CM2 campaign proposal, BTS please read.

[gunnergoz]

Speaking for myself (whothehell else, eh?) I'd love to see a CC2 type campaign option in CM version whatever...

It wouldn't need to be too complex, but simply allow me to nurse a few key units from green to elite over several operations or series of battles.

If it included options for exchanging equipment, upgrading versions, adding replacements and taking advantage of leaders and their experience...well, WOW, it'd knock me for a loop!

I love CM and only ask that the system as we know it, grow without sacrifices, i.e. corruption or dilution.

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kestrl:

What happens to your new veteran tank crew after they get their tank knocked out or disabled? do they return as veteran or regulars in the next battle.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As yet undetermined. Again, this thread is for an idea proposal, not working out the details of the system.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

I don't think a campaign option is needed in CM.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, thats nice. Many people do. Thats the beauty of an optional, additional system.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

I don't think its going to happen in CM2.

[ 06-03-2001: Message edited by: Kestrl ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Why not? All I'm asking is for them to allow some extra features - detailed AARs, outputted as files.. importing scenario data from files... They're not being asked to design the campaign system. They're being asked to 'open the door' so to speak, for someone else to do it. And for those who are interested to enjoy it.

[Uedel]

I would strongly recmonet such a feature. Even with the VL´s taken reportet so Camp. Designers can maybee also decide on this not only what troops next battle u get also to choose maybee what map next to use.

for the diskussion of the rules and working out all the things we should open an WEB-page for all intrestet to work with you and support u either with datas and or infos. Maybe some can take over writting specific code etc... something like an open source group for CM Campaigns -->CMCPG :cool:

to kestrl: if u dont like this happen in your game just simply dont download the add and dont install it. so it doesnt influence your style of CM playing

[Dirtweasle]

Sounds great. Short of a full blown campaign system integrated into the game itself, which seems to be not in the works. This sounds like a good work around.

[Peterk]

There's a way to do a campaign without really needing anything more from CM than what it is giving right now - using the Mega Campaign system idea for SP.

Basically, your program would just have to ask the user to input the Score (and maybe the final morale) after a scenario is played, and then you use that value to determine which scenario variant is the next to be played. You'd have to create multiple variants of lots of scenarios to deal with the OOB/set-up zone changes for the various win/loss combinations but it would be lots of fun to play.

As an example - scenario 1 is a mission where the US has to take a town. If the score indicates that the US did in fact take the town, you would branch to a mission 2 where the US gets to setup in the town and its unit strengths will be adjusted in some way (maybe 3 variants for easy victory, difficult victory, and average victory). Same thing for a defeat - mission 2 would be maybe a 2nd attempt to take the town, with multiple variants. A draw, might be a meeting engagement with both sides in the town at the outset.

[Lempereur]

Bump**

Rowans flight Sims incorporate some detailed campaign systems wich make the missions so much more meaningful. A campaign mode for CM would make the game a dream come true.

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Peterk:

There's a way to do a campaign without really needing anything more from CM than what it is giving right now - using the Mega Campaign system idea for SP.

Basically, your program would just have to ask the user to input the Score (and maybe the final morale) after a scenario is played, and then you use that value to determine which scenario variant is the next to be played. You'd have to create multiple variants of lots of scenarios to deal with the OOB/set-up zone changes for the various win/loss combinations but it would be lots of fun to play.

As an example - scenario 1 is a mission where the US has to take a town. If the score indicates that the US did in fact take the town, you would branch to a mission 2 where the US gets to setup in the town and its unit strengths will be adjusted in some way (maybe 3 variants for easy victory, difficult victory, and average victory). Same thing for a defeat - mission 2 would be maybe a 2nd attempt to take the town, with multiple variants. A draw, might be a meeting engagement with both sides in the town at the outset.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is an idea we can work with if BTS doesn't allow us to add a campaign utility (by not being able to import files, ect)..

