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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 1/10)

Time flies when you're having fun

It sure doesn't seem like it's been almost eleven months since my last journal entry. So much for trying to post every 3-6 months.

Last June we completed Gary's first pre-20th century wargame, War Between the States. It was naturally disappointing to be the last released of the three strategic Civil War games published by Matrix Games in the past few years. However, we can only blame ourselves for not getting it done earlier, and so far it appears that there's room for all three games in the market.
We're happy with how it turned out, and feel it's gotten even better and more historically accurate with the release of several patches after release. We've been especially glad to hear from many players pleased with the depth of the game.
I'm proud to report that WBTS has garnered three awards within the past month, 2008 Wargame of the Year at Flashofsteel.com, 2008 Strategy Game of the Year at Gamer's Hall, and the Bronze Medal in the Usenet's War-Historical's Wargame of the Year 2008 contest.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 2/10)

At the moment we're gathering feedback in anticipation of making additional changes to WBTS as warranted to continue to increase the historical accuracy of the game. If you've got comments on the game, be sure to post them on the Matrix Games forum so we can consider them.
Getting consensus on changes is always a challenge, as we often have users and testers that radically disagree on what changes would be best. Right now we're discussing whether the production system for ironclad and artillery production should be adjusted (following on the changes made in the November patch), and whether certain actions (like fort and depot construction) should expend additional supplies.
Production and logistics are the heart of most of Gary's games, so these could have a major impact on game balance. We're happy with the overall game balance at the moment, so we need to be careful that any future changes continue to keep this overall balance.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 3/10)

What's next

Next up appears to be the long anticipated remakes of Bombing the Reich and Battle of Britain which will be published by Matrix Games as Gary Grigsby's Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich. This project ran into some unexpected delays in 2008 as the programmers on this project had several interruptions that limited their time on the project.
Progress continued throughout the year, but it was slow going. It's recently picked up and David Heath at Matrix has gotten involved as well, signaling that the project is ready for the final push toward release.
As always Matrix does not like to forecast a release date until very close to the publication date, but I'll go out on a limb and say that assuming the programmers can maintain their time on the project, the game should be released this spring. Anyone interested in very detailed simulations of WWII air campaigns will enjoy this product, and get hundreds of hours of gameplay.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 4/10)

Speaking of hundreds of hours of gameplay, I hear that the War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition is coming along nicely as well. I have no real inside information on this one other than to say that I've heard rumblings that it will likely be completed by this summer.

As for Carrier Force, unfortunately Justin Prince has little to report other than that some progress was made last year. He's currently waiting for the new scenario editor to be completed so that he can create all the scenarios for the game.

Moving East

For most of you, the big question is "when will 2by3 finish Gary's next Russian Front game?" We don't yet know the answer to this question, but Gary has been working overtime on this project since last summer (with only occasional breaks to work on War Between the States patches). We've had a small group of alpha testers playing the game since last August, and during the fall I was able to play through 1941 a few times playing against the Soviet AI. Jon Pyle, one of our testers, has managed to get as far as mid-42, but as is usually the case with Alpha testing, the changes come so fast, and often are so major, that it's difficult to get far into a big game like this before the current test becomes obsolete.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 5/10)

Until a few weeks ago, all we had to test was a full war scenario. Recently Gary invested the time to get our editor so that it could create additional scenarios, including smaller map scenarios, and he's created a Typhoon scenario to cover the action around Moscow in late 41/early 42. Although the full war scenario is our primary focus, we see three major benefits in having additional scenarios:

1) It allows us to more efficiently test different parts of the war.
2) It gives players an easier way to learn the game.
3) It provides additional value for players looking to explore aspects of the war they might not see if only playing the full war scenario.

