Am I missing something with Campaigns?

[DaveDash]

D&D actually. I kick it old school, FMB can attest to this.

Nope. Don't know who that is.

I was going to say D&D, but you missed out PP and potentially EP

[Smaragdadler]

... we're going to reintroduce Kill Stats and they will be tracked throughout a Campaign. It's a win-win feature for everybody.

Steve

[teeps]

It's only my opinion, but I like the campaigns, and enjoy fighting my way through them aware that screwing up this time is going to hurt badly in the next fight.

[Battlefront.com]

Bulgaroktonos,

Nope. Don't know who that is.

Long, long time member whom we have not seen in a long, long while (but we know where he is ). He fired some stuff at Saddam's guys back in the First Gulf War for the jarheads you currently work with. Great guy, so it's a compliment that JonS confused you with him.

Steve

[bwgulley]

I still want the old Squad Leader campagin game. The player with the highest ranking leader at the end of X number of scenarios wins. Example each player is on the map, Cpl Gulley in my case. I earn points for Cpl Gulley when he or those under his direct command do positive stuff and lose points for negative stuff. Of course winning the scenario wins you a lot of points. After 1 scenario Cpl Gulley has +10 points not quite enough to earn say a +1 for learership but close. After 6 scenarios Cpl Gulley has maxed out all the positive modifires so he earned his NCO stripes. Now in scenario 7 he's KIA, bummer, the game don't end but I must start over with a brand new leader. So at the end of the war the winner is the player with the highest ranking leader. Simple, fun, and exciting as you watch yourself earn that VC, MOH, ect. Now you don't get awarded "medals" like in some games but you get the drift. So if you risk yourself to gain points you may get killed, hang back and be a slacker (me in real life) and you don't earn points. Am I the only one who thinks this would be a great way to play these games? I know in real life the war wouldn't last long enough for this to happen (of course in WWII it happened all the time) but it's a GAME so lets have fun playing it.

[TheVulture]

Put me down as one of those who really enjoyed the old CMx1 operations. Although to some extent a 4 hour CMx2 mission where you have to stop the attack and go resupply your troops manually from their vehicles has something of the same flavour.

But then, I like the east front the most too. East front operations: I guess I'm not the largest target audience in the world.

But dammit, I still want BFC to cater to my every passing whim to the detriment of what everyone else wants

[ASL Veteran]

I liked the old operations too. The primary problem with them was that the game couldn't draw the set up boundaries properly between battles. Until BFC can figure out a way to get the computer to draw good set up zones it probably is a good thing to just leave them out.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

True enough, but I suspect Elmar wants everything.

That is, he want to be able to refight maps a'la CMx1 if he wants to (or rather, if a campaign designer makes it so) AND have the ability to campaign across time and space (a'la CMx2).

[snark]I wonder what features he's prepared to give up in order to realise this.[/snark]

And with good reason, IMO.

If my wishes, whom I consider to be ways to improve the the campaign, offend you, then I'm deeply deeply sorry for having uttered them. Clearly, I have no right to express my opinion about these things. Good thing you were there to apply sarcastic derision. Clearly, it's improper to suggest CMSF can be improved upon. Forgive me?

[Battlefront.com]

Elmar,

If my wishes, whom I consider to be ways to improve the the campaign, offend you, then I'm deeply deeply sorry for having uttered them. Clearly, I have no right to express my opinion about these things. Good thing you were there to apply sarcastic derision. Clearly, it's improper to suggest CMSF can be improved upon. Forgive me?

Clearly this is a load of crap Of course it's fine that you're expressing a desire to see something else. I've said that a number of times. There are certainly a decent number of people who share your point of view, which I've also said. But in your pursuit to request another way you are trashing the viewpoint of others who disagree with your vision. You've cast them aside like they don't exist or that they don't also have a valid point of view. Or put another way, you want what you want and don't care what others want. Which I don't find at all helpful. I am absolutely sure that is what JonS was poking you about.

And this is the problem we've always had with discussing operations/campaigns with people since before CMBO was ever released. Ask 1000 gamers what their ideal type of campaign is and you'll get almost 1000 different answers. They will break down into rough categories, but they will differ dramatically in detail even within each category. Which is why I say, every time we get into this...

It is physically impossible to produce a campaign system that will make everybody happy. Therefore, no matter what we do a significant number of people will be unhappy with our choices. That is a fact and denying it is the same thing as denying that the world is round.

