NEW Campaign System in Development

Sounds good! What we've been missing is a comprehensive campaign system that can be applied to any possible situation. It will always be hex-based, though, right?
 
I don't see aircraft modelled/mentioned. Wll the same rules apply as artillery ?

Does the artillery include some TRP's ? Especially in the case of an attack you might think that the arty has some points calculated at which they want to poor some fire. (Actually, the firing missions which you can plot at the start may be enough.)
 
How about FOW? I know it hasn't been practical for some of our other campaigns (because we like to have spectators), but fog-of-war is a important feature even if it is something randomly generated before a campaign. My thought is that some aspect of the opposing forces remain a mystery until recon or other actions clarify the picture.
Just a thought.
 
USS Wyoming said:
How about FOW? I know it hasn't been practical for some of our other campaigns (because we like to have spectators), but fog-of-war is a important feature even if it is something randomly generated before a campaign. My thought is that some aspect of the opposing forces remain a mystery until recon or other actions clarify the picture.
Just a thought.
Click to expand...

Yes, FOW is also an option -- it just adds an extra workload to a third party, neutral administrator who has to produce extra version of the sitrep maps -- three in fact have to be maintained and updated all the time: one for each side and the combined overall map -- but I have some ideas I am mulling around.
 
IMHO FOW is not necessary there are a lot of games without FOW (all board games) and I remember that once Rico said to me --- KISS ;)
 
Hmm... some more interesting ideas in development -- depends how complicated we want to be.

Interesting idea would be for mech units to have 2 movement impulses and one main attack impulse, and then another pursuit battle ability.

So, in the first movement part of a turn, the mech units move together with the foot-sloggers.
We the resolve all battles.
Mech units only can then move again half their movement allowance to either break through enemy lines, pursue retreating enemy units or redeploy behind their own lines.
This is then followed my a "pursuit battle" opportunity for Mech units against any enemy unit having retreated from previous battles or newly encountered units not dug in.
(the pursuing mech units would not have any Corps support like arty available for these battles, but can use organic light arty like mortar spotters)

This would reflect the wide difference in mobility between the leg infantry units and mechanised units that characterised much of East Front combat.

I am going to import a very good system for making multi-hex and multi-directional combat possible -- I had this formula (gotta look it up...) that transferred the positions of attacking units to the defending hexes on to the CM maps.

Also I am quite partial to the attacker deciding what time of day the battle takes place in -- if he decides a night battle would be a good thing, so be it -- especially since I want to re-incorporate river and stream crossing battles in this system.
 
Flexibility
One of the things that excite me about this system in development, is it's flexibility -- as the building block elements that make up the battle groups can be pre-set and standardised for each period and theatre we can fight in, and also adjusted to make them fair.

What's also possible, is that the campaign can be based on a "purchase system" where players have points to spend on buying units and equipment (costs can be adjusted to make for more balanced game play)
... or we can use it to build campaign losely based on historical encounters and have pre-set reinforcements and replacements arriving to a schedule for each side... either in the form of already complete units/battlegroups...or in the form of the individual building blocks that the CO's can allocate to existing units as they wish.

One can also pre-set quality levels and limits to "ueber-weapons"... so perhaps even playable Barbarossa period campaigns may be feasible -- hordes of green Red units against smaller numbers of veteran German units.

I am looking to create a CM campaign system that would possibly work as a template to build campaigns fro now on, and as Bootie said, not invent and relearn new rules every time (believe me, I get confused with keeping track between all my different campaigns and tourneys ) :)

Stay tuned.
 
Rico said:
I am looking to create a CM campaign system that would possibly work as a template to build campaigns fro now on, and as Bootie said, not invent and relearn new rules every time (believe me, I get confused with keeping track between all my different campaigns and tourneys ) :)
Click to expand...

You're not alone with that - keeping track of everything can be a major pain when participating in half a dozen different campaigns/tournaments. Such a comprehensive system might even attract players to join FGM and make them stay. There are other systems, but most are either too complex for most people (CMMC) or too GM-dependant to work in the long term (like the Lauban campaign). I really think this one has a bright future ahead of it...
 
purchase system is quite simple and gives campaign additional tactical level at purchase stage
 
Been down and out for the count for much of last week with a very nasty stomach virus... but had a bit of time to think about this project a bit more yesterday and I think I might have made a bit of breakthrough with handling casualties for INFANTRY COY formations.
Many ideas have been floating around -- but most of them just make things more and more complicated.
Then I hit on the idea -- instead of attempting to track casualties in each platoon, squad, attached MG squad etc... (which makes life a nightmare with all the different OOB's all over the place), I just take each company unit included in the availble units chart, and add up all their personnel, divide it by half and you have the cut-off point for casualties and elimination.
ie: a German Mot PzGr Coy has a compliment of 145 men -- if after a battle it has suffered more than 73 casualties, it is eliminated from the map.
All thore numbers are pre-figured for both sides, added to a chart and presto -- this might be very simple/
 
It should work fine. There are lots of paper wargames out there that use a simple setp system. One step is at 100%, the next 50%, followed by eliminated. As long as you do not take a step loss, the unit continues to fight at 100%.
 
