Skirmish Battles with Random Enemy

[junk2drive]

I spent the evening playing the Normandy Skirmish D-Day battle. 1 turn short of taking enough flags to win, grrrr.

I found it to be entertaining and look forward to trying again, knowing that the enemy will have a different makeup next time.

Has anyone else tried these random battles?

Is it worth my time to put together more of these for you to play?

[Rizik]

I never tried one of these before your post. I really liked setting up my entire force. It will be interesting trying different setups and not knowing exactly what I'll face. More of these would be great.

It could really use a setup phase at beginning though, if that's possible to add.

[junk2drive]

By setup I assume you mean deploy? I'll try to make one for you.

[tim1966]

Just found this myself - lots of fun and very diverting from modding! I was just about to write it would be nice to have one with British forces and then thought I'd better check and there it was More would be most welcome.

[junk2drive]

I copied the folder to my campaigns then went into the editor and opened Normandy2. Clicked the deploy button and saved as Nor2deploy. Start the red coloured campaign and go to Nor2deploy, there you go, move your stuff.

Edit: actually I copied the Normandy2 bam file to a campaign that I am working on, then opened in the editor and saved as Nor2deploy. Sorry if I misled anyone.

[Rizik]

I copied the folder to my campaigns then went into the editor and opened Normandy2. Clicked the deploy button and saved as Nor2deploy. Start the red coloured campaign and go to Nor2deploy, there you go, move your stuff.

Edit: actually I copied the Normandy2 bam file to a campaign that I am working on, then opened in the editor and saved as Nor2deploy. Sorry if I misled anyone.

I'm afraid this is over my head Junk.

I want to thank you for all your work though. Your instructions on how to expand the Zoom limit in the manual additions has tremendously increased my enjoyment of the game. Besides just getting the big picture, there are some really nice views, such as the ground level zoomed out a ways. Looks really nice.

[XShadowY]

Actually I prefer the random scenarios, because all fixed missions and campaigns have only little to none replayability value for me.

I found the first Normandy random mission easy, finished it with the first try, but the second (Panzer Skirmish) quite hard. Several times I ended up 1 turn short. Especially when the enemy has 2 King Tigers, 3 Panthers and 1 Tiger it can be tough, because you have to make it through the narrow road and if these heavy tanks block the way, there`s no option to try and intercept them through the forest with infantry, because you wouldn`t make it due to the short time frame.

However, still much more fun for me than replaying fixed missions. The only thing I would like to see "changed" somehow is the freedom in the "purchase unit screen". In my opinion you tend to buy the same units over and over again. From the best available tank down until the points are used up.
And that´s a pity, because of the tight turn frame you are faced with infantry will never make it. I would wish for more points to choose units from and then enough time in the scenario to use infantry, too.

Otherwise (at least for me) it`s always the same start: I take the Firefly, the Churchills, the Shermans ... and then all points are used up. I get the feeling that these units are somehow required to stand a chance, so it looks senseless that infantry is being offered in such high numbers.

I like the way how it was solved in the old Close Combat series. Let`s say you only had 50 points then you had to make a choice whether it will be only one 45 points valued tank or 4 times infantry and 1 MG, and still could win the mission just with infantry. This feeling I don`t get (yet ) in BA random missions, because the limitations are still too strict. The player should be able to purchase 10 Firefly`s, but in the mission he will realize that they are completely useless due to heavy forest.

Maybe this could be solved with lifting the turn limit, because then I could imagine that even the infantry has a good chance against tanks. But you need time for flanking and moving in on them.

I understand that this scenario is meant as a tank clash, but (in my personal opinion) what I described above fits pretty much to every random mission, or mission in which you can "freely" buy units before a battle.

[junk2drive]

I played the Normandy2 with deploy last night and being able to move the units didn't change things much. I still ended up with a loss much like DeLaVega described. The KT was too tough to kill. It moved to 3 squares away from my 17lbr at an angle and when I targeted it showed 0 chance to kill. I'll try again with the easy button.

Rizik, I'll work up something today and post it in the scenarios forum.

[Merr]

DeLaVega brought up some very good points ... I will post his suggestions in the scenario editor thread regarding a way to do this.

Junk2Drive ? If you want, we can work on a little project based on what DeLavega posted. This would require me to write a little code in the scenario BSF, and it works like this ...

Random Human Player OOB (orders of battle) .... If you guys have some suggestions on OOB's that I can randomly create for the human player that matches the number of "buy points" then I can code the OOB's into the scenario. The player won't be able to "purchase" units but it will randomly select an OOB that a player might pick as his force.

If you think it's a good idea I would need you guys to post the OOB's. I like the second battle (panzer attack) because it's a big map with lots of potential.
Naturally, I would keep the 3 Brit Paratroops as fixed units ... but it will be a coin-toss for you main force.

Let me know.

Rob

[junk2drive]

Sure, I'm up for just about anything.

Not sure what you want for the OOB? I'm guessing the list of units and points for say, just the British units.

