Yeah, I mainly play Solo which is why its always been a rough one to get the table. I will say “In Country” is pretty good solo. Although it suffers somewhat from being a magazine game (charts on maps are bad).
Well if you are soloing, the module is a good way to go. Easier to manage ounter stacks! And end of Turn admin counter maintenance is just a button click. :) No More “I’m out of Ops Complete counters”. :)
Man, you guys are nuts. What you really want in a wargame is stepping carefully through your opponents turn to see where they screwed up (“you moved one hex beyond your movement allowance. You miscounted your attack factors here. Armor can’t attack out of a swamp during mud turns except along a road”), then send the move back to them so they can do it again. That’s really what you want? Because that’s certainly my Vassal experience.
I don’t really have that kind of problem in my vassal games, but i usually play them in live sessions rather than PBEM. Unlike some of the others, I would enjoy, say, a rules-enforced version of VG Vietnam, but that’s probably never going to happen. I’ll happily take the widgets that make things easier.
I mean, i’ve heard multiple people complain about VASSAL’s interface but not really explain what they mean.
Um, isn’t that what wargaming is all about? :) I mean, most of the people I played games with in the days when I went to wargaming clubs were freakin’ rules lawyers.
Well… As sometimes of a rule lawyer myself, yes, I think that’s what wargame is about to an extent :P
Learning the rules is a big part of wargaming, and if you make a good move which effectivity is predicated on the other player having to follow the rules of the game, I think it’s fair to be a rule lawyer. Minor stuff that doesn’t directly impact an important move? Let those slip.
But if you move your pawn as a queen because you don’t know the rules, yes, expect me to object :P. The problem is that with some wargames complex systems, a one-hex move can be determinant to an engagement.
FtF or live play games are saved because they are mostly played wrong. The slow pace of pbemail does allow for more analysis of a player’s move (which is great to help learning the rules, too).
Isn’t that how all games are in person?
Oh, yeah. Years ago, when I was like thirteen or so, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I convinced my father to play SPI’s World War II game, can’t recall the name, ETO or something. Whatever. It was a Western Front game, maybe, what, corps level or something? Anyhow, I got the rules sort of wrong, and we were calculating combat by adding up all of the values of all of the units in a line, or something like that. But hell, I had no idea what I was doing, and my father, well, I doubt he really cared that much.
Then there was the time, years later, when I was in grad school for the first time. At a wargame club meeting (we called it the Historical Simulations Club, to avoid political flak), we were playing SPI’s CityFight. I think I was the moderator for a double-blind round. Either I got the rules wrong, or the rules were themselves wonky (always a possibility!), and a NATO and a WP armor company ran right by each other on the same street without either side seeing the other–according to how I interpreted the LOS rules!
I see. So playing a wargame online isn’t allowed to be any better of an experience than playing face to face. I’m surprised you guys don’t complain that the counters are too easy to move and the stacks never fall over.
Look, I get it that board wargames are partially appealing because the rules systems are comprehensible – unlike these Gary Grigsby-style games where you can never really know what is going to happen because it depends on whether your infantry division has 16,841 rifles or 16,842. And you don’t want the program to hinder you from learning the rules. I agree!
But why would it be bad for Vassal to tell you, after you’ve finished your move, but before you send it to your opponent, “Hey, you made these mistakes, here’s why they’re wrong, with rules references”. Wouldn’t that help you learn the rules? Wouldn’t that make the game play more smoothly, and be more fun?
I think you guys have some kind of stockholm syndrome from all the crappy digital wargames out there. It’s like you can’t even imagine a system which is actually helpful.
Josh, I may be nuts, but I think I’ve gone on and on and on above about how Vassal enhances many games (Vietnam as an example) far beyond what the boardgame ftf experience provides, and not just regarding space constraints. If I’m saying anything, respectfully, it’s that your opinion on Vassal seems 5-7 years out of date. I mean, I get it if someone doesn’t like Vassal because they want the smell of cardboard. Or if they wish it was more consistently implemented. But in terms of functionality, and enhancing beyond the ftf experience, its already there.
I would love if VASSAL could do that, but I don’t see that as realistic- wargames are all different. To put that functionality on all VASSAL modules would take an enormous amount of programming, a lot of man-years. It took an enormous effort to get a rules-enabled WiF program dropped, and it is an extremely bare-bones implementation. You’d need a Google-esque company just to take the existing vassal modules and program them to implement rules.
I compare VASSAL to the other options and am appreciative of it in that respect.
This would be really cool!
It is also an order of magnitude harder to implement than mere rule enforcing (which is also quite some work when related to many wargames, given rule inexactitudes and complex sequences of play).
I like tools that help visualize stuff easier, and that take care of bothersome accounting and counter managing (I don’t care about counter management), but comprehending the rules is not the same as executing them. Board wargames have comprehensible rules, but I think sometimes they also gain from those rules being executed by the player (not only being comprehended).
I would be very happy for VASSAL to do this. I don’t think that anyone is arguing that they would not want to see this. But what I do disagree vehemently with you about is that the current implementation of VASSAL needs to “die in a fire” which is terminology denoting a worthless product worthy solely of destruction. VASSAL is an incredibly powerful tool as is, with capabilities above and beyond a paper wargame - my current experience with Empire of the Sun has been enhanced by visible Air ZOI, including differences between it and LRA ZOI, as well as HQ Activation Range depiction. Activated units get red outlines (whereas there’s are not even Activation counters in the game - you have to remember which units you activated). VASSAL already functions at a very high level, thanks to the efforts of amazingly talented dudes like Francisco Colmenares and Joel Toppen and others. It’s pretty amazing, and if your experience of VASSAL is from 5 years ago, you should update it.
Sure, it would be great to have VASSAL implement all the rules in every game. Seeing how difficult it was to effectively do this in purpose-built games like Computer War in Europe or World in Flames, I’m not expecting anything even close to this any time soon. I’m not willing to throw VASSAL out until it happens, though.
I would love to have my car fly me to work in seconds every day. It may do that someday, but not soon. However, I can get there by driving it just fine. Your argument seems to be that it should fly me to work, and if it can’t, I should just not go into work at all.
There is now a short thread detailing the progress they are making.
Frederik W is an unsung hero in wargaming
Not wargaming related, but I think still applies as Grog porn:
Anti-submarine P-5M aircraft carrying a 10-kiloton nuclear depth charge is forced to ditch off Whidbey Island. The weapon is never recovered.
Whoa, this is cool! And scary af :)
Thanks!
It’s a trip zooming in on those old Nike sites.
I had forgotten all about this game! Something about the new version turned me off but I can’t remember exactly what. How did it turn out?
You can try out the generous demo, but I didn’t like the game’s interface. Tons of clicks and wasted space I thought.