A Full Length Game of Waterloo for KS

I am here to see if there is any interest from the KS community  on the possibility of participation of a full scale multi-phase Waterloo event.

The details goes as follows:

1. The sprite ratio and battalions on the field may vary based off of the amount of lag induced when I am finished creating the scenario. The goal will be to fit as many battalions, brigades, and batteries on the field. If what will be close to the full order of battle produces too much lag I will scale down until that problem ceases. If the remaining forces look pitiful on the current non-scaled-down Waterloo map I will be forced to spend the time scaling down the map or creating a Waterloo map from scratch.

2. The ultimate goal is to create an experience that will take a similar amount of time the real battle took to unfold. The length of each phase will ultimately be decided simply by how much the will participants wish to endure per-session.

3. Each player (at least by my estimates of how many people will participate or stably fit in a game) will inevitably be commanding almost half a corp at minimum to a full corp at maximum.

4. Preferably the battle will be played with HITS and full courier delay but the end camera height will be variable depending on the amount of participants. I personally have no problem commanding a corps sized unit from the ground level but I have a feeling not everyone will feel that way.

5. Both teams will naturally have a command structure to them and all participants should draw up a plan for each phase of the battle. Due to the proposed scale of the engagement and what could be a large time commitment to each phase of the fight this is a necessity and who wants to fight Waterloo haphazardly anyway.

6. The game's continuation will be dependent on the save and reload method of course. Depending on the magnitude of disturbance of the adverse affects of random orders being given out upon the reload of the game and units morale being replenished to a degree due to having to reset the battalion size two counter measures may be used.

A.) 15 minutes before the end of that phase of the game all units will be issued to recall a minor distance from the enemy to give some leeway to the commanders. If this is too disrupting or impractical we will simply let the potential chaos unfold each reload.
B.) If possible, heavily depleted units will be removed from the battle field to prevent battalions fighting until completely galvanized.

7. It is undecided at this moment but this could also be ran as a re-enactment to a degree and for each phase the historical area of attack and objectives could be pursued.

If you have any suggestions, want to say you are interested, or anything else please post so.

If you want to contact me directly here is my steam page; it should not be difficult to find me or you can add me through your web browser. http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198014028214/

I am a busy day-trader so the expected time for initial testing of scale should be complete some where by the end of December or early January.

Interesting idea. You're to be applauded on cooking up such a bold plan!

Due to the lag and instability of the SoW game when many players are present (we've never managed more than about a dozen players in SOWWL) you may wish to consider running this as a mini-campaign with segments of the battle played as separate smaller scenarios, possibly based on the stock scenarios but with carry-over using a casualty calculator or manual casualty deduction methods.

This gets over the biggest hurdles which will be numbers of players needed, length of scenario and numbers of sprites on the field.

I feel sure several KS members may be interested but as we only play Kriegspiel themed games, in which of of war is a vital ingredient, we would most likely only participate using HITS camera height. We would almost certainly only play using the KS Mod as well, so that's something to consider.

The guys at the Dogs of War SOW community may be interested as well :~

http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/board,130.0.html

Sorry if it was not clear. The intention is for the scenario to be made for KS. I only play KS and I only ever will play KS; vanilla is awful and objectively bad in every way. I am personally not too concerned about player amount as long as each player is willing and capable of commanding half a corp at minimum. HITs camera height will come down to how many players are present and how capable they are. I personally do not think a camera restriction of 30-50 would be too breaking of the spirit of HITS if each player is commanding 15-30k; if there are enough then the usual camera height of 8 or 10 (been a while cannot remember) should suffice.

That is good news. I think though that a height of 10 is about our maximum as higher than that allows too much information and breaks the illusion of being there, which is as key a component of kriegspiel play as using couriers is and our other fog of war elements. With that camera height usually a division is the maximum a player can directly command although in our games we also do have fully AI controlled divisions and we relay on AI stances to conduct our battles to a great degree. In those circumstances it is possible for a player to command a small corps although it would probably be a tiring game experience.

This and the technical, practical; matters of the stability of the MP game, numbers of players you may able to rely on, etc is why I suggested you fight the battle as a sequence of scenarios (not the stock ones, but a series made from scratch).

I am very interested in the project, please keep us in the loop.

I have thought of another consideration and that is the pace or speed at which SoW plays. From playing literally 1000s of games both using stock and KS Mod games, and the Napoleonic mod for Gettysburg as well as the ACW version of Gettysburg its my view that the game plays considerably faster than real black powder combat did. Communications are quicker, units change formation very much more rapidly and formations (brigades, divisions) can have their positions and directions of advance changed very quickly. This lets a defending player react very much faster to a threat from an unexpected direction and so on.

My personal view is that, in effect, time runs somewhere about 3 times faster in the game than it would in reality and therefore any battle that supposes to represent a full days fighting (say 11:00am to about 8:00 pm in the case of Waterloo) should encompass about 3 or 4 hours of game time instead of the 8 or 9 of the historical battle.

Our usual MP sessions run for 2.5 or 3 hours and are corps vs corps strength with a result achievable within that time. Napoleonic corps sized actions were usually around several hours to at most a full day in duration, therefore the 3x calculation fits quite well.

Thanks for the feedback.

I have very high reservations about splitting the battle into individual scenarios like it is in the vanilla game because I personally believe it heavily destroys the continuity of battle and flow of reinforcements despite the fact it would heavily decrease the production time. The weakening and strengthening of flanks or movement of supporting artillery does not carry over unless the surrounding forces are also modeled in but then they have free reign to focus on an area of defense/attack without having to worry about their flanks unless rigid rules are put in place to prevent such abuse. However, as I said the possibility to run it as a reenactment on one scenario and one map I think provides a more accurate representation of local forces and their legitimate role on the battlefield.

SoW cannot handle an MP game with 140,000+ troops represented. I have tried it.

Its an impossible dream.

Breaking it into smaller segments is the only way it can be done.

This is why I will cut the army size and sprite ratio as much as necessary and if that turns out to leave the map too baren to scale the map down or create a Waterloo map from scratch. The goal is to get an NTW3 historical battle vibe but with all of the advantages of scourge and KS. So do not worry, I have no plan on representing 1:1 the full OOB if I had not already made that clear in the OP and I am determined to create a scale of battle that will fit on one map and not implode scourge.