The Game Manual Sucks

[rocketman19]

I know that this game has been around for several years and Grigsby is on a roll with this series of historical simulations, so who am I to “spit in the wind,” so to speak? Well, I have been playing, designing, and developing games for the last 60 years. I have seen a LOT of games. I have seen small games, big games, and monster games. In fact, I even designed the biggest game, The Longest Day, that Avalon Hill ever published, way back in 1980.

That was then, and this is now. Gary Grigsby’s game of the War in the East is a very large, detailed, complicated game. It may not necessarily be all that complex, however, despite a 380-page manual in the 2010 edition. My thesis in this essay is that, for new players, this game takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to master, but most of that misery can be laid directly at the feet of the development team who have produced a tutorial that doesn’t and a set of rules that reads like the Congressional Record.

What were they thinking? I have been analyzing rules of play for the greater part of my life and I am now in my seventh decade. I have read the War in the East “game manual” and I assume it has the rules of play hidden somewhere deep inside its many labyrinthine pages, but deciphering paragraphs, and screen grabs is a task for a team of diligent scholars working tirelessly for many seasons. Somewhere in page-after-page of mind-deadening prose, there is a game system, probably a very good one, I imagine. But how they could waste all that energy and not produce a coherent document is a marvel of futility.

It is easy to criticize, so let me explain. Besides being a game designer, I am also a rather accomplished instructional systems designer. As part of my training and practice, I have spent a great deal of time investigating how humans learn and master complex systems. There are at least three major axioms of learning that the writers of this game manual fail to grasp:
(1) Comprehension is markedly enhanced by organizing information to assure that terms and concepts in the current concept have been previously introduced before incorporating them in higher constructs.
(2) Most learners apply concepts through exposure to examples and non-examples. Both are critical to understanding.
(3) When first time learners are exposed to a complex sequence of tasks, they usually derail on the very first step of that sequence. Begin at the very beginning.
In reading the previous reviews for this game, I noticed that many remarked that their learning curve was very lo-o-o-o-ng, some not “getting it” until they invested 30, 40, or 80 (!) hours playing the game. Why? It is a complicated game, but not necessarily a complex one.
I believe the root cause of the failure to “get it” easily is found in the game manual: It sucks.

Now, I have read some terribly composed rules manuals in my life, some really turgid stinkers that were so bad that one wonders, “What was this guy thinking?” Well, I ask, given the ten-year gestation period described in the designer’s notes, what was this development team thinking? I believe they suffered from a terminal case of overfamiliarity with the content.
My theory is that the original designer described how to play the game to the very first playtester and he “got it” and then explained it to every other playtester along the line either face-to-face, on his cell, via Skype, or in lo-o-o-o-ng Facebook posts. Then somebody said, “Hey let’s write this stuff down!” But certainly, no tester learned this game by reading the game manual!

Look, just between you and me, who in their right mind writes a set of rules by starting off with sixty pages of detailed descriptive text explaining every cotton-picking nit and grit about every dialog box and interface in the game? And they are apparently not bothered by the fact that they have never introduced close to 100 terms and labels for things painstakingly described in each and every stupid dialog box. There is absolutely zero context for any of it; it might as well be gibberish! For example:
Toggle Night Air Mission On (hotkey n): This button will display when bomb unit, bomb airfield, bomb city or air transport mode has been selected. The default is day missions (sun symbol). When toggled to night (moon symbol), only air group units with night mission selected in the air group unit detail window can conduct missions, to include any auto-interception by the non-phasing player’s air group units (16.1.6).

Realize in this linear narrative that is the game manual, none of the terms in the above passage have been defined or introduced at this point. What is an air group unit? What does bomb unit, bomb airfield, bomb city or air transport mode mean? What is a mode for Pete’s sake? For the first-time player, this might as well be written in Sanskrit! (But the cross reference at the end is a nice touch except that this passage is Section 4.x.x that references new information that the reader will not encounter until Section 16.x.x. That simply does not work. No one retains details for that long. And who needs hot key info on the first reading? That crap needs to be in an appendix.)

