HITS Meets GCM: A Game

Mr. Digby wrote:Talking in TS though isn't what these games should be about.

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. But you, Digby, must remember that GCM battles are not fought in the same spirit as your Hits/Couriers group. We (GCM players) are not trying to re-enact or re-create Civil War battles. We are not concerned with role-playing. We are trying to have big, tough, fun SOW games, and we are quite successful doing so.

Many GCM players enjoy the TS aspect of coordinating attacks and defenses.

Mr. Digby wrote:Talking in TS though isn't what these games should be about. Players should do all that co-ordinating by courier. Perhaps the GCM/HITS mix game could be improved if the two sides started further apart, with the component divisions of each close together and a clear chain of command. This would enable a plan to be agreed beforehand and for divisions to co-ordinate their moves and even conduct flanking moves in support of one another.

The flaws of this were illustrated perfectly in yesterday's game; prior to game start, players have absolutely NO IDEA where they will end up on the field or where the enemy will end up. You can't make plans that way - it's even a problem that historical generals didn't have to face (they would have a map drawn up with enemy positions, their positions, and decide what to do from there).

As Soldier mentioned, this game isn't meant to be 100% super hardcore accuracy all the time, otherwise the Rebs would win every battle! We're not in it for the aspect of "Oh my god, I'm going to be marching my troops across the same piece of ground that General Meade relieved himself on!". We're in it for the blood, guts, gore, and glory of victory. Which GCM does very well, in fact it's much easier to coordinate in GCM than it is in HITS, as I've noticed. For example, in HITS, once committed it's nearly impossible to pull regiments out of combat.

Comrade Chernov wrote:

Mr. Digby wrote:Talking in TS though isn't what these games should be about. Players should do all that co-ordinating by courier. Perhaps the GCM/HITS mix game could be improved if the two sides started further apart, with the component divisions of each close together and a clear chain of command. This would enable a plan to be agreed beforehand and for divisions to co-ordinate their moves and even conduct flanking moves in support of one another.

The flaws of this were illustrated perfectly in yesterday's game; prior to game start, players have absolutely NO IDEA where they will end up on the field or where the enemy will end up. You can't make plans that way - it's even a problem that historical generals didn't have to face (they would have a map drawn up with enemy positions, their positions, and decide what to do from there).

As Soldier mentioned, this game isn't meant to be 100% super hardcore accuracy all the time, otherwise the Rebs would win every battle! We're not in it for the aspect of "Oh my god, I'm going to be marching my troops across the same piece of ground that General Meade relieved himself on!". We're in it for the blood, guts, gore, and glory of victory. Which GCM does very well, in fact it's much easier to coordinate in GCM than it is in HITS, as I've noticed. For example, in HITS, once committed it's nearly impossible to pull regiments out of combat.

Hold on - Digby, Comrade Chernov, k- little mac, these 3 posts are off-topic (discussing why standard GCM is/sin't great), as they are not discussing Ron's original idea, and threaten to derail his efforts at bringing the two camps together.

If you enjoy standard GCM, great, play GCM. If you enjoy HITS, go play HITS. What we're discussing here is using Garnier's mod to play HITS.

". . . threaten to derail his efforts at bringing the two camps together."

I certainly hope not, surely not my intention. I enjoy playing HITS. I enjoy playing GCM games.

Flashman is exactly on point, IMO. If I'd thought the upshot of all this was to be additional argument and chest-thumping, I wouldn't have bothered.

The thing is that there is plenty of room for HITS, GCM and no doubt several other ways to play SoW. It's OK to have preferences, but at the same time, quite juvenile to suggest one group has cornered the market on what is THE way to play the game.

So, where do we go from here? Probably not far if the HITS and GCM groups pull back into their shells and limit themselves to their respective styles. On the other hand, if enough members of both remain interested and sufficiently curious to reach out, as I think was initially done with Saturday's game, how can we not learn much from each other?

-Ron

WJPalmer wrote:Flashman is exactly on point, IMO. If I'd thought the upshot of all this was to be additional argument and chest-thumping, I wouldn't have bothered.

The thing is that there is plenty of room for HITS, GCM and no doubt several other ways to play SoW. It's OK to have preferences, but at the same time, quite juvenile to suggest one group has cornered the market on what is THE way to play the game.

So, where do we go from here? Probably not far if the HITS and GCM groups pull back into their shells and limit themselves to their respective styles. On the other hand, if enough members of both remain interested and sufficiently curious to reach out, as I think was initially done with Saturday's game, how can we not learn much from each other?

-Ron

Perhaps a friendly, monthly KS/GCM match-up would be appropriate?

