Coop Rules

[narrowsoul]

Hello all, I just wanted to share a ruleset a friend of mine and myself came up with to play the game cooperatively, and ask for any input you might have. Apologies if the instructions are unclear, the process is a little confusing. I came up with two versions of the flow before this one, the first one was illogical and the second one wasted time. (The first one had players resolving turns on their own computers and opening up the possibility for mismatched turn results, the second one failed to realize each player can record their orders for two turns per round of emails)

We have been trying it with a game of SF2 and it's working so far, with RP'd radio communications between my mechanized infantry and his tanks/engineers going with the emails containing the game files. Sharing contacts and instructions will probably be a lot more interesting [read: pain in the ass] when dealing with WW2 where not every unit on the map has a radio.

Included is a working pdf of the rules as well as a little sample of what our emails look like back and forth.

coop combat mission.pdf

[narrowsoul]

Oops, the image in the post is supposed to have one file that's "watch 10" and one that's "play 10"; I added that text in with paint for clarity and made a mistake.

[Bud Backer]

I love cooperative play in a lot of games. I’d love for a baked-in option for it but as a beta tester I also am all to well aware of the many demands that are already extant on the developer. I played a coop game with @IanL against two other players, and it was challenging and fun. 

I’m going to have a good look at your rules, as I am open to fresh ideas.

[A Canadian Cat]

We were playing PBEM which has the advantage that the .ema file is automatically the watch file and the .bts file is automatically the play (orders) file. But his rules also have comm delays and targeting accuracy issues. So, cool.

I read the briefly and have one question: if the supporting fire inaccuracy rolls come out that the supporting fire can see friendlies at the location can the no fire? By that I mean if your table would cause friendly fire but the units involved can actually see the friendly personnel can they elect not to fire or perhaps re roll or adjust in some other way?

[narrowsoul]

The intent behind the inaccuracy was to model the firing unit slightly misunderstanding where they're supposed to be firing since it's hard to convey with 100% accuracy the location of an enemy during combat. Hence, the firing unit is intentionally firing at the computed location and would definitely not fire directly on friendlies if they could actually see the friendly units. I'll add as a note to reroll the directional die if it comes up with a solution that fires on friendlies, thanks for pointing that out.

[StieliAlpha]

Hm, sounds pretty good for a quick shot. Though the „handing down of a file“ before it is being executed will be quite demanding and time consuming. How about sending all moves of sub-commanders to the overall commander and he executes the final order?

That even might enforce some discipline. Say, the overall commander has to put in his file by day X. Any sub-commander file which comes in late is considered as „no orders“.

[narrowsoul]

In reality it hasn't been too difficult so far although it is a bit difficult to adapt to, especially saving every time you watch a replay and then saving again after your orders. It's been comparable to playing a pvp email game, except you play your half of two different turns in one sitting.

If there were more than one subordinate, it might get complicated and necessitate something like you suggest, this set of rules was really designed for just splitting between two players, i.e. one commands armor and another commands infantry.

[DerKommissar]

This is really cool. Actual Combined Arms. I'd love to try something out like this.