The problem with this game’s set of rules is that they are not directive. The authors set down no general principles, to be followed up with specific cases. None. (I would have to work extra hard to do this intentionally, so it must be accidental.) And understanding is always more efficiently conveyed by the judicious use of examples and non-examples. (A non-example is the opposite of, the reverse of, or the inverse of the thing that is the example.) These guys apparently don’t believe in examples. Or, to be charitable, when they have this existential drive to explain every stinking dialog and interface before they even explain how to move a unit from point A to point B, who needs examples to illuminate their prose?

There is no context for almost everything in the first 60 pages of the game manual except for a terse description of the sequence of play, which boils down to “you move and fight then the AI moves and fights,” followed by a page and a half of “phases” which are little more than logistical and leadership status checks that could just as well be executed by the damn computer. Get over yourselves. After all, STAVKA had a staff of hundreds to screw up this supply stuff, but the player has to do it all by himself? Ah, don’t get me started…

We teach new instructional designers to start every step in a complex task with an action verb like, “Attach the fastener to the thingamajig and torque to 10 ft./lbs.” This directs the reader as to what he or she needs to do to effect the required outcome. I am hard-pressed to find substantial examples of this in the 380-page game manual. Instead, we are treated with page after page of dense blocks of text. For example, a common form in the narrative looks like, “Supplies and fuel can be airdropped to units by transport and level bomber air group units and this mission can be escorted by fighter air group units.” How about, “To airdrop supplies or fuel, assign transports or level bomber units using the umptyfratz interface. Fighter groups can be assigned as escorts, if desired, on the same interface” instead?

And speaking of dense blocks of text, apparently, Gary and Company never heard of an enumerated list or even the sophisticated evolution of using a bulleted list to break up attenuated sentences and paragraphs. It is not rocket science. It is called “chunking text for comprehension.”

And speaking of clarity, the patient reader must wade through 53 pages of grey text and fuzzy screen shots before getting anything approaching an illustration depicting an example of game action. And a screen grab is not an illustration if it is not directive by the use of arrows, callouts, and other graphic devices. In a sea of tiny numbers, first time users must puzzle as to what is an example and what is a nonexample. The dearth of creative graphics to illustrate key concepts is mystifying. If the graphics folks had put as much effort into figures to illustrate processes as they did on the cover art, we would all be better informed.

Much of the gibberish in the 380-page game manual might be solved if the authors of this tome had any concept whatsoever of a learning hierarchy. In a nutshell, this means you can’t introduce a complex concept until you have explained the simpler parts that make up that concept. Comprehension is drastically improved by arranging content in a logical flow that introduces basic concepts that escalate to more complex concepts. Easy right? No, the game manual is an almost perverse reversal of this time-tested construct. Please tell the team that the game is not about a series of dialog boxes and interfaces, but a test of the player versus the AI. (And many of these interfaces are just awful! What is gained by a veritable sea of numbers with no differentiation between primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of importance?)

And folks, there is no excuse for misspellings, grammatical errors, missing words, and the embarrassing misuse of words. Not in the era of spellcheck.

I know this appears to be a rather severe ravaging of a very popular and successful game. But, popularity is not necessarily a mark of quality. It is with humility that I make the bold assertion that The Avalon Hill Game Company and Simulation Publications Inc were producing far superior rules of play in the 1970s. And the games were as big and as complex as WITE is today. Remember, the term “monster game” was coined in the 1970s. Rather than take this as a rant, I would just hope that once and future game designers would take this review as a primer and tutorial on how not to construct a set of rules that mere mortals can easily comprehend.

[spurchase1961]

Go on the matrix forums. Many of your questions can be answered there. Also other kind souls have updated the Manual. Unfortunately this can become "out of date" with patches. Reading the After Action Reports is both helpful and interesting.

