Return to St Vith Tutorial Planning Aids *Spoiler alert for those playing as Axis*

[Agent Smith]

Daz, These reports are sublime, I can think of no other AAR's that come within cooee of yours, from this, or any other game; period.
-thank you

 

[Iconoclast]

Following along with great interest. Looking forwards to the defense of St. Vith.

Regards,

A

 

[Daz]

Thanks guys
Not sure I will get as far as the defence of St Vith.
Its very time consuming doing the AAR and taking up all my spare time.
I might have to take a break for a bit in a while, but hopefully will continue once I have done all the things I was supposed to do weeks ago

 

[Ripppe]

Daz, it's a shame that the real life takes it toll on these marvelous strategic puzzles we're discussing on this forum... But to be honest, I can totally relate to that problem. As a relatively new father, I find it very challenging to scrap even small amount of free time for CO.

On a game related note, I'm also curious as to why you don't use assault at timing on a regular basis? Wouldn't - for example in this last attack - it be easier to coordinate the attack of artillery - 51 arm inf bn - 1 bn 318 inf regt - at pl of 1/318?

 

[Daz]

On a game related note, I'm also curious as to why you don't use assault at timing on a regular basis? Wouldn't - for example in this last attack - it be easier to coordinate the attack of artillery - 51 arm inf bn - 1 bn 318 inf regt - at pl of 1/318?

Unfortunately Dave never got to the bottom of this problem:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3313015
Quote from Dave on matrix forum:
"I have a question for you all.

At the moment when the user sets an HHour it is set in stone. This places a fair burden on the user to estimate enough time. Would you rather instead have the HHour set but enable the AI to automatically slip it for you. This will mean that you would have to manually reset the HHour of any other attacks that you were trying to coordinate with. We can popup a message but it will then be up to you to either reset or accept that the other attacks will no longer be starting their assault at the same time".

If your formation misses the attack at time it will abandon the attack completely, instead of slipping it and launching it asap.
This means you always have to over calculate the time that they need to get into position if you use the attack at feature, because if they do miss the time, you will have to re order the attack, and suffer another complete orders delay.
This can have a huge knock on effect on your plan, as you can lose hours of game time playing like this.
So for a lot of the orders its best to let them attack as soon as they are ready, and keep an eye out for the indicators that they are about to launch the assault.
The attack at feature is best used if your formations are already in the assault location, so you know they won't be late getting there.

 

[john connor]

How you finding playing it, Daz? I'm having lots of buggy behaviour. All minor things, that I haven't even bothered posting about separately, mostly, but together they make it a bit difficult sometimes. It's irritating, for example, to find all the facings set back to generic north with auto unchecked every time I come back from a save (a very old CO1 bug). It's irritating to deal with the mouse pointer not actioning the piece of estate its actually pointing at. And I've had all sorts of problems with Ctrl-select to try to group units - including units that I have apparently grouped then turning out to have mysteriously reverted to their organic parent, unbidden. To name a few. I was just trying to play through and enjoy, without posting everything, but I think it's a little soon to just play it, to be honest.

Peter

 

[Daz]

Have moved your discussion to here Pete:

http://forums.lnlpublishing.com/threads/whats-the-most-irritating-problem-in-co2.1491/

 

[Daz]

 

[Robert Ward]

Love the AAR, really brings the game alive.

 

[Daz]

Thanks Rob

 

[Daz]

 

[kipanderson]

Daz,


I would have posted this earlier if I had been paying attention..


But congratulations on an outstanding presentation.


Really is extraordinary. As with many here am a veteran of a lot of fine wargames since PCs really arrived in our hobby but this AAR sets new standards.


Is surely a “must have..” for any manual to help new players into Com Ops 2.0.


BTW... this is an important point, in my very biased view anyway . It took me a long time to really appreciate Com Ops as game I wished to play a lot. I admired it, would list it along with CM, Scourge of War and such as one of the “big beasts..” but not play it much.


The reason was that I had over absorbed the line that the AI was so good player intervention could not much improve matters. New players need to be helped to learn micro management first, then appreciate that some jobs are done reasonably by the AI.


This would help that a lot.


Quick question.. ok.. request maybe.. is there an updated document that we can just download and view or print as we wish?


Your AAR is so good it’s wasted by only being available amongst the clutter of forum thread .


All the best,

Kip.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Daz, if you bundle it up into a pdf I would be happy to have it hosted here under the Resources section.

 

[DerGrenadier]

Daz, if you bundle it up into a pdf I would be happy to have it hosted here under the Resources section.

Ill second that. A PDF would be great.

 

[alcamatraz]

Wow, really helpful. I've played the tutorial several times, and now I can see that even so I was doing a terrible job!
Thanks for taking the time to make this!

 

[Daz]

Thanks guys. Those are lovely encouraging words, and very inspiring, thank you
Ill look at my options for doing the pdf.
I have them all collected into one document in Indesign, so making it shouldn't be a problem, my biggest concern is going to be the size of the file.
I think its going to be huge

 

[JArraya]

Daz - Amazing AAR. I've played a lot of wargames and I've seen (and failed miserably at writing good AARs myself) a lot of AARs but nothing like this.
I'm new to Command Ops - loving the game - and this AAR really helps not only understand the mechanics of the game but also to think like a strategic commander, rather than a tactical micromanager. I've also started doing the Google Earth map overlay and it really changes the way you think about the battlefield, helping to see the high and low ground much better than the shading.
Thanks and I can't wait to see the next instalment!

 

[Joseph Bellerose]

Forgive the stupid question, but is this Planning Aid by Daz available to be downloaded and used by others/players?
It seems to be a fantastic piece of work and greatly enhances the enjoyment of Command Ops.

Is it "for sale"...?

 

[Daz]

Thanks guys.
Its a fan based publication, so its not for sale, but I will put up a pdf for it when I get round to it for free.

I have been very busy this week dismantling a huge tree over a greenhouse, and outbuilding!
All I'm good for when I get home from one of these is sleeping, but we are almost done now.

I will finish the current page (21), but am going to wait for the Intel bug to be fixed before continuing with the AAR. Shouldn't be long now.

In the little time I have had, I have been going back through the earlier pages, and editing them to bring them up to date with the later formats I have been using. I am continuing to learn more about the software I am using to make the AAR as I progress, so the layout does change quite a bit.
I keep asking the wife to go through and pick up some of the typos, spelling errors and grammar, but she always seems to have something better to do

 

[JArraya]

Daz,
I'll come and chop down your tree if it helps you get back to doing these!!
In seriousness, I picked up a few typos when reading. I'd be more than happy to go through and give a quick edit if you think it helps.