Issues with Issuing Orders

[Heiko Alkema]

So one of the things I think would help revive the site a bit would be to identify some of our gripes, grievances and general inefficiencies with the game as it stands and try to address them one by one.

This thread is more for enumerating problems, once we have a decent list of issues then we can start brainstorming solutions.

Lay out all out here.
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As I mentioned in the other thread one of the biggest problems is the way everything requires some level of staff involvement at every level of the game. Staff has to approve all apps, staff has to close all threads, staff has to moderate all battles, staff had to maintain all profiles (all of them: skill, mini, journals, etc.), staff have to generally maintain the site. The list goes on and on.

And as we've seen, staff isn't always around or motivated enough to do all of it at the same time. It can get very overwhelming, let me tell you.

So we need to relinquish some of that control to the community. The easiest ones to let go of would be moderating battles and maintaining profiles. And that would be a huge load off of the shoulders of the few staff hanging around.

Letting players maintain their own profiles and units should be safe enough. We're all reasonable here. No need to have such tyrannical control over that portion.

I think we can also let anyone who wishes moderate battles as along as the battlers consent to having that person mod for them. One of the biggest reasons battle threads fail is due to the mod dropping out. In this case I think we could work in a Cp incentive for these proxy mods for their service.

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I also think IO has become too complicated over the years. The shop became super bloated. The games mechanics became strained by the skill point system. And there are a lot of unnecessary rules bogging things down and making things opaque for potential new members.

So I feel we need to reign in some of the more complicated and unnecessary systems and features.

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What are some other things that you guys think are making the site drag?

[Friedrich Falkenbëck]

In the time I been here the main problem I seen where it from my view had an affect on the activity, every time the staff disappeared or it took them ages to give CP or the shop died a lot of people seemed to go away or do something different for awhile the, staff seems to have been effective enough (when active).

So all in all one of the main thing is staff should be very active if they aren't things don't work.

Concerning the skill point system wouldn't there be a way one could make a skill point system a bit like it is now but in their profile they'd be able to put the points in they have themselves with + buttons or something but the system wouldn't permit them to put more into their skills then they have.. a bit like when you make stats in PC games so when staff gives them their say 3 SP the person goes into their profile and can then himself put those 3 points in by pressing a button but he can't remove them or allocate them when placed if that makes sense.

Or in the end concerning Skill point train one or two specifically for that task so it's all they have to worry about as mods.

In the form of regiments I would say that players should be able to manage those themselves, as we should be able to trust the members we have here.

Personally I prefer the mods doing the battle moderations because mostly they are consistent but in case it is decided to permit other players to act as a proxy battle mod I think the people who done battle mods for ages should maybe put down a guide or at least some guidelines in order to have a consistency. And a reward for those who wants to use their time to do it I think is a good idea as it may prove motivating and if one does a lot of battle modding he wont be "punished" by it since he still achieves CP and so on.

So in the end..

Let players maintain journals and put them up themselves
Let players maintain their own regiments (though I still feel it should be approved before everyone makes a regiment)
Train more battle mods
Keep shop
An easier Skill point assigning
And last if you are a staff member be very active or at least inform before disappearing

[Deleted]

As far as staff involvement in everything, a lot of it is necessary. A neutral position in battle is essential to a fair and realistic outcome. A lot of things can be done to streamline their job and make it less of a chore. I've thrown some pretty wild ideas around in contemplating this.

I think that some burden can be taken off staff in neutrals. Requiring site staff to dish out CP is an ineffeciency That could be remedied by allowing other players (not involved in the thread) to do it themselves, maybe even giving them CP for doing it. Whoever is online when the thread ends can check the thread for quality and depth, and make a cp judgment within the boundaries of neutral thread rules. A roleplaying republic. This should ease staff duties, give others an incentive both to do more neutrals (as ending one would be easier) and to help end them (cp bonus).

What could be done to make applying easier? I'm not sure of everything that could be done, since I haven't seen this from a staff perspective. As it is, it can take weeks to get a character approved. Maybe leave the screening to non-staff? This might let in the riffraff, and i've always loved IO for it's high standards. Either way, the final approval can't be done by non-staff. We can't approve registrations, or whatever, but we can shorten a lengthy (or not) application to a few simple sentences for a mod to check. "Hautt approves? I know he got accepted, and is an OK roleplayer, so his judgment should be sound." We know the rank restrictions, etc. CP can also be a valuable incentive, at a fixed rate. I need a few extra points to get that upgrade, and someone just applied. Lucky me! Read the qpplication, pass judgment, get cp.

