Shards' Scenarios

[GabeKnight]

Nice scen. Played very well. Thanks, Shards!

But, ahem, yeah, on my first try, and I did neither study the triggers nor design the scen...
(granted, I reloaded two turns)

Screenshot 181.jpg (965.96 KiB) Viewed 1690 times

Guess I'm not too pampered by playing with my mod and can still handle vanilla gameplay.
It was a fun scen and I'm glad it's in the community content crate.

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[Shards]

Given that all the armour divisions were being used in the push towards Moscow, one would have to enquire where that Panzer IV came from

(And the 4/7 on outlying towns indicates a certain laissez-faire attitude towards securing your lines as you advanced )

[GabeKnight]

Given that all the armour divisions were being used in the push towards Moscow, one would have to enquire where that Panzer IV came from

Bought it from my unit pool. Very strong against infantry on open terrain, 13HP or not, entrenched or not. If you didn't want this to be possible, you shouldn't have given me core units (or prevented it with triggers...)

(And the 4/7 on outlying towns indicates a certain laissez-faire attitude towards securing your lines as you advanced )

True, but if I went after the stray unit, then I would've needed probably two more turns to finish. I let my rearguard deal with stragglers.

[Shards]

I've had this scenario knocking around for years so thought I may as well give it a bit of spit and polish and make it fully playable.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/adlgfq8mye4l4 ... 2.zip?dl=0

Wanjianling 0.2.2
East of Wuhan, August 1938
Japanese forces are advancing towards the Chinese Military Capital of Wuhan on multiple vectors. They have made landings on the South Bank of the Yangtze River and have taken Jiujiang. Can the Chinese forces in the area stop them from securing the vital rail link to Nanchang?

It's a single-player defensive map where you will certainly be outflanked and are expected to do a staged retreat to narrow your internal lines of communication.

I'd appreciate it if people could give it a go and let me know if there's any issues (esp things like missing event images!)

[bru888]

Wanjianling 0.2.2

Me: "The complexity of this thing is mind-boggling!"
Shards: "Oh, not really. The idea was knocking around for years but I really did it all in one evening and while the telly was on."

[Shards]

Hah, I'd done most of the grunt work back in 2018 or whenever I was working on it last. I've put in maybe 8 hours or so this year going through the notes I'd left myself and just ticking off things like event pictures and making sure the income felt about right.

[terminator]

Chinese Nationalists are the only faction I know that can recruit Partisans :

2_Wanjialing 529 0.2.2 (1).jpg (461.94 KiB) Viewed 1129 times

[GabeKnight]

Thanks. Played okay.

I'd appreciate it if people could give it a go and let me know if there's any issues (esp things like missing event images!)

Diff. IV, vanilla OoB version; good RP and unit balance, MV on first try.

- what do you mean with "Prestige"? RPs?
- the "do damage" prim. obj. pic was missing
- didn't understand the "perimeter" sec. obj.; although I did get it awarded at scen end.

[Shards]

Chinese Nationalists are the only faction I know that can recruit Partisans :


2_Wanjialing 529 0.2.2 (1).jpg

Yeah, curiously they seem to be in the Engineer role for this faction at this point...

[Shards]

Thanks. Played okay.

I'd appreciate it if people could give it a go and let me know if there's any issues (esp things like missing event images!)

Diff. IV, vanilla OoB version; good RP and unit balance, MV on first try.

- what do you mean with "Prestige"? RPs?
- the "do damage" prim. obj. pic was missing
- didn't understand the "perimeter" sec. obj.; although I did get it awarded at scen end.

Thanks!

This scenario was originally part of an idea for a full campaign where I was going to use Prestige as a currency to carry across scenarios. I did not and do not have the time and energy to do that full campaign

Thanks for Event pic, knew I'd miss one

I suspect you're too good a player to get pushed back far enough for that obj to matter, but I will give it a double check, see if I can figure out what past me intended.

[GabeKnight]

- didn't understand the "perimeter" sec. obj.; although I did get it awarded at scen end.

I suspect you're too good a player to get pushed back far enough for that obj to matter, but I will give it a double check, see if I can figure out what past me intended.

Yeah, I saw the VP markings, but didn't know if I was supposed to hold them all or just one or at scen end or whatever.

The beginning was dragging a bit as many of my aux. unit got slaughtered during the first turns and all I could do was watch the long AI turns.

Also wondered why my (allied) coastal battery (and ship?) did not engage - they should put up at least a little resistance IMO...

But the attack was neat. Always busy with something. Either with healing and reinforcing my lines or regrouping...
Thanks again.

[Shards]

I think the intention was that the start was to show that "you're losing this". Wuhan was very much a Japanese victory and this battle was a rare relative success for the Chinese and I wanted to show that you're being beaten up everywhere.

Also hints about the outflanking coming from East and West...

I might let the player control the Coastal Battery, the ai sometimes fires, sometimes doesn't. Not sure why..

[GabeKnight]

I might let the player control the Coastal Battery [...]

No, no, better not.

[...] the ai sometimes fires, sometimes doesn't. Not sure why..

I thought maybe you forgot them in some "inactive" AI team. Maybe LOS issue? Maybe too weak. I see no problem giving it full health. It's gonna be destroyed in a few turns anyways.

