Slitherine

Hi guys

So, derived from another thread, I have a few suggestions I would like to have implemented.

1. Village H&M. When you click a Taliban unit, a little window appears in the lower left corner. I would like to have that with villages as well. The window could include the current H&M value of the village as well as the current flag and an indicator of how much the H&M went up or down in the previous turn. This is vital for the 7th mission at least.

2. When you win a mission, it would be nice to have it checked somehow in the campaign window, so you at a glance can see if you have completed the various missions.

I will add more later...

Maybe you wanted to post in the beta forum? or I didn't see there's a demo version?
Or you have bought a key in a bad store?

until the game gets released on the 23rd of March , no one with the game from the official channels can reply either, as everyone here is under a NDA, which doesn't end until the game gets released,.

no idea tbh on what the press copy has, or hasn't got in it, or even what version number it's on or under what NDA there under either, that's a admin question also

so any question on any subject regarding a beta project can only be answered by either the developer if he so wishes, or staff.

It's a press copy, version 1.0.0, no embargo.
I'm showcasing the game on my youtube channel.

ParadogsGamer wrote:Hi guys

2. When you win a mission, it would be nice to have it checked somehow in the campaign window, so you at a glance can see if you have completed the various missions.

Slitherine games have been ignoring this for a LONG time. Battle Academy, Battle Academy 2, Pike & Shot . . . npne of these games make note of when you complete a mission. It is a huge annoyance.

I will be pretty disappointed if this game continues that trend. Please, just add a checkmark or something to show that you have completed a mission, as the ParadogsGamer mentioned.

FroBodine wrote:

ParadogsGamer wrote:I will be pretty disappointed if this game continues that trend. Please, just add a checkmark or something to show that you have completed a mission, as the ParadogsGamer mentioned.

It doesn't seem to indicate that you have completed a campaign mission, but I wonder if the UI might be bugged. The manual says that only the first six missions of the campaign (which includes the four tutorial missions) are supposed to be unlocked at the start, and then the others can only be unlocked by beating the previous mission. So that would give you an indicator of progress in the campaign... except that it doesn't actually work that way in the game. In my game, all of the campaign missions are unlocked, and I am able to select and play any of them.

Additionally, the manual (and the tutorial) says that the game saves your progress each turn, and that if you have a campaign in progress, an option to "continue" from your last save will appear in the main menu. It doesn't. If I quit out of a campaign mission partway through, there is no "continue" option in the main menu, or anywhere else that I can find. I can go back to the campaign menu and restart the mission, but I can't pick up where I left off.

Bug?

Being some turns into the 1st tut only - when I leave and relaunch the game the "continue" button is there (right next to the campaign button) and works fine for me. Not sure if that would be different when playing other missions.

All right, now the "continue" option is appearing in my game, but it definitely wasn't before. I had to restart the second tutorial after playing through most of it.

Campaign missions are still all unlocked, though.

ParadogsGamer wrote:1. Village H&M. When you click a Taliban unit, a little window appears in the lower left corner. I would like to have that with villages as well. The window could include the current H&M value of the village as well as the current flag and an indicator of how much the H&M went up or down in the previous turn. This is vital for the 7th mission at least.

2. When you win a mission, it would be nice to have it checked somehow in the campaign window, so you at a glance can see if you have completed the various missions.

both are already in testing for inclusion into V1.0.5

I hope it's okay if I also post a couple of suggestions in this thread

Highlight discoveries Sometimes discovered items are difficult to find, because the map is dark at "night time", it's on the back slop, and in the shadow of a mountain, it's small, my eyes are tired because I play this game too deep into the night/early hours of the morning (see how red they are?) jk except about the early hours stuff

It would be really nice if they got highlighted. Either per timer--ten to 15 seconds--, or jump the map to center over the discovered thing, until you move away from it.

Three ANA per FOB after withdrawal Currently when you build and FOB, you can train up to a maximum of 3 ANA infantry units, even if they all get destroyed in combat, or what-ever. Once the Gringos go home, there is no way to replace lost infantry, beyond building another new FOB somewhere, which just seems rather contrived to me. Obviously, if your country/government is so poorly run, that the public would rather watch it go to hell-in-a-hand-basket, than fight for it, you've already lost.

