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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Proposal for turn timeslicing system (ticks)
I have here first shot at a timeslicing system. Rather than refine it further, I thought I would present it and see what people think. Although I intentionally kept it somewhat simplistic, it may already be too complicated. That's one thing I would like People's input on. The thing I am really concerned about with this one is that the player won't always know whether they can move a TF to a particular square on a given turn without a substantial amount of calculation. One option of course is to just have the player try it and see if the move bounces, but that seems too cavalier. Anyway...
This system is designed so you can tell which TF does what, when and where. The result should be a rough mimicking of what would happen in actual continuous movements system, without much of the overhead involved. The basic idea is that each turn is divided into 10 ticks. Each action that a task force might undertake will have a cost in ticks, and when that cost is paid the unit will complete the action. This regimentation makes it possible to determine when reserves reach an area where combat is going to, or is likely to occur. I'll try and provide a quick example at the bottom. Note that it will occasionally be possible for experienced/hardened units to "break the rules" and squeeze in a few extra ticks per turn when the situation is sufficiently desperate.
Some of the more extreme actions take more than a turn worth of ticks. It's my intention that if orders are given, and not changed, then ticks can be saved up to achieve an action. This is true for even actions with much lower tick costs if they were "cut off" by the turn boundary. We will see how this works in practice. Additionally we need some mechanism to make sure TFs that happen to complete their movement actions on the same tick can't 'teleport' thru each other without ever covering the intervening space. This will be relatively easy to put in, we just need to decide on some specifics for implementations.
Mostly what I have so far relates to movement, although there is some other stuff. I think the system I have may already be too complicated, so ideas on how to simplify it with out losing the big effects are very welcome. All the tick costs below are additive. You just take all the relevant modifiers that apply and some them together. For each area I will list either the based tick costs or modifier, followed by a description that will hopefully clue you and is to what I'm talking about  .
Basic terrain types
4 Flat (Grassland, steppe, flat desert)
6 Hills/Broken
10 Mountainous
- 1 Dirt Road
- 2 Hard Road (perhaps this bonus should only be for motorized vehicles)
+ 2 Obstructed Movement (Swamp, Jungle, Forest)
- 1 Any Type of Road through Obstructed Terrain Gives This Additional Bonus
+ 1 Cautious Advance (digging in every night, careful to always have scouts well in advance...)
+1 to +3 Artillery or other very slow movement item in TF
+1 to +4 Foraging for food (depending upon availability)
+1 to +4 Construct field fortifications (diminishing returns with more time spent)
+1 to +3 Flight Battle (normally on the low end of this)
+1 to +3 Pillage (depending on how much there is to wreck, somewhat diminishing returns)
+1 to Forever... Besiege
I will rely on the military guys to better specify especially the numbers that are given as ranges of tick costs.
All these modifiers assume movement across a square side. (At least the ones that are movement-oriented) for a diagonal move the tick cost is obtained by multiplying by 3/2 and rounding down.
Simple Examples
movement over flat land (4) with a dirt road (-1) with prepositioned supplies (+ 0) -- costs 3 ticks
movement in hilly (6), forested terrain (+ 2) while foraging (say + 2) -- costs 10 ticks
Example:
An ancient invasion. I can't come up with reasonable specifics right now because I'm under time pressure and want to post this, so I will just give a bland example for now. Let's say that a force from Carthage has invaded Roman territory. The Carthaginians, being low on food, and thinking there is no Roman army nearby, split up in order to forage more effectively. The two armies are in adjacent squares. The Roman army has been lucky enough to find out about this, and is going to attempt to attack the forces while they are divided. Let's say the Carthaginians have split evenly into the two forces, and that the Roman forces are equal in combat strength to the combined Carthaginians forces. Let's assume everything happens on Grassland with no roads and that the Romans have prepositioned supplies. We begin with the Carthaginians having split off, but having not yet forage for food. The Romans are in a square directly to the south of one of the Carthaginians TFs (on the right). We start the turn there.
Tick 1
both Carthaginians groups began to forage, they will be done at the end of tick 2
the Romans begin their movement into the Carthaginians square to the right, they will get there on tick 4
tick 2
both Carthaginians groups finish foraging, they are now set for food until the end of the turn.
Tick 3
Carthaginian group on the left begins moving into square on the right to reunite the armies, this takes 4 ticks, so they will arrive at the end of tick 6 (at this point they don't know the Romans are there) Carthaginian group to the right continues to forage waiting for the other group to return.
tick 4
Romans arrive in Carthaginian right square at the end of tick 4.
