Vietnam '65 announced @ Matrixgames/Slitherine

[jomni]

This tedious task is what's turning off some people.

[Steelgrave]

Every now and then I go and clean out my Steam cards by putting them up for auction. Most go for around a dime, some as much as 15 cents. It's tedious since you have to click each card individually, put each up for sale individually, etc......but it's free money.

I saw I had three Vietnam 65 cards and when I clicked on them I noticed the average auction price was .50 apiece. I put them up on Steam and they sold immediately.

Basically auctioning off your Steam cards amounts to having a dollar or two taken off future purchases if you sell enough of them. The cards for Vietnam '65 are trading for much more than usual right now, so if you have any it looks like a sellers market.

[KyzBP]

Every now and then I go and clean out my Steam cards by putting them up for auction. Most go for around a dime, some as much as 15 cents. It's tedious since you have to click each card individually, put each up for sale individually, etc......but it's free money.

I saw I had three Vietnam 65 cards and when I clicked on them I noticed the average auction price was .50 apiece. I put them up on Steam and they sold immediately.

Basically auctioning off your Steam cards amounts to having a dollar or two taken off future purchases if you sell enough of them. The cards for Vietnam '65 are trading for much more than usual right now, so if you have any it looks like a sellers market.

I did that on day one and made $1.80.  That's the most I've ever gotten selling cards...by far.

[Steelgrave]

I  made $3 bucks today and made $15 the first time I cleaned out my stock. But then...I have a lot of games on Steam. I look at the trading cards like discount coupons. Go put a bunch up for sale every few months and take a few bucks off a game. No biggie either way.

[JasonPratt]

Is the dev still around? I've got a few questions, from an AAR I'm running here at Grogheads, and he may be able to clarify some rules for me.

The most important one at the moment, specifically, is why the NVA are activating already. And does it mean a tank is coming, and if so does it mean support is coming with the tank (and if so generally what can I expect)?

[Pinetree]

Here's an update from the Slitherine forums:

We are currently working frantically to release an update to V65, items we are going to include are the following:

1. Fog of war , map tiles out of detection ranges will be 'greyed out'
2. Weather , rain will effect combat and Airstrike availability , three day weather forecast on Intel map
3. Villages will have names
4. Player can name US bases and units
5. Combat modifiers to include weather, supply status, proximity to friendly units
6. Custom game option , player can set variables for custom game incl. victory conditions, enemy aggression etc
7. Hex overlays on both maps
8. UI improvements - upgrade on deselect function, Action buttons for selected unit to move to bottom of screen as opposed to being clustered around the unit, helps with tile selection and panning

Update is 2 to 3 weeks away, will update on timing as and when.

Thanks for all the support.

[jomni]

A good set of updates.

[Vietnam65]

Is the dev still around? I've got a few questions, from an AAR I'm running here at Grogheads, and he may be able to clarify some rules for me.

The most important one at the moment, specifically, is why the NVA are activating already. And does it mean a tank is coming, and if so does it mean support is coming with the tank (and if so generally what can I expect)?

NVA activate on three occasions:

1. Every turn there is a chance a NVA unit will start either a base attack or ambush mission, the % chance of such a mission is dependent on the overall HM score , higher the HM score less chance of being created and vice versa

2. Whenever a village HM goes below 40 ( NVA flag flying in village ) a NVA unit is dispatched to setup a support base close to that village, if destroyed will keep trying until Village HM rises above 40

3. If the overall HM is net negative for three consecutive turns the NVA launch an offensive, represented by NVA armor, counter then reset to 0 awaiting for next three turn negatives.

Hope this helps

[jomni]

Sounds like a very deadly snowballing effect with no way to recover once it starts.  the player must prevent this from happening and keep H&M up.

[Vietnam65]

There is a way out of the spiral and it has to do with shifting your focus to the conventional war (Cobra's, Armor etc), defeating the enemy (gaining big PP) then re-focusing onto the non-conventional war and hopefully having enough time to get the HM up.

Of course, the best solution is to keep the VC (and subsequently the NVA) in hand from the start, sometimes not so easy...