Once the Yanks exit, allow to rebuild destroyed ANA infantry units.

Special Forces Need a Pickup SF can "repel into the mountains, but never and under no circumstances can they ever be picked up. In reality, they can, and you can find YouTube videos showing them do it. Okay, I understand that it shouldn't be treated like open ground terrain, but maybe there's a compromise.

Give SF units a special task called Find A Pickup Location, which costs 3-4 movement points, maybe all, if you want to be that way . Once activated, a helicopter can pick them up at the cost of the remainder of their movement points. Maybe make it cost the helicopter more than 1 movement point to pick them up from the mountain too. This means, the SF unit spend the turn--most of the turn--getting ready to be picked up, and the helicopter took longer to pick them up too, so the whole thing is far from free.

All these suggestions seem fair to me, and IMHO, would enhance the game.

Captain_Orso wrote:Three ANA per FOB after withdrawal

This is not by design, I will investigate and revert
You should be able to train new ANA units with the ANA SF unit at the FOB

Captain_Orso wrote:Special Forces Need a Pickup

Am aware of the real world solution, but SF already too powerful a unit to give them more mobility would make them seem superhuman in game, its about the balance

appreciate the good feedback

Trying to not start another thread, so I've got a couple of suggestions...

You guys have made a great game, and I'm embarrassed to say that I've sunk a lot of hours into this game since it came out (the stars aligned with a work "stay-cation"). In playing the Lashkar scenario and the skirmishes, I'm a little bit worried about the feasibility of what I'm calling the "Dien Bien Phu" strategy.

To start, the player builds an FOB near a single village that is preferably easily reinforce-able (by road is not necessary; distance is more important than accessibility). The player builds a single water works in the village and garrison's troops near the waterworks. Its advisable to begin garrisoning supply trucks with ammo and FOB supplies in the base, but its not necessary if the infantry are rotated and supplied by the +1 per turn method. Then you just wait..... (build some roads and maybe do militia clean up; but do not attack opium fields). In the background, the militia will plant opium fields and the Taliban will surge across the border. Because there is only one waterworks, the Taliban will be drawn into your death trap and will show up around the area. Some SF outposts will reveal tons of Taliban converging on your Afghanistan version of Dien Bien Phu. From there, you just howitizer and Apache your way to victory. At 750-1000PP per Taliban, you can easily jump up to 10,000 PP (which appears to be the max). If you've been diligent in not clearing out the opium, the Taliban will never stop coming and will happily cross the mountains to feed themselves into your war economy. As long as you do a decent job finding militia, H&M should go through the roof with all the Taliban kills your racking up. Control of roads isn't necessary either, as the PP economy is so big that you can feed everything by Chinook. Once you've got your Dien Bien Phu up and running, its simply of matter of quickly building FOBs, training ANA and sending them to the Taliban killing fields to get some experience.

So... the handover is definitely the hard part, but if you build FOBS everywhere with you enormous PP, you can get by. The thing that bothers me the most is how tenable the Taliban economy seems to be. I feel like a militia war lord myself because I get happy seeing the opium field number go to 7 or 8. I know that that heroin money will deliver itself to my front door into kills that will delight the guys back in Washington. While this strategy isn't guaranteed every time, I do think its weird enough to warrant some game changes to try and combat it. These changes are:

Lower the PP income from killing enemy combatants The basis of the economy should be waterworks which require that the player leave their safe places, and travel into the country. This might require some tweaks on how expensive water works/repairs are to prevent to many early game political defeats. Maintaining a stable country side (via preventing fighters from forming) should form the basis of US operations versus trying to engage in set piece battles.

