Slitherine

**Spoiler Ahead****

So I moved on to the Case Blue Scenario in Panzerkrieg of Voronezh. I opted for a Northern/Middle approach to the objectives with just a token force in the South. This worked extremely well as I was one hex away from claiming all objectives by turn 28. Unfortunately I had a scratch holding force of about 4 NPC units in the South that had seen little action so I decided to advance them late in the game. As I was nearing completion of objective about turn 27 I am suddenly notified that there is a new PRIMARY objective to defeat 8 Russian units because this scratch for blundered into a scenario trigger. Had I never advanced them, the trigger would never have activated. Seeing that I now have to kill 8 new Russian units in 1 turn, I have 0 chance of completing the secondary victory condition of completing the scenario in 28 turns. What was the thinking that went into this? Did the designer never consider that the player would ignore the South and it that would be activated sooner? I looked at the scenario in the editor and can seen that if I'd never advanced in the South at all I'd never seen that. Seeing that I was one hex from normal victory, I was able to back track units and still complete with the exception of the 28 turn limit. I could easily replay it and avoid it all together and easily win in 28. Putting that "Trap" in the south was a cheap shot and totally unnecessary is it can be completely bypassed. It is one of the "Golden Bullet" scenario designs that plague the OOB series.

Ok, this scenario is even worse than I'd thought. I went back and as I saw, if I never advanced my Southern scratch force, the counter attack never occurred. Fine, I just completed the Scenario in 26 turns. What do my wondering eyes should appear but, despite finishing completing all objectives in 26 turns, the secondary scenario of "Complete all objectives in 28 turns" is still unfulfilled and I do not get the +2 specialization points.

Ok, this is 2 in a row with buggy scenario victory conditions. There is just no excuse for that. Please spare me the "it's a small team" or 'the beta was cut short". Those ARE YOUR PROBLEMS! Not the poor purchaser of your unfinished products. It's wearing a bit thin. I have some games for my IPAD "Carrier Battles for Guadalcanal" and "Through the Ages" that are in the first part a one man show, and the second part a small team that are stellar examples of premier game design and execution. In that context OOB stands for "Out of Bounds". I do have something to give the developer of OOB credit for, he has forced me to explore the excellent offerins of Solitaire Board Games that have been released.

Easy there. Calm down, this is a game.
The pattern you described never came up in beta (everybody advanced through that secondary), but it will be adressed and fixed in a new patch.
And please cool it with the anger; this is not healthy.

Thx for reporting, it will be changed.

SPOILERS:

I actually advanced my small.southern force with several turn remaining, primarily as they were doing nothing and i was winning, so i thought that it may be worth my while taking the extra town in the south for points or just to even out my Front.

I encountered the trigger, but because i had the time, I was able to take and hold the town with the few southern units and assemble an ad-hoc force from the north to relieve them and push back the late enemy wave.

This turned out to be great fun and quite dramatic for me at least, I guess just because I had the time to react. I may have felt differently if I didn't have time to move down an emergency relief group from to North, but my southern units were able to hold for several turns in a dramatic defense and I had to adjust my main northern push as I had depleted it to support the south.

I guess what I'm saying is that for me, perhaps simply as a result of timing, this scenario was a blast. Maybe the timer in the southern counter attack trigger needs adjusting rather than thrown out, which for me at least would be a shame.

It is not so much anger as pure frustration. Each and every release of OOB has had buggy scenarios with errors that should have been caught in proper testing. In this case, I've hit 2 in a row. That's about 3-4 hours of game time when you account for the need to go back and replay the scenarios. For those of us with limited game time, that's pretty frustrating, especially as it could have been alleviated if the product had been adequately tested.

The problem with the scenario is 2 fold. This first problem is that the trigger for the counter attack is proximity based upon some towns in the south, creating a proximity "mine field". The problem is that if you never go down there, it well never trigger. The second and bigger problem is that the secondary victory condition is tied to the counter attack so if a player bypasses the southern mine field, they get penalized. In my case I looked at the map and decided that it was better just to have a blocking force in the south and concentrate my attack in the north and middle to create some mass and allow the groups to be mutually supported by each other and by air. Instead of being rewarded for this I got a penalty.

How to fix it? I'd make the secondary victory condition a hex in the South/South East and if you want to setup a proximity based counter attack trigger, set 2, one to the west of the hex and one to the north so that it will get triggered if someone bypasses the south and loops down on it from the North like I did. Had that happened, yes it would have been fun, as I'd been scrambling to complete take the hex AND eliminate the counter attack force.

I participated in the tests, played this scenario twice.
Everything was ok for me
I distributed all the units evenly from the north to the south of the map and systematically occupied the area approaching Voronezh.
It wouldn't have occurred to me that someone could fool the game by deploying units in the north and attacking only that way.
I'm sorry that I tested this game so badly. (I'm serious)

It reminds me of one of the Morning Sun's scenarios.
If you didn't capture one of the cities, a strong Chinese counterattack didn't take place, then you had to take all the targets and had to take THIS city at the end.
I remember that fact because I discovered this possibility - it seems to me it hasn't been repaired until now.
Unfortunately, time passes, we don't become younger, and the eyesight and mind aren't the same as 2 years ago ...

Honestly, if the game is based on triggers then we must be prepared for such errors.

Kverdon, sign up for beta testing, someone so observant and clever would be valuable support.

kondi754 wrote:
Kverdon, sign up for beta testing, someone so observant and clever would be valuable support.

Good advice.

kondi754 wrote: Kverdon, sign up for beta testing, someone so observant and clever would be valuable support.

