Campaign Series Vietnam: The Vice turned out to be a pretty fun scenario. It's not a large battle, just a couple battalions that one is operating with, but it turned out to be a lot of micro decisions that impacted the entire scenario. That was a blast! It was fascinating to see how just a hiccup or two can throw plans out the window. Small unit tactics were essential for this scenario - and one more praise for all the extra support the US and South Koreans had to help with the battle!
Bill and I started Campaign Series Vietnam scenario "The Mauling" up. I played as the Americans and he played as the NVA (PAVN). My goal was to advance through a plantation area and root out any opposing forces that I could find. Well, Bill definitely made that a chore and a half. It was touch and go all the way through and a hell of a lot of fun. I was appreciative of all the support I had, but holy, against a capable opponent, one never knows what's going to happen!
Started off with a brief explanation of a project I'm working on and then we got into the thick of it. We did a playtest of one of the Tet scenarios that I have been working on. It was a first go. Well, holy crap, Murphy was out in full force during today's session. If it could go wrong, it definitely did! I tried my best to survive, and was successful in a couple of places. Next session will be the revenge, that's for sure.
Alas, I misread my reinforcement schedule. I received some great reinforcements, just not enough of them. The horror, the horror. I did what I could with what I had. I did get lucky in some places of the city, so yay for small miracles. But alas, I was royally defeated. I have some tweaks to do the Event Points for this scenario, as I was trying a new idea and it definitely added up quickly! HA! Otherwise, it was an eye opening scenario on how effective the scripted AI can be. We had some great conversation today about ongoing projects!
We playtest a new Tet scenario with some Aussies today. The first test went fairly well, although I will tweak it a bit to make things a little more challenging for the ARVN/Australians. Keep in mind that there was a lot of heavy action for most of the scenario, it just dwindled a bit too soon. I will remedy that and will try it again next weekend. This was a lot of fun though, it is always fascinating to see how the attacks pan out - there are so many options for the Viet Cong!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
A second test of the Ba Ria scenario. It was interesting to see how the attack came to fruition and the adjustments made to the ARVN had changed the dynamic of the scenario! I noticed a few more minor errors in the script, but nothing game stopping. I will do a little more tweaking and we should be ready to release. I might try this one more time next week to see how it goes. I hope you're enjoying these testing sessions! Yay for learning!
A final test of the Ba Ria scenario. There were significant changes made to the lua script, which I go over in detail at the beginning of the session. It's quite fascinating to see how HAL will respond to the changes and what it does. This session played fairly well and I only need a couple of tweaks to finalize the scenario. I also showed some of the work I've been doing on the Iranians Order of Battles for the Iran/Iraq War.
Here's the very first raw test of this new scenario. This is a good example of why testing is so important. On the bright side, the scripting turned out fairly well. HAL attacked with the Viet Cong in a couple of different ways which made things quite interesting. I will do a couple of modifications for next weeks stream that will, hopefully, finalize this scenario. That will include a few little things like ensuring the Viet Cong don't kill themselves on stacks they just can't take.
Well then, that was eye opening. I was able to test this scenario twice during this session. I didn't poorly the first run, the second run - I don't even want to talk about it. Looks like I have one more tweak to do and it seems that the scenario is good to go. I'm on the verge of embarrassed to post this video and how HAL absolutely slaughtered me, but hey, that's how we learn!
We started up a brand new Tet scenario. I literally "finished" scripting it last night, so there were some teething issues getting it rolling, but lots of valuable lessons to be learned in Lua Scripting. We played through the first half and it's turned into the usual mess for me, but it has been fun to see how the die rolls start off for the main attacks. Some areas are holding on well and heck, I'm even counter-attacking! Alas, other areas seem to have the short end of the stick for sure.