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Campaign discussion

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Post  Martin Mon Mar 26, 2012 2:25 pm

Mr. Digby wrote:............... I am going to need everyone's e-mail address, so I'll be sending out PMs to you all shortly, unless Martin, you can provide those?
Have most, but not all (missing Joshua, Dan Young & Wittman).
Martin

PS a most awesome piece of work, Diggers.

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Post  Uncle Billy Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:00 pm

Kevin Komisarcik (Little Billy)
Little Billy, indeed. It is all I can do to contain my armies from taking a stroll through your currently green and fatted lands.
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Post  Father General Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:10 pm

Mr Digby, I have a lot of experience. If you need me to serve in an advanced capacity, I am prepared.
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Post  Ike Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:35 pm

Mr. Digby, do you envision the map-level commanders' conferences being on the forum or being live? The conferences could very well be held either way, but if live is wanted, the TS server information can readily be handed out to the map commanders for conferences there, using one of the labelled channels for it. Perhaps both will be used or only one; not my decision, certainly, but they have the option to us the TS voice server if they (or you) would prefer.
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Post  Hays Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:39 pm

CSA Battle field Commission please.
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Post  Father General Mon Mar 26, 2012 4:33 pm

Hays wrote:CSA Battle field Commission please.

Yes! We must have Gen'l Hays.
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Post  Hays Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:07 pm

It's good to see you back Neal.
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Post  Mr. Digby Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:23 pm

All discussions would be on the forums or by email. Possibly by PM here.

I was keen to have a private CSA sub-forum available only to the CSA players (or possibly of more entertainment to the whole KS community NOT available to the USA players) and then vice-versa for the opposing side. I'll just have to trust the general public not to reveal people's secrets.

I used secure sub-forums on another game but that was a WWI North Sea naval campaign and effectively that setting gives command by committee since all the senior officers were ashore or at least on their flagships in harbour and so could exchange letters/telephone calls as a group thus the sub-forum workled extremely well. Here, commanders are not in proximity except that we can say they are at the start (the ball on the night before Waterloo syndrome).

It would be great to have something to show on the forum to non-players so that the game remains a community thing but equally I'm wary of info getting to players when it shouldn't, like being handed out in a group format when only the sender and recipient would know of it.

Father General, thanks for the offer. I am still not yet sure quite how much work will be involved though I am definitely of the mind that umpires cannot also be players.

One thing that is bothering me is that almost all our American players have gone to the CSA side. This does not bode well for matching the teams up for online games as I'd really like a sprinkling of Europeans and Americans on both teams. This way we could have a battle early in the day that the European players might more comfortably attend while late in the day (from a Europe time-zone standpoint) our American-based players could fight battles when it better suits them.

Would one or two of the Americans be willing to switch sides?
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Post  Uncle Billy Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:59 pm

Would one or two of the Americans be willing to switch sides?
The start of a fifth column? Very Happy
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Post  Father General Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:20 pm

Hays wrote:It's good to see you back Neal.

Thank you, Hays.
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Post  Ike Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:47 am

I'll transfer to the Union side of battle commanders, Mr. Digby, to confirm my remarks in the TS today. Smile
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Post  Father General Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:54 am

Mr. Digby, the best cure I can think of is to play one game per week with the time chosen by the majority of players. I should be good for most any weekend battles, but I am on Pacific time, so early start times are difficult during the workweek. On the weekends, I'll rise as early as need be to whip Yankees.

One game per week may seem slow, but when you get into the admin, it can be just enough. Also, if the players interact on the forums during the week, it passes quickly.

I agree that umpires cannot be players. In the last group of which I was a part -- and a leader, that was the problem, a problem I fully participated in. Mistrust is inherent (especially when seeing those blue uniforms) and if game officials are also players things can get ugly. I learned some lessons back then, and that was one of them!

Looking forward to whatever you do.

FG
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Post  Martin Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:36 am

Father General wrote:One game per week may seem slow, but when you get into the admin, it can be just enough. Also, if the players interact on the forums during the week, it passes quickly.
I agree. Email games can give rise to lots of admin, and some past games have ended prematurely due to umpire burn-out. It may be best to start sedately - you can always increase the speed later if you're able. I suspect players will be quite happy with one battle per week. They can still play ad-hoc sandbox or user scenario games on other days.

