Balance v realism?

[quaazi]

Now, something I've been wondering about BFV is how can you guys model the fact that the vast majority of US involvement in Vietnam resulted in tactical victories (the game representing the tactical scale). Indeed, massive NVA victories started popping up only after 1973, so I believe there's some kind of compromise to be made to both give the NVA/Vietcong side a winning chance as well as keep US losses to a minimum.

Essentialy, what I'm asking is, how well balanced would the game be considering the actual outcomes of most famous battle that will probably be recreated (Hue, Khe Sahn, etc.)?

[Stg.Hellfire]

that is the same as the question M16 or AK 47. wich is better?
the m16 is more accurate but does less damage
and the AK does more damage and is less accurate
the US soldiers are more tacticatlly
and the VC/NVA are in the majority and has the Home advantage

[Pizzaman11]

that is the same as the question M16 or AK 47. wich is better?
the m16 is more accurate but does less damage
and the AK does more damage and is less accurate
the US soldiers are more tacticatlly
and the VC/NVA are in the majority and has the Home advantage

Actually what was most important about the ak47 is it would never jam while the m16 would jam a ton. The damage really wouldn't matter much because if you get hit by a bullet (they weren't using kevlar back than) you were going down. Anyway back to the main subject I think the NVA will be probably be on the defensive for most levels (think the Middle Eastern army on Muttrah city) while the vietcong will be more insurgency based I.E. infinite reinforcement, defense advantage, etc.

[Cassius]

Only because the us says so does not mean its true. Now we know that except for large scale operations like tet, the Vietnamese were not looking to achieve tactical victories, but merely to harass the enemy and aiming for a political victory, which they got. If they killed one or 2 and were gone by the time artillery hits it was a victory to them.

So you could have engagements with patrols operating around a Fire support base who have artillery and cas on call to take out VC. Just give the VC more tickets to reflect, that the us must achieve a good killratio.

[quaazi]

Finally, an ontopic reply.

Yes, that's exactly the problem - political victory. How can one simulate the average american and his TV set in a video game like this. In the end, all comes down to tickets, meaning that the only way for VC/NVA to win is to drain their opponent of tickets.

[Trooper909]

How was every battle a victory untill 1973 for the US? Where did you get that idea from? US media? US documentaires? The internet? (most sites run by the US)

My point is realism is a silly way to go as the only sources we have are US ones and the media of that time (and today)is never going to say "we got our asses kicked" Also how can we know those "victory's" wasnt the NVA/vietcong's plan all along?theres a huge difference in tactical retreting to running for hills in fear.

I mean think about all those towns the US took.Thay turned out to be a bane to the US forces in the end as that was the perfect place for the vietnamese to sell there drugs to them.
I could go on but I cant source nothing as thay have never really talked in detail on there tactics soo its logical tho no?


So I say balence ish not same value's on weapons etc I mean this type of balence for example:
The US shouldnt get tanks for some maps were the NVA or what ever will as US tanks never worked in the swamps of nam were and vietnmemes tanks worked fine.

Make the m16 far less accurate than an ak47 to simlulate m16's being **** at the time and ak's being far better in every way but US get things like nade launchers.


Theres alot of different scinarios in that war even unconventional vs unconventional IE when US started adopting more gurilla tactics to counter the VC

Even pure balence style gameplay like kashen desert map style of 2 full str armys going head to head.

Either way id not like to see it go like normal PR IE everything US is OP as it just wasnt true at that point in time.

[quaazi]

What I am saying is that the US troops constantly achieved their objectives, which was to bleed the **** out of the VC/NVA, hell, I am the first guy to claim how utterly the US lost the war as opposed to their claims of a tie, but in simple military terms, the US did little wrong. Tactical retreats are not possible in FPS engines, commonly. I really hoped I'd get an answer from a dev as to how the general game structure is going to be.

[chagadiel]

The US forces didnt win every fight. companies have been practicaly wiped out in ambushes.
The vc were very good at escapeing from a fight when they decided. the so called bodycount is with out dispute mostly fictional and over exagerated.
In a book i read recently the auther, a US adviser and the ARVN he was with engaged a large force of vietcong who were in bunkers in a tree line with a large river to the vietcongs back. a whole day insued of fighting with constant artillary, tac support and all night the vc were pinned down with two spooky gunships. In the morning they moved to the enemy positions and found not only had the vc escaped but as the auther stated cleaned up everything bodies guns and all they left were some shell caseings.

