American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Exactly right, Steve. That is what I was looking for: Given the vast collective experience of all the forum members, and given the limitations of the engine as it exists what are the suggestions to increase the effects of fatigue and lower casualties?
John Ferry
LTC 2/20th AC

I don't see that the designer can do more than adjust the PDT and there you have a section on fatigue and all the weapon values that can be adjusted.
For anything else it seems that hardcoded sections need to be modified, so maybe the most important change would be to add as many values as possible to the PDT so that they could be adjusted by the designer.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Post started as a wish so one can wish away.

A richer set of Victory Hexes to be added to that list. VP hexes that reward VP/turn occupied for example. VP hex that immediately granted VP when first taken rather than held. VP hex that had to be occupied to receive VP. I am sure there are other possibilities. This would give the scenario designers a richer set of conditions to handle victory.

Some things can be handled through the existing HPS systems. Some would require only making them variables in the PDT file like fatigue recovery rates. Some might require minor additions to the game engine like the above victory hex changes. Others might require significant changes to the game engine. Regardless, it is usually easier to modify an existing game engine than to write a whole new one.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

As these games are mainly "moral" games I would like to see that the designers are able to:
- Define the range of fatigue gained by combat, fire combat(that is currently hardcoded 1-3 times the casualty figure) and melee combat(the melee as 50% higher fatigue and the looser gets double fatigue losses.
- Shift the probability of triggering moral checks(currently there is a 50:50 chance when 25 casualties are taken).
Putting values to achieve these points into the PDT would allow to adjust many scenarios to give better casualty results but also a better run of the scenario itself.
Overall I imagine that early scenarios, especially in 1861 should see triggering of moral checks more easily compared to later stages of the war so that you see a rather easily "horrified" forces in Bull Run while you see rather "numb" units in something like Spotsylvania's Muleshoe.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

1 - Fix it so that during column movement supply wagons follow in column on a road the way that infantry, cavalry, artillery, and leader units do. Currently if you have more than 2 supply wagons in a column and you come to a hairpin curve then they do not stay in column but try to cut corners.

2 - We shouldn't have to load an outside program in order to make the roads, trails, and creeks show up better as that should already be in the game programming.

3 - The wording in the terrain boxes for JTS Overland when I right click on them is very hard for these old eyes to read. Maybe a different color background?

4 - When I set the way that I want to view my game (the View Dropdown Menu), I should be able to lock it in so that I don't have to do it again every time that I open a game turn.

5 - Standardize movement costs among the various ACW games.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

Ned, see my post, "Hey, MULE!" ()

And I totally agree about standardized movement costs throughout the entire JTS/HTS Civil War Campaign series. Its fine to be able to privately change things around in the PDT if you and your opponent(s) want to do so. But for the rest of us standardized movement factors and costs keep things simple and in focus.

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General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

I would like to see an added Zoom In to the View - 2d.

2D Zoom out
2D Normal
2D Zoom IN

I like the Zoomed in 3D. . . . .I think I would like a Zoomed in 2D even better. I am getting old, I need to be able to duplicate hunching down over the board to see the pieces better.

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Yr. Obdt. Srvt.
Lt. Gen. R. Sickbert
Second Division, First Corps
Army of the Potomac

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~Retired~

I would like to be able to enlarge the "Strength Dialog Box" so that I could see all the units and also be able to "copy and paste" that info.

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

In Nappy games "K" short cut highlights command range I would like to see all short cuts the same for all the games of the Civil War and Napoleonic wars.

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

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General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

The main problem, that you'll have is that you eventually (assuming that you want to use the weather features), need to develop separate PDTs to cover individual situations. They can have the exact same ratings *but* the issue will be the weather - this is coded directly in the PDTs.

I actually thought that there was one (a standard pdt) in a build when it is turned over to a designer -but, it looks like in CWB it would be whatever the project was built on originally - in other words, Overland looks like it had had Chancellorsville's -leastwise I have a test copy that has a Chancellorsville PDT in it, but the Overland published version did not. In the series that I am working in I think it was labelled as 'standard' - but like I said - 'standard' is only standard if all of your ratings relate to the same scale.

That being said, go for it, Joe . It is integral to scenario design -and it is a great discussion point.

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~Retired~

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Gen Doug Shaw,
4/1/XIV AotC

Us designers can only manipulate pdt numbers, same as y'all in the wider audience. Can't get under the hood. Your ideas might be taken to a certain point in what we ARE able to do.
Wanted to mention, Rob Frost is probably the most experienced in the manipulation of the numbers for movement and maneuver in the pdt.
And again, there is a standard pdt. It is Overland1.pdt in the game, which I took straight from the games which had gone before.
John Ferry
Overland co-designer