IPod battery dying. Must post. Will add more thoughts later.

-Hautt (he is in das haus)

[☭ Joseph Petrov]

I haven't put much thought into this idea yet but perhaps soldiers could be free? Hear me out now. If upon creating a character, a player was given an amount of soldiers in proportion to his or her character's rank then it might encourage more battles. Why? Because people won't be worried about risking their hard earned CP on something so fragile, and it will guarantee that everyone (in an army at least) will be capable of participation in a battle.
Example:
Private and PFC = a fire-team of 3 solders
Corporal and Sergeant = a squad of 8
Second and First Lieutenant = a platoon of 24
Captain = a company of 70

Something like that. So, uh... thoughts on it? Stupid? Good? Undecided?

Also, I do like Hautt's sign-up idea. While something might be needed to keep people from abusing the system, I do think an incentive to keep that from happening would be A) Looking like an ass if you "approved" a terrible application, and B) wanting to keep the "rif et raf" out.

As for the shop, I think it could use some changes. Such as significant price reductions. What I mean is, the shop has a crap-ton of stuff that we *never* use. I don't think anyone has ever bought a Cromwell tank, for instance. Why? Largely because getting the CP is difficult, and because it's so expensive people generally only want to get stuff they know they'll use. What do they know they'll use? Most likely something that has as small a chance of getting destroyed as possible. Like a King Tiger. Not a Cromwell, or a Stuart tank. There are (well, in the past) some people who have so much CP, it's not even funny, and they can afford to blow their money on stuff they may never use just to make their regiment look snazzy. Now, I'm not saying we need to just *give* people tanks and stuff, but I do feel something must be done to bring more armour into battles. A big part of that is making people want to spend their CP on it, even if they know it could get destroyed in a battle or two.

[Mac Bargett]

Punk had me start the D&A battles as a solution to those problems, Joe. I the moderator supplied the units and tried to use a few units that no one used.

Perhaps we could take that general idea and flip it. Let anyone mod small battles and the players have one use npcs that don't come out of their pockets.

Then we have staff run battles where the players use npcs that they bought, but for a higher point reward

[☭ Joseph Petrov]

I think that's definitely a step in the right direction. Though my problem with D&A is that it's sort of a "non-canon" thing, if you know what I mean. So while the player is participating in a battle, it's not exactly developing their character's story the same way a normal battle is (if I remember correctly).

While on the subject of battles, another big thing that I think keeps people from participating as much in battles is; the map-making. As nice as it is, making and editing a map every time you post isn't always possible, and can be a bit time consuming. Thus making people wait longer for posts. I'm not quite sure how we could get around this though, or if we even should. I dunno...

[Heiko Alkema]

Maps are actually optional, always have been. They're just super helpful and became the norm, but there's nothing that says you have to have one for a battle or update it every post.

In fact I think it's actually a shame that they became so commonplace, as I feel people came to put more focus on making maps than writing good clear posts, relying on the maps to do that for them. (I'm guilty of this too.)

In my mods I tried to have the writing overrule anything on a map in an effort to combat that, and I will continue to do it.

Fun fact: The first epic campaign was done entirely "blind", each side only had the blank map for reference in their writing and could submit a supplementary map to the mod via pm with their posts if they wanted. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that in the future. (One of those battles was actually my first battle. Good memories.)

Also, I created a repository for good old maps so that they could be reused in future battles since a good map is hard to find/make. You can find the thread stickied in the battle sign up board which is now located under the battle category instead of buried in the character area.

[Deleted]

I just kind of float from topic to topic. I kept having new ideas, remembering old ones. Changing on the go. Left a lot of things unsaid. Feel free to express your thoughts.