I agree. It may also alleviate some frustration as I can honestly say the effort that went into Scenario testing from both testers and Devs was immense.

The problems as I see them however were timescales resulting from the need for a pre Christmas release (totally understandable, we need The Devs to cover their costs and continue to develop the OoB platform), and the aweful timing of the imposed Unity platform upgrade, which caused significant issues with stability and so distracted enormously from resources for testing.

On the subject of Unity, this is not the first time I have seen Unity screw games development, playing little heed to the impact of the timing or consequences of their platform upgrades and then charging to fix things more often than not.

steevodeevo wrote:

kondi754 wrote: Kverdon, sign up for beta testing, someone so observant and clever would be valuable support.

I agree. It may also alleviate some frustration as I can honestly say the effort that went into Scenario testing from both testers and Devs was immense.

The problems as I see them however were timescales resulting from the need for a pre Christmas release (totally understandable, we need The Devs to cover their costs and continue to develop the OoB platform), and the aweful timing of the imposed Unity platform upgrade, which caused significant issues with stability and so distracted enormously from resources for testing.

On the subject of Unity, this is not the first time I have seen Unity screw games development, playing little heed to the impact of the timing or consequences of their platform upgrades and then charging to fix things more often than not.

This ^^^ is a very good post.

Hello, I have just updated to 5.2.2 but in Voronez I still do not get the +2 points when finishing prior turn 28 and there is a question mark next to the objective. I ended at turn 20... Any idea why? Was this not supposed to be fixed?

Did you trigger the southern counter attack. Triggering the counter attack creates a new primary victory condition that it appears you also have to complete by turn 28 to get achieve success with that victory condition. Just completing the original primary victory conditions does not get you a completion as you have not completed the extra "hidden" victory condition.

FWIW, I did apply to be a beta tester in the past, I believe for Burma Road. I never received a response. I just thought that as an rather vocal critic of some of the ahistorical game decisions the developer(s) had made, they were not desirous of my feedback.

kverdon wrote:
FWIW, I did apply to be a beta tester in the past, I believe for Burma Road. I never received a response. I just thought that as an rather vocal critic of some of the ahistorical game decisions the developer(s) had made, they were not desirous of my feedback.

Not everybody can be a betatester every time. I seriously doubt that the devs cant handle criticism. They would be out of business otherwise. And there's constructive criticism propelling a project forward and there's passive-agressive ranting...soooo...yeah.

BTW, I fixed my frustrations with wargames by saving excessively. Every turn has its own save in OoB and I also quicksave a lot. Really a lot. This way, I can go back several turns and undo stuff. Saves a lot of nerves.

@Chapon: Yes, all of this will be fixed in a new autopatch. This DLC has added a ton of units, functionalities and a 64 bit upgrade all wedged into a very tight beta testing and production schedule at Slitherine by a small team supplying a niche market. I am repeating this because it is the truth.

kverdon wrote:Did you trigger the southern counter attack. Triggering the counter attack creates a new primary victory condition that it appears you also have to complete by turn 28 to get achieve success with that victory condition. Just completing the original primary victory conditions does not get you a completion as you have not completed the extra "hidden" victory condition.

FWIW, I did apply to be a beta tester in the past, I believe for Burma Road. I never received a response. I just thought that as an rather vocal critic of some of the ahistorical game decisions the developer(s) had made, they were not desirous of my feedback.

Hello, no, I went north and middle as the OP. If this is the case, then I must agree with the OP that this scenario is not very well designed. Just by looking at the map, there is not any reason to go south, yet there seems to be some hidden conditions requiring the player to do so. But it is just 2 points, not a big deal. I already have plenty unspent points and waiting for 1943 to spend them as I do not see any use for available rewards currently available.

kverdon wrote:Did you trigger the southern counter attack. Triggering the counter attack creates a new primary victory condition that it appears you also have to complete by turn 28 to get achieve success with that victory condition. Just completing the original primary victory conditions does not get you a completion as you have not completed the extra "hidden" victory condition.

FWIW, I did apply to be a beta tester in the past, I believe for Burma Road. I never received a response. I just thought that as an rather vocal critic of some of the ahistorical game decisions the developer(s) had made, they were not desirous of my feedback.

Hi,

FWIW, I did add you to the beta test for Burma Road and sent out a beta key to the registered email address

It might be worth checking that emails from us aren't being diverted to junk or the Promotions tab in Gmail (that's where I often find my mails get sent).

Thanks

kverdon wrote:Did you trigger the southern counter attack. Triggering the counter attack creates a new primary victory condition that it appears you also have to complete by turn 28 to get achieve success with that victory condition. Just completing the original primary victory conditions does not get you a completion as you have not completed the extra "hidden" victory condition.

FWIW, I did apply to be a beta tester in the past, I believe for Burma Road. I never received a response. I just thought that as an rather vocal critic of some of the ahistorical game decisions the developer(s) had made, they were not desirous of my feedback.

It seems to me that I am probably the biggest critic of OoB from the historical point of view, and I participate in all Beta tests and I think my contribution is even appreciated by devs.

Indeed, we greatly appreciate and encourage all constructive feedback on the scenarios

Thanks Shards, It does look like your email got swallowed by the Gmail Spam Monster. Sorry I missed out on that. I will definitely be tossing my hat in the ring for the next one though.

kverdon wrote:Thanks Shards, It does look like your email got swallowed by the Gmail Spam Monster. Sorry I missed out on that. I will definitely be tossing my hat in the ring for the next one though.

That's the spirit!