Another thought would be a column on the csv for random. A 1 allows it to be true on your script. That would make custom csv easy to make and change.

[Merr]

J2J,

Yeah that's a good idea too, the random column ... That's possible ... but ... The PLUGIN stuff isn't editable unless we use JSGE to swap out the main plugin folder with a change in the code.

Now, for OOB ideas .... To start simply we can use the forces given.

OOB selections can be what other players use ... For example, my selection for Panzer Attack was something like this (from memory) ...

1 Firefly
1 M8 Greyhound
3 ATguns
2 Trucks
2 APCS
2 Piat
2 Engineer
3 Scouts
1 Flamethrower squad
4 Infantry
2 Mortars

Something like that ... I won with a last minute dash to the objectives with infantry. (using quantity over quality).

[junk2drive]

Your from memory list is what the designer wanted you to have.

My thought was a setup like the AI has

3 Firefly
3 M8 Greyhound
3 ATguns
4 Trucks
4 APCS
4 Piat
4 Engineer
4 Scouts
2 Flamethrower squad
6 Infantry
3 Mortars

IOW more than you would be allowed by a designer then a random chance to get one of the above. You might end up with 4 trucks and no tanks, 4 scouts and no engineers, and so on.
Or we do like Panzer Command and have the type column come into play, a percentage of the points is spent on each type so that 60% for tanks, 20 infantry, 10 artillery, 10 transport. For us that is tracked, halftrack, wheeled, infantry, artillery.

The icing on the cake will be purchasing bonus items.

Edit the bonus icons are in the folder but I've never seen them in the game.

[Merr]

Well, there are probably dozens of ways to do this.

Now that I think of it .... If I cut/paste the random code from the PLUGIN into the scenario BSF then I could have the player's OOB built along the same lines as the AI's OOB.

This will avoid the chance that your OOB will be 10 Trucks with 1 tank

My original thinking was "canned" or scripted OOB's for the player ... but having an OOB built upon the same code as the AI could be interesting.

[Merr]

I copied the folder to my campaigns then went into the editor and opened Normandy2. Clicked the deploy button and saved as Nor2deploy. Start the red coloured campaign and go to Nor2deploy, there you go, move your stuff.

Edit: actually I copied the Normandy2 bam file to a campaign that I am working on, then opened in the editor and saved as Nor2deploy. Sorry if I misled anyone.

hey Junk .... I just read this again and realized something ....

The correct folder to bring over is called SkirmishNormandy.
It only uses 2 maps or BAM's ..... so you can basically create more skirmish battles using the other normandy maps.

How?
Well, in the CAMPAIGN.TXT ... add the map names.
Open the additional BAM's in the editor and set it up like the original BAM skirmishes.

Hmmm .... it's just an idea so it may require some more tweaking than what I said above.

EDIT ... So, instead of two skirmish maps ... you now have 10 skirmish maps

[junk2drive]

That's where I was before reading your post. I knew about the unused scens. I loaded #3 and opened the plugin. It doesn't list all of the German teams. I can't seem to get it to change.

[Merr]

That's where I was before reading your post. I knew about the unused scens. I loaded #3 and opened the plugin. It doesn't list all of the German teams. I can't seem to get it to change.

Ok, cool ... you're ahead of me

I'll look at #3 and see if I can pull some strings to make it work and let you know what I did, of course, unless you beat me to the punch.

[junk2drive]

Team 5 was fixed and team 4 must have been deleted. Un fixing 5 cured the problem.

Now to figure out how many points to allow.

[Merr]

Team 5 was fixed and team 4 must have been deleted. Un fixing 5 cured the problem.

Now to figure out how many points to allow.

Here's a suggestion for points ...

Since the original scenario used ALL the units, you first set the # of points equal to the team's full cost.
Then, manually add more units, evenly distributing them amongst the current teams.
Add enough units so it "buys" perhaps 75%-100% the total team cost.

For example, if the current team cost was 400, raise the buy points to 400, then add more units to the team so the total cost is between 400-500.

It'll take some testing. Makes a nice little project if you want to tweak a scenario a smig or two.

[junk2drive]

I'm thinking how to get this truly random.

Take 3 different ~100 point tanks, set the random points to 100+ and see which tank gets picked? Or 3 sets of 3 tanks and give 300+ points?

[Merr]

To be truely random you need to drop unit cost and go by types.

You know how we set the victory flags? Well, we do the same for teams, call them TEAM MARKERS.

Perhaps we can make a PLUGIN that does this, the team marker will simply set a global location with parameters set, like UNIT TYPE, QUANTITY, and SIDE.

So, we drop a TEAM 0 marker, set it to ARMORED with a value of 5, for SIDE 0 ... viola, it will drop 5 tanks (randomly drawn from the CSV) using the deployment code.

Perhaps moddable, preset OOB's would be better. We drop a marker, set it to armor with 5 units, and it will drop 5 tanks (similar) drawn from random platoon sets.
Instead of drawing them from the SQUADS csv it can be drawn from a PLATOON csv.