Creating Quick Battle Maps Question

[theforger]

I have a couple of maps that could make decent QB's. What should be included / excluded? 

Objectives?

Units, if any?

Briefing notes?

Appreciate any advice

[BornGinger]

Quick battles must have occupy objectives, and occupy only, as touch objectives and objectives working as triggers don't do anything.

The occupy objectives for attack and assault are closer to the defender, in a meeting engagement there is usually one occupy objective closer to each side and one or two closer to the middle.

No need for units as they are choosen in the quick battle option window.

No need for briefing notes.

You do need to have AI-plans for booth sides if you want them to be possible to play as a single player.

You also need to make sure that you designate a size for the quick battle so people can find it when they look for a certain size.

You need to designate whether the quick battle is an attack, assault, meeting or probe.

An advice is to open different quick battle maps in the editor and check what has been done to them.

I'm sure other people will fill in what I forgot to mention.

Edited May 7, 2021 by BornGinger

[Heirloom_Tomato]

When making a quick battle map only two things are needed, terrain occupy objectives and AI orders. Everything else is determined by the battle type; meeting, probe/attack/assault. The game sets 1000 points for each quick battle with the casualty parameters as well as the amount of points for terrain objectives adjusted automatically. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but in an assault battle terrain is worth more than casualties for the attacker where as a meeting engagement should be closer to 50/50.

When I am making a QB battle, I use the size of the map and battle type to determine how many objectives are reasonable. I then set the points for each objective as a ratio, for example lets say the battle is an assault on a small town with a few outlying houses. Those houses are objective 1, the town center is objective 2. Based on the narrative I want to tell with this QB map, the town center is far more important for the attacker to capture so it is worth 3 times as many points. I would name objective 1 "*" and give it a value of 100 points. Objective 2 would be named "***" and have a value of 300 points. Players should be able to determine Objective 2 is worth more points and worthy of expending greater effort to capture. This ratio system will ensure whatever type of battle you set, Probe vs Assault vs Meet the game will attach 3 times as many points to the more important objective. 

[Canuck21]

I've seen in somewhere that maps for QB's are selected according to the type of battle it is. I took that to mean Assault/Attack, Meeting, etc. How is a map different from the various battle types that can occur, other than size?

[domfluff]

By convention, the larger the attack, the deeper the objectives (and usually the larger the defender's setup zone). The largest attacks (Assaults) also provide the attacker with pre-battle intel. The larger the battle, the greater the points disparity between sides.

[Combatintman]

22 minutes ago, Canuck21 said:

I've seen in somewhere that maps for QB's are selected according to the type of battle it is. I took that to mean Assault/Attack, Meeting, etc. How is a map different from the various battle types that can occur, other than size?

Not sure what you're asking here.  The parameters you have to have plugged into your QBs are those that match the selections when a player chooses a QB such as the battle type (Meeting Engagement, Probe etc) and the battle size (Tiny through to Huge).  How the game interfaces with those map types I have no idea as naming conventions don't seem to play a part.  Most recent titles do follow a convention along the lines of as an example Rough-Water (1088 X 1088) 289 Meet.btt.  At a guess, the program pulls the settings that you plug into the Mission/Description part of the editor when you make the map.

The physical features on the map itself do not have to be different, by that I mean that if you have a map that you've called 'My First QB Map' and you've laid all of the terrain out - you can have a Meeting Engagement on that map as well as a Probe or whatever ...  so there's no need to move houses around or change roads or anything like that.  And here about endeth the sum of the parts of my knowledge of QB maps.

[Canuck21]

1 hour ago, Combatintman said:

The physical features on the map itself do not have to be different, by that I mean that if you have a map that you've called 'My First QB Map' and you've laid all of the terrain out - you can have a Meeting Engagement on that map as well as a Probe or whatever ... 

Ahh, ok. That's what I was looking for. I wasn't sure if you had to change the features of a map according to the type of battle. Thanks for that  .

[Combatintman]

9 minutes ago, Canuck21 said:

Ahh, ok. That's what I was looking for. I wasn't sure if you had to change the features of a map according to the type of battle. Thanks for that  .

Well you can always have a look see - I know you've got CMFI - the screenshot below shows four QB files from that title.  Crack each one open in the editor and I'll wager that the physical maps are exactly the same.  If you want to know more about the nuances - have a look at the objectives and the AI plans for each battle type.

[Canuck21]

Sounds good, I'll do that. Thanks