wraith said:

Have you tried the Fully Loaded mod to see if that helps? It just seems like it'd make it easier to alter the scenarios that way. Or do you not like having the ammo and weapons together?

wraith said:

True, but it'll never happen. Never. It has nothing to do with me deciding to campaign. It's all I can do to get together a game and I can't even hope to have the same players every time. Between Doom & Descent I have more scenarios that I can get played in my life time.

So much food for thought in this thread! Apparently, the scenarios vary in relative difficulty so that no matter what I do to balance the game in one scenario, I'll have to tweak things again in the next. Maybe as the Invader I should just take a DM approach and just try to make the scenarios exciting without going all out to kill them.

Trump said:

And once again, it is about control over the balance. The Fully Loaded mod adds one ammo token for every weapon, regardless of the number of marines, the number of enemies, or how plentiful ammo is supposed to be in the scenario in question. In order to fix the balance such that the game has the same difficult for one, two or three marines, I would have to work out how many marines would be required to get the use of the mod. Even then, the fix would be somewhat uneven, because it wouldn't hit the required level of ammo for at least one particular number of marines. (That is, if you play without Fully Loaded for one marine, and with Fully Loaded for two marines, what do you do for three marines?) And even having worked that out for one scenario, it doesn't necessarily work for another. I mean, suppose a scenario is supposed to give lots of weapons so that marines can choose their method of attack freely, but be very short on ammo to emphasise the challenge of choosing the right weapon for the right situation. Using Fully Loaded could upset that design.

Looking at Knee Deep In the Dead, Fully Loaded would add four shells/bullets, one rocket/grenade, and one or two energy cells (depending on whether you interpret Fully Loaded to apply to a weapon gained from an encounter when the encounter also already specifies that the marine gains a certain amount of ammo). My analysis led me to believe that a more appropriate modification to restore balance to the scenario when playing with three marines was to add ten shells/bullets, four grenades/rockets and no energy cells. While scenario design is not an exact science and one could debate the most appropriate types of extra ammo to give and whether another one or two tokens more or less is appropriate, Fully Loaded only gives about half of what I believe is best to fix Knee Deep In the Dead for three marines. (Which means it is probably about right for two marines in this case.)

But it didn't take very much analysis to determine that ammo remaining constant while ammo usage does not is one of the primary factors in the game becoming harder with more marines. Nor is it at all difficult to apply the most obvious fix - to increase ammo proportional to usage.

Also, no, I'm not thrilled about bundling the weapons and ammo together. There's a cost to gathering ammo in the regular scenario, and I don't wish to change that.

And changing the scenarios is not at all difficult. Just load up your preferred Doom scenario editor (I used Tilesystem) with some customisations to the tileset (coloured ammo, med pack and armor tokens), spend ten minutes or so re-creating the map (using a combination of white and blue tokens), then add green and red tokens in approximately equal numbers to the blue tokens. Take note of the colouration of the invader figures, and if there are a lot of white invaders, favour white tokens when you first create the scenario.

All up, it takes about twenty minutes, and by the time I am done, I know the scenario well enough to be able to play it quickly as the invader, so that the marine players don't get antsy waiting for me to figure out what tokens I need for the next section.

Trump said:

As a software developer, I hear that all the time. I've still been proven right many times after I've said, "We should design for the possibility anyway."

Trump said:

That's true. Some of the standard scenarios for Doom are definitely easier than others. There's not really anything wrong with that, especially in a campaign. However, I would still think that a scenario designed to be easy for one marine should remain easy for three marines.

Also, some of the scenarios would be just about impossible if played by marines who haven't been built up by going through scenarios earlier in the campaign. (Unless you just game extra starting resources to simulate playing through the campaign, of course.)

Trump said:

Maybe as the Invader I should just take a DM approach and just try to make the scenarios exciting without going all out to kill them.

A rule of thumb for scenario design: If you aren't equally happy to play your scenario on either side of the table, you are doing it wrong. That's regardless of which of your fellow players is your opposition.

**** it seems trump, and wraith are going to hammer this porblem out on their own judging by how many posts they've made in this thread. I still think the best way to even out the game is to play it a few times with the intended players, and hammer out any unbalenced areas so you can eventually have a challenging, but not horribly unbalenced experience. Still tough makes a huge diffrence so if you have someone who is stuggling really hard playing a marine you may try just allowing them to select that ability then drawing their other two.

DaemonLord said:

Eh, this is all analysis I've done long ago. I'm just presenting what I discovered when I examined these possibilities several years back, as Trump suggests another one. I mean, it's not like one is likely to redesign five scenarios without examining things like Fully Loaded along the way. (Looking back at my material, I've realised that I never did rework the five expansion scenarios. The reason is that most of the invader figures in them are white, which means that resource requirements are relatively invariant, so changes weren't necessary. Play bore this out.)

