Allied: Crete

[Rudankort]

Not related to the scenario but i think the evade mechanic need looking at. It's just way to random without any possibility to influence it except maybe of sacrificing a small rodent to the gods of RNG.

Any specific suggestions on how to improve this?

[Tarrak]

Not related to the scenario but i think the evade mechanic need looking at. It's just way to random without any possibility to influence it except maybe of sacrificing a small rodent to the gods of RNG.

Any specific suggestions on how to improve this?

I guess evade is simply a fixed % chance to just avoid any attack that submarines innate have. I think the easiest way would be to use kind of mass attack effect where every enemy unit adjacent to the submarine reduce the evade chance by a certain amount. It would be still random but at least not totally.

[Flaygor]

I can see how a sub can evade one destroyer, and I can live with that, but two, or even three?
Leave it as is for a single contact but reduce the chance if two units in contact and poss remove it if three or more present. Include air attack in this.
That way the onus is on you to hunt it down and kill it but at least come away with a kill. I get annoyed when I use three or more assets to attack a sub and it takes no damage at all, just a waste of game time.

I thought the rest of the scenario was nicely varied, but way too easy to shoot down the gliders and transports. If I played again I would take in an extra fighter and... I mean take one less fighter and make it a contest.
If the map was bigger they could possibly land undetected? Current map is a little too easy to patrol.

Edit: Tarrak was too quick for me, well done mate, but I will leave my post as it gives another view on the same idea.

[monkspider]

Crete
Beta 2
General level
Ending prestige 3415
DV turn 16/18

Having played this from the German side so many times over the years, it was nice to finally be on the defending side! It was a fun scenario, your troops are spread pretty thin , but overall it was pretty easy. Maybe you could include a panzer or some artillery on some of the landing craft. I managed to save all my naval vessels, and evacuate them, including the cruiser that I picked up way back. I will have built up a decent little navy now. I like this mechanic, as long as there is a way to evacuate the units on the scenarios that they can be deployed. However! I was frustrated that I couldn't buy any New Zealand or Aussie troops. I am probably beating a dead horse at this point though.

[Rudankort]

Allowing nations like Australians and New Zealanders in the core would be nice, but it does generate a number of problems under existing engine. Thus, if such units can be present in the core, their respective nations must be configured in each and ever scenario as allies. And this in turn creates new problems, for example:
- There are not enough flag slots in Purchase screen to list all possible allied nations.
- In single scenario mode these nations will still be listed, and people will wonder why nations which did not historically participated in a given battle are included in it and available for purchase.

That's the reason why auxiliary nations are widely represented with aux units, but using them in your core is not allowed. If you have an idea how to resolve all the issues in a nice and elegant way, let us know, and we might still change this.

[deducter]

I'm not so sure that the mechanic of withdrawing AUX units via the evacuation hexes, and allowing those units to be deployed to the player's core, is such a good idea. At first it seems interesting and novel, but there are a number of problems with this:

Since withdrawing the AUX units is by far the best course of action, as they can be disbanded for prestige in the deployment screen, this is nearly a must-do. This scenario ended after I destroyed all the German units, and this was before I had a chance to withdraw my units. So in effect, I lost something like 5-6 bonus units because I completed the scenario too quickly. Shouldn't completing my objectives faster should result in an even greater reward? Instead, I'm a victim of my own success.

Of course, this is no problem playing the scenario a second time. Now that I know what units the AI has, I can pretty carefully plan a proper evacuation and get almost all the land AUX units and all the sea AUX units into the evacuation hexes on time. But I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Also, balancing becomes difficult, because what about the players who enter the war at a later date, and miss out on some of these free units?

In theory though, there can be some interesting strategic choices that comes about an AUX-on-demand system. Do you spend more prestige to deploy a few helper AUX units to boost your core size temporarily, or do you invest that prestige into your core forces? But a lot more thought is necessarily for careful balance. Such a system would be non-trivial to introduce, and I'm not even sure it's a good idea for a game like PzC.

So I think either there should be a scenario parameter to place all AUX units into the player's core in the event of a DV (in this scenario, but necessarily all scenarios), or those units should just be wiped with a trigger in the subsequent scenario.

[ThvN]

I guess evade is simply a fixed % chance to just avoid any attack that submarines innate have. I think the easiest way would be to use kind of mass attack effect where every enemy unit adjacent to the submarine reduce the evade chance by a certain amount. It would be still random but at least not totally.

About the submarine evading, this would be my favourite solution as well, I'll just quote myself:

And something not really related to the scenario: I had big trouble with the submarine. I wasted two Beaufighter attacks and seven destroyer attacks on it, all but two were evaded, of which four in a row, very frustrating. In fact the submarine took more damage in counterattacks than my own attacks. Maybe it is possible to have the chance to 'evade' attacks decrease if they are more units able to attack, like the mass attack bonus on land.

But, in the meantime I've managed to think of a more unnecessarily complicated idea/mechanism to add to this:
the experience level of the units will determine the chance of evading. A more experienced submarine will have a better chance of evading, but on the other hand more experienced attackers will reduce the chance to evade.

To be honest, for this rare type of combat just having some sort of mass attack bonus will be perfectly adequate I think.

