Fun questions to ponder about the future of subsims

[Molon Labe]

Originally Posted by Pillar

What I mean is, if the campaign tracker existed but the battles still had to be resolved in DW *as is* (with mods), would there be problems getting battles resolved? If so what problems? (I gave the example of the time it takes to play out a mission in DW)

Last time I played MP DW we couldn't time compress... I'm not sure if that is still the case or how it works, so I'm curious about that. Saves, reconnects... are these not in DW MP now?

Thanks

Saves are available for single player only; no time compression, no reconnect. But if you did have a campaign engine--such as something like fleet command--it could easily be designed to create a save file that records the scenario, platforms, positions, messages, etc that could be loaded again at a later time. The original game already did that for SP, why not have the same capability if it's used as a campaign engine?

Reconnection would be a given when you have a persistent server that players can log on to and off of at will. That's definitely a big step up from what we have, since the lobby would have to be integrated into the strategic level simulation.

As for using DW "as is" with a crude engine being used for scenario generation, I think the biggest problems you'd get would come from having tactical sim and strategic sim running in series rather than parallel (Series = stategic sim runs, generates tactical scenario, tactical scenario is played to resolution, data fed back into strategic sim, stategic sim resumes; Parallel = tactical sim runs at same time as strategic sim; both sims communicate with each other and update accordingly; multiple tactical encounters can be run simultaneously). You would have issues if there were multiple encounters possible in the same general time frame, because a second encounter might get "skipped" during the time it takes to complete the first, or you could have a problem involving what platforms to place in the tactical scenario based on proximity that may or may not have a chance to fight depending on how long the encounter lasts. This might be a minor issue but it looks like it's begging for glitches.

You would also have the "meta information" problem, because without the capability to switch between the strategic and tactical sims at will and run time compression, the point at which the tactical scenario is developed has to be deliberately chosen based on some fixed criteria---detection, potential detection, etc. And you also have to place opponents in specific platforms on the other side, which tells them who the hammer is about to drop on. Again, this is solved by running the sims in parallel instead of in series.

As far as player convenience goes, I don't think this is a major issue with this type of format. When I ran the GDT (which was essentially exactly what we're discussing here, but with me acting as the crude campaign engine/scenario generator) we had fixed match times of 2 hrs and completing scenarios in that time was not a problem. Meta-information was a huge problem, though.