Jump to content

MBT from GMT games


Red2112

Recommended Posts

Another fun alternative:

 

ONLY occupy crew positions in the Commander's or XO's vehicle. The majority of the mission will still be played using the map, but it forces you to consider where your two most experienced Officers should be placed "on the ground." While the AI will still do most of the crew-level work, this gives you, as the Commander, a way to "directly participate in the fight" (because planning, refining, and supervising the execution of the entire scenario just isn't enough. ;)) I count it as a decent approximation of a seasoned Officer acting as a force multiplier.

 

To take this idea even further, establish a Succession of Command, and have the scenario end if these leaders' vehicles are destroyed. You could also do this with the enemy as well, making targeting, and protecting C2 an important concept. Suddenly, your BN CDR's tank is more than just another 120mm cannon. B|

 

Just some ideas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I imagine what you prefer in dedicated wargames like Combat Mission is the fact that the user interface and pacing of those kinds of simulations are designed for a different user experience. Steel Beasts combines simulation with wargame in continuous time, there is a different feel to it.

 

In Combat Mission for example, you can take your time, pause the battle, switch camera positions, and so on. In addition, representations of distance and line of sight is different, you can see what's coming at you from a distance and plan accordingly. Doesn't work that way with Steel Beasts, because the 3D terrain is much, much more complex, and what's killing you is often beyond visual representation or distances and line of sight can be more difficult to gauge visually, so losing a lot of units in short time from several kilometers away doesn't give the same  feel that you are in control of the situation. By and large a battlefield looks very flat in boardgames and wargames other than in Steel Beasts, distances and lines of sight are more abstracted as such, so you worry more about the bigger picture more than whether a pixel of a unit is exposed enough to be seen from 2km away or something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think one factor that separates Steel Beasts from most other wargames is the fact that you must create a plan prior to execution to have a reliable chance of success. I've found that in other games you can generally "fake it" a lot more than you can in Steel Beasts. 

 

For example, in Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, you can generally just have your forces move cautiously to a meeting engagement, and then decide what you want to do, due to the whole concept of turns. In Steel Beasts, heading into a meeting engagement without a basic plan usually ends in a slaughter, and not the good kind.

 

Steel Beasts, being real time, doesn't give you the "accustomed" amount of time to think. You can pause the game, but even then you can't manipulate your units except in real time. Personally, I enjoy this. 

Edited by Mirzayev
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do understand that the Steel Beasts model is more realistic from a battlefield command perspective.  For fun tonight I threw Guard the Lake into the editor, swapped all the blufor out to Canadian vehicles, and tried to command from the cupola as suggested.   I generally had a pretty good time, though I did end up with a few units driving themselves into rivers and swamps for no apparent reason, the path finding leaves a little to be desired compared to micromanaging like you can do hopping around or in a Combat Mission game.  

 

I would say that the experience was fun but also very different from playing something like Combat Mission Shock Force or Black Sea.  It was more realistic in your limited 'gods' view and the problems of delayed updates, disabled radios, and a bit more frantic trying to keep situational awareness and adapt to the evolving situation.  On the other hand I still think Combat Mission or something similar is better for visualizing how tactics are supposed to work sand table style.  You can take your time watching the replays of your turns in Combat Mission, you can micromanage and make sure your tanks and troops get into good fighting positions one at a time without the game flying past you, etc.  You can sit back a bit and enjoy watching the individual duels etc.   The replay feature in Steel Beasts is good for some of this too I think.  Anyway, I definitely had a fun time, you guys might have convinced me to try something similar with an even bigger scenario, maybe a Battalion or something next.  Not going to stop playing Combat Mission or board games tho!

Edited by rykirk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

More than happy for you to keep using CM (and its variants).

 

All I can say is that we here in Aust use SB mainly as a "constructive sim" to test student's plans on various courses (SGTs aspiring to be WOs, LTs aspiring to be MAJs, MAJs aspiring to be LTCOLs as well as on our Combat Officers Advanced Course - for Combat Teams commanders).

 

So it gets quite a workout as a digital sand table. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
35 minutes ago, rykirk said:

It was more realistic in your limited 'gods' view and the problems of delayed updates, disabled radios, and a bit more frantic trying to keep situational awareness and adapt to the evolving situation.

 

Try out the option for the bird's eye camera (must be enabled in the Mission Editor's Options menu). From the external observer's position, hit F8 again. Press middle mouse button and drag to tilt the camera view. Pan the view by holding the right mouse button and dragging the view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree the hex movement constraints and limited 3D prespective in a boardgame gives one a different thought, it´s more about planing, odds and a bit of dice roll luck.  Of course it´s all about moving counters too :D You worry about supply, HQ´s and how units support each other, It´s just a bit more obvious in a board game I think.  You have a different sense of time and difficulty to do things.