I admit I've had the same idea before. I liked roleplaying with freebies in my battle against Heiko. I'd have to say I'm opposed to free infantry though. Mostly because CP and the shop can be fixed to a higher standard where infantry would really mean something and have variety. I've had a thousand micro-ideas in the space of an hour, some of them coming to me in my sleep. I've sktched out basic and not-so-basic designs for a shop system relying on sections and squads instead of individual soldiers, so that battles take place on a slightly larger scale than before. One reason is that it is rare for their to be a battle on IO of less than that size. Situation where two units of less than squad size commanded by less than a squad leader were far less common than otherwise. Uninteresting, and potentially boring. Unless it's a sniper batlle or duel, battles will be larger than that. Certain Squads and sections organized in a certain manner form certain platoin, companies, etc. The type of a battalion can be easily discerned by the organization of the squads. Building a hodgepodge unit with everything mixed in can be difficult to structure and frustrating to organize.

More detailed units means better battles, since kbowing the squad type can tell the suad composition. A few clicks from a moderator as he looks up a 1939 Panzer Pioneer squad is all it takes to tell how many men there are in the squad (in this case 12), what weapons they have (4 x Gewehr 41/43 rifles, 4 x MG42 LMGs, 3 x MP38/40s, 1 x flamethrower), how much ammunition each man carries (in Heavy MG teams, for instance, riflemen carried less ammunition for themselves since their rooea were to carry the MG ammo and crew the weapon) and what non reusable ordnance they carry (18 x hand grenades, 8 x satchel charges, 6 x anti-tank grenades). Having ordnance become more common shouod also druve the price down. As it is, I tret grenades as sacred gifts rather than disposable kill-sticks. "Heilige Handgranate." The Holy Hand Grenade. Valuable CP that goes right down the turd chute if it's a bad toss or whatever. Holy Turd Chute.

There is so much I've learnee about the composition of units, from the squad level (variations in how many men, what weapons, ordnance, ammunition) to the size of entire Corps and Army Group. It's frustrating not to be able to express that here on IO. On top of it all, units changed throughout the war. Also, the Actual Unit Table of Equipment differed from the TOE Order of Battle. The TOE (OB) is the structure, on paper, that the unit is supposed to be. For instance; a Tiger Company in 1942 had an Order of Battle of 20 Tigers and 25 Pz IIIs (usually ausf. J). However, due to losses, and periods of waiting inbetween resupply, they may have much less. The ACTUAL TAble of Equipment might only br 6 Tigers
and 10 Pz IIIs. The purpose of the TOE (OB) is to give the unit a goal, a marker of "full strength". The Tiger company reports how many tanks they have, and the ordnance depot ships them 14 Tigers and 15 Panzer IIIs, bringing them to full strength. That is when their TOE and TOE (OB) are the same.

Orders of Battle changed tio. Tiger companies in 1944 had only 14 Tigers, and no Pz.IIIs. Battalion HQ might have some anti-air, panzergrenadiers, pioneers, and so on for support.

Anyways my point us that creating a TOE (OB) is easier with units coming in various types of squads. It can freate depth in units that ee don't have now. It is easier on moderators to keep track of that information, too. I could build an entire Division to a structured format with such a syatem.

To really give it diversity, there would be a lot of additions. Off the top of my head I can think of about 500 squad formations for the Russians and Gwrmans combined. Another 500 total for Company, Battalion, Regiment, Brigade, and Division level historical Orders of Battle. A chart showing the cost of material and men could make the shop obsolete except for personal character items. NPC inventories would follow tge guidelines of its TOE structure.

This includes any variants of any vehicle, aircraft, whatever. Heck, with a basic soldier type cost for specific service (armor, arty, inf) and costa for all devices (about 300 in all) the entire shop could be a single sub forum, Each nation having its own sticky. All German items in a single thread, easily saved and edited in notepad, previewed with the handy dandy post preview, and subject to simple BB code.

Also reducable to a single sub-forum is the library of devices. These are anything from guns (alone,
unmounted) to aircraft droptanks, engines, small arms, whatever. Such information as penetration capabilities if different guns, different ammunition, range, speed, cost to manufacture, load/resupply cost, etc.

One idea I've had for making armor more useful and easier to obtain is, as apetrov said, price reductions. I also have pondered what it would mean to make a tank roughly as cheap as a squad. Since it is around 1/4 or 1/5 of a platoon, as is a squad, all it would need would be to fix a percentage for inflation and production limitations/availability. Just throwing numbers around, a light tank could be 20 percent more expensive than a basic infantry squad, a medium tank 40, heavy tank 60.

