Do you prefer frontlines or the old zone system?

[I WUB PUGS]

But why bother fighting for something if it doesn't reward you?

I get that it rewards you for you know, giving you access to the damn crossroads, but this is a game and must be designed for.............wait for it..........

































Gamers.

 

[Protosszocker]

Its been discussed before.

You keep your frontline but you have capture points on the map that probably aren't at all like the cap zones of Wargame, but more like areas like crossroads and important buildings or heights that give more income bonuses. The point is to direct the fighting at important places without having the stupid CV's. You just push your frontline in that direction. This mitigates the present game design which is "I have 51% of the hedgerows, surely this makes me der Gröfaz" resulting in a win even though you did nothing but grind for some fuggin bushes.

We need more game modes thats for sure. This one is a really nice way to go. Also an offens vs deffens mod or a ambush mode or so where one player has to get units trough to the other end of the map and capture a point. We really need some variaty. Destruction is unplayable and Conquest is good and makes every game a bit different because you can fight everywhere on a map but it doesnt make the maps unique. Would be cool if oyu have the objectives like getting controlll over a town.

 

[Karelian]

A system where certain logically selected areas of the map give more Conquest points than rest of the map would be a perfect mix of old and new.

Frontline should also appear only after a certain period of time, so that it wouldn't provide free intel of initial enemy movements.

 

[Rojan]

People really push this free knowledge of enemy movements meme. Recon doesn't move the line, two man teams don't move the line. Not once has the line given away a crucial attack I was executing. It might sound important or spooky in theory but in game it makes no impact.

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Frontline is fine.

Fighting over hedgerows becomes droll. Focus it on key points. Even have them randomized, but I'm not gonna hold my breath on getting anything interesting.

 

[Karelian]

Sneaking around is certainly possible and useful, even mandatory. Major surprise flanking attacks in the beginning are not.

If a strong force is not pushing the line much at the start, the enemy has a sizable force in the way. If your lone flank picket unit isn't enough to stop the frontline at that sector, the enemy is out there in force.

Frontline is better gameplay mechanic than static zones of ALB vintage, but it could still use refinement.

 

[Rojan]

Frontline is fine.

Fighting over hedgerows becomes droll. Focus it on key points. Even have them randomized, but I'm not gonna hold my breath on getting anything interesting.

There's nothing stopping you from pushing an area that you want to fight over. I force the engagement on my opponent and make them fight where I want them to be. I try different places on different maps and matches. I like that it is more dynamic this way than any procedural generation or randomized selection could be. The hedgerows being dull is just due to the setting. I like it but I know others don't.

 

[Crotou]

Its been discussed before.

You keep your frontline but you have capture points on the map that probably aren't at all like the cap zones of Wargame, but more like areas like crossroads and important buildings or heights that give more income bonuses. The point is to direct the fighting at important places without having the stupid CV's. You just push your frontline in that direction. This mitigates the present game design which is "I have 51% of the hedgerows, surely this makes me der Gröfaz" resulting in a win even though you did nothing but grind for some fuggin bushes.

The very first Conquest mode that appeared in WEE was basically something like this. And it was the best gamemode ever in the entire Wargame series.

 

[Fade2Gray]

The very first Conquest mode that appeared in WEE was basically something like this. And it was the best gamemode ever in the entire Wargame series.

Pity it resulted in crazy VAB rushes and it ended super fast. It was a horrible mode for playing, and thankfully died with EE. Rushing for all those "dots" was terrible.

 

[Crotou]

Pity it resulted in crazy VAB rushes and it ended super fast. It was a horrible mode for playing, and thankfully died with EE. Rushing for all those "dots" was terrible.

It's painful to read such statements in 2017 when we know for years all you had to do is change a little bit the parameters to avoid such rushes.

40 min game with all but 3 circles to hold and you had the best games you could hope for a Wargame.

It died with EE because 1) at that time, a big part of the community cherished Destruction mode and didn't want to really try the Conquest mode (how many "big" players tried it one or two times with basics settings and then calling it a spam-rush fest and demeaning it until today ?). The community felt way more comfortable with the camping-arty -sometimes mass Pact chopper- fest we enjoyed everyday. (Some guys like @Drrty-D even found the circles ugly, because, yeah, all the distorded zones look really better ). And 2), Eugen started developing ALB way before that gamemode was added and seeing it was not well received, it was sent to the bin in favor of an awful Economy 2.0 gamemode.

 

[Fade2Gray]

Some people have some rose tinted glasses on for that original conquest mode. Why I do not know, but it died as it rightfully deserved to. It was a disaster and painful to play, and only helped to reinforce the cancer that is destruction. The only thing worse than it was siege, and thank goodness that mode died as well. Mercifully conquest evolved into so much better, and it stuck around for 2 games.

Strange how some people thought that it was just a "simple matter of tweaking paramaters" and suddenly it was better. Oh well, sometimes I look back on painful moments of my military service and think it wasn't so bad as well.

 

[Protosszocker]

Some people have some rose tinted glasses on for that original conquest mode. Why I do not know, but it died as it rightfully deserved to. It was a disaster and painful to play, and only helped to reinforce the cancer that is destruction. The only thing worse than it was siege, and thank goodness that mode died as well. Mercifully conquest evolved into so much better, and it stuck around for 2 games.