Also some of the "lets plays on youtube" will also help to clarify a few things. This is the sort of game where you continue to learn each time you play. Ihave had the game over a year and many of the rules I still find "hazy". But I do enjoy the game. Certainly one of the better games I own.

[FireShark]

The tutorial was pretty bad.

Road to Minsk should be the tutorial mission and it should have guided you through several common types of very important actions, such as breaking through a line, assessing fortifications and enemy strength, movement differences between infantry and motorized units, enveloping, setting up air doctrine, capturing victory locations etc. etc.

If not for the 4-5 hours of Youtube tutorials and Let's Plays that I watched, there's no way I would be able to learn enough to play this game.

I don't have a long background in wargames and boardgames, just an interest in grand strategy. Most people in my position are probably throwing out the manual, watching some Let's Play videos, and then stumbling through it by sheer force of will.

Somewhere along the way you either love the game or give up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRAQXIg07gY&t=1s&list=PLuJKbR4pQ3nGpmNMVE9o-dtcWP1NCpzky&index=2

Give this 2 part series a try. You will learn more from an hour of this than 5 hours of reading the game manual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LW8YC4KJ0Q

And here is a Road to Minsk tutorial.

[rocketman19]

Thanks for your comments and feedback. Let me clarify one point: I did not write the review as a player, but as a game designer! I firmly believe it is the bound duty of every publisher to provide a coherent, concise, and complete set of rules for their published product. That should be firmly and completely non-negotiable. For an $80 title, it is inexcusable that those established developers could not or would not provide an effective and enlightened set of rules in a 380-page document. They should not get a pass--and certainly do not get one from me--because buried under the mess is a gem of a game. To tell your fellow player to go learn the game on Youtube or use some amateur guides to learn the rules is total insanity. For a premium price of $80, the buying public should expect a whole hell of a lot more.

[FireShark]

Well I didn't pay $80 for it. Just bought the digital version during the current sale.

For $80 though, yes you would expect a better manual and tutorial.

Personally, I would be mostly happy with my purchase if the tutorial scenario and tutorial documentation were much better.

I do enjoy the game, though.

[runifoc]

The standards in the industry are much lower now. In part this is due to the fact that good writing skills are difficult to master and many companies don't budget for hiring talented writers. Some companies have the developers write the rules; which isn't their forte.

Also, many players won't take the time to read what rules are published and would rather observe someone actually playing the game while explaining what they are doing. This explains why YouTube videos are referenced so many times when answering player questions in these forums.

[jabgamer]

I appreciate the original post. I have to agree that there's much that could be improved in our documentation. I will try to answer your question about how we got to where we are with WitE. We're a small dev group that relies on many volunteers to help out on many parts of the project. The tutorial was something put together by a few testers that volunteered to create a tutorial. Had they not volunteered, we would not have had a tutorial. We had someone being paid pennies per hour working on the game manual. Just getting him valid information about how the game functioned (while it was constantly changing in development) was no easy feat. Unlike a boardgame where you must have the rules before you can start playing, with a computer game you can start playing without any rules. The main designer/programmer (in this case Gary), rarely designs on paper first, he just codes the rules as he goes. Figuring out what they are after the fact can be a challenge for those of us that aren't programmers (and sometimes for those that are).

Gary and I (and Pavel who came on initially as a tester to help with our map data and then became the co-programmer/designer for WitE and WitW) were focused on getting the game to function and then getting it as balanced as we could in the time available. Although it had started development in 2000, it had only gotten about 1 years’ worth of work before we picked it up again around 2008. As it was, it was one of the biggest/longest dev projects we've ever worked on, and at some point we had to publish the game. This was due both to the need to pay the rent and because the game would never be finished with limited testing. It had to get out to a wider audience. This need for a public (paid) beta is the hard truth of games like this. It's hard to find time to work on documentation, but we do accept help when we can get it.