-Neal

Father General wrote:

WJPalmer wrote:Flashman is exactly on point, IMO. If I'd thought the upshot of all this was to be additional argument and chest-thumping, I wouldn't have bothered.

The thing is that there is plenty of room for HITS, GCM and no doubt several other ways to play SoW. It's OK to have preferences, but at the same time, quite juvenile to suggest one group has cornered the market on what is THE way to play the game.

So, where do we go from here? Probably not far if the HITS and GCM groups pull back into their shells and limit themselves to their respective styles. On the other hand, if enough members of both remain interested and sufficiently curious to reach out, as I think was initially done with Saturday's game, how can we not learn much from each other?

-Ron

Perhaps a friendly, monthly KS/GCM match-up would be appropriate?

-Neal

I'm sorry I missed out on the game, I would have very much liked to try it.

I started out playing at GCM, but found I was wanting for the HITS aspects of play. Little Mac makes a fair point about the damn courier messages - and that is surely something that could be sorted out by Norbsoft? That would seem to go a long way to reconcile a major complaint against Couriers.

I hope you run a similar thing again sometime. I think you have achieved a great deal here. The GCM players clearly had a good time, and many very useful and positive suggestions such as dispersion of starting forces, and the Couriers message bug. I am pleased to see both camps discussing the thing positively and constructively.

For HITS to work well, we need lots of players (IMO). And to get lots of players, we need the GCM guys to buy into HITS, and hence address their concerns. Which is exactly what you're trying to do (I believe).

So, bravo Sir!

Ollie

P.S. Yes, a monthly HITS/GCM game would be an awesome plan!

A regular game is an excellent idea. And we shouldn't rule out those spontaneous urges that can strike on the odd, quiet weekend day either!

It would be extremely helpful if Garnier could add a map of the players starting positions for each side separately before launching the game. This info is available in the scenario.csv file.
Then the CinC knows his disposition and can give initial orders before the battle starts. I assume corps and div cmdrs will start the game where the 1st div is.

GCM already has maps with all starting positions, but only after ending the battle. Maybe this could be reused?

FlashmanKBE wrote:Hold on - Digby, Comrade Chernov, k- little mac, these 3 posts are off-topic (discussing why standard GCM is/sin't great), as they are not discussing Ron's original idea, and threaten to derail his efforts at bringing the two camps together.

If you enjoy standard GCM, great, play GCM. If you enjoy HITS, go play HITS. What we're discussing here is using Garnier's mod to play HITS.

No, my post was on-topic. I was suggesting other ways a GCM setup (using the GCM Mod) and a HITS environment (2m view distance, couriers at brigade level, no using TS unless your general avatar is alongside another players) could be further improved to give us all a better game. My ideas suggested ways to give a slightly more historical start position (less confusion over where your other divisions are) a clear command structure (historical; useful for GCM, essential for HITS) and army start positions further apart - and by definition away from objectives (to allow time for planning and road marching).

Trouble is some people who think every post I ever make on the internet has dissing the GCM as its sole purpose and waded in to attack me. People didn't even read what I was suggesting, just assumed it was hostile.

Read what I wrote again - it was all positive helpful suggestion and didn't centre around role-playing at all. Why was role-playing even mentioned? What has that got to do with a GCM/HITS joint game?

Mr. Digby wrote:Trouble is some people who think every post I ever make on the internet has dissing the GCM as its sole purpose and waded in to attack me. People didn't even read what I was suggesting, just assumed it was hostile.

Read what I wrote again - it was all positive helpful suggestion and didn't centre around role-playing at all. Why was role-playing even mentioned? What has that got to do with a GCM/HITS joint game?

"Talking in TS though isn't what these games should be about."

I was only responding to your absolute statement, which was a response to Chernov's point to the Father General that GCM games have a very strategic aspect because of the liberal use of TS.

How you misconstrue my post as an attack against you isn't surprising. But It was by no means meant as any such thing. I think if you read what I wrote again, you will see it had not a single word attacking you in any way, shape, or form.

Back on topic, since the Army Commander doesn't know the starting locations for his side's divisions, perhaps we should do what we sometimes do in GCM games where we play courier communications only: put teams in different rooms for the first 5 minutes of the battle and allow liberal TS chat to form a game plan. Then both sides are returned to the same room and normal communication by courier rules are followed.

This would allow for a more coordinated effort by both teams.

We did this BEFORE the battle and it didn't really help much. I think doing it during the first 5 minutes of battle would be a big help.

I posted the link to this thread over at the GCM forum so Garnier could see everyone's suggestions & comments for better accommodating the HITS experience in GCM. Here are his insights:

"A few things to mention.