Since we are in a no-win situation we are forced, and I mean forced, to provide the system that pleases the most number of people as best as possible. If we can even please 40% of our customer base then I think we've had a big success. That's because the other 60% is fractured and fragmented in support of completely different systems. So that if we picked any one of the alternatives we would have an overall level of happiness below 40%.

Again, we're in a no win situation. It is unfair and counter productive to pretend otherwise. It is also unfair and unproductive to insist that there is only one way to do it and, surprise-surprise, that way happens to be the way the critic wants it done.

ASL Veteran,

I liked the old operations too.

I liked them also! I was the one that designed the thing, after all The system basically did what it was intended to do and it basically did it very well. But it inherently was incapable of giving the most amount of CM players the sort of experience they wanted. Which was a strike against the system even if it was perfectly executed. However, clearly it wasn't...

The primary problem with them was that the game couldn't draw the set up boundaries properly between battles.

The effort to do this right was huge. Since we saw that the underlying system was inherently not what most people wanted, such a big investment would have been absolutely foolish for us to do.

Until BFC can figure out a way to get the computer to draw good set up zones it probably is a good thing to just leave them out.

That was our opinion back then and it still is today. Plus, as I said, it was not the right system to pursue in regards to what the larger portion of our audience wanted. In a perfect world we would have both systems. Who knows, maybe someday we will. But it's not practical any time soon.

Steve

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Ah feck it!

[RecceDG]

I have little issue with the campaign system as it exists right now. There are some small improvements that would be Nice To Haves (post-battle ORBAT management comes to mind) but for the most part, the systemic flaws in CM-SF are tactical in nature, not the campaign system.

The campaign writing, on the other hand, is horrific. At that it what Lt Mike was posting about in the first place.

DG

[Combatintman]

RecceDG

With regard to your comment in the post above about the campaign writing - I'll take some of your points from the other thread:

So to sum up, the campaign so far has suffered from:

1. A lack of a central "main character" (meaning a unit, not a person) to hang the narrative on;

A - 4 SCOTS BG

2. A lack of continuity mission-to-mission in most cases;

A - Not quite sure what you mean here, but the continuity is supplied by the geography. The units may differ mission to mission but each mission will feature elements from the core units file which bring us back to 4 SCOTS BG.

3. A gross misunderstanding of the sequence of tasks involved in an operation;

A - Untrue. The premise of both branches of the British Campaign is the same - kick the doors in and go for a regime collapse objective in Syria. So we have an initial sequence of pure warfighting missions followed by some stability tasks followed by resumption of the advance. Now of course you're thinking - that's just the point I'm making - stability ops should come at the end. Well I vaguely recall on TELIC that there were stability tasks going on concurrent with the battle for Basra so your neat construct actually doesn't fit the facts. So why have the stability tasks where they are in the British Campaign? Well the reason is simple, and I accept that this may not have come across strongly in the campaign narrative and so I accept the point, 7 Armd Bde, having led the assault has handed off to 4 Bde to take up the attack and therefore is conducting stability ops while reconstituting prior to resuming the advance later on.

4. A further misunderstanding of the troops assigned to tasks (both type and amount);

A - I accept that troops to task is not realistic and therefore I agree that part of the point but this is where the gameplay v reality equation kicks in. To say that the Campaign designer misunderstands troops to task is factually incorrect.

5. A passive AI who does not react to opportunity, nor commits reserves, nor even makes effective use of artillery.

A - Agreed and there are plenty of posts to that effect here - I'd love to see a trigger-based AI.

So, I hope that puts it into context more for you and perhaps encourage you to use less emotive words such as 'horrific' when discussing the campaign.

[cabal23]

One could argue that CM should be designed to do more then what it does today.

Persistent damage would be one feature I'd love to see, allowing us to fight several battles on the same map, like the old style Operations. It may be a gameform that Steve seems to have no high regard for but whose continuity beat the current campaign by a country mile.

Or unit experience. You can start a game with a platoon of Green soldiers and twenty battles later, after killing more people then Genghiz Khan they are still Green soldiers. A flaw which demotes virtual soldiers to mere tools for the task of reaching the end.

This campaign offers no tangible reward a player for fighting a battle other then proceeding to the next. It will not let you defend that office block you captured earlier, take that squad of farmhands and see them through the campaign until they are battle hardened killers.