Give the Taliban an intimidate ability and make it nasty (-7) I may be wrong, but it appears that only the militia intimidate while the Taliban focus on trying to bring the fight to the US. The US should make keeping Taliban out of the country priority number 1. The Taliban were the rulers of Afghanistan, and if they're running amok, it shouldn't be too hard for them to convince the locals that Taliban control is back. I think this, even more than lowering the PP income, reduces the stability of a Dien Bien Phu strategy. The militia never seem to appear in numbers that threaten to take a H&M from 60 - 40, but I've seen 15 Taliban on the intelligence screen before.

The Taliban should circle ambush FOBs Not sure if they do this, but the Taliban seem primarily concerned with ambushing on roads. When they have the numbers and have fulfilled their road ambush priorities, they should form an ambush circle around FOBs. This makes resupply by air hard/impossible and seems to be in line with their road ambush AI.

Give the Taliban really crappy mortars (like 10% hit) to use against FOBs So maybe the Taliban don't have Giap to magically materialize heavy field guns in a remote jungle valley, but surely they've got some rinky dink Russian leftovers. Right now you can mass tons of units (including supply trucks and chinooks fully loaded with supplies) in FOBs which make sieges difficult for the Taliban even when they've achieved full control of the surrounding country side. A pesky, low chance to hit mortar firing on US bases gives the US another reason to sortie out instead of turtling up. Combined with the fact that the Taliban is probably waiting in ambush all around the FOB (see above), this will make for some tense times. Maybe not all Taliban units will have mortars (maybe its a special unit that comes every 5-6 taliban units). Maybe the 10% chance to hit is applied to all units in the FOB to avoid the US player creating mega stacks that can resupply simply by waiting a couple of turns.

Make US and ANA ambushes only trigger when a unit moves within 2 hexes; not when a unit is present within 2 hexes or make Taliban ambush range 2 hexes I posted this on another thread, but wanted to bring it up again here. Its weird that, Taliban lying in wait can get ambushed by my guys. I had imagined the ambush as more of a mechanism for the US and ANA to set up strong points at road junctions, etc. Right now its the go to attack for spotted Taliban. Because the ambush range for US/ANA is greater than Taliban ambush range, the US/ANA completely negates Taliban ambushes when Taliban are spotted. The Taliban may be spotted, but that doesn't mean they're going to give up their strong fighting positions so I have no logical explanation for the tactic I'm using in game.

Make Taliban ambush a priority on roads leading to broken waterworks. If multiple waterworks exist, have them concentrate ambushes on one If waterworks form the basis of the US economy (versus Taliban kills), then the US has to build multiple waterworks. If, in a given turn, 3 of them get broken, the US has to respond. Knowing exactly where the enemy is going, what routes they'll take and that they have to divide their forces up is asymmetric warfare 101. As the US player, this is agonizing choice making at its best: ignore some of the waterworks?, send weak responses to all of them knowing that some are probably death traps?, gamble on one?

Make buffalo repairs cost a supply resource (like ammo) Having to Medevac infantry units back to beseiged FOB, or out of beseiged FOB and back to base is gold. Having to spend a couple of PP to have my MRAPS continue the Taliban murder chain is less gold. There is lovely multiplication of supply that occurs with FOBs (1 FOB supply can potentially become 5 rations/fuel/etc.) that captures FOBs as the anchor of forward operations. For some reason, the buffalo got decoupled from that core game concept.

Got to say, great game though. The internet is bad for capturing tone so I want to explicitly say that I love your game, and these are suggestions versus complaints.

This is the feedback that I have been waiting for, so appreciate it

So what you call 'Dien Bien Phu' , I call Taliban harvesting... , and I agree it needs to be mitigated , the PP reward for killing TAL units has been changed many time over the last couple of months, in fact it's the main reason PP is capped at 10,000. Still looking for the optimum balance.

Getting smarter mission objectives are also currently in testing whereby a heat map of US/ANA movement is formulated and targets set accordingly.

Having the TAL doing indirect mortar attacks on FOBs is already in testing.

Your point on the Buffalo is very interesting and I will give it some thought.