The two sides had two very differrent definitions of victory of battle.peaple who claim that the us army won every battle are thinking on a conventional warfare level in a unconventional war.

General westmoreland more and more went for heavy handed conventional warfare tactics. The hearts and minds tactics were a joke which involved taking the local populations from there antient homes and putting them in camps.

the US military definatly played a part in the loss of the vietnam war.

[Drunkenup]

The US forces didnt win every fight. companies have been practicaly wiped out in ambushes.
The vc were very good at escapeing from a fight when they decided. the so called bodycount is with out dispute mostly fictional and over exagerated.
In a book i read recently the auther, a US adviser and the ARVN he was with engaged a large force of vietcong who were in bunkers in a tree line with a large river to the vietcongs back. a whole day insued of fighting with constant artillary, tac support and all night the vc were pinned down with two spooky gunships. In the morning they moved to the enemy positions and found not only had the vc escaped but as the auther stated cleaned up everything bodies guns and all they left were some shell caseings.

The two sides had two very differrent definitions of victory of battle.peaple who claim that the us army won every battle are thinking on a conventional warfare level in a unconventional war.

General westmoreland more and more went for heavy handed conventional warfare tactics. The hearts and minds tactics were a joke which involved taking the local populations from there antient homes and putting them in camps.

the US military definatly played a part in the loss of the vietnam war.

Thus it should be very much like a insurgency in PR. Asymmetrical balance, even though the US will have such advanced technology compared to the VC and NVA, they both will make up for it using more unorthodox tactics. Tunnels, ambushes, etc you name it. While this is only the case with the VC, the NVA will be a conventional Army, but poorly equipped, (i.e. lack of standardization, like the Chechen's, but with money.)

[Bazul14]

Thus it should be very much like a insurgency in PR. Asymmetrical balance, even though the US will have such advanced technology compared to the VC and NVA, they both will make up for it using more unorthodox tactics. Tunnels, ambushes, etc you name it. While this is only the case with the VC, the NVA will be a conventional Army, but poorly equipped, (i.e. lack of standardization, like the Chechen's, but with money.)

I think you are making a little mistake here. The NVA were fairly standardized, they mostly used 7.62mm ammo, for AK47 and RPKs, RPG-2 and 7's and some other munitions. The Viet Minh(or as the US called them, Viet Cong) were not standardized. In the early stages, Viet Minh used mostly captured munition, like M1 Garands, and more calibers than can be counted by hand.

[RUSSIAN147]

Everyone has stated one fact or another and you are all correct, as a history person i try not to look at the Vietnam conflict either black or white. Reality is that through the 10 years Australia, New Zealand, America and other SEATO countries were involved little progress was made to stop the communists. Sure there were victories for both sides, for the SEATO countries they were military victories, for the NVA and VC there were polictical victories. Essentially what i'm saying is that in the end no'one really won. The NVA and VC unified Vietnam, but it was at an attrocious cost. And the SEATO countries didn't stop the spread of communism further south. And on another note the AK-47 was superior to the M16 because it is simple, reliable, cheap, and easy to use.

[[uBp]Irish]

Honestly, this is a game. You will not be able to realistically portray events in real life. If you offset the tickets for the NVA by giving them more, but give the US the assets that they would "realistically" have in real life, that makes no difference because the skill level of the players could mean that the NVA comes out on top.. which might not be true.

Its a game. Tickets will be balanced as they should, the skill level of the players with the assets, and the terrain should determine the outcome of a game conclusion - not if we're being true to reality.

If we have a Khe Sahn map.. I am not expecting to have a 200 v. 500 Ticket Ratio for the sake of realism. The map is the map to be played.

[RUSSIAN147]

Iam inclined to agree with Irish here.

[quaazi]

Yeah, I guess it's pretty hard to please both ends (ha) here... fun first and foremost, eh?

[Ghost231]

US had to be on the defensive during the Tet Offensive. However what you could do, to balance things out, is to create holes in US defense on some maps.

[PFunk]

US on the defensive map:

Defend Firebase X from VC attack. FOB is in the middle of the jungle, US airfield far away in some corner of the map with big DoD on it, don't spawn any air assets there for like... 20 mins or could be pushed up to longer. Once air assets are in counterattack can begin.

