Fire and Rubble Preview: The Anatomy of What Goes Into a Stock Campaign Release

[dbsapp]

51 minutes ago, Ithikial_AU said:

Testing – Scenarios and the Campaign

 

When it comes to testing a final campaign there are two layers to consider; 1) do the individual scenarios play as intended; and 2) does the campaign flow from start to finish as intended.

 

Testing individual scenarios can occur as they are being built, like what a designer may do when building an individual standalone scenario. However, there is one very large difference that is difficult to artificially ‘fix’. What the testers are playing will never match the end product that the players will realistically experience. Testers jumping into Mission 5, won’t be experiencing the battle with the results (including unit losses) the player has experienced leading up to that scenario in the campaign.

 

It’s because of this that a campaign needs to be tested with full playthroughs and ideally by ‘blind testers’, or people who are unaware of the individual scenario designs including the placement of enemies. Also encouraging a tester or two to purposefully lose key scenarios to go down ‘lose’ pathways is also of assistance to ensure each pathway gets a degree of review.

 

As a designer looking to help out testers, providing a visual campaign tree with small blurbs about what each scenario entails, including friendly forces the tester should have available, will provide them a big help. It’s this way they can identify if the campaign script and the core unit file is working as intended with the correct scenarios and forces showing up and the right time.

 

This is not to say that individual scenario testing is a waste of time and shouldn’t be undertaken for campaign scenarios. For this type of testing, I advise referring to Jon’s Scenario Design AAR handbook for tips and things to look out for. However, testers moving through a campaign as a player and moving into follow on scenarios in a condition that a player will reasonably be in is the most important additional piece of information a tester requires after each battle.

 

After Release

 

When you release your campaign, the player will only require the .cam file that is generated when compiling the campaign. The game will only draw information contained inside the .cam file.

 

There is an unwritten rule (until now!) in campaign design, and that is as a designer to hold on to all the component files that is within the generated .cam file. This is for security going forward as regular game patching and upgrading cycles may inadvertently break something or make the campaign unwinnable in the future as settings are tweaked. Perhaps the best example for of this was some early designed campaigns from the first release of CMBN when automatic weaponry effectiveness was a lot less than it is now. Playing these same campaigns today will likely lead to very different outcomes than the designers originally intended.

 

If the designer does not want the responsibility, it is advised to provide the files to the players downloading the campaign files in case someone wants to fix any problems that arise down the track.

 

Final tips for an enjoyable campaign from the player’s side

 

And there we are. After just under 70 pages of writing and around 18,000 words that’s about it. Good luck for everyone that decides to take the dive into making a campaign.

 

Some final thoughts and of course what I provide below is highly subjective.

 

-          Ensure it is winnable. It’s a game, not a slog!

 

-          Don’t expect your players to be a tactical genius. This may sound counter to the point of Combat Mission but even the most experienced players will get their ass handed to them from time to time. Ensure that under most circumstances a battle will always provide the player with a chance of ‘winning’.

 

o   This is not saying every scenario needs to be balanced, if anything most scenarios will need to be balanced in the players favour, especially where core units that need to appear in follow up scenarios are part of the mix.

 

o   For example. Let’s say the campaign is trying to be a historical recreation of every engagement that Easy Company, 506^th PIR fought from Normandy through to Market Garden. There would easily be a dozen or more scenarios here with a real mix of forces the player must go up against. There is also no real replenishment historically available except for the replacements at the end of Normandy and before Market Garden. So, what happens if the player takes Carentan at around Mission 5 but suffers very heavy casualties in doing so? What happens next? The player is thrust into defending against the fresh 17 SS Panzergrenadier Division counterattack with no more than 20 soldiers to deploy? It simply won’t work and I can promise you the player will switch off in anger/despair before even attempting to defend Bloody Gulch.

 

o   The campaign by design should of pushed the player down the ‘lose’ route in this situation and either kicked the player out of the campaign as a whole or skipped to Market Garden noting Easy Company was not part of the defensive action. Don’t expect your players to be a Lieutenant Winters when the time comes.

 

o   This is extremely hard to get right and honestly won’t ever be perfect given the wide range of player skills out there and countless combinations of outcomes from each scenario from a game like Combat Mission.

 

o   As rules of thumb:

 

§  don’t rely solely on your designated Core Units for every single mission/task the player needs to achieve;

 

§  follow history as a guide throughout your design as a guide about what your troops could theoretically be expected to achieve;

 

§  ensure unique units are the backbone of completing objectives later in a campaign. (ie. The player’s core units are expected to fend off an armoured counter attack at some point, but the only has three possible 57mm AT guns at their disposal… and they were potentially lost two scenarios ago).

 

Don’t ignore the narrative and make the player care for spending dozens of hours with your creation.

It's a really good idea to ensure that campaign\scenario is winnable. Sad that this advice is too often neglected. 

Player should have enough forces to sustain casualties and complete the mission in "natural" way, without reloading. 

But it's usual to see player is given as many units as enemy that he has to attack. You can win such mission, but not "naturally". 

Ok, I have lets say 10 tanks, and the enemy has 10 tanks and AT guns hidden in bushes. I lost 1 tank bogged in the woods or dirty road, 2 tanks were destroyed in the beginning. I'm left with 7 tanks and still has the objectives to capture and enemies to destroy. Is it real? Could it be winnable in real life? I doubt it. 

 

 

[chuckdyke]

I started Fire and Rubble and started To Berlin then a patch came out a week later and something like 40 minutes was added on the first mission. Then I restarted it and with 40 minutes to go and thanks to the spoilers the Germans surrendered. I have not touched it since then. Hammers Flank of the original RT is still my favorite. Better to wait a little longer and make sure everything works as intended. 

[benpark]

The longer German campaign is designed in 3 phases, just like the Soviet one. The Germans get armor reassignments just about every 3 battles (Konrad I,II,II - KG Darges/Wiking twice, and once with s PzAbt 509).

It is winnable (in game terms), but it’s the tougher of them - it’s the German side in 1945. The infantry need to watch out for taking losses in that campaign - a concern of the Soviets at this point, as well. Both are designed to highlight the issues that both forces faced historically. This is also highlighted in the lack of transport for the German side during Konrad I-III. Getting that balance is the trick with campaigns based upon historical situations where one force is the focus.

Edited October 17, 2021 by benpark