Objective Flag Values

[Suhiir]

While I agree the values of the objectives makes them somwhat less then useful, given the max value of objective hexes vs the unit costs in WinSPMBT, for determining victory they are VERY useful for scenarios vs the AI.

I've never sat down and worked out the exact corrilation but the AI looks at "distence to closest objective" and "point value of objective" to determine where to send its troops. So it may decide to temporarily bypass a nearby low point objective for a higher value one. This makes the AI a little less predictable for the player.

In player made scenarios you can use objective hexes to encourage the AI to take a certain path.

You can also use a cluster of objectives to encourage the AI to go to a certain area first.

[Jack_Dionne]

Having been an avid ASL player for 25 years now may I make some suggestion for alternate victory conditions?

First thing I should say is that ASL stands for Advanced Squad Leader and is a board game with the same top down view as SP and same unit scale but is entirely WWII.

There is literally hundreds of different Victory Conditions (VC) that different scenario designers will use. Here are a few examples:

The attacker wins by having more good order units within road boundary (as determined by map, the grid would be written out). If the attacker doesn’t have more good order units then the defender, the defender wins buy default. You can change the wording to Player 1 and Player 2 rather than attacker and defender.

The rule book for ASL also has an index with definitions of specific terms: Good order means any armed, unbroken unit not held in melee and any mobile armed AFV with functioning main armament.
Notice the word “mobile” in the sentence, this implies a vehicle which is not immobilized in any way.

Some people have been known to read between the lines when it comes to winning in ASL so scenario designers would have to modify the wording of VC as follows:
The attacker wins by having more good order infantry units within road boundary (as determined by map, the grid would be written out). In the special rules section of the scenario it would be clearly stated that crews may not voluntarily abandon their vehicles.

There is VC that can be two fold as well, another example: Player 1 must have more good order unit on any hill hex of Hill??? Without losing twice as many casualty victory points as player two.

I think this type of VC would work, what do you guys think?

[Lt. Ketch]

Originally Posted by Jack_Dionne

There is literally hundreds of different Victory Conditions (VC) that different scenario designers will use. Here are a few examples:

The attacker wins by having more good order units within road boundary (as determined by map, the grid would be written out). If the attacker doesn’t have more good order units then the defender, the defender wins buy default. You can change the wording to Player 1 and Player 2 rather than attacker and defender.

I think this type of VC would work, what do you guys think?

Those conditions could certainly make the game a lot more tactical and objective. The way I see it, such score could be possle in two different ways. Automatic and manual. If automatic (built into the code) I would hate to see the coding job needed to get the computer to understand them, so it may not be a viable option.

As Imp as shown, however, there are manual scoring options available which stress the importance of objectives (which explains why he's not trying to advance any furture in our game. Crap, I'm got to go in after him! Sorry. Tangent.) So it could be incorperated into a spreadsheet and manually counted, as I guess it is done in ASL. That has a potential of being time intensive however.

If such scoring could be done, I personally would care to have the option of switching it off. Some games should be simple, but other games are a lot more fun with some context/specific goals. Again, it might require miles and miles of code that Don and Andy will never agree to doing (and I wouldn't blame them.)

[Jack_Dionne]

I think just physically counting isn't that time consuming and if there is a disagreement with the count just post a screen shot for a neutral third party.