darroch
Posts: 210
Joined: 3/13/2001
From: US
Status: offline
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Birdgunner,
Here are some things I learned during the creation of Russian Steel...first some background:
Originally begun as the 'Campaign Collective', it was started on the basis of everyone would design a battle from a long list of scripted battles - this way, no one designer got stuck with them all - this was desired both from a workload perspective and a desire to ensure surprises for all the designers (with the exception of their own battle of course). With a dozen designers, a given player would play 11 new, never seen battles between each one of his own making.
The original scope was a full Tank battalion (+) - about 150 units in the core!! The script called for the player's core to be nearly destroyed every three battles and then a major rebuild would occur (at the end of each 'operation' or set of three/four battles, the player's core would be down to 25% and it would generally be some type of escape scenario..)
We began with over a dozen designers - the coordinator spent all his time explaining the approach to the campaign. Insufficient time was allowed for testing the battles.
Initial problems included:
1) too many units - besides becoming a clickfest, in battles with over 400 units total, tank crews do not appear because of too many units - players expect their core tank crews to bail out and preserve hard-won experience and this frustrated that desire.
2) battles took too long to test - deploying, testing, retesting, and debugging scenarios is a lot of work - these big battles increased the amount of time required to bring a battle to completion by a disproportional amount. For example, to see if the reinforcements set for turn 24 in a huge battle actually show up and move as planned (rare on the first try even for experienced designers), one has to play through turns 1-23 to find out - if a change is needed, you get to play through it all again....imagine several tries to get it right and you get an idea of how tedious and frustrating testing can become with a big battle.
3) Lack of visible progress after several weeks. Since everything took so long and was done on a volunteer basis, the group in general gradually lost interest because no finished battles came out and the coordinator became overwhelmed.
4) Once finished, most battles took over 20 turns, many were 30+ - this consumes a lot of time and many players are looking for a quick, one-per-evening, game.
Unfortunately, by the time most of these lessons were realized, only two designers remained and a playtester who had stuck through to the initial release. There was so much work already invested in this format that to rework the whole thing was not feasible...so the RS 1.5 you see now is the best compromise under the circumstances...
If started from scratch, here are some guidelines I would use for 'Son of Russian Steel':
1) Average battle length = 12 turns
2) Standard core size (# units) = 16 (or less)
3) Typical AUX size (# units) = 20-75
4) Typical AI attack force = 60-130
5) Typical AI defence force = 40-80
6) only small or medium maps
7) few if any support points (< 120)
8) lots of short quick battles versus long drawn-out slugfests
9) vary the types of battles to keep up player interest (assault, defend, retreat, escape, raid, sneak, evade, etc...)
10) provide lots of information before each battle so the player has a fair idea of what to expect
11) create branches where the player goes to the same map but the degree of difficulty gets harder with the type of result achieved - i.e. a DV in the preceding scenario results in a tougher version of the next battle (i.e. a couple Tigers added or more engineers or artillery for example or objectives placed farther away). Have these branches funnel back to a single battle to keep the administrative workload for the coordinator down...
12) trade historical accuracy for playability - where necessary, stretch history to create some drama, suspense, or surprise...for example, even if the 1stCanDiv never saw any Tigers at Ortona, you should probably have them anyways because eveyone loves/hates Tigers depending on where the muzzle is pointed..
13) Diverge from these rules from time to time but only for a good reason and a clear idea of the goal of the change..
So, as you are reading your book on 1st CanDiv, consider some of the various units that participated and (mentally) select one that you will 'follow' in the campaign (i.e. model your core force on).
The unit should be one that was more or less there throughout and of the type to be frequently employed as the desperation reserve (HQ company or Tank or Tank Destroyer platoon) This ensures the player is often forced to 'save the day' which adds to the challenge/enjoyment of the fight
Select key episodes of the battle to highlight (major assaults, hill seizures, counterattacks, etc.) and then fill in between them with classic fights and occassional fun battles (I try and have a raid/rescue/escape battle every 4 or 5 battles to spice things up)...stress variety of battles over repetitve slugfests...
Maybe the core force should be just infantry (note that there is no real way to enforce core force composition - but the players you wish to appeal to will respect your guidelines if they know that each battle is designed to be do-able with the tank-less unit or whatever you end making the core...at any rate, keep the numbers of tanks down and recognize that pure infantry batles are not everyone's cup of tea...assume someplayers will sneak some tanks into their core...or promise them plenty of AUX unit tanks (AUX units are the ones that go away at scenario's end and do not carry over and do not gain experience points)...
The size and nature of the core are important because after 6 battles or so, the core's increasingly elite status makes playbalance by the designer increasingly difficult. Imagine trying to design a battle where the player might have 40 elite tanks or he might have 80 elite infantry or a combined arms unit with elite AA, ATG, and Tank Destroyers!!....too hard....keep the core as small as possible and dictate to the player the type of unit you expect him to use (allow a little latitude for players to customize - eveyone has their favorite unit and some folks may want to play the 1st Polish Div rather than the 1st Can...)
If the designer can predict the strength of the core force accurately, the battle can be built to be well balanced and enjoyable...
This is my two cents - learned the hard way. Ideally it is better to have a few committed people for testing and designing than a large number of impulsive, sounds-cool folks who never get around to completing their assignments and eventually stop responding to emails...we're all busy but it makes things harder when promises aren't kept.
Once you have designed a couple of battles yourself, you should be able to design and test a good fight every 15-20 hours of keyboard time...so a 15 battle campaign will take awhile to complete....but the end product is worth it!
If the battles (by necessity built singly as scenarios) are well scripted, then assembling the campaign is trivial using the SPWAW campaign editor provided. You must allow testing of individual battles and also allow time to 'run through' the campaign sequentially to make sure the battles and text flow correctly from one to the next....
Maybe this sounds hard but it is actually quite easy once you get the hang of it - it simply requires dedication to detail and time at the keyboard.
Cheers,
Brad
P.S Got a storyboard for Ortona yet? Having never heard of the fight, I'd be interested in a brief summary....
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Ortona: Little Stalingrad - 
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