[okiemcguire]

Crete - Beta 2
Prestige Begin: 5215 End: 1982
Results: Triumph 14/18

Brought core force up to full strength and then OS.
Upgraded OS Hurricane Mk.I to Mk.IIC. Strength reverted to 10. This is the first time I have done this. I remember reading about this being implemented but forgot. This appears to make sense to me. Also, upgraded a OS Recon to Humber with the same strength reduction.
Purchased a Spitfire Mk.VB and a AA QF 3.7 w/matador.

As has mentioned before by others, I defeated all enemies before I evacuated all aux troops. Left 2 Inf and a destroyer with the island. I knew that the enemy attacks were lessening but did not know if more airborne or troop ships would appear. I started the next scenario w/additional 4000pp. I have not decided yet what to do with the aux forces I evacuated (disband, deploy, or keep for a future scenario). Oh yea... lost the new Spitfire..

[Ballacraine]

Crusader AA becoming available surely has to be too early.

Normally it was older tanks that were modified to mobile AA use.

Crusader tanks will be 'new' models & have not been even made available yet.

Balla.

This is still an issue in the second beta.

Balla.

[Brenmusik]

U boat vanishing ray!

black-hole.jpg (49.54 KiB) Viewed 3790 times

With the sub on the evacuation hex any aircraft attacking it will
end the turn back in the reserves.

The Ju52 with the 15th Infantry is still a fixture at 37,16 as reported by Longasc.

As others have said, the German airforce does not put up much of a show.
I feel the airlandings are haphazard and they should concentrate around the airfields.
In reality the Germans were landing troops on airstrips under fire (not something easily
simulated in this game I'd imagine).

An idea to give the outcome a more historical feel.
If Allied reinforcements were restricted in some way, (the amount of prestige available
each turn) randomly - inconjunction with the build up of German troops, this would force
the player evacuate their Core before it was destroyed. The longer the Allies hold areas
of the map (and the more German units eliminated), the more prestige would be awarded at the end.

[Brenmusik]

Forgot to post the replay Zip

[zappel]

Beta2 - Colonel - DV at turn 14

Yes, now the battle has begun: no more victims, now opponents appeared. The submarine was hard to kill, need more than six attempts to sunk it. However this was no problem. The light infantery was easy to destroy, for the tanks landed near by Kastelli I needed tac-bombers and tanks. The scenario was easy to win but I like it.

[Ballacraine]

The SE Spitfire MkII is still showing anachronistic D-Day markings.

Balla.

[ThvN]

Crete

Not strictly wrong, but:

IDS_STRING22 Herakleion=Heraklion

IDS_STRING23 Rhethymnon=Rethymnon

Both are very old spellings, which would have been used in WW2 (I've checked the maps for Creforce), but I used the more modern spellings.

[Ballacraine]

Crusader AA becoming available surely has to be too early.

Normally it was older tanks that were modified to mobile AA use.

Crusader tanks will be 'new' models & have not been even made available yet.

Balla.

This is still an issue in the second beta.

Balla.

...& the third!

Balla.

[nikivdd]

Beta 3, Col

Upgrades: 2 recons to Humber AC, 2 Hur I to IIC
Purchases: none
SE unit received: Spitfire VB

I still like this scenario very much. Action in different places, with most heavy fighting in the area around Khania. Some transports are dealt with easily, those who manage to land unharmed require an effort to destroy.

Losses: 1 aux inf, DV 14/18, 3102PP

[JLChamberlain]

Crete
Colonel
Starting Prestige: 2683

Disbands: The two Cruiser IVs I bought for the last scenario.
Upgrades: 1 Cruiser IV -> M3 Stuart, 6inch gun -> Bishop,
Purchases: 1 3.7inch AA gun, 1 Stirling Strategic Bomber

Sitting this one out: My recon and my 6inch arty

Triumph, turn 12/18
End prestige: 484

Losses: 1 priceless engineer.
Kind of a fun scenario - lots of frantic scrambling back and forth. I appreciate how the AI doesn't always land its forces at the same spot.
This bugs me a little - what are paratroopers doing landing in the mountains?! Wouldn't that have been suicide?

I would suggest the win conditions be changed from 'An airfield must not change hands' to simply making all airfields into victory locations. Airfields are important and a competent player isn't going to give them up easy in the first place, but with that particular win condition, I felt too tethered to my airfields, having to garrison them constantly.

[okiemcguire]

Crete - Beta 3

Level: General
Prestige Begin: 5119 Deploy 3231 End: 3063 Victory: +300
Results: Triumph 15/18

Upgraded 2 x Rolls Royce Recons to 2 x Humber
Purchased Bishop Artilliery and a HW Inf

Problems/Issues: The last time I played this scenaraio (Colonel Level) there were evacutation points at sfakia and Herakleion. In the mission briefing it alludes to these two locations, However they are not there at General level for Beta 3. Was this planned?

[Razz1]

Holy Mackrel! They removed the exit hexes.

[maho1973]

Beta-3 - colonel level - triumph 16/18 - prestige: 2457 (start, after purchase) / 2250 (end) + 3660 (victory bonus)
purchase: hw infantry + bren
upgrades: se spitfire mk I to se spitfire vb, hurricane mk I to spitfire vb
replacement: hw infantry + bren
A varied and challenging mission.