How do you play a campaign?

[Paper Tiger]

I'm curious to know how many of you will keep reloading a scenario in a campaign until you get the very best result before moving on to the next mission?

The reason that I ask is that I'm currently designing a campaign and I'm wondering how many AI plans I should include for each mission. If there is only one, then each time you reload it, you'll get a better result until, theoretically, you get the perfect result. At the moment, each mission has at least 2 plans but I don't see the need for 3-5 plans if most people just accept the result and move on with the campaign.

Personally, I prefer to accept the result and move on to see what the campaign has in store.

[molotov_billy]

I generally only restart a scenario when I feel that I've been cheated by the game - a bug, or an AI mistake, or whatever - anything that breaks the "illusion" in a sense.

[molotov_billy]

So as far as AI plans go - I don't know. I honestly generally don't notice when a scenario has a lot of extra plans, or any extras at all. If AI plans are a big chunk of time in terms of creating and testing a scenario, it doesnt seem like a huge payoff to have a bunch of fundamentally different plans - especially when such a thing would make effective playtesting so difficult (so it was too hard - which plan did you play? "I don't know", etc.)

[c3k]

I agree with the breaking the illusion sentiment. If the fight seems fairly conducted, I accept the outcome. If something breaks the illusion, I'll repeat it and counter whatever broke it. But it'd have to be somewhat egregious. Reinforcements attacking me from a secured sector, AI bug resulting in losses - NOT the AI doing something I didn't like.

Regards,

Ken

[Pandur]

I generally only restart a scenario when I feel that I've been cheated by the game - a bug, or an AI mistake, or whatever - anything that breaks the "illusion" in a sense.

same for me, it gets less the more patches are coming out and the more i learn to predict the tacAI behaviourwich gets tweaked every patch, wich leads the more optimized decisions and less reloads.

[Lethaface]

I make frequent saves, most of the time only reloading when there is a significant difference in what I expected my troops to do and what they actually did (and sometimes when I just realise i'm doin' it allll wrong). Restarting a map is something I do very sparsely.

So, in my opinion, more then 2-3 AI plans would mean spending your time at only a few % of all players.

[Paper Tiger]

So far, what I'm reading makes me think that having 2 AI plans for a campaign scenario is about right. More is just overkill. If it were just a single scenario, I'd be looking for at least 4.

[Taki]

I agree with the People above.

Last Campaign i played was the Ghost Campaign. There i was never reloading any Scenario at all.

It was Fun to play and had some real "into the Game" Feeling to me till the last 2-3 Missions showed up.

When it feels unrealistic to me i reload or quit. That was what i did after a whole Company of mine got wiped out in a never seen Attack by the Enemy.

Better get your workload into a good looking RPG Like pdf like Webwing did and work more on the playabilitiy of the Scenarios then adding AI Plans. Thats my point of view.

[Paper Tiger]

Taki:

-Better get your workload into a good looking RPG Like pdf like Webwing did and work more on the playabilitiy of the Scenarios then adding AI Plans.-

I'm not sure I want to spend too much time designing a publication to promote it like Webwing. I just don't have that much free time available to learn the PDF skills necessary to make it interesting for you. Instead, I'm posting screenshots and progress reports in a thread I created in the Scenario forum.

To my mind, the MOST important thing is their excitment level and the AI planning is absolutely crucial to success here. Otherwise, I can just create MONSTER AI forces and give them a plan to charge at the victory point locations. (Actually, that's EXACTLY how I playtest a new map )