With WitE, there was no budget or time to provide tutorial videos. Clearly there's a business decision in there somewhere that goes something like this. Although we want the game to be accessible (and in some ways it is), it's fundamentally a massive monster wargame that's primary customer base is other wargamers with years of playing these kinds of games. We'd rather spend our time trying to improve the game than to spend more time (or money we don't have) on documentation. In addition, our time is only so useful, as we aren't skilled writers so we need to find skilled volunteers that enjoy working on documentation (hard to find). The thing I really feel bad about is that there is no Living Manual for WitE. There have been some volunteer efforts to provide an updated manual, and you can find this on the Matrix WitE forum. There is a good community there that also helps answer questions from players. WitE went through 1-2 years of post-release work by the original team, but at some point we had to split the codebase as we moved on with WitW. We were lucky that a few great volunteers stepped forward to work on making ongoing changes to WitE. That's allowed WitE to continue to improve, but sadly the documentation never got an update. I've thought about looking to see if there's someone out there able to start and lead a wiki project on the manual. Perhaps that can be discussed over on the Matrix forum. Right now, my focus has been on keeping WitW updates coming while also moving development forward on WitE2.

Now the good news is that with WitW we found another volunteer willing to produce a "player's manual" that was a short introduction to the game. It also contained a series of one-page guides to key parts of the game (done in pseudo-comic book). In addition, I created a series of basic video tutorials to help new players. I also led a group of volunteers to create a living manual for WitW and since I've been updating that with our ongoing rule changes (at least making sure that rule changes are listed in the manual in the applicable section, although we don't rewrite the old text). There have also been videos posted by other gamers to show how the game is played.

For WitE2, we hope to provide all of this, along with a manual with an improved layout. If anyone wants to help out with WitE2 (including reviewing the manual), my suggestion is to sign up to be a tester for WitE2 when the time comes. We currently are in alpha testing. If you have played WitW and you have some background with documentation, and want to help out with WitE2, you can email me at [e-mail].

Two last things. First, thanks to the original poster for taking the time to lay out his thoughts. I will point those working on the manual to this thread (although my guess is they will see it on their own). Second, I loved reading those SPI and AH manuals. Think back to those simple days of basic combat factors, CRT tables, and MP cost charts. Then take a look at what's behind the combat factors in WitE, how combat is resolved, how the MP costs of river crossings differ with different ice levels (and zocs). Then multiply that by 100 and you start to get the complexity difference between the original SPI War in the East (one of my favorites) and the computer game WitE. We could no doubt use someone with the skill of the original poster documenting the game (but probably couldn't afford it). Even then, it wouldn't be easy.

[rocketman19]

I appreciate the time that you took to form your thoughts into your lengthy reply. Having been a VP for Research and Design for a wargame company, I have some understanding of budgetary restraints and constraints of which you speak.

But, I do believe that you do not know what you do not know about how PLAYER rules are laid out and edited and eventually published. First, manual wargames do not start out with a set of rules, either. Wargames, whether paper or computer, start out with ideas that become snippets of game constructs, that get fleshed out into a game system (or ported into a successful game system) and then put into a formal framework via rules that players use to play the game.
I do not mean to get all philosophical on you, so I will try to control my vision as I describe my reaction to your response. In my career, I have thought an awful lot about what a game, fundamentally really is. I have evolved an impression that says that a game is what transpires between the minds of two players.

Chess masters can play a game of chess without a board or chess pieces, relying on their memory of board positions, the rules of chess, and their experience playing the game. You do not need a computer to play chess, but it can be played on a computer and can even have a computer program act as one of the players. The quality of the computer program determines the quality of the computer-as-player, but the rules of the game stand on their own. It is basically no different with either manual or computer games.