Tick 5
Square on Right Goes into Battle Mode. I think it's fair to say under these circumstances that the Romans will attempt to engage, and that the Carthaginians will attempt to delay or even withdraw in the direction of their compatriots. But the interesting point about the tick system here, is that if the battle were actually fought, we would know when the reserves would be showing up...
however, this isn't the battle module, so I'm not going to worry about what actually happens in the battle. All the tick system knows is that certain parts of the battle will take a certain length of ticks.
tick 6
at the end of tick 6 carthaginian 'left' shows up. This is either in the nick of time, or too late, depending how things have gone in the battle.
One other point... had the Carthaginian left square force been involved in some longer activity, it would have received word that a battle was imminent only when the Carthaginian right square forces detected the Roman's presence. The AI would then have to decide whether its mission were sufficiently important to go ahead, or whether its mission should be interrupted so it could attempt to support the Carthaginian right. In any case, I think we can assume that notification on an impending battle occurs on the tick after the discovery of enemy forces. That's because the messengers can move much faster than armies can, but without modern communications it would still take some time. For modern times with good communications, the notification would be instantaneous.
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited March 01, 2000).]
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Lord God Jinnai
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St. Louis
Sep 1999
time: 23:13
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Although I usuaally read the posts here I leave the comments alone. However today I have some things on your way of handling ticks to propose.
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This system is designed so you can tell which TF does what, when and where. The result should be a rough mimicking of what would happen in actual continuous movements system, without much of the overhead involved. The basic idea is that each turn is divided into 10 ticks. Each action that a task force might undertake will have a cost in ticks, and went back cost is paid the unit will complete the action. This regimentation makes it possible to determine when reserves reach an area where combat Hans, or is likely to occur. I'll try and provide a quick example at the bottom. Note that it will occasionally be possible for experienced/hardened units to "break the rules" and squeeze in a few extra ticks per turn when so ordered. Some of the more extreme actions take more than a turn worth of ticks. It's my intention that if orders are given, and not changed, then ticks can be saved up to achieve an action. This is true for even actions with much lower tick costs if they were "cutoff" by the turn boundary. We will see how this works in practice.
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Ticks I'm assuming represent time from all the discussions so therefore you shouldn't be able to save up an infinitate amount of ticks, and in fact, not too many at all. Probably 5 is the most. Another thing is that you should also do is have a 2:1 coversion ratio so that 2 unused ticks will convert only to 1 unused tick.
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Basic terrain types
4 Flat (Grassland, steppe, flat desert)
6 Hills/Broken
10 Mountainous
- 1 Dirt Road
- 2 Hard Road
+ 2 Obstructed Movement (Swamp, Jungle, Forest)
- 1 Any Type of Road through Obstructed Terrain Gives This Additional Bonus
+ 1 Cautious Advance (digging in every night, careful to always have scouts well in advance...)
+1 to +3 Artillery or other very slow movement item in TF
+1 to +4 Foraging for food (depending upon availability)
+1 to +4 Construct field fortifications (diminishing returns with more time spent)
+1 to +3 Flight Battle (normally on the low end of this)
+1 to +3 Pillage (depending on how much there is to wreck, somewhat diminishing returns)
+1 to Forever... Besiege
-----
You should also have something for forced marches or something to increase speed (less ticks) if ur also using the opposite (cautious approach).
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Harlikwin
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Mark:
The tic system sounds good, though I am not clear on how long a turn is but I suppose it isn't too important.
A few things here. Way the unit sytem is set up we do have actual movment rates for the TF based on the slowest unit (artillery for ex.) this could probably be converted directly to a tic modifier for the said TF.
Second, the battle module is currently set up without defining how long it actually takes due to the semi-random nature of the system, if a general gets lucky he could move through the phases with relative ease, if not it could take many phases. What we could do is determine a conversion factor of total number of phases used and what that would be in tics.
Also FYI the big hurdle has been crossed, I mainled Kerenske the assult phase model (which is pretty big) a few days ago, hopefully he will get back to me with his thoughts on the formulas et al. And it can be posted on his site. Also I will be mailing him the last phase (withdrawl) in a day or two. So hopefully it can all be up within the next week.
-Harli
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Krenske
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Hi everyone,
Yes I did receive your Email, Harli, Guess what I only opened it today! Why ? I just spent 4 days in bed recovering from an alergic reaction to some immunisation shots that I needed for an upcoming trip to africa. I will try to get the pages put together and posted somepoint today or tomorrow.