But in my proposed system, it would be enourmously more detailed than this. Each squad, vehicle, and team will be tracked for supply, casualties, kills, experience, morale, physical state ... and VLs will be meaningful beyond simple 'victory points', and such.

Adding some sort of campaign system like you mentioned would be good, if we end up not being able to do this for technical reasons - but short of that, the system I proposed is much more detailed.

[JasonC]

I can give a little insight on unit upgrades through action, based on my 6-battle mini series with 10 players, set in Normandy. They started green, and for some commanders stayed green throughout. Others had reached regular status for fair portions of their force by the end of the series.

The way I tracked it was pretty simply. I counted total forces defeated and multipled that by the victory total over 100. That gave a measure of combat success. For each squad worth of replacements taken, I deducted the point cost of a squad from this success total, as "dilution" by new greens. Then partial upgrades were awarded to surviving units on the basis of a "cost" to upgrade from green to regular of 3 times the point cost of the unit. If I had used conscripts, I would have allowed them to increase to "green" for 1 times cost - and I planned on veterans "costing" 10 times cost. I did not envision increases beyond veteran, except perhaps for snipers.

What I found with the above system was that players needed to win fights economically to increase skill levels at all. Winning ugly left the dilution cost eating up almost all the points awarded, with at best only very slow progess towards regular status, for one platoon. But players that totally defeated enemy forces roughly their own size, for little loss, rapidly progressed from green to regular - first for a portion of their force, later for more, etc.

If victory score did not reach the level needed to cover replacements, then the force size would shrink. In addition, because of the natural of my campaign, replacements were not available after each battle, but often waited until some later trigger event - like finishing the fights at one location.

I also had reinforcements, add on units rather than upgrades to or replacements for the core force. I allowed those to be earned purely from victory level times enemy force sized faced, without any adjustment for losses. This meant that a successful commander, in the sense just of winning the battles, would continue to receive new reinforcements to further his mission. But if his wins were expensive, his force stayed pegged at "green" quality. Economy in losses without mission success would tend to maintain force quality but not earn reinforcements. Disaster would shrink the force and lower quality.

Since I was running the system as I was making it up, I didn't need to follow too-rigid rules in any of the above. But the initial system I hit on for earning upgrades worked well, and I encountered no reason to revise it.

As an example, a player takes on a 500 point enemy defense and gets an 80-20 score at the end. He thus earns 400 points - 80/100 times 500. But he lost a green platoon worth of causalties, which subtracts ~100, its point cost. The remaining 300 are 3 times 100, enough to upgrade one surviving green platoon to regular status.

His force will be down the platoon lost until replacements can be taken. One platoon becomes regular for the next fight. When he can take replacements, he will replace the lost platoon as greens, and keep the one regular platoon.

Now, imagine that instead he still won the same fight, but with only a 60-40 score, and with a loss of 2 platoons. Then he earns 60/100 times 500 = 300 points, but spends 200 for replacements. He only has 100 left, which would only upgrade one squad to regular. It will take three such performances to move just one platoon to regular status. Also, of course, until he can take replacements he is short 2 platoons, which may lead to defeat in the next fight.

For applying the points to survivors to upgrade them, I followed a simple rule. Oldest surviving hands upgrade first to a given level, then next. Nobody bumps to the one higher up (veteran e.g.) until the rest has earn its way up to regular.

I made an exception for snipers, however. They counted as one skill level below their rating for increases in skill, so they would generally tend to be 1 skill level above the rest of their force. This also made it easy for any green sniper that the owner didn't get killed to make it to regular and thus do something.

Notice also that earning vet status is pretty tough with the above system. Losses taken in battle are a constant drag. Occasional lost battles drop the points built up so far. New forces entering the force are always green, and have to be "earned up" to regular, for progress toward veteran status for older elements to resume.