The primary benefit of the computer is to act as super-efficient logistical bookkeeper, impose restraints according to the predetermined set of rules, manage hidden movement and fog of war, and resolve conflict results, no matter how complex or convoluted. It is an automation device to assist or supersede manual functions.

I have spent a lot of time considering the difference between manual and computer game development. What concerns me is that the evolution of the computer game business has conflated the role of the game designer with that of the computer programmer into an amalgam of the two roles. I believe they should remain distinct and sequential, not concurrent. If a game concept, a playing space, and player rules have been formulated, then a programmer should be able to step in and produce or modify a game engine so that it responds to the requirements of the game concepts and the game rules.

Just as novels are rarely successful when written by committee, the germ of a concept for a game needs a driving central force to be successful. That driving central force is the game designer. Once that concept has been expressed as a textual description, the game has been, more-or-less, fully expressed. It is my contention that it is at this point that the game takes form as an expression of a conflict between two or more sides, conducted within a set of constraints that we call “rules.” Without rules, there is no game.

Once the rules of the game have been expressed, the programmer’s challenge is to write code that expresses the game parameters as described in the rules. How a programmer chooses to write the code is almost irrelevant so long as the game engine expresses the rules of the game as envisioned by the designer. But, I realize that that is not the way design and development is approached in most small design houses. But, to preserve the integrity of the game design, I submit that this is broadly how a game design should be developed.

Clearly, WITE suffers terribly for not having been designed as a set of rules that are eventually implemented into code. This is troubling when you consider that the origins of the game, as reported in the Designer’s Notes, was SPI’s original “monster” board game of the same name. Using any set of board wargame rules as a template or starting point would have produced a more coherent game manual than what 2by3 Games/Matrix Games eventually published.

But, I must singularly take exception with your assertion that lack of resources is the root cause of an ineffective rule book. Look, your company is charging $80 for WITE. $80! That is high end by industry standards. The game has been out for seven years. If you are telling me that you can’t afford to pay someone to write a decent set of rules, then I will tell you that you are not professionals but rather a set of amateur posers pretending to be a game publishing company. Matrix Games deserves just as much culpability as 2by3 Games. Why would Matrix Games bring a game into the house that is fundamentally flawed with a basically non-functional set of rules? This reflects badly on Matrix Games, with more resources than 2by3 Games, as it does on the original designer and developers.

And, if we want to start talking about business factors affecting a product, let’s ask this: Why is this game priced at the extreme end of the price scale at $80? Is it to recoup development costs? Usually, initial sales cover those costs and the out-year sales are where real profits are made. Can’t afford to pay for professional rules? It is not that hard. The wargaming hobby has been writing and publishing very effective sets of rules for 57 years. Manual wargame designers are STILL producing effective rules. And some of these are one-man shops. It doesn’t take a professional to write an effective set of rules, but it does require competence!
And I reject your assertion that writing rules for computer wargames is inherently more daunting than for board wargames. The computer is “the little man behind the curtain.” Its functionality does not have to be explained. It is the mystery engine under the hood. Are you interested in knowing how your car’s engine works? No, you just need to know that it gets you there after you hit the starter.

No player needs know how the computer does what it does. All the player needs to know is that attacking up the hill is riskier than attacking down the hill and it is slower to cross a river than to cross the street. The player is interested in outcomes, not processes. Some of the worst sets of rules for computer games that I have ever read inexplicably waste paragraphs and pages describing to the player how the computer computes the outcomes of combat. Who cares? Tell me what deployments and configurations maximize my chances of winning the battle and I will not worry about what the little man behind the curtain does or how he does it.

If funds are tight inhouse, you might consider the opportunity cost of having a terrible set of rules. Lots of sales are generated by word-of-mouth and by positive online reviews. How many sales has Matrix Games lost because new gamers are utterly frustrated with trying to figure the damn game out? Are they likely to talk their buddies into buying the game they just fell in love with? Not if they need to invest 40 hours before they are able to figure the thing out! Clearly, a poor game manual does nothing to enhance sales. Has the development team ever attempted to calculate how much revenue is lost BECAUSE of the bad set of rules? If you don’t have the VOLUNTEERS to write a decent set of rules could it be because you couldn’t afford to pay a PROFESSIONAL to write effective rules that would increase sales? Sounds like a vicious cycle doesn’t it?