But at the end of the day it's your game and your call. We're all with you and willing you on Smile

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Post  Uncle Billy Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:10 pm

Personally, I'm fine with the umpire taking part in the battle. The miniature group I was with for many years always had the umpire take command of a unit. Questions of honesty and integrity only arise when winning is the sole objective, rather than just having a good time. This group does not strike me as holding to the Lombardi philosophy, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." If it did, I certainly wouldn't be here.
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Post  Mr. Digby Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:23 pm

Thanks Neal, Kevin, and others.

We'll see how it goes, I have no idea how things will work out. I agree with Neal that one battle a week would be realistic, given that scenarios need to be written and also map moves made and the most senior "map" player on each side (and even junior ones) will need to send briefs to the battlefield team on their objectives. This has to be slotted in around having to live as well of course Wink

As is the nature of these things players can be busy at the last minute or someone's internet can drop them out so I would be willing to play a minor roole (maybe an ammunition wagon convoy, a few cavalry units on patrol or at the most a brigade, nothing bigger). I'd also of course fill in on either side, wherever a gap needed filling.

This would be a last resort though, my preference is not to play in the games at all, though it would be great to be a general figure who had no troops which I am sure can be fudged into a scenario.
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Post  Father General Wed Mar 28, 2012 3:36 am

Questions of honesty and integrity only arise when winning is the sole objective, rather than just having a good time.

This is a very good point, and I think it was my issue back in the day -- I had become more concerned about winning than having fun.

One possibility might be that the umpire can have a unit on both sides as an independent command. Maybe play with one side or another to add balance or a surprise to a battle? Who knows. I wouldn't force the issue either way.

We should also talk about availability. I know the earliest I can play is 4-5 PDT... Sometimes earlier, but it is difficult to predict. The earliest I am ever home is 3:30 PDT. So I would be reliably free after 4 PM PDT : 7 PM EDT weekdays.

I do have full weekend availability though!


I remember in our original campaign guys were spread out a bit, and they had a full week to play the battles, so small groups of 4-6 could arrange different times amongst themselves.
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Post  Mr. Digby Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:55 pm

Father General wrote:
Questions of honesty and integrity only arise when winning is the sole objective, rather than just having a good time.

This is a very good point, and I think it was my issue back in the day -- I had become more concerned about winning than having fun.

One possibility might be that the umpire can have a unit on both sides as an independent command. Maybe play with one side or another to add balance or a surprise to a battle? Who knows. I wouldn't force the issue either way.

We should also talk about availability. I know the earliest I can play is 4-5 PDT... Sometimes earlier, but it is difficult to predict. The earliest I am ever home is 3:30 PDT. So I would be reliably free after 4 PM PDT: 7 PM EDT weekdays.

I do have full weekend availability though!

I remember in our original campaign guys were spread out a bit, and they had a full week to play the battles, so small groups of 4-6 could arrange different times amongst themselves.
In my naivety I hadn't considered raising the subject of umpire honesty and integrity and player respect for the umpire and towards other players as I considered this group to be very much in it for the simple fun of the experience and not in it to win, which is why I gave up offering exactly this campaign to another SoW MP group. I could see that some of the personalities there and their gaming style was not going to let the campaign work for me.

Now that the subject has been brought up though we may as well take it on board and reiterate that this is a small campaign, done purely for fun and no-one is going to look down on the losers or swell the egos of the winners. It is about taking part and it is also (in fact mainly) about testing the system. It’s a small campaign of limited duration and forces and its testing a number of ideas and scenario/OOB creation tools as well.

It isn't going to go smoothly, I can promise that now, as no wargame campaign ever does, but I hope it goes smoothly enough and generates enough fog of war, humour and chaos as well as fun battles to make it worthwhile. If it works we can go on to tackle bigger things, if it doesn't we can take an honest look at why and make some improvements.

As umpire I won't take a specific command (in fact none of the battlefield players has a specific command) and I'll do my best not to take any part in the battles beyond commanding a single officer for observation purposes.