An all-regular force that won a battle against a force of equal size with a perfect 100-0 score, without any losses, would upgrade just 10% of the force to veteran. It would take 10 such perfect games in a row to make a uniform veteran force - one reason I discounted the possibility of skills above veteran by combat experience gained in a few battles, alone.

It seemed to work. In any event, it is not rocket science to work out a decent system.

[Mr. Johnson--]

How long would it take to do that Jason?

Would it have been nice to grab a text dump file that had a list of units, ie. AO Platoon HQ-3 kills 2 casualties, A1, A2?

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mr. Johnson-<THC>-:

How long would it take to do that Jason?

Would it have been nice to grab a text dump file that had a list of units, ie. AO Platoon HQ-3 kills 2 casualties, A1, A2?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I was actually in Jason's campaign, which was a good learning lesson while it lasted. And that is actually one of the primary things that got me thinking about a system similar to this.

The reason Jason had to stop all of it, however, was because it was simply too time consuming to do this all 'by hand'. He had to figure out casualties, how they effect units, ect, ect, all with nothing more complex than a pen and paper, I'm assuming.

Something like this would perfectly be able to help Jason's campaign, and those like it. It would automate the tasks that are currently very time consuming to do 'by hand' in CM.

Things like CMMC would benefit because COCAT could output a unit file which could then be imported into CM scenario editor .. CMMC GMs would be able to create tactical battles in half the time, rather than looking at a cocat file, memorizing 2 units, going into CM, buying those 2 units, going back to cocat, getting another 2 units, going back to CM... ect.

I'm just asking for a way to automate and make some things more flexible and efficient that are already being done - albeit just more slowly and alot harder.

EDIT:

In reply to the post:

It wouldn't be as hard to read, for a campaign designer/master as

A-0 Plt HQ 2 casualties, A-1.. ect, ect.

I would write a module for the program to read the text file, and display it in a more user friendly form, so they could hierachally and graphically see the information the AAR is outputting.

[ 06-03-2001: Message edited by: SenorBeef ]

[JasonC]

Well, we were trying to do it with ten players at once. We did a game a week at first, more like one every two weeks later on. The two biggest time sinks were #1 waiting for all the files to trickle in and #2 (hardest for me) tweaking each of the freshly designed scenarios for each player's force situation.

For one person it would be a snap, no longer really than designing new scenarios. Three or four at once and it will be a little bit of work, but probably manageable. I don't recommend more than that - 10 was way too much to handle at once. It did make for some interesting AARs and lessons learned, though, because you could compare things people tried and see how well they worked.

It also took time to write up the briefings and "lessons learned" files, and sometimes I wrote lengthy responses to somebody's AAR for a particular fight. Mostly not, though (there are ~60 AARs LOL). I hope to get all of the AARs and performances made available on the web sometimes, and I've had a volunteer to do the hmtl work. I just haven't gotten my act together to send him what he needs yet.

Yes, it would be useful to have a text file with units and their state, what happened to them in the game. I wasn't using a system that differentiated experience based on what that particular unit did, expect for the snipers. And there I relied on the AARs, not anything the program gave me. But someone might well come up with a way of extending the system to show greater unit-by-unit variation, especially in the case of tank aces and such-like.

As for the system I describe, it is trivial for a "GM" to do it for a small number of games. It could easily be automated, I'd think. Perhaps settings could be provided for operations designers, or scenario-sequence designers.

For example, operations designers now get settings like "night falls when?" One could provide such a setting for when replacements are received. Operations have reserve force slots that get released on some trigger. One might provide reinforcement slots triggered by combined score-time-opposition totals racked up so far. (E.g. reach score time enemy size 1000 and get a second company. Reach 3000 and get a tank platoon. Or whatever). And the experience system could function as I outlined, with perhaps tweakable levels for how hard it is to gain levels. So getting to regular from green might cost 2x, 3x, or 4x unit cost after replacements, depending on how long term and representative the campaign is supposed to be - set by the campaign designer.

