Yes, I know what you mean here. I think quite a few of us would be very happy if just some of the apparent randomness of the melee and shooting results were toned down a bit. So there would be a lot more 10-10 and 8-8 melee results (%) and far fewer 23-1 and 15-0 type outcomes. Also the overlap in the casualty bands could be reduced or removed altogether. Apparently this would be quite a simple thing to do and, in my view, would improve the game enormously without really affecting the gameplay at all.

Well, *if* we get the damage-rolls levelled out in some way, it'll change the entire pace of the game.
Combats will obviously take longer when units no longer double-break and proceed to flee like screaming pansies with quite the same frequency as at present. That's one thing.
Second point about the pace, is that there'll be a lot more jockeying for position. When combats are no longer either/or you'll probably see more Mexican Stand-offs. It might require some sort of objective-marker to get things moving.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for changing the combat-system, just not sure how it'll affect the pace of the game, which is one of the advantages of the system.

I think there are good arguments for some of the other things you mention too but they might be more difficult to implement. I would certainly like to see mass archery fire so the power of the longbow is increased - and I also agree that the command and control issue is important - maybe tougher movement penalties for troops out of command radius, for example. The problem here though is that we are starting to move outside of what is currently included in the TT game. Whether some of these ideas might be included in a later version of the game is something to ponder. I do know that a version 2 of the TT rules is being tested right now, but that does not seem to include any particularly radical re-structuring of the game.

I think we'll have to look past the TT game at any rate. Two different games that appeal to two different target-groups.
While there may be some who enjoy both, I think that merely emulating the TT game would be a mistake.
Since it is being ported to the PC, we might as well use the PC for what it is best at, i.e. number-crunching.
The problem for me personally, is that I enjoy hard-core strategy-games and as such would like to see a ton of things implemented in FOG. However, they'll never get implemented simply because the difficulty-level would sky-rocket, thus losing the original appeal of the game.
The odd thing is that some of the stuff we're talking about already *is* in the TT game. Horde armies in TT can be done, but since the stands have to be in BGs, you get these huge blocks scantily-clad, angry, armed barbarians who can move forward......
If you want them to wheel, or otherwise do anything other than attack, it'll take a while.
The PC game features BGs of what seems to be Celtic Ninjas, capable of nimbly surrounding any and all targets in a heartbeat.

My take on this point is that there is scope to make the game more historically "authentic" without making it more complicated or more difficult to play. I actually do think the game is complicated enough anyway and the beauty of it is developing tactics for all the different circumstances that can occur. So there are not too many things that I want to see changed - just the casualty calculations above anything else; and then massed archery fire (so the longbow is more of an "explosive" weapon, rather than an attritional one) and then I think there could be a useful discussion about the command and control rules (mceochaidh's ideas about this and how they would impact on "horde" amies were superb, I felt). But this last item - and issues such as weather rules, buildings, stamina (maybe), supply (maybe) - might well be beyond the remit of the "support group". I would imagine that such radical new elements as these could only be introduced by Slitherine as part of a new updated version of the game (maybe years down the road).

And the other area that is really interesting for me, apart from the rules, is the actual images of the figures. For example, I still haven't got everything I need for my WotR scenarios (e.g. foot knights in plate armour and retinue billmen without shields) - and I am currently blundering around eastern Europe discovering all sorts of chaps that constituted late medieval armies there e.g. Ottoman yayas and Serbian vlastelincici. So if the "support group" could have an input into the aesthetic aspects of the game then I think that would generate a great deal of interest in the development of the game).

I'd agree that he combat-resolutions and some sort of C&C rules are the biggest moles to be whacked.
Weather, buildings and supply would fall outside the realm of the game, I think. Now, should there be a campaign-expansion after the army-books are all released, then I'd be a seriously happy camper. But first things first. *LOL*

As for the images......
Well, the poor guys are limited to the figures actually produced.
But one thing that would be nice would be if the entire army-lists were fully moddable.
As it is, you could presumably edit the images of the troop-types in question, but only by removing the original art-work.
Not a big deal to me since I have never even opened the editor, but presumably there's a fairly serious modding-community out there.
But again, adding full moddability also introduces problems since certain scenarios would require certain mods installed, and so on.
I seriously doubt that'll happen.

Ottoman yayas? There's a troop-type called yayas???
Please, someone tell me these guys never won a battle.........
I have this awful mental image of these guys in a victory-parade, with a crowd trying to shout "All hail the yayas!" without snickering.

Cheerfully

[stockwellpete]

Well, *if* we get the damage-rolls levelled out in some way, it'll change the entire pace of the game.
Combats will obviously take longer when units no longer double-break and proceed to flee like screaming pansies with quite the same frequency as at present. That's one thing.

I think this will happen in due course. Iain has said it is a change that he would support.

Second point about the pace, is that there'll be a lot more jockeying for position. When combats are no longer either/or you'll probably see more Mexican Stand-offs. It might require some sort of objective-marker to get things moving.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for changing the combat-system, just not sure how it'll affect the pace of the game, which is one of the advantages of the system.

