Objectives

[Garnier]

Well I think most of us want some sort of objective, anything to give us a reason not to just sit on respective high-grounds and wait for someone to get bored.

Any ideas or knowledge about the objectives in game will be helpful.

I've done some investigating into objectives in sandbox. Here are some findings from the game:

Barlow is right that setting the game time to 240 minutes (the max) gives the objectives a 45+ minute timer. (It appears to be random, I've seen from 45 minutes to 78 minutes).

To hold an objective, you need to have about 1200 men within 400 yards of it. When you hold the objective for the length of its timer without any interruption, your side wins, regardless of the points value on the objective. I don't think this is mentioned in the manual, which says you just get a points bonus from holding the objective.


I think I saw it happen that when I was holding an objective, and the other side took a different objective, my objective timer was cancelled. This needs to be tested in MP so we can see exactly how it works.

I could set it up so the victor in a battle gets more of their wounded and missing back, which would give both sides an incentive to win. We could determine the winner ourselves, using simple rules. For example, if one side holds more objectives than the other side when the game ends, they win. If only one objective can be 'held' at a time according to the game, we'd have to determine what it means to 'hold' an objective.

We could always make very precise rules about it, like if one side only has men within 400 yards of the objective, then they hold it, then decide who holds what by consensus, and if there's a dispute use the rules. I could write a simple program to scan the maplocations.csv and startlocs.csv to see who holds what without any effort each time.

First thing to do is figure out how we can prevent the game from ending while using objectives.

[BillyYank1863]

I think our best bet would be to modify your system to go as far as creating "sandbox scenarios", in which we could have some control in determining things like objective timer, radius, location, etc. Once the file creation process is automated, you could set parameters that randomize locations to give us that element of surprise every time one is generated for us to play. Though I do not have the skill to do this myself, I imagine it would function very similar to the way your current system works now in generating battle oobs.

Custom Sandbox scenarios can actually be very simple to create, just by modifying a few csv files and importing oob data.

I'd be glad to share with you the little I know about creating sandbox scenarios, but will hold my breath until you ask since it can take awhile to type out in full. But it takes much longer to explain it than to do it. And again, I don't think its anything your system couldn't handle.

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I also have some ideas on how we can use objectives should the for-mentioned be successfully implemented, in which case I would go into further detail. But for now let me just say, one idea involved a setup similar to Sid Meier's Gettysburg multiplayer, where there are generally 3 objectives in a vicinity, one Main Obj, and two minor Objs who's points combined were usually equal to or slightly more than the Main Obj alone. So the idea is to control 2 of the 3 objectives, by the end of the game.

There is no time limit to hold, it is who controls the objectives when the time runs out (like you were suggesting). If the VP is Reb at the end, then the Rebs get the points for it. If it's Yank at the end, yankees get the points. If its white or neutral, than neither side gets the points for that VP.

For this best to work, I think the objective's need to have reduced radius and head count required to hold it, such that one regiment could be sufficient to hold an objective. This way you don't have to leave a good portion of your force just sitting idle on an objective, and can now use the majority to maneuver and attack the other locations. And by having a small radius, say 100 yards or less, that helps to be more precise in saying who in fact holds the majority of the ground about the Obj, and make holding them more achievable.

I have other ideas as well, but I've written enough at the moment. Just ask me if your interested.

[Garnier]

The difficulty with creating our own scenarios automatically is in placing the troop locations. It would take a lot of thought and a lot of work to recreate what norb did for sandbox start locations. I've done a very similar thing for HDN in the past, but it wasn't easy, and there I had limits on the total amount of troops possible.

Now I'll end up doing this eventually if I stick around long enough, but it won't be in the next few weeks.

I'd prefer to use the standard sandbox games for now if possible.

[SouthernSteel]

I know that it is possible to set the range, timer, and number of men necessary to hold a given objective. SC has done it numerous times building scenarios for our campaign games (yes yes, I know you may not want to hear about this stuff but it may prove helpful.)

I would also suggest you talk to Gordon - I think he has done the most as far as really modifying the game map with objectives, etc, almost to the point of creating a new aspect of the game. He had it so that not only would objectives reward points, but also ammunition, etc.

My knowledge is pretty limited, so I just thought I'd throw this out there in case it's of any use. Barlow was one of the top guys at SC who did scenario design, and I know Kershaw knows some, although I don't know about anyone else.

[KG_Soldier]

The problem with making scenarios is you have to put the troops in, and we're never sure who is going to play. It's not as if we can make a scenario and then plug in whoever is there's divisions. At least I don't think that's feasible.

[Garnier]

There's two things that we want to do.

1) I want to automate scenario creation for each battle. I can do this and it opens up tons of good possibilities, it will just take time.

2) We want to figure out a way to use the sandbox hunt-them-down or line-of-sight modes in the meantime, since we will play more battles before (1) is done.

Any ideas for (2)?

[BillyYank1863]

At the least, we can create our own map location files (perhaps make 20 or so of them, with custom set Objectives) and simply add one to the sandbox folder each time you generate a sandbox battle.

So it would be 2 more steps in setting up a battle, but they are very quick steps.

after oob is generated, host must:

1. start the game, create a sandbox game on his own, load the oob into a sandbox game and launch it. This will generate all sandbox files and randomly assign troop positions. as soon as the game starts, quit and exit the game.

2. Navigate to Work/Scenarios/Sandbox and simply replace the maplocations.csv with one of our custom created ones (you could randomly pick one).

And that should be it. Now all host needs to do is enter staging as normal, but instead of selecting sandbox create, he selects scenario select, where he will find a list including the most recent Sandbox Generated game.

I would volunteer to help create these custom maplocation.csv files.

**note, true there is no way of knowing who will start nearest the objectives, and it may favor one side or the others starting position, but if there are 3 objectives, the side to get there first will have little success in holding all 3 against a concentrated attacker by the end of the game.

[Garnier]

That could possibly work for games where the players don't change every 30 seconds before starting.

[Garnier]

Actually, you don't have to start the game to generate the scenario files. After you click "set sandbox" it generates them all.

[Garnier]

Well I decided to start working on a scenario generator. It's not as difficult as I had expected, thanks Norb. We'll see when this is done. It will make it a lot more fun.