Community Campaign (Dow 1)

[SteviEboY]

It's all well and good saying what we want to do but we really need to decide how it is going to progress before we start making loads of maps and stuff.

How many people are there, how many teams, will it be on points, will it be progressive, will a map be conquered once or contestable throughout, are there a restriction to how many matches we play, will it always be of one type on 1 map i.e 1v1 ...

Doing it like this is going to be very difficult and will need a lot of work, for it to be successful we need to decide these sort of things before we go diving in.

[Redeemed74]

Very good questions. From my standpoint, we should aim for something not too ambitious but that will give a good enough run of it to see if this is going to work or not. So my take on these would be:

# of players: 6
# of teams: 2
Points? No, instead Territories
Progressive? Yes, but not a fixed storyline
Conquered once or Contestable? Contestable!
Restriction on number of matches? Yes, but only to avoid "stalemate". The campaign should be able to finish with a definite winner after 10 matches or so, but if teams keep making comebacks we probably should set a limit at, say, 20.
One type of Map? The normal should be 3 vs 3 - full teams against full teams, the way I see it, if we go with the team turn-based structure that I suggested earlier.

I see two ways of doing this, one way is to evenly distribute the planets / territories from the start like this:


Another way to do it would be to have the HQ's owned at the beginning, but to have the rest of the planets neutral, like this:

The turns would start with each team claiming a planet adjecent to one that they owned. Of course there would have to be some fair way to determine which team went first, since they would have an advantage. The numbers could mean how much "industrial production" each planet was worth, hence a better target or so forth.

When claiming an open territory the teams would get honor guard based on it's value. At the end of that turn they determine how they distribute their honor guard among the planets they own. When all the planets are claimed the attacks can begin. At the start of an attack turn the team will be able to place any lacking honor guard units (such as if they took over a territory last turn, now at the start of this battle they get to use them). The attacking team determines which territory to attack from, and which they were attacking to and this determines what kind of honor guard is present for the battle. If they win, they can determine how to distribute the honor guard units that they had in the attack (if we want to be picky we may want to see which ones made it to the end of the battle or not). If they loose the battle, the honor guard involved in the battle are lost and will not be regained until the start of their next attack turn. This of course will leave them in a vulnerable position since the planet they attacked from will be rather undefended.

I'm thinking that "forward bases" would only be used when a Headquarter territory is being attacked. The winning team may choose to "mop up" all the other territories before attacking the HQ so as to have the greatest number of honor guard units and overcome the advantage the defenders have in their premade bases.

If this structure works well and people seem to really like it, then a larger starmap could made and more teams allowed. But for now I think this would be plenty ambitious enough to try out and see how well it works.

[KeNDaLL2000]

of players: 6
# of teams: 2
Points? No, instead Territories
Progressive? Yes, but not a fixed storyline
Conquered once or Contestable? Contestable!
Restriction on number of matches? Yes, but only to avoid "stalemate". The campaign should be able to finish with a definite winner after 10 matches or so, but if teams keep making comebacks we probably should set a limit at, say, 20.
One type of Map? The normal should be 3 vs 3 - full teams against full teams, the way I see it, if we go with the team turn-based structure that I suggested earlier....

And i was just about to make a simple campaign map in MS Paint....

Me personally I'm more keen to the first idea of a meta map but i want to approach it differently. I was thinking that each map has a number of "lives" or ticks. The opposing team objective is to get your ticks on that map down to 0 so that they can capture it - the reason for this is because it will stretch out the campaign if we have a lot of people patrticiapating...

of players: 6
# of teams: 2

Like i said earlyer im going to find larger maps and try sizing them up so that you don't always have to play with team - Haveing the same map but diffrent sizes. Its a pretty simple thing to do and ill be willing to do it.

Since i can't find anyone who want to the the story, ill just take hold and try to do it myself - are we going to do a small star system or a single planet?

[Redeemed74]

Originally Posted by KeNDaLL2000

Me personally I'm more keen to the first idea of a meta map but i want to approach it differently. I was thinking that each map has a number of "lives" or ticks. The opposing team objective is to get your ticks on that map down to 0 so that they can capture it - the reason for this is because it will stretch out the campaign if we have a lot of people patrticiapating...

Sounds fine to me.

Originally Posted by KeNDaLL2000

Like i said earlyer im going to find larger maps and try sizing them up so that you don't always have to play with team - Haveing the same map but diffrent sizes. Its a pretty simple thing to do and ill be willing to do it.

Great! How do you see the honor guard units fitting in?

Originally Posted by KeNDaLL2000

Since i can't find anyone who want to the the story, ill just take hold and try to do it myself - are we going to do a small star system or a single planet?

It sounds to me like a planet might fit the situation a bit better than a star system, but however you like would be fine.

[KeNDaLL2000]

Great! How do you see the honor guard units fitting in?

They would fit exactly the same way only they would get less squad members or less squads to control....

It sounds to me like a planet might fit the situation a bit better than a star system, but however you like would be fine.

Guess we do a planet - ill write the story someone give me a theme - winter desert forest hive city etc

[SteviEboY]

I'm all for this and I really think it's time something like this happened again, but isn't this getting a little over the top? It's your call guys as you are the two, and who ever else can, who will be setting up and making the mods for this. But as i've mentioned before, the longer it takes the longer people have to lose interest. Is it necessary for honour guard and forward bases?

