Tactics, what is the point?

[Destroid]

That is usually what you would call a strategy game Awor.

 

[skuphundaku]

Amateurs study tactics, genuises (like you claim to be) study logistics, and gods like me study strategy, which is why I only play wargames.

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."

Your lack of recognition of the original quote is quite telling. Stop embarrassing yourself.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

That is usually what you would call a strategy game Awor.

No. This would be what I would call a cRPG that doesn't fail at the party management part.

Logistics are an extremely important part of adventurers. Food, extra clothing, shelter, ammunition and other supplies need to be carried to the action zone, wounded, loot, etc. need to be carried from the action zone to the base of operations.
Realistically, a successful adventuring party would probably own some wagons and hire guards, cooks, carriers, horses for them, would own or rent some kind of a magazine and housing for storing the items and personnel. All of it would cost and reduce the ultra-rich adventurer that doesn't know what to spend money on effect.

 

[tuluse]

Expeditions: Conquistador includes some of the logistics management you seek.

 

[Karmapowered]

Your lack of recognition of the original quote is quite telling. Stop embarrassing yourself.

Whatever actions of valor of this fine gentleman seem to be, should I feel embarassed ignoring that the finest Arts of War of Humanity would have suddenly been discovered by modern times officers that lost to "third world peasants" ?

Since US > * seems to be a trend, should I also perhaps acknowledge the absolute military genius in invasions of countries with sugar as weapons of mass destruction ?

There are admirable American officers worth being studied, and incidentally being quoted, in matters of logistics or others, but since my time is limited, I usually prefer to stick to the originals : de Jomini and von Clausewitz.

More importantly, who cares ? Whatever I wrote was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

I hope I didn't hurt your feelings, and we can get this thread back on track now.

 

[skuphundaku]

Your lack of recognition of the original quote is quite telling. Stop embarrassing yourself.

Whatever actions of valor of this fine gentleman seem to be, should I feel embarassed ignoring that the finest Arts of War of Humanity would have suddenly been discovered by modern times officers that lost to "third world peasants" ?

Since US > * seems to be a trend, should I also perhaps acknowledge the absolute military genius in invasions of countries with sugar as weapons of mass destruction ?

What does that have to do with anything? Ideas and principles have no nationality. I don't care how edgy and anti-american you are.

If you're trying to imply that the US military lost to "third world peasants", you are sorely mistaken and/or un/misinformed. The American defeats to "third world peasants" were/are a result of a lack of political will and lack of a clearly defined militarily achievable goal. If they wouldn't have hamstrung themselves on purpose, all those victorious underdogs wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in Hell.

I usually prefer to stick to the originals : de Jomini and von Clausewitz.

Well, you could go even further back and stick to Sun Tzu, but sticking to any such "originals" in modern times is a grave mistake because the battlefield changed massively since the time of Sun Tzu, and even from the time on von Clausewitz. Retaining some of the more general ideas coming from them is all well and good, but giving them more importance than they are due on the modern battlefield is going to get you, your men and everybody you're protecting dead as a door nail... and maybe even glowing in the dark a little.

 

[spectre]

That is usually what you would call a strategy game Awor.

Chill dude, it's Awor, his little world, his specific definitions nobody else recognizes

 

[Johannes]

That is usually what you would call a strategy game Awor.

Chill dude, it's Awor, his little world, his specific definitions nobody else recognizes

Not really, an RPG done well is still an RPG.

 

[Galdred]

I was wondering about it too, and I think it is mostly because RPG combat almost always lack some critical parts of tactical combat, that are implemented in games that could almost be considered RPG with good tactical combat (Jagged Alliance, XCom) :
Uncertainty and imperfect informations are critical parts of tactics, but they are usually absent (no fog of war in most RPG, which makes tactics bland, and turns it into puzzle solving). Uncertainty is usualy present (through randomness management), except from most tactical JRPG (and not having to take into accound a wide different possible outcome for each action drastically reduces the space of possibilities).
Another factor is that the maps are horribly small, and reloading does indeed turn tactics into puzzle solving (or RNG abusing), but on the other hand, many RPG are not really balanced around the player not reloading games.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

What does that have to do with anything? Ideas and principles have no nationality. I don't care how edgy and anti-american you are.