Usually afer a handover the opium production is left alone as the HM penalty so close o the end of the game becomes tricky, but early game usually has the PP hungry player taking the HM knock, but the intention is to make the WW the primary source of PP, so it's here where the balancing needs to take place in combination with a moderated PP on TAL kills, as you correctly have identified.

Very open to suggestions on specifics if you want to give it a go, will put into my editor and run the game, the balance is not currently optimum but we are getting close...

The whole ambush mechanic also needs a re-look, currently working a few variations .

Great feedback and would like to arrange a Skype chat should you find the time.

I am on GMT +2 and available throughout the week , so that would be appreciated.

Thanks again

Every Single Soldier wrote:

Captain_Orso wrote:Three ANA per FOB after withdrawal

This is not by design, I will investigate and revert
You should be able to train new ANA units with the ANA SF unit at the FOB

Captain_Orso wrote:Special Forces Need a Pickup

Am aware of the real world solution, but SF already too powerful a unit to give them more mobility would make them seem superhuman in game, its about the balance

appreciate the good feedback

Thanks for your reply

I've got some more experience under my belt, and I guess I'll agree with you about no pickups directly from mountains, also because I've discovered that even in the mountains there are often many tiny valleys nearby from which you can pick up the SF's I was going by the really heavy mountain range in the 4th tutorial, where there really weren't any. I though all mountainous areas were like that

That being said, there are a couple of thing that really bug the heck out of me and make game play a less enjoyable experience.

• Please don't be shocked at the amount of text. It's because to explain some simple ideas concisely, it sometimes takes a lot of words... takes me a lot of words anyway

FOB Supply Storage
Give each FOB the possibility to hold 2 FOB Supply Containers.

Why? You can already just park a couple of trucks in the FOB, each with an FOB Supply Container loaded up.

During the end-of-turn execution your FOB Supply can run out, and even if you have 10 trucks loaded with FOB Supply Containers, it won't help you.

Example: You have 2 remaining FOB Supply Points in your FOB. In range of the FOB on post you have a bunch of infantry three of which are down to 0 rations. So they will be drawing rations from the FOB at the end of the turn. Either one of those infantry takes a hit, or you have to prematurely expend an FOB Supply Container, which is the waist of 2/5ths of an FOB Supply Container .

This causes the player to spend a lot of time micro-managing his FOB's (boooooooo-ring), and is totally illogical for the wistfulness. Just because the cooks can't be bother to send somebody to the trucks to get a case of Beans-n-Franks

FOB Supply Storage II
Give each FOB a slot for storing 1 or two Ammo Supply Containers, instead of forcing the player to store them on trucks. Trucks are fragile, and a waste for storing supplies. Plus, it just makes sense, especially toward the end of the scenario, when the Taliban goes crazy, your trucks are getting destroyed, and you need to pick up more supplies. Come on man, trucks are for transporting. FOB's need a storage dump.

Apache Helicopter
It would be really friendly if when you have the Apache Rockets selected that clicking on an enemy unit would actually move the Apache that far and fire the rockets at the target. The tool-tip already shows you how far you have to fly to fire rockets at the target.

Instead, you have to

• <whiny-voice>note exactly which hex, carefully move there, check again, adjust because your a senile old man, finally get into the maximum range, and fire</whiny-voice>

It would certainly make it simply easier and quicker to use the Apache, without changing anything in the way it actually works at all.

2nd Apache suggestion
When the Apache is selected, the tool-tip says that using the (Hellfire?) Rockets costs 1 action, but once you've fired them, even if you have used no other action points, all remaining action points are consumed. I guess this is in agreement with the rest of the game, maybe. But when I first discovered this, I thought it was a major bug . It really makes the apache very limited in its use. The only safe way I've been able to use the Apache, is to station it inside an FOB and use it as a kind of very heavy mortar (because of the "short" range of its rockets. If an enemy appears close by, simply select it, and fire the rockets without moving. Then when you release it again, it drops right into the FOB, safe and sound.