On the other hand you could get everything finished and then make the announcement and have a flurry of people join up. Which would be awesome.

I just want to see this get on the go, that's all.

So it's decided that it's going to be set on a planet Dark Crusade style yes? How many sectors/maps are we looking at having?

If a map is contestable and we do it the way of having Lives like Kendall says then I think each should have 3 lives maximum and then it should fall to the attacking/defending race and no longer be contestable, otherwise you could be fighting over the same piece of dirt over and over again. That could be the way in which the winning is decided, who conquers the most areas of the planet overall.

Will the teams be a mixture of races or will it be restricted to one specific race per team. If it's all Necrons or all Tau then the other races are going to have a tough ride.

Will the teams be able to decide who plays the matches for 1v1, so in essence will there be a team captain?

[Redeemed74]

I like the idea of 'lives' or whatever it takes to prevent a territory from being fought over too many times. I forget that sometimes these matches can be hours of grueling work when the teams are near equals! Regarding the Honor Guard, I'm hoping that it doesn't slow things down that much. As long as there is a straightforward way to know how many should be there each time it really should only take about as much time for setup as a simple email. I have a lot of the base script worked out now and am glad we went with Soulstorm, since it actually is going to be a lot easier than my first idea of using the map editor.

I hope though that the honor guard doesn't become a major problem with imbalance, and threaten interest in the game. It needs to contribute to sense of immersion and the motivation for wanting to be there for every match, or else it isn't a good idea. One thing about the Honor Guard is that they do have to be used differently from the normal troops since once they die in a particular game there is no way to get them back. They do help but shouldn't make as much of a difference as raising the pop cap or something like that. I do think that we need to be careful with it though so we don't get off track, and SteviEboy's input is really critical in this area since he has already gone through this once! I would like us to try it on a limited scale and see how it works out.

[KeNDaLL2000]

So it's decided that it's going to be set on a planet Dark Crusade style yes? How many sectors/maps are we looking at having?

Yes it going to be similar to that just less OMGNECROPNSSMCSMELDARIMPSTAUFIGHTN and more Space marines vs imperial guard...

I hope though that the honor guard doesn't become a major problem with imbalance, and threaten interest in the game. It needs to contribute to sense of immersion and the motivation for wanting to be there for every match, or else it isn't a good idea. One thing about the Honor Guard is that they do have to be used differently from the normal troops since once they die in a particular game there is no way to get them back. They do help but shouldn't make as much of a difference as raising the pop cap or something like that. I do think that we need to be careful with it though so we don't get off track, and SteviEboy's input is really critical in this area since he has already gone through this once! I would like us to try it on a limited scale and see how it works out.

Well if we use honor guard we don't have to have them available at the start of the mission. Maybe make them available after 2 min have passed in the game.

OK as far as a story goes i have about 3 ideas:

1. Space marines and imperial guard are fighting to get rid of a GronGritz band of orks on planet Ynev
2. The Sob have decalred a extremintus on Argamar. They have found that there is a slight chaos presence which could mean that the entire planet is corrupted. The Blood ravens chapter is urdging the Sob to hold off there assualt as they have found some important relics that could give them valubnle knowloadge to there chapter..bla blah blah
3. The newly conlinized world of Ungariea has been plagued with attacks from the dark eldar. Several millions have been killed or taken as hostages, as well as valuable weapon cashes haven been taken. They are urdging any imprial forces to help them fight off this mence other wise the colony may be lost...

[SteviEboY]

Originally Posted by KeNDaLL2000

Yes it going to be similar to that just less OMGNECROPNSSMCSMELDARIMPSTAUFIGHTN and more Space marines vs imperial guard...

So I guess your not going to have every race playable then, are you going to restrict it to ones relevant to the story line or will you add the other races later on?

How about

The Blood Ravens assisted by the Sisters of Battle battle lay siege to the planet of Faust after the planetary Governor declared independence from the Imperium. The renegade Governors Planetary defene force led by Fazeal Kurr and his forces of Imperial Guard stand firm against the forces of the Imperium. Little do they know that the traitor marines of the Word Bearers have an interest in the fate of the Governor and the planet itself.

[KeNDaLL2000]

....are you going to restrict it to ones relevant to the story line.....

Pretty much. All race will get there time....

The Blood Ravens assisted by the Sisters of Battle battle lay siege to the planet of Faust after the planetary Governor declared independence from the Imperium. The renegade Governors Planetary defene force led by Fazeal Kurr and his forces of Imperial Guard stand firm against the forces of the Imperium. Little do they know that the traitor marines of the Word Bearers have an interest in the fate of the Governor and the planet itself.

You just proved that you can write better then me...I actually like the story...Its not to complicated and we can tweak it so that it wil fit with everything else..Nice work....

And i know this will be a bit ambitions and completely unnecessary but Jaguar Lord has found a way to put cut scenes into multiplayer matches (i think if i read the post correctly) if we have time after everything is almost complete i think we should at least try to do this to try to get the player more involved in characters and the story as a whole...but only if time is willing