For those who want a chain of command and more orders being used:
You can set non-random teams in the Battle Queue now.
You can also have army and/or corps commanders not bring a division, and just take their commander and be responsible for coordinating the divisions. If these players play in windowed mode, they can easily bring a division commander to another TS channel and talk. *

For those who want armies to not be scattered, just set starting positions to "least scattered" and the armies will start in two clumps. **

For those who want to plan things before the fighting starts, just decide that for the first 10 (or whatever) minutes in game no movement is allowed at all, and allow free TS chat for that time -- a conference before the generals ride out to command their men.

For those who want more control over the OOBs, or a lack of balance, you can start a GCM campaign, set OOBs to custom, and pick which specific divisions you want for a given battle. Or, using campaign/random/historical divisions in a normal GCM game, throw in an extra player whose division will be left out of the action, and there's the imbalance.

* I did this a lot during the game on saturday with Obstacle and Mitra, but I couldn't really communicate with anyone further north, and my couriers were mostly intercepted. As Lee, if I didn't have my division, I could have ridden everywhere, and figured out that swinder/chernov who I guess were our far left could pull back since they were heavily outnumbered.

** I should comment that our typical (scattered) battles are more similar to the first day of gettysburg than they are to a typical civil war battle. This is because the first day of gettysburg is a far more interesting situation -- neither side knows exactly where all the enemies are, and both sides have reinforcements that might be farther away than the enemy reinforcements are. If the armies were deployed as at gettysburg day 2 or 3, or as at most CW battles, in two long lines on ridges, it would be less interesting after playing it a few times. I think our games are more interesting than most real battles were. But with HITS, once you move out you won't know where everyone is anyway (assuming some sort of objectives force you to spread out) so you don't necessarily need to start scattered.

HITS vs radio/helicopter command is not a question of which is better, they're just different. Everyone will have their preference and some will enjoy both. I'm not against making GCM accommodate both styles of play."

Good stuff. Garnier's initial point about how it is now possible to set non-random teams means that we can, if desired, pre-choose teams and leadership days, even weeks, in advance; make some general plans and arrangements; decide who will be taking individual commands; and even cherry-pick an OOB from historical units.

I think we should give this another try soon incorporating those of Garnier's suggestions that appeal to the veteran HITS guys -- perhaps during an upcoming weekend when no HITS scenario or Campaign game event is pre-scheduled.

-Ron

I like all the positive, constructive ideas above.

I think GCM also allows zero objectives, which could be another idea from our HITS games to take over to future HITS on GCM games?

-Jeff

First I'd like to thank Ron and the GCM group for hosting the game. It was an interesting experience to see how GCM games are fought first hand. I was very impressed with the system that Garnier created for setting up battles. It went very smoothly once all the HITS players got things in order.

My general impressions of the game are much as Neal's. In general it was too fast paced and spread out for HITS style of play. I understand that given how GCM normally play with 60-90 minute battles with large viewing distances and radio coms this suits their style of play very well. I can see now how long marches and slow battle development must drive the GCMers nuts when they play a KS game. However, Garnier has given a prescription for modifying this and I for one wouldn't mind trying again with those different settings.

Before playing, I had anticipated that the battle would be primarily a melee fest. I was pleasantly surprised that there was very little hand to hand fighting. Perhaps the 200 yd rifle engagement distance helps with that. I was also surprised to see just how emasculated artillery is in this style of gameplay. Unless the guns are firing canister, I don't really see any useful role for them. The other significant difference I found was the relative ineffectiveness of flank fire. It had been a long time since I had played with essentially stock settings in this regard and had forgotten that fact. Again I understand all these differences suit the GCM style of play.

Again, thanks to all the GCM players for taking the time to play a game with the HITS group.

As I understand it, GCM is first and foremost a tool, around which a supportive community has developed.

The question I have, is can the tool be modified to serve the tastes of KS gamers?

For example, can a persistent multiplayer, vs style, HITS campaign be administered by the GCM system?

Would Garnier even be interested in this? After all his vision is unique and personal, and works well for what he has made. But like many designers, he may not wish to so greatly change how his mod works. For example, Garnier is a fan of balance and randomness, all for every excellent reasons. However, KS campaigns do not feature balance or randomness, players take a side and a unit and they stick to it for the duration, bearing all their fortunes and misfortunes along the way.

We also like knowing everything well in advance and fighting set piece battles which require rough, if not specific, troop placement in advance. I do not think this is what the GCM is really about. It is a KS group thing.

If a way can be found to develop a uniquely KS GCM mod, then by all means I'd love to see it.

No matter what, GCM is a fun way to get in a quick fight and cure the SOW bug that periodically ails you. The community seems particularly enjoyable and helpful too.

I hope to see more hybrid games in the future.

-Neal

Could we use Kevin's mod and play on GCM? I don't know, but guess not.

