Slitherine

Gentlemen

It has been a pleasure see you again in North Africa...

standby...

Escoville challenge posted...password final

this is what we've been looking for. look at the map.

Spam Bot Alert! I already PMed Pip.

Navaronegun wrote:Spam Bot Alert! I already PMed Pip.

?

The guy who posted above me. Notice his "videos" in his sig are now just text and not a link.

Ah I see

Pegasus bridge is ready for my German counterpart to begin - password is pegasus

protectivedaddy wrote:Pegasus bridge is ready for my German counterpart to begin - password is pegasus

I will send pm to Mlazar to see if he will defend Pegasus once again

I'll set up Bieville tomorrow

Hello gentlemen,
I do admit to many fun times during my involvement off and on in GJS'44.
But I do find some of the scenarios limited in fun when played, as they tend to play almost as stalemates sometimes.
The tournament maps always had more appeal to me in both balance and gameplay, although I do remember the thrill
of commanding the Allied attack on Hillman Battery against Morge very early in the campaign.
Anyway, as this thread will be here along with all the available resources needed, you never know - maybe someone may pick it up and carry the ball further for a few months at some point. I look forward to playing all of you with the final maps and proceeding over to the RTT campaign!

Cheers,
jcb

Allied Escoville update: Our reduced forces of 20 (the rest of us must have already marched off to Pegasus, I guess, this being GJS'44 we all know we did not ride off to Pegasus har har) have apparently been caught napping although we were moving off, because the flags we must defend to hold the map are "darn near impossible" to hold with 25 units let alone 20, being as how they are strung out along the full length of road we are marching out on not riding out along, so I guess those commandos socks really stink and must be kept far away from the AT guns and the mortar teams, but let the enemy come and we shall see what 7 mortars can do.... what? what Captain? we had to leave some of our mortars behind in the force pool? Damnation its always something in GJS'44 !!*!&$#^$*!#

I'm still laughing at the Pegasus joke....I think....

lol...

Hi everyone, I shared these thoughts with PA in a PM (ha) and I thought I would repost them here for possible brief discussion purpose, they are not intended to sway any current efforts underway for example Pat has extensive well-thought-out plans for RTT and I want to see how those turn out. Also I am guessing I am among those you would count as the least-interested in making a good strategy game amongst the core people playing BA campaigns. Rather, I want to make a fun continuation BA game system but with the background strategy both fun and simple to follow and manage. So here is my rough idea:

I keep coming back to a campaign system where BG (or larger, say... divisions) are kept track of with larger force pools, while defining a few maximum unit counts in a derived BG, and let the local commanders of battles pick which units to bring into a battle. Then, subtract his battle losses from the total pool available at division and so on. I suppose it too could result in problems before long but GJS seems very limited due to quantity of units available and in the games, and a need for ability to select unit types more freely. I would envision force sizes of 30 to 50 on these size maps, I think that would very much liven up the individual battles quite a bit and if the force pools were historically based, there could be a newly added aspect of realism to losses.

For example. Place 200 Firefly in the allied pool (just envision one whole pool for this example) but instead of our current system, have the 4 Allied players fight each of the day's 4 battles, this is my nod to a more tournament-based styling. Each commander goes into battle, say, choosing 3 fireflies for their attacks, along with 37 other units for each of the 4 battle maps for the day (again here my idea is to widen the fun such that all active players play each map each day, maybe in a set rotation by day against enemy commanders).

Now, imagine all fireflies they each took in are destroyed that day, which is a whopping loss of 48 fireflies. Leaving 152 in the pool for next day and beyond... instead of one large pool, the system would need sector (division? corps?) pools such that you could not max out the best equipment all the time without consequences to a sector area, but I am aiming for a more simple way to do the accounting using higher level org charts.

With such large numbers my idea was to approach an approximation of actual historical force totals in the theater. As a reference point, the 200 value for Fireflies is what is quoted for historical quantity on what I could find quickly on the web. The Germans could field only some 150 Tigers, but they also had 650 Panthers and over 600 Stugs or Marders combined. So to my mind those numbers seem to work for my idea. All you have to do is limit when or maybe how many Tigers and Panthers (and any other imbalancing units) can show up at any given time onto a battle map within the larger battle force.

As for foot soldiers, since GJS'44 BA is showing you one squad, 8 men, if I understand the structure of divisions in WWII there could be as many as 1,250 infantry squad units alone per real-life division, a lot! But since in each map, a side may field 15 or even 20 of them out of 40ish, per battle, that total will go down rapidly and could be managed closer to real-life concern over the course of this style campaign.

I am deeply tempted to try to construe rules to pull something like this off, somewhere. But I fear I lack the time commitments that would make it possible.
Not to mention the probable complications and limits I haven't discovered with the idea.

You could do it with the scoring script, and fixed costs. Probably your best best is to bathtub up to platoon/squads/sections, or it gets insane. Personally, that is why when i miniatured, I never played points-Army battles. I hate ahistorical count the points stuff.

It leads to situations that just are completely counterfactual. Armies fight a certain way, and units are deployed in certain ways because of the ways they are organized and the real life situations they are put in. I always say, I like Historical Wargames because the are Historical Wargames. Take out the adjective and you are a step away from Halo or Warhammer. Any good historical Battle or Campaign or situation should be simulatable into a good game that is fun. If it isn't its a flawed design. A lot of game designers, in my experience are afraid of designing good historical Multiplayer scenarios, because, frankly it takes work to do it right and keep it balanced and fun. It's easier to make up the Battle of Venus and throw some stuff on a map, and maybe you have a shot at balanced fun, but who knows.

But hey, it's taste. Some folks like Lager and some folks ale. Que sera, sera.

Navaronegun wrote:But hey, it's taste. Some folks like Lager and some folks ale. Que sera, sera.

This brought me some memories of my old man never stopped saying that!

Still waiting on Bieville mind you it's nice waiting in Thailand

Ditto - still waiting for Pegasus to be picked up.........seems the Germans are running scared when us Allies have nothing to lose

guardsman wrote:Still waiting on Bieville mind you it's nice waiting in Thailand

I hope your waiting will be over soon. LM should have commanded the Germans in Bieville but he's busy at the moment, so I've asked Honour to take his place.