If those pleasures aren't in CMSF because it wasn't what it was designed to do I can only hope that the design will be DRAMATICALLY improved for Normandy. I hate to say it but the current offering is sub par.

It just isn't rewarding for a player. The only reward is letting me fight the next mission. Well big whoop if that next mission is once again so sterile, devoid of player influence or feedback. The current campaign is such an exceedingly small improvement of just playing single battles that I'm half wondering why it's there at all.

I totally agree. Ther are so many great scenarios as part of the campaigns I feel it is waste of resources. The campigns really do just feel like..the next level. Which Is why I just prefer single player or H2H. The rewards for doing well aren't always represented in the following missions in a campaign. The Brit's campaign has not inspired me other than a few brillant maps.

[RecceDG]

1. A lack of a central "main character" (meaning a unit, not a person) to hang the narrative on;

A - 4 SCOTS BG

Random subunits plucked from therein, with never the same units used in succession. There is no feel of continuity from battle to battle because there's always some bizarre new grouping on the Blue side.

You might as well say the "main character" is "the British Army"

2. A lack of continuity mission-to-mission in most cases;

A - Not quite sure what you mean here, but the continuity is supplied by the geography. The units may differ mission to mission but each mission will feature elements from the core units file which bring us back to 4 SCOTS BG.

We cross the border with one unit.

Next mission - completely different unit.

Following mission - yet another unit. So far, my losses in any given mission do not appear to have influenced follow-on missions.

Eventually I got to a mission where I recognized that I'd had these guys before, but only because a squad had a yellow wounded guy in it. I certainly didn't draw the connection from the name or the tactical grouping.

3. A gross misunderstanding of the sequence of tasks involved in an operation;

A - Untrue. The premise of both branches of the British Campaign is the same - kick the doors in and go for a regime collapse objective in Syria. So we have an initial sequence of pure warfighting missions followed by some stability tasks followed by resumption of the advance. Now of course you're thinking - that's just the point I'm making - stability ops should come at the end. Well I vaguely recall on TELIC that there were stability tasks going on concurrent with the battle for Basra so your neat construct actually doesn't fit the facts. So why have the stability tasks where they are in the British Campaign? Well the reason is simple, and I accept that this may not have come across strongly in the campaign narrative and so I accept the point, 7 Armd Bde, having led the assault has handed off to 4 Bde to take up the attack and therefore is conducting stability ops while reconstituting prior to resuming the advance later on.

I have no beef per sae with stability ops taking place concurrent with offensive ops - that's the whole concept behind "3 block war", right (warfighting here, where a block east we are doing stability and a block west we are doing humanitarian aid)

No, I'm talking about things like crossing the border and having the engineers - unsupported - kicking down doors of a major border installation as the first mission

If you are jumping back and forth between Bdes mission to mission, you are creating that lack of continuity I was discussing earlier.

It's a tactical game. Combat team to battalion, max. Why are we taking focus off a tactical "actor" to switch to a completely separate actor?

The only place that works is if you have a tightly focused operation with a lot of moving parts that you can play out separately but still tie together narratively. An example is "A Bridge Too Far". That you could do in CM - each Airborne drop captures a bridge, then XXX Corps starts moving up the road, then switch back to a German counterattack on a bridge, then back to XXX corps, then another attack on a bridge with XXX Corps arriving to relieve... Can the Paras hold out? Will XXX Corps get bogged down?

It's more of an ensemble cast... but you've still got identifiable "main characters" you are hanging the narrative on, not just Random Unit 4.

4. A further misunderstanding of the troops assigned to tasks (both type and amount);

A - I accept that troops to task is not realistic and therefore I agree that part of the point but this is where the gameplay v reality equation kicks in. To say that the Campaign designer misunderstands troops to task is factually incorrect.

I disagree. I maintain it is entirely possible to provide realistic troops to tasks and still provide a challenge for Blue.

I'm up to the mission in a valley, 1 x recce Tp, 1 x Tank Tp, 1 x Inf Pl for a sort of micro combat team... and Red still has not had a single position properly sited. Blue ALWAYS gets ground that dominates Red's position. Red never has mutual support, interlocking arcs, defilade to produce enfilade, reverse slope... nothing.

So, I hope that puts it into context more for you and perhaps encourage you to use less emotive words such as 'horrific' when discussing the campaign.

I calls em as I sees em - and it appears I'm not the only one who feels this way.