Yes, I agree - and that will be something for us in the support group to test. Whether it is possible to set a default result at 10% losses each, or something like that, and vary the results from that scoreline so that units degrade at a similar rate to what happens now, I don't know. But it shouldn't be an insurmountable task to re-balance the game.

I think we'll have to look past the TT game at any rate. Two different games that appeal to two different target-groups.
While there may be some who enjoy both, I think that merely emulating the TT game would be a mistake. Since it is being ported to the PC, we might as well use the PC for what it is best at, i.e. number-crunching.

Yes. The key thing is whether Slitherine are prepared, at some point, to shift the PC version of FOG from being "based on the TT game" to being "inspired by the TT game". If we can at some point shift to an "inspired" version then it will open up things like stamina and supply (I would imagine manually keeping track of these things in a TT game would spoil the game completely).

The PC game features BGs of what seems to be Celtic Ninjas, capable of nimbly surrounding any and all targets in a heartbeat.

Yes, I think skirmishers should only be able to pass through one group of friendly troops per turn.

buildings . . . would fall outside the realm of the game, I think.

I'm not sure. I think that they could, in the first instance, be introduced as just another type of terrain i.e. impassable and blocking line of sight. This would work in the PC game, I think and I would imagine it would be OK for TT too. Getting the scale right for the images might be the most difficult problem. Introducing more complex rules for castles and sieges etc would obviously have to be done by Slitherine and that might entail a separate module, I would think.

Now, should there be a campaign-expansion after the army-books are all released, then I'd be a seriously happy camper. But first things first. *LOL*

Yes, definitely.

As for the images......
Well, the poor guys are limited to the figures actually produced.
But one thing that would be nice would be if the entire army-lists were fully moddable.
As it is, you could presumably edit the images of the troop-types in question, but only by removing the original art-work.
Not a big deal to me since I have never even opened the editor, but presumably there's a fairly serious modding-community out there.
But again, adding full moddability also introduces problems since certain scenarios would require certain mods installed, and so on.
I seriously doubt that'll happen.

Keith has said that Slitherine are working on documentation that will allow a certain amount of modding in the future, so that could be a very exciting development next year. In the thread "Putting Images in the Game", which is in the technical Support forum, he wrote,

"We are working on documentation for players to customise the game. The core issue at the moment is how to do this without opening the door to cheating. Also as the game already allows players to build their own scenarios, how to prevent users issuing challenges for multi-player games where the opponent will not have the graphics assets required to play."

Ottoman yayas? There's a troop-type called yayas???
Please, someone tell me these guys never won a battle.........
I have this awful mental image of these guys in a victory-parade, with a crowd trying to shout "All hail the yayas!" without snickering.

Oh yes, the Rolling Stones even dedicated an album to them - "Get Your Yaya's out" - sound military advice, I'm sure- and they stuffed the Byzantines as a result of it. And Yaya Toure currently plays for Manchester City!!

[Old_Warrior]

I would be willing to help out with the testing provided it is in a "beta" format which is a separate install.

I would like to see pursuing units leave the map and have the ability to come back later in a queue. The same would be true to having reinforcements in a queue. We also need fortifications and so on.

The combat system is not terrible but does need some fine tuning. Go to a d20 system. That would provide more results.

Also: when a general commits to a battle their command radius is zilch. The GMT GBOH did that and it is VERY historical. No commander committed to a battle should be able to exert any radius beyond adjacent units at best.

My feelings on command & control. If the unit is NOT in command control then it can only move ONE hex OR change facing. Add in a Line Command whereby if a unit is adjacent to another unit that is in command then any unit adjacent in a line of unbroken units (no gap between them) can also move.

Elephants. When they rout they should first determine direction - then they rout through ANY unit in their way adding one level of cohesion loss to that unit. This includes enemy units.

Chariots. They should be able to move through enemy light infantry or cavalry.

Light infantry should NEVER be able to beat HI in a stand up fight. They should ALWAYS lose. I got so sick of seeing light infantry with their backs to water hold off my Superior HI in good order in one game I finally just tossed in the hat. In other words make the difference between HI and LI more pronounced.

I realize that some of these may not be added in but it never hurts to ask!

Oh yes, and please do the Empires of the Dragon module - even if it means cutting back on the more obscure armies of that book. Certainly Han Chinese and Japanese and Mongol (already have a ton of artwork for that one) could be done?

[Hoplite1963]

Does all of this mean that “Decline & Fall and its beta are likely to be delayed, and should scenarios for possible inclusion in future expansion backs still be sent to Keith ?

[stockwellpete]

Does all of this mean that “Decline & Fall and its beta are likely to be delayed, and should scenarios for possible inclusion in future expansion backs still be sent to Keith ?

I don't think this will have any effect at all on Decline and Fall or the submission of scenarios. This thread is about forming a support group that will help Slitherine with some aspects of the game that they don't have time to do.

[Morbio]

The combat system is not terrible but does need some fine tuning. Go to a d20 system. That would provide more results.

I agree with the sentiment, by why limit it to a 5% step system with a d20. Dice (virtual or otherwise) need not be involved at all. The power of the PC is that you can generate any number system you want. Personally, I'd have percentages and lookup tables.