I've always wondered what exactly CP was. It eeems to try to fill too many roles. Currency? Production limitations? Scarcity? I've always supported Adjusting CP closer to their actual production costs. The Panther cost about as much as a Pz.IV. The Tiger about as much as 3 StuGs. I can see roleplayers making the same arguments they made in real life. Would they rather have a platoon of Tigers, or a company of assault guns? IO shouldn't try to force balance where their wasn't any historically. War isn't balanced. Wwr isn't fair. "IO-because war isn't fair." lol. Can't afford Tigers? Get some jagdpanzers! Ambush the living sheet out of them! Think! Adapt! They'll constantly be learning, and facing the same problems men of war have faced throughout the history of armed conflict.

I've also been thinking if a way to standardize battles. Something that can 1. Create detailed battle maps. 2. Be used in battles themselves, drawing information from the library of devices and unit rosters to aid moderators and simplify their task. 3. Keep track and edit rosters in a graphic manner. Who carries what (roster, TOEs), what can it do (device library). Also show these in an intuitive way. Who is squad leader? Not a page of text showing stats, but also displaying it on the map itself. Line of sight, blast radii, a toggle for floor levels (something i've
always wanted). The list goes on. Priceless tool. Is this unrealistic?

Basically my desires are this; Supershop. Every vehicle of every make and model, detailing everything known about every weapon and its effects on everything. Historical squad-based unit purchases instead of individual soldiers, or at least the TOE listings. Superlibrary; could be used to dump information more for study than use. Articles about units, organization, vehicles, and such. Stats for everything on historical values. Would make resupply/repair a simple time/cost thing. Also: Superbattlemap. Helpful, easy-ish to use interface, drawing information from supershop/superlibrary and displaying it in a userul manner. If maps were higher quality, easier to make, and displayed more information for the mod to use, they might make battles more commonplace.

I do sdmit I'd try out a "blind" battle as Heiko discussed, but for heavier more complex combat it wouldn't cut the mustard.

I'm poopes took three hours to write this on the "&);&(
ipod. Aaand now you know what I've been doing for five months.

[Heiko Alkema]

First, to the point of what exactly CP is. Conceptually, Command Points, to me, represent your commanders' trust and faith in that character. These are then traded to requisition new equipment and personnel. This gets a little hazy when you throw in neutral rps, but whatever. In practice, prices should be founded on scarcity and adjusted from there according to usefulness.

And here's where we run into trouble. Different philosophies on what IO is or should be. I was wondering how long it would take for this conflict to come up.

They way I see it, there are two scalea we can slide against. There's the realism-abstract scale and the micro-macro scale. You and I are on the same side of the realism scale, I've bought encyclopedias of equipment and personnel purely for use here. However, we fall on opposite ends of the scale... scale.

I've always enjoyed the smaller squad-or-three size battles to anything larger. I enjoy very much the role playing and character building side of the game and it's obviously easier to keep track of and develop a smaller number of characters.

And as for units, where you've gone the make everything for everything route, my thoughts have traveled down the customization route. If you want an accurate historical organization, so be it, but leave the door I open for the less interested to build what they want too.

To that end, I've been thinking of reforming NPCs out of the cookie -cutter, all
-the-same-
,thing that they are now, and heading into a place where you purchase a blank slate NPC and equip him the same way you would yourself. Slap down 1 CP for a basic recruit and 5 more to strap a better rifle or a grenade to him. Want a machine gun section? 3 CP for the troops and another 15 to give one of them a machine gun. Maybe another 5 to give one of the other a set of binoculars for a bonus to accuracy and detection.

Want a sniper team? 2 CP for the personnel, 10 for a scoped rifle, 5 for binoculars. Done.

Much easier on the shop as we don't have to create a unit for every combination, just a canvas and some equipment to stick on it.

Now we could strike a compromise and have the base unit be a squad (6ish) instead of an individual. 5 CP for a fresh squad, and 1CP to replace casualties (making it more costly to replenish them to buy new thus making them less expendable).

Want to upgrade the rifles of the squad? 15 CP to give the whole squad G43 semiautomatic rifles. More specialized weapons would be singles; 15 CP to add an mg to the squad, etc.