The idea would be to have a "campaign" type, different from an operations type, that linked a series of scenarios on different maps instead of the same one. With the force and experience triggers occuring between. So someone might put together a campaign that tracks an infantry battalion through its fights in Army Group South or something. With the player starting with only a company, and perhaps commanding the battalion by the end of it.

The BTS people would need to provide the type and some variable settings, and to be sure it works they'd probably want to make a couple themselves. Others would make more and could change the parameters, e.g. if they thought units should gain experience less rapidly, or fewer additional forces should be available, or replacements should be more frequent. Dump all of that into the campaign designer's lap - LOL.

Of course, people will try it even without any additional tools from BTS. It is just such a natural. With what we've got now, it is perfectly doable if you've got a GM willing to design a lot of scenarios on a production-line basis, and spend a little time tweaking them. And if you keep it small, both in scenario sizes and in number of people playing at once, under one GM.

The games are even faster than PBEM, because the AI can command the enemy side. The scenarios don't have to be too balanced, and in fact they should not be "even" fights most of the time, or the causalties will run so high they will burn out the core units very rapidly.

The auto-generated maps are the essential tool, and CM already lets designers use them. You generate a few to get the right basic idea, then tweak it for the particular elements needed for the plot of the scenario. You do not have to lay down each tile. You do have to design the defenses, but that can be fun in itself. Getting the AI to give a tactical challenge while outnumbered, is itself an interesting tactical problem - LOL.

I heartily encourage BTS to provide more, but whether they do or not, I also encourage more scenario designers to try a spell of GM work. But for 4 players or less, and keeping the scenarios small, I strongly advise. And the GM needs some free time, too. If you plan only 4-8 scenarios all told, that will also work better than an endless campaign, simply because the time commitment will be self-limiting - about a month or two. And if a player is unreliable or not prompt, you just have to say "sorry" and go on without him. Usually players are great about it, because it is fun and they are getting it for nothing - LOL.

[Andrew H.]

Jason: that's an interesting system; more importantly, it seems relatively realistic. With that system, it's easy to imagine the groans of the troops as the new green replacements come in. It's also easy to see attrition at work, as the ranks of the experienced troops become thinner and thinner.

Did you do anything with the leadership attributes (aka hearts, moons, stars clovers?).

[Mr. Johnson--]

Damn FNGs.

[JasonC]

Yes, I did add commander points for overall successes, but I hadn't really formalized it. After a few fights the players that had done best got one extra ability. They started, as I recall, with a platoon HQ with +1 morale, and after a while some of them earned +1 command, too. They were pretty basic Lts, no great shakes - LOL.

To formalize that sort of thing, I think I'd use some sort of progressive cost tied to total force x success, like for reinforcements. But track them seperately for HQs added later, so they don't get all of them. By "progressive" I mean something like the 1st command "point" costs 300, the 2nd 600, etc. By 3000 you have 4 "pips". If an HQ is wiped out, it starts over with nada. Add bonuses in a random field. Or, one might lower the numbers but raise only a random HQ's score. Some gain would happen more often; they'd accumulate over time in randomly scattered places, as long as players didn't get their HQs killed off regularly, or lose all the time.

[Midnight Warrior]

I think that this is a great idea! With something like this one could quickly dump a friendly order of battle text file into some other program such as an EXCEL spreadsheet for recoding stats or for campaign play. I think that being able to import or export sceanrio order of battle text files would add a whole new dimension to game play.

[Wolfpack]

Yes, Jason, I seem to recall the second half of our campaign was scheduled to start about now was it not? No problem...I can imagine what a pain it was to do...I have problems enough keeping up with my PBEM games. It was a very fun experience, and even something small like that to be automated would, I think, please a goodly number of CM fans.

[SenorBeef]

I was talking with a GM in CMMC about this, and he gave me some ideas regarding CMMC, also.

I could write a specific utility designed to assist CMMC GMs and such, by automatically translating cocat .uni files into CM OOB files, automate their unit replacement system, ect.

