Minimising pre-game delays

Hi all,

I am starting a thread here which takes up on an e-mail 'conversation'. I am a fan of forum threads, & hope no-one minds. For those not on the e-mail list, there has been some discussion re the amount of pre-organisation we can do before meeting up on TS.

Martin's last e-mail said:
[...] This is the first on-line game I’ve ever played, so I appreciate that I’m arguing from lack of knowledge, but could it not be that the customary delays with them are the result of a customary lack of pre-planning? We always pre-plan for our face-to-face k/spiels, and it does make a difference. Looking ahead, I am hopeful that we will start developing our own scenarios, with military objectives (as opposed to points) and forces deployed in specific places to suit those objectives. When Digby’s campaign gets underway, we will need that, I think. Have attached a typical briefing for one of our horse & musket k/spiels to illustrate what I mean. We have found that giving briefings such as this on the day, just delays the start of the game.

I am also keen to reduce delays. I do think, though, that there is a big difference between occasional face-to-face wargames, where arrangements must be made beforehand, and online gaming where 2 or 3 battles may happen each night with people able to turn up and get a good chance of a game. I think we'll get better at getting going quickly. Last night was pretty good, I think? Another suggestion of yours:

Whatever else we do or don’t do, I think there is merit in taking-up Stefan’s suggestion and trying his customised OOBs. These include smallish divisions (2 or 3 brigades plus a small number of batteries), so should be ideal for our purposes. A few divisions also include independent cavalry companies. They are also interesting because some are drawn from different periods and theatres. Our usual hosts could have a look through them before the game, and identify one or two which would be suitable, given likely numbers. No-one else would need to do this, or even have the OOBs installed.

will I think help with this. I'll try and work out how to use these OOBs. Any instructions much appreciated.

HTH,

Jeff

Good idea re thread, Jeff. And good points.

A lot of work has clearly gone into Stefan's OOBs.

Martin

I too would be happy to recieve advice on how to install OOBs (csv files?) and scenarios into the game.

Incidentally, while I know its a bit off-topic, I have found that Garniers single-player campaign mod can generate good battles. It is easy for the host to fire these up as MP games and if he finds his campaign generates a goo done, he could, as Martin suggests, write up a quick pre-battle briefing and e-mail it to the players on the night or the day before.

If you do not mind the work in randomly generating lots of campaigns and initial battles, some good scenarios can be the result.

It would be good if we could find out what additional files, other than the contents of the 'battle xxxx' folder are needed when transferring one game to another player to host it.

Yes, .csv files. I have produced some OOBs for personal use (which I'm happy to share btw). These include one with more European-style armies in the Reisswitz tradition, with infantry battalions and cavalry squadrons of different types. Have played around with stock uniforms & flags too, just to make it more of a different experience.

I created a 'Kriegsspiel' folder in the 'Mods' folder, although you can call it anything you like. I then created a sub-folder within that called 'OOBs' and put them in that, as I found the game didn't recognise the OOBs if I didn't.

There may be a better way of doing it, and I'm interested to see what response Jeffs gets to his request on the Norbsoft forum.

Martin

Martin wrote:Good idea re thread, Jeff. And good points.

A lot of work has clearly gone into Stefan's OOBs.

Martin

Thanks for the flowers, but I must admit I don't create OOBs from scratch. What I do is modify existing OOBs found on the Norbsoft modifications forum. Most of them are conversions of OOBs from "TC2M Take Command 2nd Manassas" the inofficial predecessor of SOW.
Anyway, I analyze those OOB for interesting MP setups (roughly even forces for each player, not more than 30 artillery per side, cavalry, ...) and delete that part of the OOB which doesn't fit. This way I can easily prepare challenging OOB where the AI has like 25% more troops than the players side.

I think some of you tried one of these OOB last night - how did it go?

How to use CSV files has been explained here http://norbsoftdev.net/forum/modifications/44496-modded-oobs-where-do-the-csv-files-go