Using command as a boardgame like harpoon

[Micaz91]

hi all, i ask for help here even if it is not related to command.
I am passionate about air and naval warfare and have been playing command for years now. another passion of mine is board games, which I play with a group of friends. my hidden dream would be to play harpoon with the group, but the amount of study and the risk of not taking hold of the group has always made me give up. Hence an idea, instead of being a referee and using the harpoon rules, I can be a referee by opening a scenario with two playable factions through the editor!
hence the help from those who play harpoon. do you have any suggestions for maps and counters for players?

[BDukes]

Hi Micaz

Yes you could do this. In-person it is just swapping sides and setting sides etc. Obviously, pro probably does much of what you're asking for but is not available to the general public. I use CMO largely in this manner with normal gameplay secondary for the last few years. It is a tool I use to get most of the wargaming stuff done but lots of different gaming done outside of it to cover the things not within the rails.

Some really smart community developers have also done this with lua which you may find useful.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... hp?f=10231

Mike

[Micaz91]

Thanks a lot for the answer! the idea is to play live.
actually ike's solution could solve the problem of having to constantly switch between sides to see who sees who.
the solution I have to find is how to give the information to the players. I was thinking of printing two maps, one for each team, with relative counters

[musurca]

Hi Micaz-- I'm the creator of IKE, so kindly mentioned by Mike. FYI, the most recent release had some new features requested by players in the Harpoon Discord, including variable turn-lengths to approximate the concepts of intermediate vs. tactical turns in Harpoon. You could definitely use it for hot-seat play with a referee. Keep in mind that IKE is really designed to play multiplayer Command, if that makes sense, and it may be frustrating to try to graft Harpoon rules onto it.

Using Command as a tool to visualize Harpoon turns is a great idea, though, and you could certainly use some simple Lua scripts to switch between sides to hide information. (This is more or less what the earliest versions of IKE did.)

However, most Harpoon players use a tool called SimPlot, which is sort of like Command without any of the simulation backend (but it's free). You might give that a try to see if it suits your purposes.

You might also try joining the Harpoon Discord (see link at the top) -- it's a very friendly group and I'm sure they'll have lots of ideas for you. Hope that helps!

[TitaniumTrout]

hence the help from those who play harpoon. do you have any suggestions for maps and counters for players?

I've run some of the CMO Live! scenarios as a referee with teams of players on both sides. In my case it ran very similar to IKE, but before IKE was a thing. Each side would give orders and I'd do screenshots of the situation flipping back and forth and providing the relevant data. It actually worked really well and was a ton of fun.

[Micaz91]

sorry if I answer so late. unfortunately I haven't had time to try yet. first of all thanks Musurca for your work. Titaniumtrout I would like to treasure your experience. did you play with people who already knew command? unfortunately my friends don't know it and I'm afraid not to make them interested if I only give them screenshots and nothing to touch. the miniatures in Italy seem impossible to find, and in any case they have a very high cost. I thought of recreating the scenario with two google Mymaps maps. sure the screenshots would save me a lot of preparation time that at the moment I don't have ...

[TitaniumTrout]

sorry if I answer so late. unfortunately I haven't had time to try yet. first of all thanks Musurca for your work. Titaniumtrout I would like to treasure your experience. did you play with people who already knew command? unfortunately my friends don't know it and I'm afraid not to make them interested if I only give them screenshots and nothing to touch. the miniatures in Italy seem impossible to find, and in any case they have a very high cost. I thought of recreating the scenario with two google Mymaps maps. sure the screenshots would save me a lot of preparation time that at the moment I don't have ...

Most of them had no familiarity with CMO or Harpoon, or any game like that. A scenario was presented, and they gave me orders. I entered orders and voila, that was that. For the PvP match there was a spectator thread, and a thread for each team. Spectator Thread here : https://forums.somethingawful.com/showt ... id=3871512

The main game was just one big thread where I'd present the mission requirements through narrative (sort of like an RPG) and then the players would propose mission plans and vote on them. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showt ... id=3815107

[Micaz91]

dear titaniumtrout thanks again! I abandoned the idea of ​​doing a live game, I will shamelessly copy your idea and mount a server on discord. your strike command is beautiful but I can't even imagine the dedication it took you to prepare it.
I just have to pick a scenario that is complex enough to be fun, but simple enough to be accessible