I wouldn't mind doing this at all because I know how hard GMs work for CMMC, and how swamped they can get with manual work, so if these features are implemented, this'll be another program I put on the to-do list.

[JasonC]

That would be great, S-B. Really. If I could focus on designing the contents of the scenarios when running a campaign, then I'd run them a lot more. It is the tedious work of adjusting each OOB to the dynamic force of each player, tweaking the set up accordingly, etc, that eats up the time, and without a payback of interest. Designing scenarios and setting up defenses also takes time, but it is fun.

[James Bailey]

Senor Beef,

I am the head guy over at CMMC and wanted to share some of our thoughts.

Our basic mission at CMMC is to add an operational dimension to CM to allow large multiplayer campaigns on the Divisional, Corps and even Army levels.

Towards this objective, we have done a CPX (Command Post eXercise), US Inf Div vs. a German PzG Div in a meeting engagement. This was a 30 player game over 60 hours of game time. And we are just starting CMMC1, with over 125 players. The first CM battles of this one are underway. The motivation and knowledge people bring to CMMC is really amazing - lots of folks that really know operations and WW2 history.

Of course, supporting this effort is a cadre of GMs that resolve action, maintain FOW, built CM scenarios, etc, etc, etc. We have, and are, developing tools like COCAT and COMES to support the GM's life. However, none of them have come close to replacing the GM 'sweat' factor.

Organization tools (like COCAT) are great and building/adding feature to these are very helpful (for instance, we are adding a arty fireplan tool which is a huge step forward). And there are clearly things that BTS could do to make CM more 'campaigner' friendly.

However, the key operating weakness of CMMC is the GM to Player communication process. This process is the means by which Players learn what happens to their units and what is happening around their units.

Because WW2 combat operations are inherently very complex events, with lots of activity on a host of levels, proper GM to Player communication takes A LOT of effort. As we have established the work load right now, 1 GM is responsible for 1 Div (about 10 to 12 players) - this translates into a lot of work. Add to that the fact that players can interpret a written email in different fashions and that we require players to master certainly skills sets (like understanding how to explain their locations using Grid References), the workload increases again.

Now, looking at things from the opposite direction, i.e. the traditional wargame in which unit interaction is entirely explained by a system of rules (and therefore largely GM free): this system lacks flexibility because you are removing the key advantage of the GM - imagination and intuition.

So I would think that the best of all worlds would be a computer program that takes care of the admin while allowing a knowledgable GM to swiftly make the decisive decisions would be great. The program would then translate this into communication, which would be ease to produce for the GM and ease to for the player. Of course, the devil is in the details.

I have had some of my GMs thinking about ways in which we could approach BTS with a list of simple, yet very useful additions to make CM2 more campaigner-friendly. I would be very interested to discuss these with you, as well as additional thoughts on the operational dimension of CM.

You can email me at

jbailey@resolutecapital.com

or reply to this thread.

thanks,

James Bailey

[Major Tom]

Well, historically there was some sort of 'campaign' system going, however the field losses and the dilusion through replacements would probably result in a unit remaining at the same, and possibly decreasing in experience. Crack units were formed in between battles, not created on the battlefield. Your unit, if it started off at Regular, would probably remain as regular. Plus, trading in equipment for this and that was impracticle, since units at this scale had no control over their own replacements. This would end up in the individual having no choice over their OOB, since all units beforehand would be determined by the computer (ie. Brigade/Divisional command). Your unit will not vary too much from its original deployment.

If you have Panzer IV's at the beginnning of the campaign, chances are you will have them at the end. If you have Stug's at the beginning, you can bet your life that Division will not change your unit to Tigers.

Also, most units did not see a great amount of combat as a single cohesive formation. Units are routinely shuffled, broken down, combined and refitted. Rarely would a unit fight at one formation from 1941 to 1945, ala. many other wargame campagins.