In either case, the equipment you purchase would not disappear on death. Placed back in an inventory pool for the individual way, or a permanent upgrade in the case of the squad system.

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On the case of tanks, I think we could go two ways.

One, they're expendable and thus cheaper. Or two, of we go that customizer route with NPCs, out could be an upgrade to a squad turning out from infantry to a single armored vehicle. The equipment, again, is permanent; replaced automatically destroyed in battle, only the crew need be replaced.

That last route was something I thought of on the fly and I rather like it now.

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Anyway, that's one of the struggles we're going to have to address. Where does the site fall on those scales? That was one of my problems with the site before, a lack of focus and direction. The free form nature of our game is one of our driving forces so sticking steadfastly to one view shouldn't be the goal, rather design things to fit together with an eye toward one while not stifling other approaches.

[☭ Joseph Petrov]

I like your unit ideas Heiko, which brings me to; what should we do about units? Lots of people are inactive, obviously, especially some of the big-wigs in the unit (JT and PuNk) that run it, and/or have most of its stuff. So should we just let people make any unit they want? Again, I'm just throwing ideas out there, so maybe this isn't such a good idea. But then again... maybe it is? It could add more diversity, as well as giving people a chance to sort of customize their unit. Then of course we run into the problem of people wanting to be in a unit but the first person not wanting person number two to be in the unit.

At the very least, I think it would be good to somehow give players more control over their unit. Perhaps players could be given a "unit page". Something like a locker, but where they can organize all their characters' soldiers, tanks, ect. Like a mini-unit roster. This would lend itself to both more variety and historical accuracy (because we all know the 3rd ID didn't fight in Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge). As well as more specialization for characters.
Like, make a template that people can fill out. Copy and pasting it for each character's unit.
Its size would be based on the characters' rank. So a Second Lieutenant can have a platoon sized unit, a Sargent a squad, ect.
Rough example-
Unit Name: 1st Platoon, A Squadron, 2nd Armoured Battalion Grenadier Guards, Guards Armoured Division
Commander: Lieutenant John Doe
*Sherman Tank* - Command Tank
*Crew*

*Sherman Tank*
*Crew*


*Sherman Tank*
*Crew*

*Infantry Squad*

[Heiko Alkema]

I've had thoughts on that matter too. Opposite to my consolidation efforts elsewhere, I would like to break units down into more manageable sections. Instead of monstrous, monolithic division threads, I want to give the big units their own sub-boards so that rather than one thread where people request to join, store their units, and generally conduct unit business, each of those things can be broken up into smaller threads, with unit rosters broken into one company/platoon/squad per thread with separate threads for join requests, division discussion, etc.

And here's the really big difference. I want to make the authoritative members of those units mini-moderators of their own unit sub-boards. Company/platoon/squad leaders able to edit their own rosters and the rosters of sister sub-units should inactivity occur.

If a player doesn't want to join one
of the larger units, they would be able to create a smaller independent unit. Should two or three players decide to band together to create a larger unit, they will be given their own sub-board.

[PuNk! ™]

Right... Hello...

I haven't had a chance to go through all of this thread yet, but I'm currently face-palming at the terrible state of the site; I think before we adjourn any game-play ethics or community based policing, this place really needs to be in some sort of functioning state, it's paining me to see it like this.

I see the Proboard V5 decision has been made (or was automatically implemented)? I did keep it downgraded to avoid all the code glitches, but obviously I've been absent for a very long time.

What was the general rouse of decoration for the site? Such as, boards/category layouts? Because right now, I'm sorely tempted to bin the whole lot and start again, everything looks very mish-mash right now, which could be a cause of all the conflicting coding if the V5 Proboard isn't liking it...

Again - excuse me, know I've been away for a very long time, I appreciate all efforts and participants still coming to this site, perhaps I'm in no place to have my say to be fair, but I for one, feel I.O at this rate could do with a clean new slate.

~Danny <-- Still had to sign it, didn't feel right if I didn't, lol.

[Deleted]

Edit: Crap! Hey Danny! Didn't see you before I posted. Good to know you're back in the struggle! Can't comment on sight appearance. I'm on an iPiece of dirt. So long as we take our brains wuth us, we can get IO going again.