The bane of these online games is the fact we live on a globe spinning in space and the sun rises and sets at different times over the surface of said globe. We have European players that are in two time zones, British Summer Time and European Time (BST +1) and in America we have players in (I think) four time zones; Eastern (BST -5), Central (BST -6), Mountain (BST -7), and Pacific (BST -8 ).

7:00pm in the UK is 8:00pm in Europe (already this is, as you can see, plenty late enough for the European players to cover a 2-hour game plus about 30 minutes start up time during the week).

7:00pm in the UK is 2:00pm Eastern, 1:00pm Central, 12:00noon Mountain and 11:00am Pacific. Quite sociable times at the weekends. We could have some truly monster battles if we time them for weekends when no-one is out doing family things.

We can see straight away that only those lucky enough to be retired or maybe work from home in the USA will be able to join the 'normal' 7:00pm UK time slot during the week.

However a game starting at 4:00pm Pacific Time (5:00pm Mountain, 6:00pm Central, 7:00pm Eastern, 12:00midnight UK and 1:00am Europe) is still a practical proposition for weekends if the Europeans do not mind staying up until the small hours.

Two of our American players, John and Jack, are often on before 7:00pm UK time anyway and Ike sometimes shows up before 9:00pm UK time. Kevin can usually be online by midnight UK time.

There's no problem with the American team fighting scenarios when it's convenient for them. I don't have to be present every time. If JJ joins us we'll have six US players which is a good sized group for most games.

In the UK/Europe team we have about eight regulars to call on, ten if we include John and Jack so with a reasonably relaxed schedule of one game per week I think we can get enough together with a few days notice to play some battles of quite extensive size. Five players can easily handle a corps in HITS so I'm not overly worried here.


Last edited by Mr. Digby on Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:43 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Post  Father General Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:57 pm

To be clear, I am not suggesting that the campaign revolve around my schedule. Rather I merely suggest we change the way timezones and the rotation of the Earth work. Can you do that?

I feel (in all seriousness) your thoughts are spot-on. It's going to be an awesome campaign whether I play or not!

FG
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Post  Mr. Digby Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:46 pm

Father General wrote:To be clear, I am not suggesting that the campaign revolve around my schedule. Rather I merely suggest we change the way timezones and the rotation of the Earth work. Can you do that?
You'll need to ask Little Billy or Hays, they are our modders.
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Post  Hays Thu Mar 29, 2012 8:05 am

Mr. Digby wrote:
Father General wrote:To be clear, I am not suggesting that the campaign revolve around my schedule. Rather I merely suggest we change the way timezones and the rotation of the Earth work. Can you do that?
You'll need to ask Little Billy or Hays, they are our modders.

I’m a bit busy at the moment; I’ll add it to my list of things to do.
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Post  kg_sspoom Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:02 am

I wouldnt mind a brigade. Union or fill in is fine with me.
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Post  Mr. Digby Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:30 pm

Hi Steve, I'll put you on the Union side.

We are nearly ready to go. I do though need 1 more player for each map command team, any takers?
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Post  Father General Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:37 pm

Digby,

What does the responsibility entail? Barring anything onerous like wearing a blue uniform, I will volunteer for the CS.
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Post  Mr. Digby Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:03 pm

Neal, I would prefer non-Scourge of War players in the command teams. I'm trying to involve as many members of the Kriegspiel site as I can, so the non-computer gamers take the commands on the map and the SoW players fight the battles.

Thus the request for 2 more players is aimed at those site members who enjoy Kriegspiel gaames and do not have the Scourge of War computer game.

Also, of the 8 people who have volunteered so far, one of you on each side needs to volunteer for overall command and a second player needs to accept command of the cavalry forces. The remainder will be infantry division-sized formation commanders.

If people don't volunteer I will just pick someone Wink
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Post  Father General Sat Mar 31, 2012 8:36 pm

That will probably work wonderfully and add a new dimension to the game! Nice.

Alright, you can count on me as a volunteer for whatever duties you require. I am AFK this weekend but plan to become as involved as possible.

Neal
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