New players trying to make the game work

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stargaz3r
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New players trying to make the game work

Post by stargaz3r »

My friend and I are trying to play co-op multiplayer against the AI and have a lot of issues we are trying to figure out:

1. We cannot figure out how to identify Major and Minor Objectives. Sometimes the Objectives are named (yay!) but most times it says there are, for example, 6 Minor Objectives and 2 Major Objectives. We have no clue what is what so we just try to defend everything. We've tried clicking seemingly everything on the screen in order to reveal these.

2. We own two of the Pacific Theater DLCs but we only have access to a very small number of 2vAI scenarios. Which are other DLC would give us a much larger selection of 2vAI scenarios to choose from?

3. Regarding supply, we have read about it online and in the rules and nominally understand the coloured circles, the battery rating, and the similar levers. But we can't figure out what we can actually, concretely do to get a unit from orange and unable to fight to improve their situation. We park them next to supply ships, we sit them in cities, we say a prayer but nothing seems to reliably work in a way we could replicate and feel like we have some mastery over the system.

4. How do we simply go to the next unit, a common feature in modern unit-based games? We waste a lot of time huddled over the screen trying to figure out which units have not been ordered yet.

5. The scenarios seem wildly inconsistent. All at the middle difficulty, we crushed War Plan Orange and Under Siege, while Battle of Bataan seemed impossible to accomplish everything in 60 turns let alone 40. How well tested are these scenarios?

Thanks in advance!
Erik2
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Re: New players trying to make the game work

Post by Erik2 »

1) The primary/secondary objectives differs depending on whatever the designer uses them for. Territory objectives are usually depicted using map markers, click on the blue ?-mark.

2) A few multiplayer scenarios have been added whenever a DLC have been published, but there is no hard rule here. There are also some you can download from the Crate on the menu screen. A large number of custom multiplayer scenarios are available in the Scenario design forum viewforum.php?f=374. Check the Stickies sub-forum.

3) A unit needs to track a friendly path to a supply source and the supply number must be at least equal to the total number of command points of the unit tracking supply. Examples of command points; engineer = 2, infantry = 3, heavy infantry = 4, artillery = 2-3, tanks = 5-7 etc. Transport add 1 CP to the unit. hit the space bar and you should see the supply points on the map. Units low on supply will turn orange, units out of supply are red.
Note that efficiency play a large part in an unit's ability to attack/defend. Rest orange/red units behind the frontline for a few turns until they are green again.
Artillery will lose efficiency each turn they attack and they also need to rest.

4) You can click Page Up/down on your keyboard to move to the next unit that has not moved/attacked. I use this all the time. These and others are also available from the unit screen at the bottom of the map. Open the Options and check all keyboard short-cuts. There are lots of them.

5) Each scenario is its own entity. They will vary in difficulty, especially for someone new to the game. The DLCs go through a beta testing period and should be balanced when published. Single scenarios is a different beast, there are no official beta-etsting of these. I test my own custom creations with some trusted PBEM-buddies before publishing, but this isn't chess with a few simple rules and board-pieces. There are several ways to play a scenario, especially when you can purchase your own unit-mix.

There are several posts with tips how to play OOB (well) on the forum. Sorry, I have not got any direct links. Hopefully some of our veterans will chime in.

Welcome aboard!
stargaz3r
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Re: New players trying to make the game work

Post by stargaz3r »

Thank you!
conboy
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Re: New players trying to make the game work

Post by conboy »

1. We cannot figure out how to identify Major and Minor Objectives. Sometimes the Objectives are named (yay!) but most times it says there are, for example, 6 Minor Objectives and 2 Major Objectives. We have no clue what is what so we just try to defend everything. We've tried clicking seemingly everything on the screen in order to reveal these.
Click on the turn counter (white box) and that will show the objectives list. It also shows up at the start of every human turn.
Click the question marks on the objective list and you will see arrows that indicate the objectives. You can use the navigator (next and previous) arrows to move through the objectives and see where they all are.

2. We own two of the Pacific Theater DLCs but we only have access to a very small number of 2vAI scenarios. Which are other DLC would give us a much larger selection of 2vAI scenarios to choose from?
There are not that many official ones. But like Erik says, you can download user-created 2vAI scenarios on the Scenario Design page of the OoB forum. There's a bunch!
viewtopic.php?f=374&t=64991

3. Regarding supply, we have read about it online and in the rules and nominally understand the coloured circles, the battery rating, and the similar levers. But we can't figure out what we can actually, concretely do to get a unit from orange and unable to fight to improve their situation. We park them next to supply ships, we sit them in cities, we say a prayer but nothing seems to reliably work in a way we could replicate and feel like we have some mastery over the system.
I can't recall about ships but the only thing you can do for a ground unit to recover is let it sit, unmolested, for a couple of turns, with supply -- it'll rest and be ready again. Get it out of the way because if it's bombarded, attacked by a plane, or otherwise molested, it won't recover.

4. How do we simply go to the next unit, a common feature in modern unit-based games? We waste a lot of time huddled over the screen trying to figure out which units have not been ordered yet.
Use the Right Arrow to go to the next unit, and the left arrow to go to the previous unit. The unit badges also change when they move or engage in combat (little indicators in the unit box).

5. The scenarios seem wildly inconsistent. All at the middle difficulty, we crushed War Plan Orange and Under Siege, while Battle of Bataan seemed impossible to accomplish everything in 60 turns let alone 40. How well tested are these scenarios?

They are very well tested. And they vary greatly in difficulty!

keep awn keepen awwwn, welcome aboard!

conboy
stargaz3r
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Re: New players trying to make the game work

Post by stargaz3r »

Thanks!
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