Strange how some people thought that it was just a "simple matter of tweaking paramaters" and suddenly it was better. Oh well, sometimes I look back on painful moments of my military service and think it wasn't so bad as well.

Still some more game modes would be nice. Even though you and most of us will not like them more then conquest, some one will and also its always good to have some variety .

 

[Karlburg]

Honestly the intel thing is overblown- yes, you see if your opponent is pushing where you are not, but you already take a massive penalty in territory loss to see that. It's still a real challenge because the whole map matters where in wargame conquest, a lot of the map simply doesn't matter so it just ends up being a sneak zone.

 

[Crotou]

Strange how some people thought that it was just a "simple matter of tweaking paramaters" and suddenly it was better.

Yeah, so you don't know what you are talking about.

(You sound like a trumpist talking about Obamacare. Sad!)

 

[Archonsod]

This mitigates the present game design which is "I have 51% of the hedgerows, surely this makes me der Gröfaz" resulting in a win even though you did nothing but grind for some fuggin bushes.

To be fair though "nothing but grind for some fuggin bushes" would be a fairly accurate summary of '44 for the Allies

Capture points should be redundant. Roads are useful because they allow rapid deployment or redeployment of your forces, so in theory at least Crossroads are already important because controlling them is beneficial, whether you stick an arbitrary flag on it or not. Similarly buildings are good because they provide protection for infantry, so controlling a town is likewise already a fairly good idea, it doesn't really need anything more.

For me I prefer the frontline system, however I do think the maps we have at the moment are for the most part a bit too similar. I'd like to see how it performs on a wider variety of terrain.

 

[jammiebadger]

that you start ticking/winning automatically, without investing 100+ points on otherwise useless units like in wargame? No longer is there a balance between points invested now and a conquest advantage later to consider. Everything just feeds straight into air or the frontline.

Sure but then CV sniping and helo rushing isn't exactly cerebral play and yet its fairly effective, not a problem with Steel division so i'm not wedded to the idea of CV's capping zones which is a bit gamey anyway

who knows. We only have the playerbase to turn to as the measure of a good design. The mechanic itself would work quite well in something set in WW1, as would practically everything else about SD.
.

The sad fact is that Warfare in WW2 did bog down all to often into a grind where gains were measured in hundreds of meters at most and every one of those meters was paid for in blood, i won't bore you with too much details but battles like Stalingrad, Anzio, El Alemein, Monte Cassino and indeed Normandy were all good examples of brutal attritional battles which occurred before a final breakthrough or surrender occurred.

That said steel division phase mechanics means that some divisions can blitz heavy gains in the early phases while others come on strong in the later phases so i would dispute the idea that all games in steel division break down into bloody deadlock, that's more a function of the playerbase and possibly game mode ie destruction being the root of that problem. My only reservation with this system is that no one really knows whether its well balanced as the data to prove or disprove this isn't exactly easy to process and analyse and i'm sure if it was available people would still argue over it.

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

Capture points should be redundant. Roads are useful because they allow rapid deployment or redeployment of your forces, so in theory at least Crossroads are already important because controlling them is beneficial, whether you stick an arbitrary flag on it or not. Similarly buildings are good because they provide protection for infantry, so controlling a town is likewise already a fairly good idea, it doesn't really need anything more.

Exactly.
Strategical objectives like harbors or airfields decide the location of the engagement (the map, in this case). All objectives below that level (roads, small towns, bridges) provide similar advantages to their real world counterparts and are therefore high priority targets for players anyway. But unlike in Wargame, there is no point in holding any crossroads if it is completely cut of from the rest of your forces.

 

[Schwarz-W-R]

I didn´t played Wargame but I like at the SD system that you have to build a real front instead of sending just all units in 1-3 locations. In real war you had also to watch out that your front wasn´t penetrated by enemy units or got pushed back. Also it´s more interesting because you have much more options to win a game by choosing a specific spot to attack.
On the other hand I agree with you that it´s sometimes maybe a bit more interesting to have in addition some hotspots that gain more attention while both players know this.

At the end I`m not sure if a mixed system as addition to the actual system would be an improvment. It shouldn´t give so much points that keeping map advantage gets useless while still beeing enough attractive to get enough attention. If the blance would be good I would enjoy it I think.

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

I didn´t played Wargame but I like at the SD system that you have to build a real front instead of sending just all units in 1-3 locations. In real war you had also to watch out that your front wasn´t penetrated by enemy units or got pushed back.

OK, let me explain Wargame to you to get a rough idea about what you missed out on:
90% of my wins where due to sneaking an autocannon recon unit into the enemy deployment zone and obliterating everything there (in WG you cannot call in reinforcements without holding a deployment zone) while the enemy was busy throwing all of their units at two or three tiny capture zones.
So yeah, if they were to bring that back in any capacity, they should be reaaaaaally careful to get it right.

 

[nande]

OK, let me explain Wargame to you

90% of my wins where due to sneaking an autocannon recon unit into the enemy deployment zone

uhh...