It would really make the Apache a little more effective, and fun to use, if firing rockets cost half the action points (or the remaining, which ever is greater), so that the Apache could actually sortie a short distance out of its BOO (Base Of Operations) and return. It wouldn't change its effective use that much (wouldn't make it an Air Wolf ), but it would help prevent it from being ambushed in the air because it ventured 2 hexes outside its BOO, and just a lot more fun to use, like really flying out to attack something.

• Just one more, I promise.

Moving Vehicles On Roads In More Than One Step

• Management Summery
  Don't drop fractions between movement steps.

Afghanistan '11 seems to use the typical board game analogy, that units have MP's (Movement Points), and that moving over roads allows you to move more than one hex per MP. Any MP's, or fraction there of, not expended at the end of moving said unit is simply lost. And that's and necessary in board games, where the player would have to keep track of these things in his head. But here I have a very expensive computer to do that for me

In A11 I very often have to split up movement of vehicles over roads, and I've noted that remaining fractions are dropped For example, I have an Husky sitting on the road, and I want to use it to search for IED's down the road, but only so far, because I don't want it to be stuck out in Taliban country at the end of the turn. So I select the Husky and move the pointer down the road, counting hexes as I go, until the Route-Ribbon™1) changes to gray and I know the Husky could only move so far in that turn; 12 hexes on constructed roads IIRC. So now I want to move 6 out and six back. But I have to do it in 2 steps, because I'm not taking the shortest route between starting and ending hexes. So count out 6 hexes, move, then simply return, and see there, I can't get back to from where I started

This same situation happens with every spit move: dropping off and/or picking up units; repairing and/or building objects; every where that I have to split a move, I'm losing MP fractions.

How about saving the fractions , because even using way points to plot special movement paths, doesn't help if you have to split the move as in the examples.

We are adding a storage dump extension option onto the FOB.

I like the idea of a single attack sequence for the Apache

The Apache optimum balance has not been achieved yet, just don't want it to dominate the battlefield, currently running a few variations

Will look at the fractions issue after the convoy module is implemented, which should be rather sooner tax later.

Thanks for the great input, appreciate it

Would like to have differing type of special forces units - The current version as is (which works great). But perhaps also a hunter-killer type JSOC unit which is more for direct action Vs Infantry. Perhaps create an SOF unit where they are more geared for clearing a village (compound) better rated Vs infantry but do not have the observation advantages? Seems like we are missing such a unit as is. A better trained, small arms unit then over just regular infantry.

I think I may have mentined on earlier posts, but we are looking at adding infantry specialization upon the unit ranking up, incl. Dogs, EOD, Medic, Press, Marksmen, JTAC etc and I think these would satisfy this particular issue as you will be able to choose the upgrade

Every Single Soldier wrote:I think I may have mentined on earlier posts, but we are looking at adding infantry specialization upon the unit ranking up, incl. Dogs, EOD, Medic, Press, Marksmen, JTAC etc and I think these would satisfy this particular issue as you will be able to choose the upgrade

Sounds excellent! When you say upon the unit ranking up (I get that somewhat). But it would also be nice to just have access to such units (in limited quantity of course) without the need for "game points" prior. I've always liked realistic games (sims) that don't call for points to be earned before new units are available.

Thanks for great game!

I think it could also be interesting if when units gather info at times it is on a HVT. With perhaps just a % chance he is within a given zone. Up to you then if willing to send out resources to take him out. This could be a big bump in HM if successful. Would also play into game once additional direct action SOF units are added into game.

Indeed, the whole HVT thing needs exploring and expanding into the game, in the original design I had a "Deck of Cards" of HVTs (which were ranked up TAL units) which gave you a HM bump when destroyed, just didn't make the cut, will review...

Every Single Soldier wrote:Indeed, the whole HVT thing needs exploring and expanding into the game, in the original design I had a "Deck of Cards" of HVTs (which were ranked up TAL units) which gave you a HM bump when destroyed, just didn't make the cut, will review...

I think being on the hunt for HVT while throughout the whole other aspects of winning and securing HM would be fantastic and bring in a whole new group of buyers. Especially if added in a few more direct action type SOF units for players to use. This aspect within more of an open sandbox would bring in lots of new buyers.