[jabgamer]

I will acknowledge that you know much more than I about how a non-computer wargame is developed. Although I've played many hundreds of them, I've never designed one, and the last time I tried to modify one was in the 70s when I was in high school. However, I have been working on computer wargames since 1979, have published, developed, or in some other way worked on over 100 computer wargamers (between SSI and 2by3 Games). Gary has designed and programmed over 30 in his career (which dates back to 1982). Some of these games were A+ titles like Panzer General and Steel Panthers. They got the resources, and the expertise of a lot of amazing talent. They were aimed at a larger audience and more time went into making it easier for people to get into the games (although so much more can be done now than back in the early 90s). However, as you know, the market for most wargames (certainly of the kind that we make now like WitE) is generally small. Gary has a skill, which a segment of the computer wargaming market appreciates. Yes, a better manual would help. Yes, more tutorials would help. Yes, more in-game tips would help. However, these things don't get done for free (both in terms of money and development time taken from the design/programing team). I'm a big supporter of Matrix Games as having run SSI for over 15 years, I understand how hard it is to be a publisher. My experience of Matrix/Slitherine is they are well run and they care about their products. Based on WitE2, my sense is they have stepped up and are putting more of an emphasis on getting better documentation. At SSI we felt we were ultimately responsible for the documentation, although we asked the design groups to help provide the basic info we needed. Eventually we had an internal writing staff, but then we were also doing bigger selling role-playing games. I think Matrix is moving in the direction of taking more responsibility for the manuals.

I'm not putting all this on Matrix though, as it takes a lot of effort to document a lot of the rules when they are buried in the code. I understand that sometimes we may be over explaining as you don't want to know a lot of the details in the game. However, I've found with many of our customers they actually do want to know a lot of what's going on under the hood. We can't give them all the info (if only because it's too hard to document it and explain it in English). But we try to give them a lot of what we can. Fundamentally there are few monster wargames like War in the Pacific, War in the East and War in the West. There just aren't that many designer/programmer/development teams that can make these kinds of games or are willing to spend their time making them when they could be getting much greater rewards using their talents elsewhere. In some ways though, we are dinosaurs, but we enjoy what we're doing and hope to keep doing it a little while longer. We've been very happy with War in the East sales and we are now spending time working on War in the East 2. It will be Gary's 5th monster game covering the Eastern Front (the first, War in Russia was published in 1984). Each time we find a new angle, new research, or new factors that we weren't able to cover before.

At the same time, we are working cooperatively with Matrix to work on a game inspired by Gary's Steel Panthers series of tactical games. Gary's doing the combat code, ai code, and campaign code, and many talented programmers and artists are working on other parts of the game. It's a major project with a much bigger budget than our normal 2by3 Games products. I'm sure a lot more work will go into making the game easier to get into for a new user. Just like Steel Panthers sold 25x what War in Russia sold, we'd expect this new product to sell much more than War in the East. War in Russia cost $80 in 1984. I don't find it unreasonable to ask gamers interested in this kind of game to pay $80 today. Of course, with various sales, many players don't pay $80 for WitE today. No doubt the tactical game will be sold very differently.

The bottom line is I believe there is a huge difference between developing a computer wargame, and developing a board wargame. Chuck Kroegel, VP of R&D and then President of SSI used to say that designs for computer games were a dime a dozen. What was important was having a programmer that could turn a design into a product. Yes, that was a long time ago, and like everything the world has evolved. But Gary's skill is the key factor that allows these more involved games to be done. People think these games are just boardgames taken to the computer. The reality is they are incredibly complex simulations made to look and play like a boardgame.