DG

[Flanker15]

Biggest jump up I'd put in the campaign system is an intermission screen.

One that lets you analyse your forces for the next mission and "requisition" repairs/rearm /re-enforce and air/artillary/support and upgrades to unit equipment, using "points" earned from victories in previous missions (more points for beter vicotries).

Basically the Steel panthers campaign system.

[JonS]

I disagree.

That much is obvious. You don't like the way the cat was skinned. Got it.

The rest is your opinion of what is and isn't realistic - or plausible, what does and doesn't make a good campaign, what is and isn't fun, and what is and isn't practical within the current CMSF campaign engine.

You know what they say about opinions, right?

[Battlefront.com]

Believe me, all of these arguments are extremely familiar to me. IIRC the first such discussion started before CMBO was even released and has continued to this day. The most common element of such discussions is they go absolutely nowhere. And very slowly at that

The fundamental problem here is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO ONE "BEST" TYPE OF CAMPAIGN. People can argue as passionately as they want about how their favored system is better than someone else's favored system, but it always boils down to an argument over personal tastes and not empirical fact.

In another thread that just got started some said they really loved the CC2 and Steel Panthers Campaign models. Both absolutely bored me to tears Not only were they ridiculously unrealistic, but they were extremely repetitive with very little challenge after I got my core units up to snuff. I could post lengthy, detailed, rationally argued cases as to why nobody in their right minds would want to play either of these types of systems. I could also conclude that since they aren't any fun that anybody who does want to play them is obviously not interested in a game that provides fun. However, there's no point in doing that because I understand it is just an opinion and that others disagree with it. Therefore, it's a waste of time trying to be analytical about something which is just personal preference.

Personally, I'd be surprised if we could ever make more than about 40% of our customer base even moderately happy with a campaign system. That leaves 60% of our fan base to complain about how they are being left out. But if we followed some of their suggestions we might have 80% feeling left out.

Believe me, if there were a single system that would make even a majority of you happy... we'd do it. That system, however, does not exist. Fortunately, for the sake of our sanity, we realized this years ago

Steve

[Starlight]

Random subunits plucked from therein, with never the same units used in succession. There is no feel of continuity from battle to battle because there's always some bizarre new grouping on the Blue side.

We cross the border with one unit.

Next mission - completely different unit.

Following mission - yet another unit. So far, my losses in any given mission do not appear to have influenced follow-on missions.

DG

I have only played the first 3 missions so far of the Brit Campaign, but mission 3 does take units form mission 2. I lost 1 IFV vehicle in mission 2 for one of the Blue units, cannot remember which one and at work atm. but mission 3 started with the same unit but 1 squad without its vehicle, because it was lost in last mission. Also I had not arty in mission 3, possibly because I had expended it all in mission 2.

While in an ideal world we would push through with a 3-1 force ratio I expect that is a paper dream that rarely happens in real life. Also why would you bother playing a game where you are so numerically superior that you would smash the enemy without trying too hard. Would be the most boring game ever.

I agree that there could be some improvements but I am also having a blast trying to complete each mission with as few casualties as possible and I despair at each vehicle loss more so than the troops, lack of vehicle mobility and fire support can make crossing the map a real pain.

Eventually I got to a mission where I recognized that I'd had these guys before, but only because a squad had a yellow wounded guy in it. I certainly didn't draw the connection from the name or the tactical grouping.

DG

But when your unit has taken huge losses and gets retired to the rear for rearming and refitting how fun is that to play or the campaign suddenly ends because the rest of the force have pushed through while your stuck refitting?

I think the scope of following a single unit can be done quite easily, just I want to play with all the available toys not just those available to a single unit

[Field Marshal Blücher]

But when your unit has taken huge losses and gets retired to the rear for rearming and refitting how fun is that to play or the campaign suddenly ends because the rest of the force have pushed through while your stuck refitting?

Well, shouldn't there be consequences for failure?

[Starlight]

Well, shouldn't there be consequences for failure?

I am not disagreeing with consequences for failure, just if you follow a single unit the chance of being pulled out of the line is quite high with mounting losses and being retired to the rear. The loss of a few vehicles could easily lead to a unit stopping being a spearhead or being merged with another force and that leads to what the current campaign sort of does anyway.

This either makes for a very unforgiving campaign where you need some considerable luck and perfect tactics to actually get to the end or a very short campaign in terms of active combat rather than relegated to city policing.