[admin]

D&F is going in to beta today hopefully so it will not be delaying that

Working on it now!

[TheGrayMouser]

We're working with HexWar at the moment to find an exit strategy for them but its still all work in progress right now. When we have news we'll let you know.

We do not plan to layer complexity on the design. We'll be improving the game in other ways not by making it more complex. We'll still very much drive the course of development from here so features wont be going in that we don't agree with. This will be part of the deal for anyone who signs up to help on the project.

My two cents, many of which will sound like a broken record.

Fix the things that will make a diffence to the vast majority of players and should be easy to code

Single player:
*allow us to load premade armies for the AI in sp DAG battles (since the AI force selection is very weak)
*allow us to deploy the AI army ( as the AI deploy is weak)
*instead of bulding a 1000 ap dag army and only buying say 500Ap to trick the ai to having a larger army, make this part of the User interface. You can have disparate size battles now but its cumbersome
* DAG hotseat

Editor
***allow allied forces to be used. I actually regard this as a bug that has never been fixed as the capability is in the editor, its just not working
*real camps and field fortifcations. People have been asking for this day one....
*allow units to be at less than their nominal % strength, or disordered ,fragged when the scenario starts. Could be many interesting things that could be done with this.

MP and single
*tweak the % casualties so at least the massive overlaps are not there. Any more than that is likly to big a project.

Finally one single game play addition that I think in a roundabut way could rectify many issues of the game that have been brougt up ie horde armies , command and control
Currently , what has been brought up over and over is lack of command and control, players can literally form a battle line spanning the map which is frustrating and a-historical, and there is no in game mechanic that makes such a deployment dangerous to those that do this
I belive where the PC games has issues is where it deviates from the TT , with no mechanic to replace. This is mostly to the # of BG fielded and there maneverablity
The TT has a quite complex way of dealing with movement and basically units just cant move about as they like w/o isses There are simple and complex moves, difficult moves and impossible moves.
I dont suggest anything remotely lke this be considered , however here is the idea:

****units out of range of a Leader must pass a CMT check to do anything other than
a shoot
b charge
C move forward (ie in there frontal arc) their MAXIMUM movement

to do anything else would require a CMT. If pass, well you do what you can do now. If fail the unit can still do any of the above items.

[Lysimachos]

Single player:
*allow us to load premade armies for the AI in sp DAG battles (since the AI force selection is very weak)
*allow us to deploy the AI army ( as the AI deploy is weak)
*instead of bulding a 1000 ap dag army and only buying say 500Ap to trick the ai to having a larger army, make this part of the User interface. You can have disparate size battles now but its cumbersome
* DAG hotseat

Editor
***allow allied forces to be used. I actually regard this as a bug that has never been fixed as the capability is in the editor, its just not working
*real camps and field fortifcations. People have been asking for this day one....
*allow units to be at less than their nominal % strength, or disordered ,fragged when the scenario starts. Could be many interesting things that could be done with this.

MP and single
*tweak the % casualties so at least the massive overlaps are not there. Any more than that is likly to big a project.
TheGrayMouser

Let me subscribe all this points!
It shouldn't be difficult, in my opinion, to make this little changes and improvements so let's hope for the best!

[76mm]

Interesting thread. No programming skills but I love to argue about how things should work, and can playtest stuff as well.

As a non-TT player, I could care less about fidelity to the TT version and would hope that with these fancy things called computers we could come up with a much more sophisticated (and hopefully better) product.

[mceochaidh]

I am glad to see this discussion, as I have lost interest in playing due to the lack of progress on the issues we discussed at length earlier this year and last year. No point in being irritated doing something that is supposed to be fun!

Some good ideas were put forth in the discussion which was started to by me to provide the programming staff with the active group's "wish list" of the top 2 issues with the game, qualified by not requiring much, if any, programming.

I would be happy to participate in any initiative that moves the game in the direction of being more historically accurate in its game play. I think the strength of the game is in its historically accurate troop types and army lists and its ease of play. I think it is certainly possible to build on this good base to improve actual game play to provide a more historical "feel", without, for example, individual BGs acting like commando groups able to move anywhere at will or skirmish troops being able to stop heavy cavalry charges in open terrain due to a wild dice roll.

Mac

[mceochaidh]

As a quick note, I like the Mouser's idea on taking a CMT under the circumstances he describes above.

Mac

[ianiow]

As a quick note, I like the Mouser's idea on taking a CMT under the circumstances he describes above.

Mac

I like this idea too.

Ps Great to have you back mceochaidh

[stockwellpete]

I am glad to see this discussion, as I have lost interest in playing due to the lack of progress on the issues we discussed at length earlier this year and last year. No point in being irritated doing something that is supposed to be fun!

Some good ideas were put forth in the discussion which was started to by me to provide the programming staff with the active group's "wish list" of the top 2 issues with the game, qualified by not requiring much, if any, programming.

Here is the link to that discussion in case you missed it the first time . . .

viewtopic.php?t=23454&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=40