[JasonPratt]

I am 1000% in favor of all listed updated plans. :)

The NVA spiral, as described, is fine with me: it's legitimately avoidable, and something can be done about it once it starts, and it gets that far as a result of good/bad play by the AI/player respectively, and/or by reasonable good/bad luck.

What isn't fine with me is the Victory Generators (aka the NVA bases). The only reason the computer doesn't omnipotently secure an unbeatable win by the morning of Day 5 on every game, is because it's hampered by several random factors from doing so on one hand, and because it was never taught to make the most efficient choices with them on the other. Player strategies and tactics mean nothing, or possibly worse than nothing sometimes depending on circumstances; everything else is a sideshow until either the Victory Generators accidentally manage to come out, or until the player is in a position very late game to stomp them if they haven't accidentally come out already. Meaning by then the player has already secured his own win simply due to (in effect) the computer having dry-clicked the loaded revolver at him x-number of times without effect.

I have an extended and detailed analysis-rant about this over on my AAR thread starting here.

The easiest solution (which I'm going to try modding in myself tonight, if I can find where to do it) would be to reduce the daily damage of political support to 100 or maybe even to 66 a day. In other words, hobble the computer from deploying its guaranteed winning strategy one step further. Not really a true solution to the underlying problem, but it should be workable in practice.

A more detailed solution would be to make the bases only affect the HAM score in one or two ways, not the US political score at all. More details on that and other balancing (yet still asynchronous) recommendations here, further down the rant. ;)

[spelk]

TMA podcast discusses Vietnam '65, with Rob Zacny, Troy Goodfellow, Bruce Geryk and Tom Chick for their 300th episode!!

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/vietnam-65

[JasonPratt]

Johan's new update is coming soon; he has posted screenshots here: http://www.vietnam65.com/news--update.html

The confirmed update list is mostly bling and UI, but it affects American playstyle quite importantly in one way. (More updates could be coming either with this patch or later -- this is only the confirmed list so far.)

1. Fog of war , map tiles out of detection ranges will be 'greyed out' -- not sure if this will be optional. I would be grateful for the option, since on one hand the FOW could be very useful and on the other hand the lack of being able to visually verify it helps with the paranoia.  :D

2. Weather , rain will effect combat and Airstrike availability , three day weather forecast -- this could be a potentially huge game changer (and looks sharp!), and not in favor of the Americans! But I can't really complain about it because it makes good sense (and looks sharp!)

3. Villages will have names
4. Player can name US bases and units -- bling, but nice bling. I would like an option to name the villages, too, but I understand for flavor why that still isn't possible. (Even though American units did have nicknames for the villages.)

5. Combat modifiers to include weather, supply status, proximity to friendly units -- another potentially huge game changer. The modifier for supply status is so huge I kind of wish/hope it's an option. There are just too many times when my infantries are on the ragged edge of 2 or 1 supplies remaining and yet are expected to win fights. I do understand the point, it makes sense, but I think it would make better sense if units were hit with combat penalties for being three days out of supply instead: technically even with one day's supply left they are still in supply and well fed. (That the units simply die in the field one day out of supply has never made sense though I grudgingly understand the gamey reasons why. )

6. Custom game option , player can set variables for custom game incl. victory conditions -- this would be quite nice

7. Hex overlays on both maps -- not only will this be nice, but it will hugely help fix the perspective slants between the main game map and the overmap, the latter of which doesn't always line up visually.

8. UI improvements - upgrade on deselect function, Action buttons for selected unit to move to bottom of screen as opposed to being clustered around the unit. -- hugely appreciated. The first especially because there remains no undo function (which i understand, it's a game mainly about detection and a clever player can exploit the way Panzer General games allow limited undos before detection.) And the second because the action buttons obscured the hexes I wanted to use about one time in ten or twenty (which in this game is a lot).

[tgb]

Having combat be affected by how low on supplies a unit is really unbalances the game.  The solution might be to have helicopter deliver more supplies - 10 instead of 5 - but I don't know if that would help.

[bob48]

If the Chinook could carry double loads even - that would help and add a little more realism.