Any "prolonged" scenarios?

[SeaQueen]

I don't see very many posters who come both here and over there (not trying to start a flame war understand ), so I guess its just community standards at work.

Honestly, the appeal of the two games is different. I enjoy both, but nuclear power puts a very different spin on the nature of how the game is played.

I like starting farther away from the enemy in a blue water scenario because then the convergence zones come into play-what's the point of placing the enemy inside the last CZ like I see in so many scenarios?

In environments where you lack significant depth excess, you might not see any convergence zones.

Ignoring that possiblity, I think the point is that putting the enemy in close tends to have the effect of shortening the amount of time you have for decision making, and ultimately the amount of time from detection to shooting. I think in certain other cases, the scenario designer is trying to surprise the player. For those who want to play "ASW Doom" that's great. Although I think it's sort of a cheap trick, ultimately, because once you realize there's a submarine placed in close, you don't get fooled a second time so the scenario gets old fast.

Having to surprise the player by artificially putting an enemy in close is a sign of having insufficient randomness in the scenario. When designing scenarios I think it's really important to randomize the enemy submarine's location and depth. It doesn't hurt to randomize the number of submarines as well. It's also important to choose an appropriate distance scale for the scenario to occur over. If you do all of those things, then there's enough uncertainty in the game for the enemy to surprise you without resorting to cheap tricks which wear off once you've discovered them. It makes for more replayable scenarios and it makes for much more fun ones in my mind, because it makes the player the decision-maker. Isn't that why we fantasize about driving submarines in the first place, to be in the captain's chair? Too often scenario designers try to make people jump through too many hoops and if you don't solve a problem in a very specific way, then you lose. That's lame. Scenarios should be open ended enough that people can try different tactics, approaches and methodologies and still win. It should be up to the player what the best way to tackle a problem is.

The other thing I see going on sometimes is just people not knowing. Sometimes people honestly try to add enough randomess and they just don't know enough about ASW tactics and search theory to make decisions about things like how to position and size random position boxes or dynamic locations so that the randomness they add actually matters and doesn't just suck up CPU cycles.

[Molon Labe]

Originally Posted by SeaQueen

Ignoring that possiblity, I think the point is that putting the enemy in close tends to have the effect of shortening the amount of time you have for decision making, and ultimately the amount of time from detection to shooting. I think in certain other cases, the scenario designer is trying to surprise the player. For those who want to play "ASW Doom" that's great. Although I think it's sort of a cheap trick, ultimately, because once you realize there's a submarine placed in close, you don't get fooled a second time so the scenario gets old fast.

Having to surprise the player by artificially putting an enemy in close is a sign of having insufficient randomness in the scenario. ... It's also important to choose an appropriate distance scale for the scenario to occur over. If you do all of those things, then there's enough uncertainty in the game for the enemy to surprise you without resorting to cheap tricks which wear off once you've discovered them. It makes for more replayable scenarios and it makes for much more fun ones in my mind, because it makes the player the decision-maker. ... Scenarios should be open ended enough that people can try different tactics, approaches and methodologies and still win. It should be up to the player what the best way to tackle a problem is.

I definitely agree in principle. If there's anything I hate, it's single-path, single method missions. I've been trying to make things a bit more open ended lately thanks to people like SuBB who have shown a willingness for MP sessions that last longer than the usual 2-3 hours. Still they're in the minority. Just as an example of my frustrations, in one session I played about two months ago, the scenario was set up with forces far enough apart that the location of intercept, if it occured at all, was highly variable, but that also meant that the time was highly variable as well--no sooner than 1 hr. in if everyone was aggressive. Well, the closest Blue side platform dropped, and the closest red side player and the next closest Blue side player played conservatively. It's perfectly legitimate to play conservatively of course, but that will delay the time contact occurs. As the 2 hr mark approached the complaints about "nothing happening" started to build, and shortly thereafter a Blue player voluntarily dropped--and he was probably only 10 minutes from being engaged, too. The AI failed to take over his platform and the whole match was screwed.

Even though the delayed contact was due to someone dropping and the choices the players made, I still found it necessary to make some changes in the scenario to accelerate the conflict. Fortunately, in this specific case, those changes probably improved dynamics rather than harmed them, but that of course is not the usual result.

I'm not going to stop trying to make longer missions just yet, but I can't shake the feeling that they won't see much use.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

Just as an example of my frustrations, in one session I played about two months ago, the scenario was set up with forces far enough apart that the location of intercept, if it occured at all, was highly variable, but that also meant that the time was highly variable as well--no sooner than 1 hr. in if everyone was aggressive. Well, the closest Blue side platform dropped, and the closest red side player and the next closest Blue side player played conservatively. It's perfectly legitimate to play conservatively of course, but that will delay the time contact occurs. As the 2 hr mark approached the complaints about "nothing happening" started to build, and shortly thereafter a Blue player voluntarily dropped--and he was probably only 10 minutes from being engaged, too. The AI failed to take over his platform and the whole match was screwed.

Yeah... that happens. Multiplayer scenarios are a special case, however, I'd argue that you can still pull it off by chosing appropriately sized areas. For example, in the Kara Sea scenario, I'm always fascinated by the game time it takes for people to play it because I designed it around a simple search model

Pd = 1 - exp(-wvt/A)

That's Koopman's random search equation. It gives the probability of detecting a target at a uniformly distributed random point in an area of size 'A.' If you guys want to get really geeky we can talk about what it really means because when you start thinking about it, it's actually quite pessimistic. By inverting that equation I can come up with the median time to detection, and other numbers too. It's not a bad idea to plan a scenario around that. By using only slightly more elaborate methods you can make some calculations for planning a search area so that you can play a scenario in a reasonable amount of time with say a P-3 and an SSN in two assigned areas for MP. I haven't done it yet, but lately I haven't been doing as much gaming as I've been doing. It's sun shiney out and my balcony called me.

There's another equation, called the Klingbeil magnet that's good for barrier searches. Although you can't get a time to detect from that, you can figure that out by the kinematics of the scenario.

[difool2]

In Kara Sea I figured there was a greater chance of spotting the boomer in the middle so that is where I went. I'll catch him either going towards the edge, or catch him coming back towards the middle. He was pretty much right in my path when I picked him up (tho of course I FUBARed the activation range on my fish and he blew me out of the water).

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by difool2

In Kara Sea I figured there was a greater chance of spotting the boomer in the middle so that is where I went.

Statistically speaking, the only reason you'd be less likely to catch him towards the edge is that if you have any of your sensor "cookie cutter" overlaping the edge of the search area, you're wasting it, by looking in places he can't be. Even then, though, it's really just a matter of time. You're still searching, even if less efficiently.

Personally, I just drive back and fourth so there's no overlap.