Short of that, it seems the GCM tools are sufficiently flexible to allow pretty much everything else on our wish list. Garnier also seems happy to allow the tools to be used to set up battles / campaigns any way people want them to be set up.

The clearest difference in gameplay to me was the reduced impact of flanking fire. My artillery still did ok once I got them in place, though presumably not as well as they would have done with Couriers&Maps.

It's all good

I was also surprised to see just how emasculated artillery is in this style of gameplay. Unless the guns are firing canister, I don't really see any useful role for them.

I'll bite my tongue and just say it depends hugely on where you put them. Solid shot is still very deadly when guns are in the right position, either to kill a lot or just be a deterrent. With HITS it is harder to find the right spot to put your guns -- this is why I scored very few hits with my guns in that game. And also some maps have bigger open areas where guns are more effective. In that battle the casualties from artillery were 15% of the total which isn't negligible.

The other significant difference I found was the relative ineffectiveness of flank fire. It had been a long time since I had played with essentially stock settings in this regard and had forgotten that fact.

GCM settings aren't stock, although the morale penalty for flank fire may not be as much as in your mod. It is still much more than stock.

For example, can a persistent multiplayer, vs style, HITS campaign be administered by the GCM system?

GCM has a custom campaign system where you get two sides with ~10 random divisions and you can choose a lot of parameters for each battle, but this is mostly used by singleplayer people because they want the convenience and carryover without having to write their own scenarios.

One could use the GCM campaign and modify the starting positions of the armies / objectives after a scenario is generated -- as long as the OOB isn't changed GCM could still record the battle.

If your multiplayer campaign has relatively few battles, the convenience of having scenarios and carryover handled automatically might not outweigh the ability to customize all of the details by hand.

I'm pretty sure almost everything but sprites can be modded for multiplayer so like Garnier said there's likely a workaround and we can modify starting positions if so desired. I think it would save us time in the campaign scenario creation process as well as the carryover aspect and is worth seriously looking at. I've looked at making a hybrid of Kevins and Garniers mods, the only problem is that the GCM gets updated frequently which overrides any modifications you make to the folder, so the flanking and artillery fire mod/files would either have to be a GCM setting that can be flipped on or off or we find another solution.

Garnier wrote:

I was also surprised to see just how emasculated artillery is in this style of gameplay. Unless the guns are firing canister, I don't really see any useful role for them.

I'll bite my tongue and just say it depends hugely on where you put them. Solid shot is still very deadly when guns are in the right position, either to kill a lot or just be a deterrent. With HITS it is harder to find the right spot to put your guns -- this is why I scored very few hits with my guns in that game. And also some maps have bigger open areas where guns are more effective. In that battle the casualties from artillery were 15% of the total which isn't negligible.

I mentioned in an earlier post that when I played a HITS game as a division commander I had 12 guns (2 union batteries) which I set up when they obtained targets. I didn't pay any attention to the ground they were on. I simply gave them a use solid shot and fire at infantry command. And in less than 30 minutes, they racked up well over a 1000 points.

One must pay attention to gun placement in GCM games or you're right, Kevin, they can be pretty useless. But most seasoned vets get plenty of good work from their guns in GCM games, without firing a lot of canister.

Another big difference in GCM games is that both sides use union guns.

I've looked at making a hybrid of Kevins and Garniers mods, the only problem is that the GCM gets updated frequently which overrides any modifications you make to the folder, so the flanking and artillery fire mod/files would either have to be a GCM setting that can be flipped on or off or we find another solution.

Can't you just have Couriers&Maps or some subset load after GCM.

Uncle Billy wrote:Can't you just have Couriers&Maps or some subset load after GCM.

GCM automatically disables all non-GCM mods every time you update -- this is a huge help for preventing crashes from incompatible mods.

You could of course activate your mod each time you start the game. (Assuming it's compatible with GCM's mods.) You'd need to make sure this mod ended up at the top of the list.

What I could do is make a GCM_Extensions mod folder that is empty by default but is always activated and placed as top priority, so you could put extra mods in there. They would still need to be compatible, in the sense that they can't completely overwrite certain things that are required for GCM (anything that the OOBs depend on).

Yeah it appears to be working after doing some modifications you still get Kevin's detailed maps and extra courier functions. You just have to sacrifice the flanking fire and artillery being reduced from Kevin's version. I see it as a great possibility and would be willing to accept the compromise for a better carryover system and easy way of doing reinforcements (running turns). We'll have to play some games with it and see if people like it.

wooff woooff!

Is that Captain Flashheart I hear?

I think these developments are tremendously exciting! I wasn't aware of the custom campaign setting in GCM, which would well-suit some aspects of what we're trying to do. Keep it up you chaps!