Shallow water missions on a diesel!

[Wilko]

i'd be real interested in that XabbaRus, sounds very good

mind you I have only just got the game and am completely overwelmed at this point

[XabbaRus]

I want to make SP scenarios that will last 3-5 hours, be fun with a decent amount going on.
I also want to make MP scenarios that will be fun but take no more than 2 hours.

I love the Kilo and so want to bushwhack someone in an FFG.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

I kind of loast interest in making missions for a bit as I thought people wanted detailed briefings etc whihc I struggled to come up with as well as a plot.

You know... but I don't think detailed briefings are at all necessary. I also am not a big fan of worrying too much about a plot. The players should make their own plot. In my mind, you only need a plot in so far as it creates a reason for the player(s) to be there, and an order of battle. Missions where it's like... "jump through hoop A, then turn a somersault, followed by a triple back spring...." tend to bore me. In a wargame where I am the captain, I want to make the decisions about what to do next.

Maybe it would be realistic to have a random event trigger where things change to an openly hostile situation where as before you were just observing the Iranians? Would this be accurate Sea Queen?

I don't know. I'm an analyst, not an operator, and one of the things we turn triple backsprings to avoid is modeling different possible political outcomes and their likelyhoods. I like well defined pieces of engineering. Modeling the political calculations of world leaders is absolutely futile. How often do you find yourself looking at world leaders and thinking, "What the hell was he thinking?"

While in reality, the way the political winds are blowing sometimes has a great deal to do with military decisions (war of all kinds is, after all, politics) when making scenarios, I think of it more as a background. It helps me decide what the players are trying to accomplish, why they're there, what kinds of forces are involved, whether they're shooting or not, but I don't know if it'd be a good idea to go into the whole "now the war is on, now the war is off" kind of thing. When I think about that, it's actually kind of boring.

Now.. here's what I think might be a fun way to play it.

It's a period of heightened tension, where you're not at war, but the different forces involved are acting aggressively (you'd need to figure out very carefully what "aggressively" means.) The US ROE is peacetime and the players know that. Now, create a random trigger so that there's some uncertainty in the ROE for the opposing side. That makes the intentions of the other side a little bit of a mystery. You don't really know if the war is on or not, so somehow you have to figure it out. I think there'd be a certain amount of realism to this one because as a general rule, democracies in general do not wage aggressive war. They usually let the other side shoot first, and THEN get aggressive. In this sense, democracies tend to wage defensive wars.

You should also make the goals work so that if you make a mistake, and engage when the other side is peacetime, you get nothing. I'd also make it so that there's only a small probability of the opposing forces being at wartime. That way, trigger happy people get penalized most of the time.

That's ALL the plot you need. Your goal is to get a supertanker across a finish line unharmed. That's enough complications right there. The only other thing you'd need to make it realistic is an intelligently put together opposing force. I can't tell you what that might be.

The probability of things turning hot or not has less to do with politics, though, and more to do with how often do you think people are willing to play it and without any shooting, without making it so simple as a coin flip.

[Phullbrick]

What would be great (imho) is to work on a dynamic campaign. I had a chance once to be in a team which launched a dynamic campaign supporting 3 simulations at the same time though a storyline, sims were Operation Flaspoint, Sub Command and FA18. Great experience and it was really funny to see how people could be proud of their side, and read the (good spirit) forum war and propaganda between two games

So I'd really support a dynamic campaign project which could involve players from all the communities but it requires skills ! (and time...) could be a good thing to unite everyone around a common project

[Wilko]

That sounds great Phullbrick.. heaven help the team that got me though .. I am madly out of my depth but happy to just plug away, going to go find my spiral bound manual for 688I and have a read and see if that helps... I REALY would love a Collins class to go hunting in but a Kilo will do :hmm:

[XabbaRus]

What SeaQueen wrote is exactly what I had in mind.

The only difficult bit would be to have the enemy acting agressively. I suppose that could be shown with ships and aircraft darting quickly in and out of the Straits of Hormuz for example, or "test firing" of a missile.

I think the one goal I would have would be, stop civilian shipping being sunk. Nothing else...

[Enigma65]

Originally Posted by Ori_b

And thats excatly the kind of missions Im looking for after I finish some kind of training in DW.
If there is something i hate with the quick mission option in the game menu is the fact that most time you begin the mission with the enemy already on your sonar.
Hey, if your missions also include random factors and L-A-R-G-E spawn areas,
I say - bring it on!

Oh, you'll like them then....coming soon.