Here a suggestion for you Rico. When I did a CMBB campaign I used a boardgame as the basic rules and ideas for area movement campaign. Army strengths were pretty basic infantry or armor points for both sides. When there was an attacked I would randomize roll what each side had based off historical percentage for either infantry or armor. So as the game process some of the older equipment will be slowly replaced by newer. The map would be either farmland, forest, swamps or cities randomizes by CMBB, and afterwards I would modified according to events from the campaign. After the OOB, battle description/orders (from C-n-C players) and maps were finished, I would send them off to each player with special passwords for them only. When I received the screendump of the after battle report and a AAR..I would figure out if they loses in infantry and/or armor points. And if the battles weren't completed by their deadline..I would used the boradgame combat result table to decide what happen so the campaign wouldnt be held up. It told a lot of work on my part but I enjoyed it...Now I'm hoping that all my paperwork wasn't thrown out by my wife by mistake. If I can locate it, I'm send you what I have if your interested.
 
Thanks for the input, Lighthorse. Yes, I've run campaigns like that -- the most detailed being an Ardennes Campaign a while back that literally accounted for every man, gun, tank and vehicle in every task force with incredibly detailed simultaneous movement/action/combat/orders impulse system... but boy, was it a LOT of paperwork.

What I am trying to develop here is a streamlined system with sub-unit building blocks attached to larger units that each side's CO can build together himself (they can represent Divisions, Brigades ...anything really on the strategic board game style map)... the building blocks/sub-units then can represent and play out the battles on CM scale.
I am hoping to develop a Campaign System that we then can standardise for use in FGM across all theatres and time periods -- we have all these various campaigns running, each with their own rules, it's a headache to keep track.
 
I have been working on something as well. I think that you have to decide if you are going to use CM to resolve all combat that takes place in the campaign, or will some combat be resolved using some form of abstraction or other rules system. Using CM sounds all well and fine but I think that it limits the size of the campaigns to a handfull of units on each side. It will also make for little more unrealistic OOB as to make the CM games enjoyable one will have to mess around with the unit's makeup. Units will all have to be able to compete within CM to have any use at all. How many people would want to fight CM battles that are 100% infantry vs infantry, or a lopsided battle of tanks vs infantry. I think that the interest in the game will wain if this is the case over and over again. This will probably slow the pace of the game down, and that would be deadly to the campaign.
Now if you go with an abstracted "other rules" type system, you complicate things up somewhat, but the advantage is that the campaign will procede quicker because uninteresting, lopsided, or excess battles can quickly be simulated. Campaigns can be larger in scope and you might get a better, more realistic feel to the campaign. Problems are the book-keeping, and the conversion of units from CM to the "other rules" system. These problems are huge however, and probably the demise of many good campaigns.
I have played around with a spreadsheet that calculates the percentage to be used based on the CM casualty stats from a battle.Problem is I am not a spreadsheet design guy, so trial and error rules the day, mostly it is error. The trick to keeping things straight with tracking casualties in CM is to understand how the forces are organized and listed inside CM. Then all you have to do is duplicate this within the spreadsheet and it becomes a matter of "down arrow"/number of OK men/"down arrow"/... when you get to the end the percentage for the next battle is calculated. If at any time you drop below 60% on your base unit, just eliminate a platoon or two and addin the men here and there how you want as you are only looking for the final percentage numbers anyhow. I think that absolute accuracy as to wheather a machine gun is lost or not is rather overkill, just go on the base unit and percentage and let CM do what it has to in order to make it work.
The only simple way that I see to marry the two systems is a points type systme. Each unit is recorded as x,000 points, these will be spent within CM as they are. Losses are based on the outcome of the battle, and not what actual damage was done. So a total victory might represent a 80% loss to the losing side and a 20% loss to the winning side and so on down to a draw which would be a 50% loss to both sides. Then the unit would be recorded as the new x,000 points unit after applying the losses. HQ's would have x,000 points to reinforce the units as they see fit, but they have a limited number of points to do so. Standard rarity is used and and based on the parent unit type ect. When it comes to a battle that for whatever raeson that you have for not wanting to play it out in CM, you develope an odds based system that just compares the total points of one side to the total points of the other side that will meet in combat. It should not matter the makeup of either side as you are compare same value of the two forces involved, that being the total point for each side. You will come up with a battle ratio such as 2:1, 3:4 or whatever and calculate the battle result with a modified dice roll based on terrain ect. and you will come up with a CM equivalent Total loss, minor victory ect. for one side or the other and apply the same losses as you would with a battle foughth using CM. I would make the losses rather high as it was not uncommon for a company to take 60-70% losses in a given battle.
Just a thought.
 
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