 

It has to do more with working with the map as in reality. Most times you work out the map/sat pictures beacuse on most missions you don´t have the chance to be there or see how the terrain is, for that a boardgame captures more the sense of making yourself a mental picture of what you will find there once you get there and what tactic is more appropriate for the terrain and/or units found there right on the board, with variable outcomes with the opsfor.  Iam not saying you can´t do that with SB, what Iam saying is that with a boardgame you are forced to think/do it that way. Two tools that both work, just different.

 

Iam waiting on a copy of Tac Air to arrive next week, another Avalon Hill classic. It has to do more with combined arms and the big picture.  Video quality is not too good but the idea is there...

 

 

 

 

 

Care!

Edited by Red2112
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I play SB almost exclusively like I play Combat Mission now.  With external and overhead views enabled, its in many ways a better tactical game than CM and has the potential to be overall better with a few features added.

 

I have MBT and IDF from when they were originally released and every now and then I take them out to see if I could get into them again.  But I really can't see why you would put up with all the table searching and realism concessions when you have SB, or even CM.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

dice rolling is also a mini game onto itself: rolling dice has an inherent tension that a simulation doesn't have, whether it's monopoly, or dungeons and dragons or whatever, rolling to see if you hit or miss a critical number has something to it to psychology draw people in, precisely because it's abstract and random; the same can also be said for drawing cards, i think it's the tension of the unknown. this isn't to say realistic simulations don't have tension, but it's different, it's not the same as rolling dice or these kinds of gamey mechanics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes dice can make or break your session.  Restrictions too, if you can not move due to a chit pull against you, thus not getting to go ahead with your plan, time (turn) can make you desperate!  Yeah I know there´s alot of that in SB too, you get hit on a track and can´t move but still have your turret operative, among other drawbacks on the battle field.  It´s just different to me, there just two different "Beast" :D

 

I don´t have the above Volcano, but I do have "Gato Leader" from DVG. BTW theres B-17 from DVG that was in kickstart last year and is on it´s way to stores the following months.  With Warfighter, you now have a pay module for Tabletop Simulator on Steam.  You can also find a free module of "Silent Victory" in the Steam Workshop of Tabletop Simulator.

Edited by Red2112
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey nice to know that dpabrams!  Nice work indeed!  Could you provide me with M2A3 or a M1A1 for my avatar ?  I could not find a clean second edition counter image on the web!  I don´t own the second edition or I would have taken a snap-shot!  So my guess is that you play LnL Heroes of Stalingrad (Matrix edition) for PC too?  I do, and there´s some cool mods too over at the Matrix forum.

 

Nice to see some boardgame talent around here too! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I too love board wargames (really all wargames platforms) and have been wargaming for over 40+ years. I love that Steelbeasts is not just a   tank Sim but is also a wargame. I like to be a company or bn commander and then jump down to the track. Its a good leadership simulator in that respect. My son is an infantryman and currently in ROTC at college. Our little SB group are in the midst of a  multi-mission campaign. We pass all the planning materials to my son and his ROTC group does the planning and feeds us back the missions, which we execute. Its completely cool.

 

I was happy to find a map in the downloads section that is from Central Georgia. (#Tskhinvali_d3). This area matches up perfectly with the central section of the Georgia map in DCS (Eagle Dynamics Digital Combat Simulator _Flight_). I have verified that within DCS and SB the areas are close enough together that we can fly operations in DCS and conduct Ground operations in SB. (DCS is similar to SB in that you can conduct a whole campaign ground and air within the sim, obviously the ground campaign (using the Combined Arms mod) is not at the same level as SB).

 

So we already have a full on campaign we have been fighting in DCS since October. We can fight the air campaign in DCS and depending on results translate these results in a SB ground campaign . (Results can give the ground commander additional air strikes, pre-eliminate ground forces, etc etc) Tracking everything on an overall map similar to a  board war-game campaign helps tie things together.

 

It is a good time to be a wargamer....

 

Los

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In a similar way that´s what some people (myself) want to do with with Tac Air and MBT first edition, since the scale between both is similar.  There´s even a chance to use "Flight Leader" (Avalon Hill) for air tasking. I recived Tac Air today, so on to some rules first. Yes it would be nice to see how a game play is set-up.  Do you lay out ground units in DCS CA to have a general view and then do the actual recon/combat in SB?

Edited by Red2112
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...