Yours
Paul Krenske
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LOGO
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Aug 1999
time: 05:13
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Some thoughts on ticks,
A special moral case could provide a slight benefit to the movement, especially when moving over a short area. Maybe we could give the player a "free" forced march when, say, your going towards your final assault on the capital city after 5 years of war. Or the Carthage army troops could be motivated to save their comrades and move very fast without complaining about how their tired.
Or even a huge win could ad just a little spring in the unit's step.
I think the idea on forced marches should be a little bit more complex though, here are some different speeds:
comfortable (+2) This would be useful for a army that has just had an extreme amount of action and is not presently needed but has to be moved. This would allow them to move slower and rest longer, this would boost overall troop Moral (as long as they aren't doing this while there's a major battle that they should be at) and increase their health (I don't think there is a link between the disease model and the mil model, there should be though just look at W.W.I and the Flu). This might not be needed, thoughts?
Cautious advance (+1 or +2) obvious, but there could be different amounts, for example you could send you troops and set them for +2 when you know almost for certain they will be attacked yet you don't know where and your own scouting abilities are lacking, this would allow your force to respond very quickly, but doing this for prolonged amounts of time may lower moral as troops become frustrated always being on the highest alert.
Regular (+0) obvious
Accelerated (-1) less sleep, a little quicker pace, minor moral change unless overdone, lower readiness and lower scouting ability,
High acceleration (-2) when in crisis, only really feasible if going a place for a reason, very bad for moral when used for long amounts of time, disease can be spread for long amounts of time, extremely susceptible to ambushes and some types of guerilla warfare, easy to pick up, lower combat effectiveness when attacking directly after the march
Extreme acceleration (-3) absolute sprint, absolutely impossible for more then a certain amount of time, everything that happens with high execration only doubled, only possible when troops have some kind of reason (or are extremely loyal)
all these systems are towards, obviously a tank wouldn't have the same kind of reactions but we can do those vehicles later. We remember we want the player to use regular most of the time! We can also add in things like mechanical malfunctions when troops are pushed too hard (e.g. M-16s not being properly cleaned in Vietnam)
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Krenske
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Logo,
Their is nothing truly stopping Leaders being takeninto account at the individual unit level. The reason we haven't is that it appears to be a good way of interfacing with the Character model. It is assumed that the number of available characters will not be greater than 100 or so. (?) Having 1 per unit may not fit that model.
Of course the option is there to have the Command staff of the Unit modelled as various values with small random changes over time (representing the changeover of staff).
I believe that small special operations are best considered outside of a general combat model. But I agree stealth should be modelled , possibly at some tech level new special abilities become available to elements. This ability could carry a stealth value that acts as a modifier on the oppositions scouting chance. I imagine it should be fairly expensive to stealth a ground military unit as most of the detection and identification of ground units is done visually.
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LOGO
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Aug 1999
time: 05:13
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I think I agree that we can't have a thousand charactors in this game, and sertainly naming someone as col. or something is micromanagement to the extreme. Maybe we could have an overall idea about training and intelligence of the unit comanders or even officers in general (not counting the actual Generals who you'll know about each specificly). For example, if you allocate your resources to making millions of grunts and see that the people who should lead your army should just be veteran grunts then that will do something. But if you invest in military academies and war colleges and spend much of your resouces on teaching your officers the art of war, along with giving them frequent war games should do something very different. There would be a few different ways to do this, first off building military academies and giving them resources. Second is use an idea i've thrown out a couple hundred time, a military docterine window, to allocate funding twoards war games and create an enviroment conducive to the type of officers you want. For example Iraq's officers were trained to fear Sadam and to do whatever he says without question, but once they were stranded they were unable to make decisions for them selves and surrenderd, on the other hand officers with a lot of freedom might just through a coupe or start a civil war. Along with that you could in that window control the type of tactics and strategies you want to fight with defaultly rather then have to click through all that stuff before a turn. I'm getting to much into interface so I'll stop.
About the stealth thing, the reason I was thinking of it was in the future (future meaning now-next twenty years) stealth of large scale land units will be more and more important. For example tanks with fiber-optic wires all over the body would make it almost invisible, a very powerful weapon. Or artillerie that can not be deteced by radar and has some kind of sound suppressor could really ruin an army's day. I don't think those types of stealth really work very well on the strategic level but they are extremely powerful on the tactical. Though I do agree with you that it is used so little in anciant times it should be a combat bonus.
I also agree that hard core spec-ops shouldn't be in the same realm as large armies. But I wasn't really talking about delta force/SEALS (unconventional warfare)but Rangers (smaller and more elite then regular forces but mostly conventional) I'm not that well versed in their use today so I'm not really sure what they'd go under.
