Decrementing counter values. Is this worth sharing?

[Matt]

I am new to the Vassal community and have been working on things for about 18 months very part time.

My team and I are working on building modules for Avalanche Press’ Great War at Sea and Second World War at Sea.

The games have two aspects with different maps and counters, tactical with individual ships and operational with fleets on very large scale maps.

We have developed a new way for me to do each part of the game.

For tactical, each ship has IRL a ship data sheet with a line for each ship with boxes you tick off as damage occurs. You keep track of speed, number of primary, secondary, and tertiary guns, torpedoes, hull damage and fuel (which is quite complex based on speed and distance with you using more the faster yuo move - I did not tackle that this release.)

We had built the counters with all the values and dropped them into the game as is. Then we started making property sheets for each ship and having the same boxes there to tick off but that was just to keep track. Then we decided to make the torpedoes dynamic. In the series, firing torpedoes is a one time event, so we set up layers for the torpedo marker, loaded and ready, damaged, and expended. This worked great and we got to thinking we wanted to use hotkeys like that to decrement the actual values on the counter. After a lot of work and questions here, THANK YOU!, we ended up with all the values set in the property sheet to be set in a prototype for each class of ship as dynamic properties, then we set a hot key to decrement (and increment in case you make a mistake) each value on the counter and a text label to display it. So figuring out the state of the counter went from this:

To this:

Now all combat takes place on drop downs or hotkeys and there is no more editing and keeping track of damage from the property sheet (which still has info but no checkable stuff)

On the Operational side. We built out a double blind system where Solo and Umpire see all counters, but Entente and Central Powers see only their counters or counters that are explicity spotted.

Solo view

Entente view

Central Powers view

Would there be interest in an article on how we did this? I have to document my tickets for work so it isn’t too foreign. We are new and haven’t played a breadth of the games here so this may be regular practice but to us it felt really fresh and new.

[DonLazov]

Yes, very much so. I think something like this could be implemented into the GBACW games where in the real life game you have sheet that keeps track of losses for each counter, and I was wondering how I could add this to the counter itself and not a chart or sheet.

[Matt]

I bet we could do this. Let me write up an article thingy and then maybe if you have the time we could try some things.

So the info on the card is for the brigades not the regiments, I see Forno has the 5th,6th, and 14th La. And each of them lets you mark all sorts on the counter like hits. Do you want some way to get the brigade and have the regimental damage be listed on the brigade card? Never played this so asking for familiarization.

[DonLazov]

Matt,

Here is another screenshot on how to use the charts:

What the card does is to keep track of each Brigades losses from each of the unit counters (the regiments), so for example in Forno’s Brigade the 5th has M6 or a Strength of 6 (Muskets).

Likewise the 6 La, 7 La, 8 La and the 14 La also have a strength of 6. So 4x6 = 24 that you see on the chart or 24 VPs.

So the idea is that each unit needs to keep track of its strength and in the real game they use a strength marker under the counter to denote its current strength, but for the VASSAL module the designer added a feature where you can increment/decrement the strength value like so:

It would have been cooler and slicker if they make it so the R4 (rifle) number changed to reflect the real strength but this is doable.

So it would be cool to do the following, mark the counters with the current strength (already exists), automatically updated the chart (currently its just png with no way to mark it), and then keep track of the VPs for each side for each lost (not in the module).

I think all the GBACW games modules don’t have any of these features and they all need it and what I have ascertained is that folks instead use a spreadsheet to track this stuff.

Personally I’d rather let VASSAL do all the book keeping.

But that is my personal opinion and observations.

[Jardic]

You can do what you want using, ‘dynamic properties’ for recording and ‘Game piece inventory Window’ for reporting. I hate making “Change” for unit strength using counters, However a bunch of games limit amounts to the counter mix.
Awhile back I used this method to “sort of” get around the issue. In ‘Ides of March’ the legion & Auxiliary counters Strengths are now controlled by Dynamic Property. Si use can just increase or decrease the value. Each sides totals (and individual locations) are reported to a Game Piece Inventory Window. Players still have to “manually” look at the window to ensure any limits are not being violated. They also look there to see who is the current “Enemy of the State”.

[Jardic]

Another twist on the same method.
In ‘The Korean War’ Module. I have an invisible, non-stacking, non-moveable counter in each VP Hex. Players can flip control of the VP hex. The value is then reported to the “Cities Controlled” window. showing current VP status.