If you're trying to imply that the US military lost to "third world peasants", you are sorely mistaken and/or un/misinformed. The American defeats to "third world peasants" were/are a result of a lack of political will and lack of a clearly defined militarily achievable goal. If they wouldn't have hamstrung themselves on purpose, all those victorious underdogs wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in Hell.

It only proves the idiocy of the American government/command. They went to foreign countries with no idea what to do, they went to these countries without realising that achieving their goals (which weren't clearly defined in the first place) may require doing something which they have no political will to do (so, they have pursued unachievable goals). It's not something that one expects from a modern country.

Chill dude, it's Awor, his little world, his specific definitions nobody else recognizes

Yeah, I live in a special world where PnP RPG manuals have whole chapters on travel and survival, have tables dedicated to everyday use equipment and transport vehicles, have non-combat hirelings and followers, etc.
I guess everyone else's PnP RPG manuals got these chapters and tables removed so that they wouldn't be strategy games.

 

[Coriolanus]

Von Clausewitz is just fantasy, how he wanted to see the notion of total war but not the reality of "total war", or any type of warfare reality at any point in history - a post-traumatic, post-factum analysis from his Napoleon days; a classic book if you want to read about late-XIX, early-XX vision of "ideal warfare" and stuff that influenced the beginnings of the trainwreck that was WWI, but not really descriptive of what actually happened.

It only proves the idiocy of the American government/command. They went to foreign countries with no idea what to do, they went to these countries without realising that achieving their goals (which weren't clearly defined in the first place) may require doing something which they have no political will to do (so, they have pursued unachievable goals). It's not something that one expects from a modern country.

Yes. US keeps repeating its own mistakes, over and over again. Arrogance and misguided belief that brute force and money win guerilla/civil wars, it never changes.

 

[Karmapowered]

What does that have to do with anything? Ideas and principles have no nationality.

I am happy that you think so. I share this philosophy, but I also firmly believe that one should give credit where credit is due. Ideas have an originator. Principles are successfully used for the first time by someone. Some Californian hipsters might very well have thought, lived and breathed like Gandhi, it doesn't make them Gandhi. Nor does the career (and genuine actions of valor) of a Barrow make him an Eisenhower or a Mac Arthur (notice I didn't say Patton).

I don't care how edgy and anti-american you are.

It irks me that concepts that have been theorized, normalized, extensively applied and proven on European battlefields during the XIX century (if not before), should suddenly be credited to some (with all due respect, rather obscure) American modern times officers.

If that makes me anti-american, it's in your imagination.

I have utmost respect for the American soldiers that died to free Europe, and my stepson-to-be is American.

I just point out propaganda whenever I see it. Granted, I can't read Russian or Chinese, so feel free to correct me if it's practiced on a larger scale than I thought.

If you're trying to imply that the US military lost to "third world peasants", you are sorely mistaken and/or un/misinformed. The American defeats to "third world peasants" were/are a result of a lack of political will and lack of a clearly defined militarily achievable goal. If they wouldn't have hamstrung themselves on purpose, all those victorious underdogs wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in Hell.

Hey look, another revisionist, as if we were lacking of those on the Kodex. Sorry, but not going to follow you down to the cesspool on that one.

Well, you could go even further back and stick to Sun Tzu

I didn't go back to Sun Tzu on purpose :

1/ Sun Tzu is of kindergarten level, college level if you really must. You don't get any Kodex Kool points from me for mentioning him.

2/ Sun Tzu is a bit the Nostradamus of our modern times. While a lot of what he teaches remains valuable and true, it's easy to abuse his writings as a general prophecy about everything and anything ever devised or thought of in military matters.

3/ I think that logistics at the time of Sun Tzu are not to be interpreted in the same way that we interpret logistics nowadays. If logistics of our century have sharply improved compared to the logistics used during the Napoleonian or the Prussian wars, they still can be seen as their (technical) expansion or extrapolation, especially if you added everything learned by the Colonial powers of that time about naval warfare. Transport aircrafts still have to follow jets to supply them. Before you get on your high horse, notice that I am talking about *logistics* here.

but sticking to any such "originals" in modern times is a grave mistake because the battlefield changed massively since the time of Sun Tzu, and even from the time on von Clausewitz.