[Enigma65]

Originally Posted by SeaQueen

You know... but I don't think detailed briefings are at all necessary. I also am not a big fan of worrying too much about a plot. The players should make their own plot. In my mind, you only need a plot in so far as it creates a reason for the player(s) to be there, and an order of battle. Missions where it's like... "jump through hoop A, then turn a somersault, followed by a triple back spring...." tend to bore me. In a wargame where I am the captain, I want to make the decisions about what to do next.

I don't know. I'm an analyst, not an operator, and one of the things we turn triple backsprings to avoid is modeling different possible political outcomes and their likelyhoods. I like well defined pieces of engineering. Modeling the political calculations of world leaders is absolutely futile. How often do you find yourself looking at world leaders and thinking, "What the hell was he thinking?"

While in reality, the way the political winds are blowing sometimes has a great deal to do with military decisions (war of all kinds is, after all, politics) when making scenarios, I think of it more as a background. It helps me decide what the players are trying to accomplish, why they're there, what kinds of forces are involved, whether they're shooting or not, but I don't know if it'd be a good idea to go into the whole "now the war is on, now the war is off" kind of thing. When I think about that, it's actually kind of boring.

Now.. here's what I think might be a fun way to play it.

It's a period of heightened tension, where you're not at war, but the different forces involved are acting aggressively (you'd need to figure out very carefully what "aggressively" means.) The US ROE is peacetime and the players know that. Now, create a random trigger so that there's some uncertainty in the ROE for the opposing side. That makes the intentions of the other side a little bit of a mystery. You don't really know if the war is on or not, so somehow you have to figure it out. I think there'd be a certain amount of realism to this one because as a general rule, democracies in general do not wage aggressive war. They usually let the other side shoot first, and THEN get aggressive. In this sense, democracies tend to wage defensive wars.

You should also make the goals work so that if you make a mistake, and engage when the other side is peacetime, you get nothing. I'd also make it so that there's only a small probability of the opposing forces being at wartime. That way, trigger happy people get penalized most of the time.

That's ALL the plot you need. Your goal is to get a supertanker across a finish line unharmed. That's enough complications right there. The only other thing you'd need to make it realistic is an intelligently put together opposing force. I can't tell you what that might be.

The probability of things turning hot or not has less to do with politics, though, and more to do with how often do you think people are willing to play it and without any shooting, without making it so simple as a coin flip.

Well said SeaQueen. The biggest hold-up in my mission creating the plot and radio text issues where one gives background to the player.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by Enigma65

Well said SeaQueen. The biggest hold-up in my mission creating the plot and radio text issues where one gives background to the player.

Maybe this is just me being "old school" but back when I first started playing wargames, it was Larry Bond's Harpoon on one of my friend's basement floor. We didn't obsess over some kind of carefully constructed geopolitical melodrama. All of this "I must make a scenario with an elaborate plot," nonsense is new. We just wanted to shoot some cruise missiles and torpedoes, and maybe gain a little bit more understanding of what we saw going on during the evening news. The best scenarios are boiled down distillations of the most essential elements.

We got our ideas from books, movies and the news. All the plot we needed was what was going on in the New York Times, Frontline, or 60 Minutes. Their coverage of the Tanker Wars really got our juices flowing. The USS STARK got hit. The USS VINCENNES hit someone else by mistake. Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October were great. Everyone wanted to imagine stalking a Soviet SSBN under the ice. What was it like to go to the North Pole? All of our dads had participated in the Vietnam War, The Gulf of Tonkin Incident wasn't alien to us. Every once in a while, the paper would report a Soviet YANKEE, NOVEMBER or VICTOR surfacing off North Carolina. What the heck was going on out there? We all wondered. We'd all been up to Nag's Head, RIGHT THERE in front of us an undersea naval war could have been going on. The whole Libyan "line of death" thing was interesting to watch. TOP GUN was totally rad. Growing up in the Washington DC suburbs was great for kids with an eye on current events because world news WAS local news. The Walker spy ring was busted down the street from my house and used to make their drops up and down the road in front of my house. When I found out this, my imagination just soared! A few years ago, they came out with a great documentary on the Discovery Channel, where they covered the RIMPAC exercise. It was called Fleet Command. I really wish I could find that one on DVD. There's so much good material in there for wargaming.

We didn't need drama. The drama was there for anyone who payed attention. We needed data: orders of battle, lat/longs, etc. All the little details they don't make public because if you had them you'd be able to figure out what was going on. We couldn't get specifics, but through research we could make good guesses. The Internet totally makes that kind of thing easy, these days. Back then, it meant hanging out in the library going through newspapers, books and magazines. It's still worth doing that too, because there's an awful lot of stuff that's not on the Internet, but it's faster now. Our scenarios weren't intended to be novels, but instead they put us in the drivers seat so we could get a feel for what it was like to be the decision maker. To me, that's what wargames are about. All of this storybook stuff, is usually just noise.