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Major Tom:

Well, historically there was some sort of 'campaign' system going, however the field losses and the dilusion through replacements would probably result in a unit remaining at the same, and possibly decreasing in experience. Crack units were formed in between battles, not created on the battlefield. Your unit, if it started off at Regular, would probably remain as regular. Plus, trading in equipment for this and that was impracticle, since units at this scale had no control over their own replacements. This would end up in the individual having no choice over their OOB, since all units beforehand would be determined by the computer (ie. Brigade/Divisional command). Your unit will not vary too much from its original deployment.

If you have Panzer IV's at the beginnning of the campaign, chances are you will have them at the end. If you have Stug's at the beginning, you can bet your life that Division will not change your unit to Tigers.

Also, most units did not see a great amount of combat as a single cohesive formation. Units are routinely shuffled, broken down, combined and refitted. Rarely would a unit fight at one formation from 1941 to 1945, ala. many other wargame campagins.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is all a very good post. And I agree with you, for the most part. Again, we're not talking about a war-long campaign in which Sergeant Joe goes from conscript to elite, commanding a BT-5 and ending with an IS-3.

We're talking more about a way of tracking losses, casualties, supply, objectives, ect, in a more complex way than CM operations are capable. What I propose would more resemble an extended CM operation than a panzer general style war-wide campaign.

The current CM operation system is more or less a hastily done system to give the players some sort of extended battle, rather than a well developed operation system tracking everything important to an operation.

Its not bad for what it does, and I don't blame them for not concentrating more on it, but the critical factor here is time. They didn't have time, and they don't have time, to implement an operation system - because they want to concentrate their development effort on their tactical game. I commend that, honestly, I would appreciate a better tactical game than a half-done campaign system.

However, because they don't have time to do it, doesn't mean their fanbase doesn't.

Together, we can manifest the ideas of what a campaign layer (or extended operation layer, if you prefer) game should be.. and all we need is a coder (which I've volunteered to do), and some good ideas, which are plentiful on this board.. and BTS to "open the door" so to speak.

All that is required on their part is a willingness to allow user input in this fashion. The actual technical details involved in allowing what I asked for in the proposal are minimal - they just need to open the door for us to design our own campaign system.

Think of it this way. People have been doing a CM campaign game since the start of the game - but they've had to do it manually. To click on each unit, write down the casualties, unit names, ect.. and then calculate the replacements and such, on paper, and then manually go into the scenario editor and re-add all of these units with the same name, the replacement effects (experience, squad liquidation), and ammo/supply detail.

This has all been done by hand - we've had discussion of it on this thread, by Jason, for example. The problem is that, as Jason said, it takes hours and hours to track all of this out - and you can't afford to do it in great detail, because it would take entirely too long.

What I want to do is to automate this sort of system. You could make it into a set operation - a series of maps by a talented map designer, similar to the cm-minicampaigns, but with real dynamic data - or you could choose to do a GM to players sort of campaign system as Jason has done - or you could do a massively multiplayer campaign like CMMC. What I propose will open the doors to allow ALL of these types of campaigns to be practical, because the repetitive tasks that many people struggle to do manually, because they want continuity, would be automatic and detailed.

[ 06-05-2001: Message edited by: SenorBeef ]

[Thomm]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>OOB's will be exportable and importable so you can keep OOBs for specific historical units and carry them from scenario to scenario.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>... found on the Combat Leader Forum of Matrix Games ( http://www.matrixgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=27&t=000322 ). Seemed relevant to this discussion.

Regards,

Thomm

[Dr. Brian]

Some great comments pro and a few con … but there has been no response from BTS, so this looks like a dead issue as far as implementing (in CM2 at least).

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dr. Brian:

Some great comments pro and a few con … but there has been no response from BTS, so this looks like a dead issue as far as implementing (in CM2 at least). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I'm hoping they're discussing it before they reply...

[SenorBeef]

Bump...