Also if the campaign was set around say the Recon force, there could be many missions where you encounter almost no enemy force or even none at all.

[Battlefront.com]

Starlight's point is absolutely spot on. Especially in an environment where the attacker has ample reserves and opportunities to swap them in for a unit which has sustained casualties. Sure, the Soviets in WW2 were known for keeping their units in the line until they literally disappeared, but that certainly isn't the norm. If a player wants to have a campaign prematurely end because he's suffered relatively light casualties... well, that's absolutely something the current Campaign system can simulate. We just don't think that's a great game experience for most people.

There are two other reason why the player isn't in command of a single set of units throughout the entire campaign:

1. It's utterly unrealistic because forces are constantly augmented or subtracted from in order to accommodate various tactical and operational necessities. So what do we do when the core Battalion is split up into two attack forces? Have you command only one of them and not the other simply to keep the player with the same units? That doesn't make any sense to me.

2. Who here thinks its fun to play with exactly the same forces battle after battle after battle? Meaning, if you start out the campaign with a platoon of tanks and you lose them... you don't get to play with tanks ever again for the rest of the campaign? Who thinks that if you're commanding a regular Infantry Battalion that it would be less fun to sometimes have an Engineer or Mech Infantry Platoon here or there? Sounds very uninteresting to me.

Which comes back around and highlights the central problem of having a discussion about campaign systems. Not only do people have wildly different points of view about what is "fun" and what is "realistic" (though the latter is easier to debate rationally), you also get people who criticize a system incorrectly. Or at least out of context of what that system is designed to achieve. Then we have to spend time correcting misperceptions and/or glaringly obvious errors simply because someone argued without really examining the facts first.

Steve

[Elmar Bijlsma]

That much is obvious. You don't like the way the cat was skinned. Got it.

The rest is your opinion of what is and isn't realistic - or plausible, what does and doesn't make a good campaign, what is and isn't fun, and what is and isn't practical within the current CMSF campaign engine.

You know what they say about opinions, right?

And here is me thinking the raison d'être of this forum was to share opinions.

It's that or a very cunning ploy to keep opinionated arseholes off the streets.

Or are you thinking that he gave the wrong opinion? Then come out and say so.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Well, I'm a big fan of RobOs campaign, which is much like Steel Panthers. The player picks his force and depending on how well or bad he does the player receives influence with which he can "buy" replacements, or improve his force loadout.

People who'd use that system for insanely unrealistic OOBs (like me) can get their jollies, and those that desire a more realistic ToE (also me) can do so to.

Let the player shape the way the campaign plays out more. It's his campaign, after all.

[dan/california]

A true campaign system amounts to an entire separate game in the same wrapper. The Total War series has done this for years. Unfortunately they refuse to properly patch or support either of the two "separate" games they are selling, so I have completely quit playing and buying their products. BFC has concentrated almost solely on the Tactical engine,and done it very well. Campaigns are just a relatively low effort way to tie individual scenarios together in a way that makes them more interesting.

The outside attempt to do more based on the CMX1 engine seems to have foundered unfortunately. To produce the "real" campaign engine many people seem to want would dramatically slow further development of the WW2 games among other things. Please raise your hand if you want to wait an extra six months for Normandy.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

A true campaign system amounts to an entire separate game in the same wrapper. The Total War series has done this for years. Unfortunately they refuse to properly patch or support either of the two "separate" games they are selling, so I have completely quit playing and buying their products. BFC has concentrated almost solely on the Tactical engine,and done it very well. Campaigns are just a relatively low effort way to tie individual scenarios together in a way that makes them more interesting.

The outside attempt to do more based on the CMX1 engine seems to have foundered unfortunately. To produce the "real" campaign engine many people seem to want would dramatically slow further development of the WW2 games among other things. Please raise your hand if you want to wait an extra six months for Normandy.

To which I reply: X-COM.

Game, set and the match to me, I believe?

Honestly, I think everyone that wanted a completely separate campaign engine had a good cry and got over it long ago. Is it even being hinted at in this thread?

But some sort of framework around the current tactical engine to allow some form of interaction with your core force is not all that much to ask for, IMO. Anything to improve what is currently little more then a sequential playing through of scenarios.

Please raise your hand if you want to wait an extra six months for Normandy.

*raises hand*

If CMSF taught us anything, it is that patience is a virtue.