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Krenske
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LOGO,
The Unit scale really bottoms out with approx 5 x 400 man elements. This is effectively a small brigade. Rangers and Commandos and occasionally even the SAS were fought in large formations but they were not able to translate their small unit unconventional sucess to the same degree on the larger scale. Effectively they just became well trained and sometimes highly experienced troops with good morale.
We could indeed include a couple of general leadership values that effect individual units. How though are we going to tie them to tactical and training doctrines. That is the question.
Initially we are looking at creating a standard model. We should be able to add to it fairly successfully later
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Harlikwin
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Logo,
Way I see things going with the charater model on the small scale is this: Things like military acadimeis, military spending on training etc will be included in the TF description. Currently I of the opinion that low level (under general) leaders can be be kinda lumped into the morale/experince of a unit. So a good leader would have a positive impact on morale and experince while a poor leader would result even good units a loss in morale (we hate this guy, F- him) as well as experince would go down, this would reflect the poor use of the troops (um, sarge why don't you go charge up that hill with all the entrenched enemy troops) rather than the troops being bad. This way it simplifies the number of things on the actual TF display. As for the interaction this will be on the level of the general commanding the TF.
As for stealth etc. Currently the model is designed to cope with history from ?? BC to 2000AD In terms of stealth I think it could probably factored into defense of the unit (if ya can't find me ya can't kill me) Also small unit actions (SEALS, Ranger etc) will be handeled speratley from this model.
anything else?
-Harli
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Good! it is important to stay out of the typical ever-increasing experience and morale prevalent in this type of game. Allowing experience and morale to decrease when losses (due to battle or retirement) are replaced with green troops, or when a leader sucks, will help keep play interesting.
It would be especially interesting if some of these factors are hidden form the player. The "official" morale and experience status would stay the same while the "true" levels drop. Only combat, or perhaps an mobilization exercise against a competant commander, would have a probability of revealing the negative leadership effect. But only a probability, because even the best leader sometimes makes a mistake, or is simply bested on the field by dumb luck.
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LOGO
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Aug 1999
time: 05:13
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Don don, you idea of your comanders lying to you is one that is being debated on the Charactor model (or should I say was being debated, nobody's been posting lately) under the idea of corruption. There are two sides, one that says corruption is a necisary part of the experience that would increase realism and another that the game would be broken when you can't trust your own information. I don't quite have an opinion, and the only real agreement each side has had is that if it was implemented it would be optional.
Also I don't quite understand what you meant by "dumb luck" there is a amount of randomness to ever battle in the model if that's what you mean.
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Harlikwin
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Ok, In terms of the general thing and the charter model there are really 2 options.
One, every general you have is a character. Problem with this is it might lead to too many charaters in the game.
Two, There are none to a few charaters that are generals, while the rest of the generals are modeled in a more limited way through the mil model. Naturally the charters should be better than the mil generals (or look that way) This keeps the number of charters down, but provides less choice in terms of who is commanding what.
Also on the "not knowing exactly how the military is doing" This is something I want modeled and I even have an Idea of how to do it. The point would be that you would have a rough idea of certain stats within a certain % depnding on techs. As for leader stats these would be random (to the player anyway) and the more the general got used the more concrete they would become (I do have a rough formula for that too) I'm pretty sure that this won't make demo 5 though...
-Harli
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LOGO
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Aug 1999
time: 05:13
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I'm sorry but how many TFs would be in the game at once? I'm having a tuff time putting the TF system in our context, for example would our army in Desert Storm be 1 TF or several? And what about our north African offensive?
There's an idea in the Charactor model that i've given and it has to do with advisors. The Advisors might be charactors so my idea was a sort of military window. Let's say your the US and you've decided to attack Iraq (there would be an advisor system helping you to decide if you should attack Iraq also) and you're really not in the mood to micro-manage. Well you could go to a military screen where you'd have all your top generals and they'd pitch different stratigic ideas, everything from the Gulf War like attack to Kosovo air attack to a vietnam to a nuclear attack. You'll be able to move between different strategies or even make you own (but put it in a general's hands to make it work) I don't know how feesible this system could be but if we could pull it off it would be fantastic. Any thoughts?
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Brian W
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Michigan
Mar 2000
time: 05:13
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Hello everyone. This looks like a very cool game and I would love to be a part in making it. I have emailed Mark Everson and he told me to introduce myself and to ask for an order of implementation. I could probably start working on something by Friday of this week. Thanks.
