Creating Scenarios

Hi.
Does anyone have any experience in creating scenarios? I don't need fancy stuff, just an existing OOB on a chosen map and with defined starting location areas for the 2 sides (basic setup for troops as in sandbox play is ok).
Thx

Yes indeed, there's a real need there. Uncly Billy, can you help? Anyone else tried doing this?

Martin

I will need to know how to do this as well for the campaign battles, but I fully support the idea that our casual games should start to be more contextual and have objectives (and I don't mean stars floating above some empty field) and some background so a basic guide in the Kriegspiel style so doing this would be extremely helpful.

I can email you lots of examples of k/spiel horse & musket briefings to give you an idea how we do it for face-to-face games.

While they vary quite a bit in content (eg in some situations you know more or less about the enemy), the broad structure is the same. The approach is pretty much the same as that which the Prussian and other armies used in the 19th C, so has at least stood the test of time.

Wherever possible, we aim to get the whole briefing on one sheet of A4, as many players will not read more - and some appear to struggle to even read that

Martin

What I have in mind are some basic scenarios for MP battles in SOW.

I want to take the customized OOBs to the next level:
- player vs. player (not only vs. stronger AI)
- basic objectives as a briefing (without need for in-game objectives): e.g. Defend area XY for 2h, clear hill/city/area of enemy presence, reach area xy with at least XXX men, reach area xy in less than 1h, ...
- balanced or unbalanced OOB depending on scenario
- including cavalry

Therefore I need to create a scenario where I can simply specifiy which army starts where.
Else a pre-written briefing doesn't make sense and the commanders cannot formulate a strategy before entering the map.

While GCM has lots of options, I can't see any way to use it in creating such a scenario.

Leffe7 wrote:Therefore I need to create a scenario where I can simply specifiy which army starts where.
Else a pre-written briefing doesn't make sense and the commanders cannot formulate a strategy before entering the map.

Absolutely Stefan. And there is a way to do it in the game. We just need to understand how.

Martin

I tend to use British army staff school style briefings which usually cover:

Situation (for my campaigns this includes some political background and the larger picture but for a scenario only includes the relevant strategic situation)
Ground (a general description of the terrain and any significant features; might include weather)
Own Forces (should be obvious)
Enemy Forces where known (will vary in accuracy and/or coul dbe true but out of date)
Objectives (couched in military terms as Martin suggests)
Other notes (anything relevant not falling under one of the above headings)

But a wargame scenario is never to me just two sides on opposite corners of a map, which is what our online games have all been so far but semi-scripted settings with objectives for both sides. I particularly enjoy scenario design and have come up with some pretty devious things in the past. Some of my more cruel designs involve sets of objectives for both sides that, if they both work directly for them, will not result in a battle at all. Or orders where one side has no hope whatever of winning if it fights but must actually run away - and do players work to those objectives and orders? Nope.

The other nice feature we have with SoW is sets of linked maps - we have 5 maps that form a linked region with Gettysburg (including East Cav), the two South Mountain maps and the three Pipe Creek maps. These can give extended scenarios or mini-campaigns lasting a few days. All sorts of great possibilities.

I figured out how to define the starting locations in a scenario. I will explain later how I did it, incl screenshots if possible.
It's time to give such a scenario a try. I want to test it on friday - I will open up a separate thread for it

Well done. That's exactly what we need now.

Martin

Good news for casual play and campaign games.

Brilliant! - this is definitely the way forward

Hi guys

I am planning a scenario but I am struggling to find a certain OOB. I have searched through my NorbSoftDev folder but cannot find it, yet it comes up as an OOB if I select the sandbox game option so it must be on my computer somewhere!

It's the OOB_SB_HarpersFerry.csv

If anyone can locate it and send it to me by email I would be very grateful.

In the SDK folder perhaps?

No, not there. As I said a search of Windows Explorer does not bring it up, yet it shows in the game, so I'm wondering if its packed somewhere?

It must be from a stock OOB, but it's not included in the SDK.

Little Billy was very helpful on tracking this down and I would imagine the same applies to other OOBs that are packed away inside sections of the game:

"It's stored in the Antietam sow file, so you have to create it. Start a single player army level game with the OOB you want. Then quit. Now go to the work\scenario\sandbox folder and open up scenario.csv. That is the oob with a couple of extra columns. You have to do a little column rearrangement to get everything right, but that is a minor effort."

Thanks to Little Billy for being so helpful.

This thread looks worth watching.

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/modifications/45568-scenario-team

On other news I have begun work on my first scenario, "The Burkettsville Derby".

Oops, my bad. I linked to completely the wrong thread!