The purpose of my previous message post was not to discredit the message, but the alleged source.

Retaining some of the more general ideas coming from them is all well and good, but giving them more importance than they are due on the modern battlefield is going to get you, your men and everybody you're protecting dead as a door nail... and maybe even glowing in the dark a little.

That is precisely why the US (and the French) lost in Viet-Nam. The SU (and the US again) in Afghanistan. All the modern toys will do you no good if you don't master your fundamentals, and the fundamentals in matters of modern (military) logistics can not be credited to an American.

 

[Karmapowered]

Von Clausewitz is just fantasy

And here come the dummies to join the discussion.

Go and tell the Poles, the French, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Russians, etc. that suffered through the wars of the last century that von Clausewitz was a fantasy.

 

[Karmapowered]

Logistics are an extremely important part of adventurers. Food, extra clothing, shelter, ammunition and other supplies need to be carried to the action zone, wounded, loot, etc. need to be carried from the action zone to the base of operations.
Realistically, a successful adventuring party would probably own some wagons and hire guards, cooks, carriers, horses for them, would own or rent some kind of a magazine and housing for storing the items and personnel. All of it would cost and reduce the ultra-rich adventurer that doesn't know what to spend money on effect.

Chill dude, it's Awor, his little world, his specific definitions nobody else recognizes

I don't know what else is supposed to be included in the package, but so far it definitely sounds like a cRPG I would like to play.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I don't know what else is supposed to be included in the package, but so far it definitely sounds like a cRPG I would like to play.

AFAIK even OD&D had logistics. cRPGs are horribly backwards when it comes to that stuff.

 

[Karmapowered]

Yup.

I remember a waterskin being always the first item I would buy with my newbie coins in *every* MUD I used to play. Probably the same in our (A)D&D parties, even if I now think that (A)D&D aged pretty bad (for other reasons).

<AI> : regression since JA2
<Modding editor> : regression since NWN
...

But all is well, since we still have got Skyrim, right ?

 

[Logic_error]

I've been wondering this recently. As much as I enjoy RPGs with tactical movement and control of my characters, I rarely find the encounter design to support it.

Usually, you just have to figure out how to use your party of about 6 characters one way and that will let you sail through 95% of the game's combat. This is boring and time consuming, as many have noted in Expeditions: Cortez.

The promise of tactical combat is that the player will need to make some interesting choices during the battle. This happens so rarely that I'd almost consider it against most game designer's intentions.

So, as the title says, what is the point? Why should we care about any combat system, especially a turn-based one, that is essentially a task in micromanagement and baby-sitting?

I'd love to see a tactics game primarily designed around the feature of allowing players to write scripts for their characters. Certainly allow the player to intervene, but when a 4-line script that remains unchanged for 90% of combat shows up on the lead designer's desk it might push encounter design to a priority.

I am not sure that I understand the point here. I am not trying to be sarcastic, so please hear me out.

Expeditions conquistador is a boring game. Using that as an example for instructing TB tactical games as boring is probably not very fair. Why is it boring? The reason is lack of depth in the tactical options (i.e. The number and utility of options) and the completely mechanical placement of encounters that are devoid of real challenge. The first may be evident unto itself; if not please just ask me and we can discuss. The later is all about Artificial Intelligence.

Let me explain briefly.

What I understand about games is that I should NOT expect infinite replayability from them. I admit that this is the central most important assumption I make when I write what comes next. Moreover I am assuming here that NO game is made to be impossible to beat. All games have, what we call, 'artificial difficulty' that makes them hard but not outright too difficult to beat. This means that game difficulty is NOT meant to be an NP problem, but rather a solvable puzzle, especially made to appeal the given player base.

What I want from games, however, is that if I play a tactical battle, it should be *challenging* in the sense that the AI should make me think what possible strategies I can employ to defeat it. As long as there are not only 4 (example) ways to defeat it, the game is actually good for some try outs. The most widely used *challenging* combats in cRPGs comes from HP bloats or immunities/resistances, which are the worst form creating challenge. This only prolongs the battle and does not really encourage 'out of the box' thinking or 'puzzle solving' attitude of challenge, but rather forces you to utilize hamfisted tactics. These tactics are usually as cheesy as the enemy abilities or involve using broken mechanics.

