I know BAO is a feature to be added at some point, and is a complex addition. But I am wondering if there is an ETA on that? I can't give up warfish without it... :(  Plus it might get Cumberdale more involved and back into things...

I'd have posted it on the announcements area if I could, as I am looking for an announcement on it, so I will have to hope it is ok here! feel free to move.

eagerly anticipating BAO,

Gimli

It's scheduled for after the scenario enhancements which I'm working on... best guess would be a couple of months away all being well G.

Only snag is we've still got to thrash out the details of what form BAO (Simultaneous Play) will take here... it turned into one of those never ending discussions where nothing got decided on and a lot of arguing about suitable acronyms was done.

tom wrote: nothing got decided on and a lot of arguing about suitable acronyms was done.

If there's one thing the people on this forum are good at, it's that.

at least people are talking, responsive and want to be involved on here lol

Viper wrote: at least people are talking, responsive and want to be involved on here lol

Around here, we say ALN instead of lol, and it's LLOL if you really did laugh out loud. lol is outsider speak.

tom wrote: It's scheduled for after the scenario enhancements which I'm working on... best guess would be a couple of months away all being well G.

So T-Bone!

Are you open to allowing people to work on it with you?

my apologies for not using the correct nomenclature.. I always knew ALN to be About Last Night. Is it something else here? Is there a WG acronym index somewhere? hah

tom wrote: Only snag is we've still got to thrash out the details of what form BAO (Simultaneous Play) will take here... it turned into one of those never ending discussions where nothing got decided on and a lot of arguing about suitable acronyms was done.

I have to admit, despite my mild interest, I never really "got it" on Tos, so I'll be paying attention to the discussion here.

Viper wrote: my apologies for not using the correct nomenclature.. I always knew ALN to be About Last Night. Is it something else here? Is there a WG acronym index somewhere? hah

This acronym index could be extremely useful. Someone needs to create it.

I'll whip up the Wargear Acronym Index eventually, but for now you'll have to settle for no WAI.

Here, let me sum up the longest BAO thread we've had so far:

Me: I want a BAO that doesn't put so much emphasize on (ironically enough) turn order as a tactical consideration.

Just About Everyone Else: We liked it the exact way it was on ToS and we're so opposed to change that we'll put up with a crappy system because we're used to it. Plus, you smell and shut up.

At least I think that's the way it went, my memory is a bit foggy.

IRoll11s wrote:

Just About Everyone Else: We liked it the exact way it was on ToS and we're so opposed to change that we'll put up with a crappy system because we're used to it. Plus, you smell and shut up.

And there was potentially deep tactical and strategical elements to turn order that did not want to be lost.

Deep tactical and strategic elements brought about by the dumb consequence of how the system was 'designed', not by any foresight.

Of course, if you like the fact that your attack in Kalamazoo was successful because you managed to delay it by making a bunch of meaningless single unit 'attacks' into territories you owned in Timbuktu, then classic BaO is for you.

I happen to think we can do better.

No, snarkiness aside I don't hate the BaO* system from ToS*. In fact the most fun I've had on any map (on either site) has been the Long Haul tourny on the Texas map, which was set up as BBB*, full-fog, 16-person games. If we can't work something else then I will live with it.

It will still rub me the wrong way that the most important tactical decisions involve turn order in a system supposedly designed to eliminate turn order as a variable, in much the same way that the word inflammable bugs me.

*TOS (or ToS) = That Other Site = the Risk site where the administrator basically went AWOL with regards to everything except for taking money for new subscriptions, and where quite a few of the initial signups for Wargear came from.

BaO = Blind at Once = a playing method where everyone issues their orders at the same time popular on ToS. Once everyone has issued orders the turn is played at Once. Also the topic of this thread, as in: when is WG gonna get a similar system, and what will it look like.

BBB = each B stands for Blind, one each for Territory Selection, Unit Placement, and Turns. Three Bs means a BaO system is used for all three phases. Used on ToS.

ALN = Audible Laughing Noise.

IRoll11s wrote:
Of course, if you like the fact that your attack in Kalamazoo was successful because you managed to delay it by making a bunch of meaningless single unit 'attacks' into territories you owned in Timbuktu, then classic BaO is for you.

I think we started discussing this in the other thread, but yes knowing when to attack in the turn order when Order Placement is Simultaneous does involve a lot of strategy IMO, which is what BAO is/was.