Brian W.
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Harlikwin
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Few things...
Logo:
The smallest character I would envision would be something like a 4 star, i.e. head of a TF (at the smallest scale) As for your earlier suggestion it would be great, but only if we can get the AI to do it. Currently the battle resoluition model is up in most of it's entirety, (I haven't heard from kerenske in a while but we shall finish it once I do)
As for new stuff. The next things that I would like to discuss would be: Supply, Guerilla warfare, SF implmentation... Stuff has been posted previously on these topics so I would advise people who have thoughts on them to go back in the fourms / pages and read what has been talked about so that we don't have to replicate a lot of arguments...
-Harli
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Harlikwin
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Brian
Welcome aboard...
I guess I detailed where I kinda want to go next in my previous post. However if you have something specific you want to do that I didn't mention let me know. Also if you have any thougths on the current battle resolution system (on kerske's webpage) let me know.
Logo:
TF's um, basically one or two per a geograpohic area. Ex, Desert storm would likely be one big TF (the hooking bit) and like one blocking TF. A place where you would have several TF's would be like WWII Russian front where you would have like 3-5 per side. (mainly for manouverability purposes) Ex: Army group center, south and north...
-Harli
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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quote:
Originally posted by Harlikwin on 03-29-2000 09:23 AM
TF's um, basically one or two per a geograpohic area. Ex, Desert storm would likely be one big TF (the hooking bit) and like one blocking TF. A place where you would have several TF's would be like WWII Russian front where you would have like 3-5 per side. (mainly for manouverability purposes) Ex: Army group center, south and north...
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Hmmmm... At the front level, this is a different conception from what I had. I'd envisioned something like 3 or 4 TFs under one commander would compose each army group (of which we'd have 3-5 for the Russian WWII front) Giving something like 15-20 TFs for a big front.
I agree that operationally there would be 3-5 army groups, but realistically the forces would be spread out over like 20 squares or the dispersions would be all wrong. So at a minimum we would need some patch to fix this problem. I think that could be worked out. We could assume the Army Group size TF has a ZOC or something to simulate forces that are actually in those other squares, but aren't shown for game mechanics purposes.
The more important problem I see is with fun. Players IMO will love to try encirlement strategies etc, and with a small number of TFs that aren't filling the whole 'front' this kind of thing will be much harder to pull off.
That said, your approach would almost certainly make the AI much easier to do, and reduce micromanagement if we can pull it off while still having max fun factor.
Thoughts from everyone on this Big issue?
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F_Smith
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Austin, Tx 78728
May 1999
time: 05:13
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Personally, I agree with Mark:
I would likely enjoy more units on a big front, from 10-20.
But otherwise, excellent model. Great object design (Taskforce, Unit, element), using both encapsulation and inheritance. Tight integration. Very, very good work.
You can go very far with this design.
Can I suggest one last layer of encapsulation?
Add to 'Element' a 'weapon' and 'armor' object? It would simplify some of the coding. Just a suggestion!
Again, good stuff.
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LOGO
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Aug 1999
time: 05:13
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Hi Brian welcome to the party 
A thing about TF's, I agree with both Mark's and Harli's points, though I do think Harli's system would be easier to manage but mark's might be a little bit more satifying. I'm trying to imagine what they would look like on the battle field but it's just not clicking, I don't think we should worry too much about it, this sounds like one of those problems we really need to try out and see which works better. I don't think 10-20 is at all a realistc number, and I think it might just become really stressful when you get that high, if I'm wrong tell me why (it happens so times )
Has Krenske put together a navel model yet? I remember we were putting off both air and naval until we had land.
A little thought, do we have anything in our model governing night fighting? It sounds pretty complex and I don't know if it really has a place but it did play a big role in several conflicts...
I was just thinking, I really didn't like civ. II's use of cruise missles at all. It made absolutly no sense to me why we'd have to go through the incredible micromanagement and unrealistc expense for such an unimportant weapon. I think it would be much easier if the "cruise missle" system be used only by a unit's weapons not individual (we could put the SCUD like launchers under a form of artilleria, this might drasticly effect the combat system, which cruise missles did do when they became a real weapon) Along with meduim range missles I think we need a real ICBM system, the best I can think of is one somewhat like the satelite warfare system in SMAC, thereby you can easily launch missles at targets and automaticly set a responce to launch back at enemy nations. We should also create Star Wars project to go along with that.
[This message has been edited by LOGO (edited March 30, 2000).]
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01-03-2000 04:15
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