The alternative to this is improving the enemy AI so that it can respond to your non-cheesy and non-broken tactics in a reasonably intelligent way. This is particularly easy in a Turn based game as the possible number of moves enemy can make are limited and the possible things you can do, equally so. The funny thing is, this is all quite nice to describe but hard to implement. It is made even harder because our current generation does not really want to be challenged, instead being more interested in 'story' or 'social' aspects of games.

Thus, it is actually possible to tactical games that are interesting and fun to play. But unrealistic expectations from them (like super AI or too much replayability in terms of battles) will not really be fruitful.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yup.

I remember a waterskin being always the first item I would buy with my newbie coins in *every* MUD I used to play. Probably the same in our (A)D&D parties, even if I now think that (A)D&D aged pretty bad (for other reasons).

<AI> : regression since JA2
<Modding editor> : regression since NWN
...

But all is well, since we still have got Skyrim, right ?

Everything is shit.

 

[Delterius]

That is usually what you would call a strategy game Awor.

Chill dude, it's Awor, his little world, his specific definitions nobody else recognizes

I wouldn't say that resource management of things like equipment durability, sources of light, food, carry capacity for loot and coins, potions, arrows, and all sorts of things that are expendable and yet necessary for whatever adventuring enterprise; Thus costing quite a bit of a character's gains when tomb pillaging, would turn something like, say, TES into a Strategy game. Especially since resource management isn't even mutually exclusive with Action-based gameplay.

It would add a new layer of depht to the game and make it more strategy oriented, but then again, it would be characteristically RPG - its not every strategy game, even squad based ones, where the resources to be managed take from the character's point of view (his basic and immediate necessities), instead opting for a abstraction - as befitting a pure Strategy game.

I think this is a very interesting discussion because this sort of gameplay could be the starting point to fix the utterly broken economies of games like Skyrim, where you're a effective millionaire almost right off the bat; In a world where there's nothing to spend weightless gold on, no less.

It might also improve the games' Loot design. Instead of hundreds of caches of generic Gold, you might instead pick a few precious stones, easily carried and concealed, and barter them for items and services needed for your next adventure.

 

[J1M]

I'd love to see a tactics game primarily designed around the feature of allowing players to write scripts for their characters. Certainly allow the player to intervene, but when a 4-line script that remains unchanged for 90% of combat shows up on the lead designer's desk it might push encounter design to a priority.

No offence, but anything like what you describe sounds extremely silly to me. DA:O did an attempt at such a system, and it scored a legendary fail at it. Even if it had worked as designed, why would you want a game that essentially plays for itself, while watching the visual effects and listening to the music of your battles ?

What I want to see is a game that has varied and interesting encounters.

As stated in the original post, the scripts for party members feature is primarily there to force the designers of said game to do some introspection.

If the testers/programmers can easily demonstrate to the designers that the same simple script can be used to solve 90% of the combat encounters in the game, it will be self-evident that the encounter design is shit. The feature exposes the poor encounter design in such a way that it cannot be ignored.

 

[J1M]

I've been wondering this recently. As much as I enjoy RPGs with tactical movement and control of my characters, I rarely find the encounter design to support it.

Usually, you just have to figure out how to use your party of about 6 characters one way and that will let you sail through 95% of the game's combat. This is boring and time consuming, as many have noted in Expeditions: Cortez.

The promise of tactical combat is that the player will need to make some interesting choices during the battle. This happens so rarely that I'd almost consider it against most game designer's intentions.

So, as the title says, what is the point? Why should we care about any combat system, especially a turn-based one, that is essentially a task in micromanagement and baby-sitting?

I'd love to see a tactics game primarily designed around the feature of allowing players to write scripts for their characters. Certainly allow the player to intervene, but when a 4-line script that remains unchanged for 90% of combat shows up on the lead designer's desk it might push encounter design to a priority.