We're not yet sure how many scenarios we'll provide with the game, but we do hope to have a method to create scenarios and have the AI be able to deal with these smaller scenarios. In the Typhoon scenario the German player has over 75 divisions, so it's not really all that small. With HQ's and air units the German OOB has over 130 units. The unit count can go even higher, as a few months ago we added the ability for players to breakdown German and Finnish Divisions into three regiment sized kampfgruppen. Brigades and regiments do suffer some penalties, so there are major trade-offs involved in dividing a division. Many of the Axis-Allied forces are brigades and may not build up to division size, so they always suffer these penalties.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 6/10)

Currently we've enlisted the help of one of our testers, Pavel Zagzin, to review our map data and try to improve the accuracy of the map. Pavel is uniquely suited for this task given that he lives in Vilnius, speaks both English and Russian, and has traveled extensively through many of the areas covered in the game. He's found some great sources from the war years, and although he's understandably grumbled about some of the distortions in our map, he's been doing a fantastic job.
Up to this point we've been using some simple alpha map art provided by Matrix Games several years ago. Jason Barish has recently come on board to produce the final map art for the game. We've enjoyed working with Jason before on the War Between the States map, and we can't wait to see his final map in this game. Since the map data has changed so much since the original map created 8 years ago, recently we've been forced to test using very ugly terrain tiles (one of the joys of alpha testing).
We're hoping that within the next few months we will have a great looking map from Jason. Getting the final map into a game is always a major milestone, and one that makes testing a lot more fun.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 7/10)

We've settled on the following terrain types in the game (the game scale is 10 mile hexes):

Clear
City
Light-Urban
Heavy-Urban
Light Woods
Heavy Woods
Rough (hills/broken)
Swamp
Mountain
Water (lake/sea)
Minor River Hexside
Major River Hexside
Impassable River/Lake Hexside

We also have rail lines and towns (small reference points), but these do not have an impact on the terrain of the hex.

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Februar 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 8/10)

This month we settled on five map zoom levels, and Marc Schwanebeck delivered the unit counter art for two of these zoom levels. When Marc was unable to complete the other art sets before leaving for his honeymoon, Jim Martin stepped in and got us what we needed so we were able to complete the switchover to the new counters. We really appreciated Jim's help on this. Matrix is providing all of the art for the game, and the Matrix artists are a great group to work with. When Marc returns next week, we hope to get the final touches on the counters, and then move on to working on the interface art.

A few of the testers have also started working on a review of our leader data. Here's a comparison of leader data for two leaders in the game:

	Manstein	Zhukov
Political	5	7
Morale	6	6
Initiative	9	9
Land	8	9
Armor	9	8
Air	1	1
Naval	1	1
Admin	6	7

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 9/10)

One interesting rule is that each turn each unit must pass leader Initiative and leader Admin tests, or the unit has it's movement points (MPs) reduced for the turn. In order for a unit to pass the test, only one leader in the chain of command must successfully pass the test. German units that are usually assigned to Corps HQ's have four chances to pass the test, as they have a Corps HQ, Army HQ, Army Group HQ and OKH. The chance of a leader passing is lower as you go further up the chain of command. On the Soviet side, typically a unit is attached directly to an Army HQ, which reports to a Front, which reports to Stavka. This means the typical Russian unit has only 3 chances to pass each test. A unit can also have its MPs reduced due to fatigue.

So unlike most boardgames, unit MPs can and will vary from turn to turn. In addition, the supplies, fuel and ammunition that a unit has are tracked, along with the unit's requirements for each. Motorized units without enough fuel to meet their needs have their MPs reduced, while non-Motorized units without enough supplies have their MPs reduced. In addition, the number of MPs a unit has can be reduced if the number of vehicles in the unit does not meet the requirement for the unit. Each side also has a global motor pool of vehicles that are used to bring supplies to the units from the railheads.

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February 15th, 2009 - Time flies . . . (Page 10/10)

The status of the motor pool can have a major impact on the amount of supplies, fuel and ammunition that make their way to the frontline units. In 1941, as German units move far from their railheads, the motor pool gets worn down and the supplies reaching the units at the ever more distant frontline decline. We still have a lot of work to do to get the systems to work exactly as we want them to, but this should give you a sense of the detail in the game.

That's all for now. I'll try to report back this summer.

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