In the end though, yes, I'd love to have a better manual for all of our games. I'd also like to have in-game help and in-game tutorials and video tutorials.

[Keyser Soze]

The original point is a valid one, albeit maybe a little overblown. Getting back into this game I personally am scrambling and searching resources to try and answer the questions I have. But I just want to say it's awesome that a developer actually responds to this in an open and contructive way. If nothing else, hats off for doing that _b Thanks.

[rocketman19]

Perhaps the "traditional" approach, in your personaal experience, to designing and developing computer wargames was always a less than optimal approach. If it requires a cult of personality around Gary Grigsby to combine the role of game designer with programmer, I question the validity of that model. There are plenty of other paradigms in other industries where design and programming are seperate and sequential stages to produce a sucessful product that puts into question your belief of a superman designer/developer/programmer. And, on reflection, I do not believe that is central to my argument for a decent set of rules. The game rules are the heart of the GAME design. Programming is labor-intensive, but it is part of implementation of a game design. The heart of any game design in the PLAYER experience, not the PROGRAMMER'S.

I appreciate the thought and consideration that you have put into your responses. It was very illuminating and I hope other gamers will find it equally enlightening.

Good luck to you and the rest of the 2by3 design team. If I could be suppoortive of your efforts, please let me know. May you always roll sixes!

[jabgamer]

Could be it's less than optimal, but it produced a lot of games I'm proud of and have enjoyed developing and playing for many years. I certainly don't want to promote a cult of personality (although since it appears to help selling the games, we'll gladly put Gary's name on the product). The games stand on their own. Now I assume you're wishing me to always roll sixes is not based on the very early AH and SPI CRTs, because in those days rolling ones was the key to victory. :) I still remember a game of S&T Borodino 40 years ago where on the last turn I was able to manage a 1 to 2 attack on the key hex that would determine victory. I still remember the shouts of joy and agony when the roll on the classroom floor turned up a 1. Sometimes it is better to have a lucky general than a good one. Thanks again for your comments and you can be sure that those working on the manual will read and digest them.

[rocketman19]

<grin> No, I was thinking of Craps! <WINK> Good luck and may the wind always be at your back...

[Rystar]

Came here to read a quick rant and ended up staying an hour for an enlightening conversation.

[rocketman19]

Bob: Glad to contribute!

[retiredredberet]

Thanks to all contributors. So many valid points - sounds like we are juxtaposing complex belief & value systems to reach ethical decisions.

I'd like to propose we developers and players keep in mind the automotive metaphors raised - when I purchase a car, I expect to get a user/operator manual that tells me how to open/close the hood, not a technical/service manual to detail system specifications under the hood.

Those with obsessive desires to validate programmers' AI algorithms or detailed calculations of combat and movement variables are not playing the game, as much as gaming the play. You guys at 2by3 should be very proud of your engine designs and innovations, but please save the process details for peer reviews and technical literature (and contract negotiations). Don't try to showcase/illustrate your engine mechanic skills in a user manual. Such discussions need to be relegated to the forums, conveyed in PMs or not disclosed at all when offering a glimpse of the proprietary menu.

We who value this game as a useful historical simulation tool would also appreciate a more helpful editor manual (& flexible editor options) since "play balance" is not a particularly desirable consideration. We puzzle over plausible outcomes. What if Stalin's stand-to order actually reached Soviet field commanders 24 or 48 hours prior to the opening of hostilities; what if Soviet military culture actually tolerated leader initiative or delegated authority to allow senior commanders the administrative latitude to transfer subordinate units to an adjacent higher HQ; would the Axis have gained from a petroleum policy focused on developing potential and proven Carpatho-Danubian reserves in lieu of acquiring demolished wells beyond the Caucasus; would Soviet units have done considerably better had Soviet leadership "risked" widespread distribution and employment of wireless communication prior to the Axis invasion???