I am not sure that I understand the point here. I am not trying to be sarcastic, so please hear me out.

Expeditions conquistador is a boring game. Using that as an example for instructing TB tactical games as boring is probably not very fair. Why is it boring? The reason is lack of depth in the tactical options (i.e. The number and utility of options) and the completely mechanical placement of encounters that are devoid of real challenge. The first may be evident unto itself; if not please just ask me and we can discuss. The later is all about Artificial Intelligence.

Let me explain briefly.

What I understand about games is that I should NOT expect infinite replayability from them. I admit that this is the central most important assumption I make when I write what comes next. Moreover I am assuming here that NO game is made to be impossible to beat. All games have, what we call, 'artificial difficulty' that makes them hard but not outright too difficult to beat. This means that game difficulty is NOT meant to be an NP problem, but rather a solvable puzzle, especially made to appeal the given player base.

What I want from games, however, is that if I play a tactical battle, it should be *challenging* in the sense that the AI should make me think what possible strategies I can employ to defeat it. As long as there are not only 4 (example) ways to defeat it, the game is actually good for some try outs. The most widely used *challenging* combats in cRPGs comes from HP bloats or immunities/resistances, which are the worst form creating challenge. This only prolongs the battle and does not really encourage 'out of the box' thinking or 'puzzle solving' attitude of challenge, but rather forces you to utilize hamfisted tactics. These tactics are usually as cheesy as the enemy abilities or involve using broken mechanics.

The alternative to this is improving the enemy AI so that it can respond to your non-cheesy and non-broken tactics in a reasonably intelligent way. This is particularly easy in a Turn based game as the possible number of moves enemy can make are limited and the possible things you can do, equally so. The funny thing is, this is all quite nice to describe but hard to implement. It is made even harder because our current generation does not really want to be challenged, instead being more interested in 'story' or 'social' aspects of games.

Thus, it is actually possible to tactical games that are interesting and fun to play. But unrealistic expectations from them (like super AI or too much replayability in terms of battles) will not really be fruitful.

I used Expeditions as a topical game to motivate the discussion. Are you familiar with the concept of an example? Its flaws are the norm for the genre, as I'm sure you are aware. Or maybe not, considering you constructed a strawman to respond to by treating Expeditions as a unique offender.

The suggestion that tactics games need punishing AI to be fun is very strange. Imagine if one were to build a "Deep Blue" quality AI for an RPG. I can assure you that it would be very little fun to play against. Combat would become even more puzzle-like with an AI that only makes optimal moves with zero mistakes.

Encounter variety, enemy variety, and ability variety are what maintain fun in a tactics game. Braindead zombies that always attack the nearest enemy are actually *more* fun to fight than zombies that use perfect flanking and 5-foot steps. That level of sophistication should be saved for a competing adventuring party.

 

[RK47]

Tactical games need challenge, else the player would just get bored of every encounter quickly and look for quality elsewhere - perhaps in the non-combat section like conversation, plot, character interactions. (Remember THAT game? Yeah, Arcanum.)

Mind you, achieving that perfect balance between 'fun' and 'challenge' varies - cause each player's preferences differ from one another.
So yeah, either you give a good difficulty setting (lots of custom switches - Enemy HP: Low-High etc) or somehow create that perfect set-encounters to engage the players whenever they enter a new area.

Encounter variety, enemy variety, and ability variety are what maintain fun in a tactics game. Braindead zombies that always attack the nearest enemy are actually *more* fun to fight than zombies that use perfect flanking and 5-foot steps.

That's why I kept highlighting Blood Bowl as an example. There are many different playstyles for every team you face, and if you add the short-long term leveling considerations into it, a Blood Bowl 'ideal league environment' would make it a great competitive tactical AND fun experience.

 

[Logic_error]

The advantage of BB is that it is not a (solely) SP game. Human Intelligence trumps AI we have today anyday.

J1M

I am not saying that the AI needs to be perfect or anything. I concur that an Ideal AI is unbeatable except via random chance.

What I am saying is that AI needs to be tailored to fit the requirements of a given player base.

 

[RK47]

Normal: The New Easy?

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

Thanks to this thread I stopped working on Wild West Tactics