And when Trump suggested adding areas? Well, I never actually added a new area, but in one scenario I did add to the layout of an existing area for when there are more than one marine. Thy Flesh Consumed has a heavily-stocked cache where there simply wasn't room to add the tokens I believe the scenario needs, and I didn't like the idea of creating stacks of tokens in the cache, so I added a whole new tile for each extra marine.

So it's not like the principles I've been talking about are inviolable. It's the approach that is important. Identify the issues, and work towards resolving them.

DaemonLord said:

Certainly playtesting has a place in the process, but it is a lot easier to do that hammering if you do a bit of analysis to determine what the causes of the imbalances are and how you are likely to be able to address the issues. Otherwise you are just flailing about hoping to hit upon the solution.

We found the game to be incredibly difficult to the point where we getting too frustrated with it near the end. Intro level (get to the hanger bay) with three marine players, and we managed to get about half way to three quarters of the map and then we gave up because we had no ammo. The amount of monsters was about right I guess but there either needs to be more ammo on the board, ammo points respawn or a reduced chance of ammo being used up.

Have you tried the "fully loaded" variant? Where every weapon comes with an ammo of it's type? If you find a hard time with ammo, that's your best way to keep the game fun.

In my games, we've never had a problem with ammo, but then again, we *Aim* a lot too

-shnar

The_Big_Show said:

Use AIM.

Use your Fists and/or Pistol.

Ignore lower priority Invaders or try to avoid slow moving Zombies.

Use the expansion deck because the basic game deck is simply broken.

Sprint more, shoot less.

Don't stall in each and every room, the marines are not the hunters, they are the hunted. No.1 mistake of every newbie group.

The game is great. Don't give up!

FragMaster said:

Just a side note, the Pistol still uses ammo according to base rules, though many players house-rule that the pistol uses no ammo (i.e. unlimited ammo), that way it gives the players *some* incentive to use the pistol (otherwise you *never* use the pistol). I'm making that rule official in the Advanced Campaign, as well as adding a Marine Card "Duel Wield", that if the marine attacks with the pistol, he may attack the same target twice.

-shnar

shnar said:

It's not a home-rule, it's an official mod from the expansion. "Unlimited pistol ammo."

Except "Fully Loaded" I believe that all other official single player mods should be standard in any DOOM game, expansion or not.

FragMaster said:

Good point, I always forget about the "official" mods. I rarely use any of them, though I do like unlimited ammo for pistol since it just gives you an actual reason to use the pistol...

-shnar

FragMaster said:

That's funny, fully loaded is one of the few mods from the expansion that we do use. That's the one where every weapon token comes with a token of ammo, right?

Yeaup, I remember Kevin saying on the old boards that was a pretty good mod if the Marine players were feeling this game was too hard. I use that half & half. If I'm playing with new players, I'll usually throw it in. If semi-experienced players, I'll ask what their preference is. With experienced players, no-go!

-shnar

Steve-O said:

My group has very experienced players and we never use "Fully Loaded". In fact, we don't LIKE Fully Loaded at all. It changes the game completely. The marines never bother with ammo, never bother with Aim, never bother with ammo management, nothing. Just move and shoot. Heck, I don't even use it with newbies for the same reason, they might have a good time but they will learn to play the game wrong. If I'm planning to add a newbie to a regular DOOM group I won't use Fully Loaded. If I'm playing with newbies just for fun and I know that they are not going to play regular DOOM games, I guess I'd use it.

Ammo conservation is a BIG part of DOOM's strategy, if you use Fully Loaded, you remove a big part of the game. It changes gameplay drastically and not for the better. I completely understand why it may be a good rule to use while playing with new players because they have an easier time with the game but after a few sessions this rule should be dropped so that players start to play the game as intended.

Having said that, I'm talking about DOOM+expansion here, not basic DOOM. IMHO, base DOOM is simply broken because of the super-powerful {and broken} Invader deck. Add to this that Scenario II is also broken and Scenarios IV and V need to be parts of a campaign in order to be playable and it's clear that marines need the extra ammo.

If you play with the expansion and/or home made or fan scenarios, using Fully Loaded is essentially "Easy mode".

FragMaster said:

I completely agree that ammo conservation is an important part of the game, but we haven't found that element to disappear when using fully loaded. Maybe the marines could stand to aim a little more often, but that's just how we play. Now, mind you, we do play with the original Invader deck (I have the expansion but haven't used the expansion deck yet) and we also play with a few other house rules, chief among them being no respawns. Each marine gets one life, then he's toast.

We find the game perfectly challenging as is. Survival horror theme remains intact.