[Shards]

I very much like the current choreography of that bit of the map, so don't want to alter too much. Batteries do indirect fire, so they should really be shooting no matter what... I'll take a look at it

[Shards]

Updated to 0.2.3

- Fixed the missing event picture
- Made Coastal Battery it's own AI team and set to max aggression
- Tinkered with initial deploy zones and nearby bridges
- Updated deploy location of Eastern reinforcements to try and get them to attack that flank and not clog the center
- Added a line of clarification to Perimeter sub objective (essentially it's just a hint to players that these are the attack vectors)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dxxcbi0b1jbfp ... 3.zip?dl=0

[Erik2]

Nice scenario, indeed.
Maybe add a vic pic?

vic.jpg (97.78 KiB) Viewed 1029 times

[Shards]

Hmm, thought I had!

[bru888]

This is one of the few times that I just went ahead and played an episode of OOB without picking at it first. (Frankly, I would need a Rosetta Stone in this case.)

So I am diving in and taking notes as I go, merely as a player.

First observations: Pretty map, nice choice of battle and foes. No Nazis, Tommies, or G.I. Joes for a change. Well-spoken briefing! The enemy is "deluded"? Very good.

First criticism: In the briefing, I can see where Jiujiang is located. I can surmise that the Lushan mountains is the range to the south, but why not label them as such?

It's the third briefing that goes astray in my opinion. It mentions "De'an and the railway towards Nanchang" but the player has no idea where that is because the camera focus stays north.

I suggest focusing on De'an with the third briefing and moving the second blurb in that briefing to the fourth briefing, as follows:

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Screenshot 3.jpg (481.24 KiB) Viewed 1007 times

Notice, by the way, that I have corrected "the" to "they" at one point. Also, I believe that when one refers to direction, one does not capitalize "east," "west," and "southern." Only where a cardinal point is being referred to as a place, or ideology, etc., would it be capitalized, such as the headline "The West and East clash in World War III."

Also notice that I have temporarily moved the Chinese Heavy Infantry unit out of De'an so that the name will show. You could do this and move the unit back with a trigger on Turn 1 if you want.

It so happens that this unit, a "Chinese Collaborator" (how this will unfold is to be seen), has no AI team assigned to it? Intentional? I'm not sure if this unit will even defend itself without instructions. Perhaps you assign it to an AI team by trigger; I will take a look.

To be continued ...

[bru888]

It so happens that this unit, a "Chinese Collaborator" (how this will unfold is to be seen), has no AI team assigned to it? Intentional? I'm not sure if this unit will even defend itself without instructions. Perhaps you assign it to an AI team by trigger; I will take a look.

I don't see any trigger in which this unit is addressed. Moreover, there is another unit just like it, unassigned to an AI team, further south:

Screenshot 4.jpg (593.17 KiB) Viewed 1001 times

Another observation while I am down there. Why not name this key town? And why not put up a sign post "To Nanchang" if this is indeed "the railway towards Nanchang"?

Screenshot 5.jpg (576.9 KiB) Viewed 1001 times

Two other things before I go to bed.

While I was looking for a trigger that dealt with those Chinese Collaborators heavy machine guns, I found this minor issue in which you forgot to pick up the CC infantry unit that your replace with its Nationalist China doppelganger:

Screenshot 6.jpg (513.84 KiB) Viewed 1001 times

Also, the event pictures are missing for these couple of triggers:

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Screenshot 9.jpg (560.05 KiB) Viewed 1001 times

To be continued ...

[bru888]

One last thing before bedtime. And here is where I get annoying, but it cannot be helped. It comes with the territory! It's part of my essence!

First, traditionally, outcome_2_0 is associated with Defeat (maybe this is why it did not come up for Erik in his Major Victory*). You need an outcome_2_1 for happy news (Major and Minor Victory) and, from the looks of it, this outcome_2_0 should be associated with grim news (Draw, Minor and Major Defeat):

outcome_2_0.png (299.12 KiB) Viewed 1000 times

Were you trying to call up the photos as shown below? It has been my impression that those boxes are for entering an alternative phrase for an Outcome, such as "Happy Days" instead of "Major Victory." I believe the program is structured to automatically look for "outcome_X_0-4" photos in the folder, where "X" is the human faction number and "0" through "4" allows for up to five different images for each Outcome. But that goes by the number entered next to the title box.

Screenshot 10.jpg (507.12 KiB) Viewed 1000 times

Here's an example. The designer is using only two Outcome images, one happy and one grim. So he has only outcome_2_0 and outcome_2_1 photos. For three bad outcomes, the designation is "0" and for the two good outcomes, it is "1". The program thus knows which image to choose depending on the Outcome number:

Screenshot 11.jpg (532.54 KiB) Viewed 996 times

Here's really the annoying part, sorry. All of this work in what looks to be a very superior scenario, and you have nothing to say in your Outcomes? I would think this would be an opportunity for you to shine, Shards.

*No, come to think of it. The real reason is that the program was looking for outcome_2_4, the way that you left it. Not finding that file in your folder, it called up the default scenario-ending image.

To be continued ...