Thanks for this! I have one general response and then I'll address your points one by one:
ArmCom was indeed started as an adaptation of Patton's Best, but it didn't take long before I wanted to develop the scope of the game further. I like to think that it's its own game now, and that while having experience with Patton's Best will help, there's a lot about ArmCom that doesn't fit into the system of the board game any more. Have you taken a look at the online manual page? It's still incomplete, but might be helpful.
Bugs- I originally kept this in to always give the player a chance at a critical hit, but I'll change it so that the shot must be possible to get a critical hit
- That's just a matter of chance; even on Heavy resistance days there's a chance of light resistance, and there's always a chance of having no encounter after capturing an area
- I found this bug too, and hopefully it's fixed in Beta 3
- This was a bug with all mission types; fixed in Beta 3
- Not sure why this is happening; spot ability should be re-calculated at the start of every battle encounter. I'll do some testing and check it out.
- I think it's still good to walk the player through what's happening, otherwise the flow of the battle can quickly become confusing. Using arty and advancing fire is a tactic choice, and the benefits of making this choice should be clear to the player when they happen.
Questions- You can only switch between direct and area fire with HE, and only before you start to fire. If you've maintained RoF, you can't switch modes. I'll do a write-up on the to-hit calculations for the manual eventually, but with area fire you have a much better chance to hit at medium and long ranges, but the dice roll modifiers are applied to the to-kill roll instead, so you've more likely to pin rather than destroy the target.
- Any other AT fire on your tank while an enemy scout car is Spotting your tank gets a -1 bonus to hit. This modifier is listed in the to-hit roll display when such an attack happens.
- Sector control is a bit weird, and it might be something that I simply remove in the future. The number of sectors controlled applies a modifier to friendly attacks, and enemy units cannot spawn in a friend-controlled sector. You're right though, it's quite unclear what they do, so it's something I'll have to figure out for Beta 3.
Criticisms- So the d100 scores and modifiers in PB are actually all pre-calculated odds from the Advanced Squad Leader system. If you look up to-hit rolls and modifiers for ASL, and calculate the odds of success on 2D6, you come up with the percentile scores in the Patton's Best charts. When I realized this I decided to make just about everything in ArmCom use a 2D6 system. This is because the odds of 2D6 results are not linear, but produce a pyramid-shaped 'bell curve' centered on 7. When you start stacking multiple modifiers, their effect on the final chance of success doesn't calculate the same if you use a 2D6 system versus d100. In any case, with ArmCom the game calculates everything for the player, so there's no need to simplify things into tables.
- In Beta 3, all mission locations will be maximum two map nodes away from the player's current position.
- Counterattacks are changed too in Beta 3. The actual resistance level you face in a Counterattack battle is determined by the level of adjacent map nodes, so if you're next to a Heavy node it might help to reposition yourself. In Beta 3, however, you'll be forced to move if you are cur off from friendly forces, so moving around a bit will be helpful.
- With Counterattack you're fighting a lot more during the day. You always get a bug bonus to start Hull Down and ambushing your enemy, however, so make the most of it! There's not a lot of Counterattack days in the calendar, either.
- Strict Commander Replacement was something I added to provide the option of playing with permadeath for those who wanted it. If you want to play through an entire campaign, it makes sense to choose Casual and just replace your Commander as needed, but just as in history, crew death in ArmCom can be sudden and unexpected. I don't think it's ever unfair, however, since the player is aware of all the dangers they face. There's always a risk in every action, the key is to balance risk and reward in how much you expose your crew to danger in order to complete their mission.
Suggestions- The suggestion to flesh out Friendly Action is very well-received. The way you describe it is definitely something I've been thinking of: making game messages more narrative in tone, even if they don't add anything materially to the game. It's on my to-do list, anyway.
- There's a huge scope for random events in the game, but I'm not sure how much I want to add to this incarnation of the game. More on that later.
- Arty affecting only infantry is a hold-over from Patton's Best. I think I'll leave it for now, however, since losing tanks is a huge VP hit.
- Aha - Panzerfaust attacks are indeed in the game! It's a random event, but there has to be an infantry squad in close range armed with a PF for the event to trigger. Be glad you haven't been on the receiving end of one of these. It's not pretty.
- Regarding sector control: I might just end up removing it altogether; especially since the player can't do anything directly to affect it. It's nice to abstractly model what's going on around the player, but if it has a significant impact on the game and is totally outside of player control, it can get frustrating.
Anyway, thanks again for your comments! I should mention that I have a to-do list of major features for ArmCom that is slowly getting shorter, but once I have everything on that list implemented I'm going to be shifting the game into a maintenance / bug-fixing mode. Hopefully all the major stuff will be done in 1-2 months, and then I'll keep working on polishing the rough corners of the game for a while.
After that, however, I'm planning on starting ArmCom 2, which is going to break away completely from the model of Patton's Best to become its own game system. I've learned a ton over the past year, and want to start from the ground up on a new tank commander roguelike. I'll keep supporting ArmCom 1, and if someone wants to fork the project to develop it further they are more than welcome to!