Having no turn order but a throw everything into a "pot" for when Order Placement is Simultaneous is different and does remove a potential strategy type but does also introduce a new/different strategy type.

Once WG travels down the road of BAO/Sim I think it is definitely possible there may end up being multiple types of BAO/Sim gameplay here, at least I think there were a few promising systems proposed in the previous discussion.

if turn order can be assigned to seat order, defined by scenario, determined by # of units (1st in units is last or first in turn order), then there are lots of options in ToS that mitigated importance of seat order.
Seat order was fun for large BAO boards, like Cumberdale's city of the dead or Atlantis ones... it let you know who was most powerful when someone was assigned seat #1.
In Toaster's AnA for example with assigned seat position, it really puts emphasis on attack order decisions.
I am curious how a BAO mechanic would work that didn't have seat order even less important than it could be in ToS... I'm curious. Maybe like tourneys, there could be multiple types of BAO...

I never really liked the fact that a map could be set up to use #territories or #armies or some other tactical consideration, but then have everyone's efforts at playing for those stats be totally negated by someone shifting around 100 background armies.

Now, I know there is a cost to leaving all those armies in places that they can be shifted around just as a delay. There's also a tax on sanity for setting up all those moves. Regardless, I'm with 11's on the idea that padding the stack is an annoying and uninteresting way to have gameplay manipulated.

I'm not offering an alternative at this time, though. Just picking sides.

*TOS (or ToS) = That Other Site = the Risk site where the administrator basically went AWOL with regards to everything except for taking money for new subscriptions, and where quite a few of the initial signups for Wargear came from.

BaO = Blind at Once = a playing method where everyone issues their orders at the same time popular on ToS. Once everyone has issued orders the turn is played at Once. Also the topic of this thread, as in: when is WG gonna get a similar system, and what will it look like.

BBB = each B stands for Blind, one each for Territory Selection, Unit Placement, and Turns. Three Bs means a BaO system is used for all three phases. Used on ToS.

ALN = Audible Laughing Noise.

I'm familiar with everything except ALN.  Thanks!

Padding the stack was what turned the BAO light switch ON for me. No attack is meaningless if you are doing it for a greater end. Doesn't that happen in real war all the time? You make an attack here so that they allocate troops there and then you make your big attack somewhere else? I think there was something about that in Nomandy or something but I don't want to get off on an Historical discussion here.
I'm all for a new system and welcome it with open arms. I think that turn order and using the stack (Stack: Set of moves that have not taken place and the order in which they will actually occur) is just a good way of doing simultaneous play. I don't want something dumbed down and simple, we have turn-based for that, I want a more involved style of play that takes actual thought other than when to cash and where to attack.
I'm behind any idea that allows turns to take place at once without any knowledge except for educated guesses as to what the other player is going to do. Aside from that, come up with whatever you can, but I personally can't imagine how that can happen without turn order and the stack coming into play.

Cramchakle wrote:

Now, I know there is a cost to leaving all those armies in places that they can be shifted around just as a delay. There's also a tax on sanity for setting up all those moves. Regardless, I'm with 11's on the idea that padding the stack is an annoying and uninteresting way to have gameplay manipulated.

I'm not offering an alternative at this time, though. Just picking sides.

Perhaps unsurprisingly to some, I'm throwing my lot in with the curmudgeons. And actually the flip side of this coin is what really bothered me about it - the sanity tax wasn't a deterrent to me, it was what eventually ruined BAO at ToS for me. Because if I wanted to compete at the top level with the rest of you killers - and I did - I had to spend 15% of my turn time strategizing, 83% of my time queueing up fake orders, and the other 2% of the time actually doing the turn.

I think we have a great opportunity to start from scratch and dream up an even better system here, and there were some good ideas in the other thread(s) on this subject. Let's not think small just to speed up the development time.

I stayed away from BAO on big boards once I realized the order stacking. ASM's 15% strategizing could easily last 1 to 3 hours, and well, that's silly to pad the stack like that for hours and hours.

But an immediate fix for that while preserving the order stacking strategies we DO love is not clear to me.

Limiting the number of orders to 10 or 20 or 30 per turn sounds like a quick and reasonable fix, possibly annoying to count out, but in "little guy goes last games" gives the little guy that all important last order.

Building on ASM's post, at some point I'd like to discuss a generalization of BAO that increases the functionality of order stacking and contains BAO as a designer-specified parameter. But it'll be a larger post.