Would it be alright for me to create a thread for continuing the shop discussion? You said a lot that I fully or partially agree with, and I'd like to reply without derailing this thread.

Anyways, as far as unit templates go, I like it. It's basically a Table of Equipment (Order of Battle) that I discussed. The foundation for the way the unit is organized. Basically a template template. There are tons of ways to organize platoons and companies. For instance, say I want to found a single platoon of a Tiger company (the company itself has variations, in this case an HQ platoon of two Tigers and three combat platoons of four each). Here's one way to interpret that:

--HQ SECTION--
-Command Tiger I E- (platoon commander's section)
-Crew-

-Tiger I E-
-Crew-

--HEAVY TANK SECTION--
-Tiger I E- (section commander)
-Crew-

-Tiger I E-
-Crew-
----------------------------

Three platoons plus two HQ Tigers would make a company.

Basically it's two sections with two Tigers each. The Platoon Commander takes control of a single section, while still commanding other sections thru section leaders.

It could also be organized into four sections of four Tigers. What if the unit is just being formed? Understrength at two or three tanks per platoon. And that's just options for a platoon following one type of TOE. The company could he founded on 1942 structure of 20 Tigers, 25 Pz.IIIs. Completely modular. It's a more effecient use of TOEs. Look at some historical examples, and structure your own unit with knowledge of HOW it could be done well, while by no means keeping the player from experimenting.

As far as using sub-boards, I've considered the idea before. Can there be sub-boards of sub-boards? If so, it could go Division, Regiment, Battalion, Company, and threads for platoons.

How would divisional command be determined? Say two people each have their own 3rd SS company. They founded them without each other's help or input, using their own resources. At what point is a divisional commander declared? They were essentially independant. How can one grow to a full division without swalling up the other? It would be confusing to have a full 3rd SS Division, but they don't control this one part. Would entire Divisions be founded at a time? Coop venture? A race to earn command?

Whayever the case, I can see use in each level having its own HQ answering to the one above it but not to each other battalions answer to the regiment hq, not other battalions. I can (and have) drawn graphic representations of entire divisions. Each board and sub board could have an HQ sticky showing what the unit contains. For the division HQ, it would show regiments and independant battalions under its command.
Regiments show all battalions under its command, etc.

I can't put pictures on the ipod, but I think you can understand what I'm saying.

[Heiko Alkema]

The v5 update was forced through by Proboards a couple of months ago. All the old code is still tucked away in "legacy" file somewhere but for the most part the update didn't transfer much over. And if you think the site looks bad now, you should have seen it yesterday before I took a hatchet to it clear off a good bit of the glitches. And to be fair, it was already pretty mish-mash before Proboards hit it in the face with a shovel.

As for a clean slate, I'd rather look at it as if the site is a lumpy piece of clay that just needs some extra molding and care. We've got a good formula here as evidenced by the fact that this site has been here since 2007-2008. So just massaging out the bad and smoothing out the good is what we need, I think.

As for more shop discussion, Hautt, yeah, that definitely needs its own thread.

Side note: I don't know why I'm far more verbose when writing on my phone as opposed to writing on my laptop.

[Friedrich Falkenbëck]

Something about the units I see a problem with is if say we have 8 new people who join (happy days of course) then they all decide they want to make their own units and then a month later they all leave forever and we'll have 8 units who just sit there... What would the approach be to that?

And connected to that how will we do ranks? will we have tons of kids with shitty apps being approved into officer positions because they had a friend who want them to join? Or would there be set some level of standard for peoples rank since I'd feel horrible seeing someone making a field-marshal with a two paragraph app

Concerning purchasing things.. does this mean we are going to remove the differences? Where before Russians tended to be cheaper because their training was lower then the others, or are there still going to be advantages of the different countries?

Also the tanks now if we ended up making the tanks permanent like a rifle I can see that most people would end up just making armoured units because against infantry it's quite dangerous and if every time you get slaughtered all tanks destroyed you just pay 1cp per man lost it wouldn't really feel like you lost. And being the one winning you won't really feel the same level of having caused damage to the enemy/ sense of victory "Oh cool I killed a tiger division but once that guy had one neutral thread he'll have it all back"