Campaign system idea for discussion.

[Fullhouse]

Well yea.

I was trying to move the emphasis away from the idea of there being some realistic operational level simulation which used CM to resolve battles to a more simple and elegant system of dynamic battle generation.

ROQC dynamically creates battles and the parameters depend on the historical situation (if you are germans in june 41 you are much more likely to get attack battles, than in Dec 41 etc) but these are all generated by die rolls with modifiers, so any battle type is possible just some become more likely at certain times of year.

How you performed in the last battle will change many factors and it is worth noting that the ROQC has an experience system for your core forces and squad leaders (who can gain bonuses such as stealth etc) but most of the advantages come via prestige that can buy you better support troops and arty etc and also be used to influence the type of battle you next fight (though this will use up a lot of points)

ROQC can be fun but playing against the AI soon gets old for me. So I was looking at how it a similar system could be implemented for Multiplayer. A story system is one way, but that way you give up all the diversity and flexibility of ROQC in which no 2 campaigns will ever be remotely the same and you can fight the entire course of the war.

I see prestige points as key. Players in the Campaign are seeking to become the most famous or infamous commander of WW2. So the game takes on an almost RPG element. It is worth noting that in ROQC you can be killed and your prestige reset to 0. Retreating costs prestige, but you dont want to end up dead/captured.

However there could be a way to allow players to "alter" history, in ROQC there is an operational situation modifier that effects the battles the player is given. This is hard coded dependent on the historical situation at the time. Perhaps a system could be implemented that if one player succeeds to a given parameter this would change the operational modifier. I find this a bit unrealistic if you are fighting the whole war say, as the performance of one company or battalion however brilliant would have no overall effect. If you are talking about a specific operation such as Kursk/Stalingrad though, it becomes a bit more realistic, or at least enough to suspend disbelief for.

A starting point and I would do this myself if I had a clue how, would be a system that simply generated battles e.g Force type by division etc, exp,ammo etc then battle type and then weather, time of day etc depending on time of year and year itself. Then perhaps add a modifier based on the performance of the last battle, based purely on the victory result. A system for linking battles to maps could be included also.

So really all I am looking at is a system for dynamically generating battles for H2H play that will put the players in unusual unbalanced situations (as is the case in war) but will give them a motive to stand and fight to achieve the best outcome possible for the sake of prestige. This system will be of course dependent on taking its parameters from the historical and meteorological circumstances of the time in which the battle is fought. Also it is important that over the course of a given campaign that unbalanced situation occur roughly equally for both players.

One interesting idea I think, would be for a battle type called Hold at all costs. This would have an open ended time turns with no set limit. One of the players will be outnumbered massively but seek to make the battle last as long as possible. Victory conditions are determined literally by how long the battle lasts and the players prestige will be determined like wise.

I am waffling to much, but the core idea is dynamic context driven battle generation that creates more realistic situations and then gives the players a reason to fight what might be unbalanced battles.