Would be really cool if you could have it as a two part map. First hour or so is spent defending the US Firebase, then (if game code were only fair) when armor/air support opens up turns into an INS style map where US Forces depart firebase to chase down attackers and root out their little hide aways (represented by INS style objectives). Would be like every map was a slice of the lone platoon's experience in Vietnam.

[HAAN4]

that is the same as the question M16 or AK 47. wich is better?
the m16 is more accurate but does less damage
and the AK does more damage and is less accurate
the US soldiers are more tacticatlly
and the VC/NVA are in the majority and has the Home advantage

I don,t really thick the USA soldiers at this time where really tactical,

indeed the Vietnam conflict has development drugs, such has cocaine. what definitives turn you soldiers into supposed ''kiling machines'', what in true they become extreme stupid and ''fearless''.

Also Vietcong where a lot more tactical for the environment, i mean a soldier how can dig itself is a big advantage in jungle warfare where camouflage and hiding give real benefits,

the USA army only started to become real Sirius after 1980, such prove of what i saing is they loose,

common face it kind, USA LOOSE Vietnam.

basic. in urban warfare USA soldiers win, in jungle Vietminh would smash then. my opinion.

and stop saying the USA soldiers are superior infantry. that,s not true. and even less true at this time, where the USA army has just a child compared to those days.

[kllr101]

Hmm, This is something I didn't think about after I heard about PR:V.

Considering the NVA itself was pretty strong, and modernized force for back then, whilst the VC was nothing more than men with AK's. Balancing it out would be a hard task, to keep the game fair. Otherwise, Noone would like to be VC.

Hmm, I will be intrested in seeing how this ends up.

[Tim270]

the USA army only started to become real Sirius after 1980, such prove of what i saing is they loose,
common face it kind, USA LOOSE Vietnam.

Militarily, Vietnam was not really a lost cause at all for the US. It is somewhat a common myth imo that the US lost in the military sense. They did not, they won nearly all the major engagements. There are so many factors that caused the withdrawal, public support, perception of a lost cause and Nixon's election campaign to name a few. But I digress...

How does this relate to the discussion? the way I see it, the factions can be used in a similar fashion to the current ones in PR, conventional forces and a more guerilla/insurgent faction that has different objectives to a conventional force.

[chagadiel]

Militarily, Vietnam was not really a lost cause at all for the US. It is somewhat a common myth imo that the US lost in the military sense. They did not, they won nearly all the major engagements. There are so many factors that caused the withdrawal, public support, perception of a lost cause and Nixon's election campaign to name a few. But I digress...

No once again this is a myth about the americans always won their battles. Battles in vietnam were infact largly a whole series of engagements, for example The battle of the Ia drang was was roughly a month long series of engagement from very large like X-RAY and Albaby down to tiny hit and run skirmishes if memory serves. It involved most of the 1st cavalry division and several regiments of NVA. The end result The NVA went back into cambodia and the 1ST CAV went back to the the Golf cource. The main judgement on who won the battle was the bodycount which was a joke through out the war.

american units were lost at platoon levels in ambushes throughout the war and sometimes whole companies were ripped apart in well laid out ambushes. This so called myth is a myth in its self to massage the fragile american egos and lest we forget vietnam was a disgusting word until the film platoon reopened the wound to help heal america in 86. The build up to the war in Kuwait was tence in 1991 the american public was still truamatized by vietnam. Dureing the kosovo war a politician was heard saying "forget getting over vietnam yet, the public havent gotton over samalia yet" or something similler to my recallection.

HO chi Minh and General westmoreland had two very different ideas of victory. The US lost THE Battle militarily outright. General westmorelands tactics and reation to the norths counter tactics were the biggest cause of the loss of the Vietnam war and the political and civil reaction was a reaction.

In reaction to whether THE US miltary was of a good standerd
The US miltary units were in their first visits to vietnam fully trained profesionall army and marine units with many Korean war veterans among their ranks as well. However Most units were in vietnam for the entire war, they never left and their ranks were refilled with young volunteers and conscripts with only basic training under their belts. The units themselves were trained to engage in the fields of Germany the red army and its armour. The final problem was that becuase of the risk of a large war with the USSR the officers were rotated through vietnam very quickly so that all the officers could get some combat experiance for the big one if it happened and just to build an experiance officer list in peace time.

So yes they were a profesional army but were withered by casualties, time, inexperianced command structures and low moral in latter years

merry xmas all