Sometimes the drive for a plot actually makes me angry because I don't want a scenario designer to act as the "hand of god" and inject some arbitrary event into my perfectly happy little approach. What have I learned then? A reactor scram ruins my day? Duh! A good scenario leaves the fate of the player in the hands of the player.

It's a wargame, for heaven's sake! Not a role playing game. If we wanted melodrama, we'd have played D&D (we did that too)!

[Wilko]

That makes oh so much perfect sense

I watched Hunt for Red October yesterday and am half way through rereading Red Storm Rising and all I need is a good scenario and my mind will quite happily flesh out the details

[Enigma65]

Originally Posted by SeaQueen

Maybe this is just me being "old school" but back when I first started playing wargames, it was Larry Bond's Harpoon on one of my friend's basement floor. We didn't obsess over some kind of carefully constructed geopolitical melodrama. All of this "I must make a scenario with an elaborate plot," nonsense is new. We just wanted to shoot some cruise missiles and torpedoes, and maybe gain a little bit more understanding of what we saw going on during the evening news. The best scenarios are boiled down distillations of the most essential elements.

We got our ideas from books, movies and the news. All the plot we needed was what was going on in the New York Times, Frontline, or 60 Minutes. Their coverage of the Tanker Wars really got our juices flowing. The USS STARK got hit. The USS VINCENNES hit someone else by mistake. Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October were great. Everyone wanted to imagine stalking a Soviet SSBN under the ice. What was it like to go to the North Pole? All of our dads had participated in the Vietnam War, The Gulf of Tonkin Incident wasn't alien to us. Every once in a while, the paper would report a Soviet YANKEE, NOVEMBER or VICTOR surfacing off North Carolina. What the heck was going on out there? We all wondered. We'd all been up to Nag's Head, RIGHT THERE in front of us an undersea naval war could have been going on. The whole Libyan "line of death" thing was interesting to watch. TOP GUN was totally rad. Growing up in the Washington DC suburbs was great for kids with an eye on current events because world news WAS local news. The Walker spy ring was busted down the street from my house and used to make their drops up and down the road in front of my house. When I found out this, my imagination just soared! A few years ago, they came out with a great documentary on the Discovery Channel, where they covered the RIMPAC exercise. It was called Fleet Command. I really wish I could find that one on DVD. There's so much good material in there for wargaming.

We didn't need drama. The drama was there for anyone who payed attention. We needed data: orders of battle, lat/longs, etc. All the little details they don't make public because if you had them you'd be able to figure out what was going on. We couldn't get specifics, but through research we could make good guesses. The Internet totally makes that kind of thing easy, these days. Back then, it meant hanging out in the library going through newspapers, books and magazines. It's still worth doing that too, because there's an awful lot of stuff that's not on the Internet, but it's faster now. Our scenarios weren't intended to be novels, but instead they put us in the drivers seat so we could get a feel for what it was like to be the decision maker. To me, that's what wargames are about. All of this storybook stuff, is usually just noise.

Sometimes the drive for a plot actually makes me angry because I don't want a scenario designer to act as the "hand of god" and inject some arbitrary event into my perfectly happy little approach. What have I learned then? A reactor scram ruins my day? Duh! A good scenario leaves the fate of the player in the hands of the player.

It's a wargame, for heaven's sake! Not a role playing game. If we wanted melodrama, we'd have played D&D (we did that too)!

Once again, very, very well said.

[SeaQueen]

Thank you. I'm starting to get very opinionated about scenario design. I didn't used to be this way. I WAS DRIVEN TO IT I TELL YA! :-)

[Fish]

Not to spoil your guys fun, but shouldn't this thread move to the mission designer forum?

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by Fish

Not to spoil your guys fun, but shouldn't this thread move to the mission designer forum?

Not necessarily, I'm expressing my views as a player on what I think constitutes a good scenario. The fact that I happen to make scenarios that conform with my philosophy is purely coincidental.

I wish more players would at least talk about what they liked and disliked about scenarios. After action reports are important, I think. I wish people said, "this scenario stinks/is great/somewhere in between." People don't talk about scenarios and what they liked and disliked about them enough. That always strikes me as funny, though, because when it comes right down to it, that's what makes a given game fun.

[Bellman]

Well we must encourage our resident guru SQ to convert theory to practice. It seems from his output of scenario(s) that he is a little long on theory and short on product.

Kara was an acquired taste and one wonders whether further output will reach a greater market and if he will venture into the MP sector ?

I ca'nt honestly say that I'm holding my breath ! More like I'm nursing some disappointment that such early promise
has yet, in my oppinion, to be realised !