Adventures in Campaign Building by a Beginner

[scJazz]

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This thread is meant to be a running commentary on scenario/campaign design. It is not intended to be the syllabus of such, rather the running list of interesting points as viewed by a Beginner at Scenario/Campaign design who has experience playing with the WinSPXXX engine as a player.

Any feedback is highly welcome!

Don and Andy... this is by no means a critique! 
We have the engine. These are the results. No doubt 
some of what follows is my failures. It is worth 
mentioning only insofar as this is what I learned/am 
learning while being a complete Newb!

[scJazz]

Lesson 1) Map Editing

Arguably, the most important part of building a scenario or campaign. The lesson here is this...

Once the map is built and you buy units to place on the map...

ANY change later in the map causes ALL unit placements to be removed!

You can not build a map, buy units, place units... decide that some tree, or hill needs to be removed. You can not even later decide that you want Map Text Notes without every unit placement being invalidated. ANY edit to the map invalidates unit placement!

The lesson here is this, build the map, buy a single squad of infantry, move them around the map checking LOS for those wonderful Anti-Tank traps and FO spotting, etc. Take notes about which trees, hills, etc need to be removed/increased. Decide on which, if any, text notes you want to place on the map ahead of time!

Build the map. Test it with A0 or 1 squad of infantry for LOS. Add the text notes you want. Only then can you proceed!

[scJazz]

2) Once you buy the initial units for the scenario it becomes at best tedious that you do not alter the number of formations after the fact.

After initial testing you might decide that this side or that side is too powerful. Deleting any formation out of Player 1 (Human) will cause a strange shift in placement on the map and even observed changes in the number of "A0 command units" in Player 2. Multiple exits and re-boots of WinSPXXX might clear this oddity except for this strange fact...

The OpFire/AI artillery (AI artillery assumed but not yet proven) routines will direct fire at the unit with the lowest ID. This is assumed to be the A0 unit (and B0, C0, C1, etc). However, having deleted Player 1 Formations after initial testing all indexes shift up and perhaps beyond their initial pointers. Such that you could have in the index A0, D(stuff), B(stuff), ZY(other things that were deleted earlier but are now here)

NOTE: Clever designers could probably exploit this... make a force, delete some stuff... add some more back and the unit Index would be high enough to force the AI to fire at it rather than anything else preferentially.

END NOTE: Unless you wish to intentionally exploit the OpFire and AI Artillery routines... do not delete formations at all. Change them all into 1 pt formations and set them on the map edge.

Other amusing side effects are the "units with no location" aka Aux units as passengers pushed out to the last known "Fixed" location on the map or just left out in the water.

[scJazz]

3) Passengers on a Transport are not hidden from the AI fire routine!

A0 can be on transport CZ99. If it can be fired at by an AI unit preferentially it will. This is not apparent normally but becomes so if all possible targets are visible to the AI with roughly similar targeting chances.

[scJazz]

4) AI artillery routine fires at first valid target. Then it adjusts!

While it is uncertain what the initial valid target happens to be this much is certain... given above preferential treatment to anything the AI sees as the "A0" target. While designing set pre-fire targets... set those targets at least N-1 turns!

The AI will fire upon the A0 if it doesn't have anything to target, B0, C0, D0, etc are also acceptable. It will do this even in the face of 50 other units that it can see and ignoring FOs which have better artillery abilities.

If you drop pre-fire artillery around the map the AI will adjust it as possible. Preferentially, toward the A0 unit but then toward anything close enough.

[scJazz]

5) It is hideously important that any decision to change a unit type adheres to unit class! Changing a infantry scout units weapons will not change its basic scout desire to only fire at range 1!

[scJazz]

6) Initial facing is vastly important! The AI will NOT ever alter a units facing! EVER! Until it has detected an attack! Such that a rifle unit 11 hexes away FACING a sniper directly (as in very directly) has a good chance of detecting the sniper if it has a facing just 2 or 3 hexes away from direct of the sniper it probably will not detect.

[scJazz]

7) If you want your Air Strikes to hit anything be careful! We have SEAD, COIN, and normal airstrikes already which indicates preferential treatment to targets found.

Not so obvious is the attraction towards newly (destroyed/created) crews which will draw most of the airstrikes.

Equally, not obvious is this... DO NOT EVER USE Ammo units for your artillery, mortars, SAMs for AI purposes. Airstrikes zone in on them preferentially as well as new units of crews which have a formation ID of the probably same Formation ID.

Dispersal of the airstrikes is likely ineffective with recommended 5 or 6 range as suggested.

Given previous comments vis a vis clear LOS Forward Observers... doesn't seem anything will change this at all. Best results are to arrange Airstrikes 1 turn at a time without any above clutter obfuscating things (no other possible targets within 500m/10 hexes)

[scJazz]

8) We could for a moment talk about the randomness in the results of the AI. It will only actually take a moment.

It is not random at all and it isn't an AI. Top down target selection with Artillery, Airstrikes or Guns preferentially isn't random.

OOB designers: Please note Place Scout and Size 1 Scouts at TOP not bottom of formations! Size 1 Jeep at B1 is better than any scout jeep at Z1 which is where you all like to place them!

They will preferentially draw fire from artillery, opfire, and airstrikes. Even better if they are Crewed

[scJazz]

9) OOB designers note...

Using a Mech Infantry Formation that has...
B0) Inf
B1) Transport
C0) Inf
C1) Transport
(ETC ETC ETC) is not cool!

In every case... if the formation is an Infantry unit and B0 is an Infantry unit B1 should be an infantry unit as well! B1 should never be the AFV/APC! Those units have bad Infantry command skills and set a situation where a APC with Armored command has CO over an infantry unit!

Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
APC
APC
APC

The above is the format since more or less few of you thought about the formations vis a vis unit losses in a Campaign.