https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 3&t=311237
Composite map of the Old World, terrain only:
Since I am getting fairly close to an alpha candidate, I figured it would be a good time to start my own thread. So for the moment just some background:
I decided to take over in late June 2020. I spent the first year working solely on the coastlines. Then I decided to complete another map (War in the Pacific) that someone else had also started, and that took up about 18 months all told. I then switched back to this 16 months ago, and have been slaving away on it ever since.
At the time I had NO IDEA just what I was getting myself into. If I had known...yeah I likely would have still done it. By turns it has proven to be exhilarating, frustrating, and everything in between. Looking back the amount of work necessary was indeed as massive as the screenie above indicates. It involved rapid bursts of activity followed typically by me hitting upon a major issue, having to find a remedy, and getting back on track. I had to take frequent breaks both on an hourly as well as a daily basis or it simply would have overwhelmed me. I can see why there have been so few scratch maps made for the SC system.
Anyway, as my new title indicates, my inspiration derives mainly from one of Sid Meier's first games (predating even the Civilization series), Crusade in Europe (as well as its partner title Decision in the Desert). My first custom scenario was also for this title, an alternate history one where Hitler didn't try the abortive and disastrous Operation Lüttich and instead retreated his forces to behind the Seine.
That game had a divisional scale, as will mine, 20 kilometer hexes/12 miles (in practice to make everything fit I had to tweak it to 19 km essentially, which is almost exactly 12 miles). Battleships and other heavies will have a 1:1 ratio of counter:ship, as will both kinds of carriers; heavy cruisers 1:2, light cruisers 1:3 (which will minimize high seas clutter), and all smaller ships 1:8 to 1:10.
When I first got into SC close to 20 years ago with the first game engine, while I found it to be highly enjoyable, I also found that the scale proved to be rather frustrating. Combined with the no-stacking design decision, this often led IMHO to ahistorical play esp. in terms of manuever and encirclements. Fast-forward to today, and now the optimum operational manuever is ye olde "Fire and Fall-Back" two-step, where the hard-hitting tank and mech units expend their 2 attacks against the enemy front lines, then retreat back behind a wall of relatively expendable and cheap infantry.
So my most radical departure from the SC modus operandi is intended to obviate all of that:
* The scale should provide everyone with LOTS more room to manuever.
* Tank, mech, and other mobile units will now get 10-14 movement points, vs. the 5-7 they get in the default scenarios.
* Buyback costs and times have been significantly reduced. On the offensive end, this will favor players being more aggressive with their mobile but costly and irreplaceable elites; on the defensive end killing units in high supply [5+] will result in them coming back quicker and cheaper, whereas destroying them while in low supply will necessitate the full cost and time delay. My goal is to pretty much require players to kill the majority of enemy units in low supply to force full buybacks by the enemy.
* My city density criteria is intended to eliminate what I call "supply deserts" in the default maps. As it is now in the Euro map, there is often little to be gained for anyone, on either side, to garrison empty areas with not a single town or even settlement to be had, since progress in any campaign depends on capturing population centers to improve supply for followup offensives.
If you look at the default Europe map for example, there is a huge 80 hex void south of Moscow bounded by said capital and the towns of Tula, Ryazan, Tambov, Borisoglebsk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Orel. Nobody bothers to garrison any hexes in this area since (aside from the forests) there is little defensive terrain (just one river) and nothing worth defending. Any units you place there will likely be in poor supply without an HQ or two. Any serious attempt to "cross the void" to take the towns on the other side will require a feeder HQ along with the spearhead HQ, but risk petering out their supply if the latter gets more than 8 hexes from its buddy.
My design by contrast provides liberal quantities of Settlements (the smallest pop. center and thus the one with the lowest defensive value). Since even Settlements provide the same base supply values (for invaders) of even the biggest city, the player on the defensive cannot simply fall back on the relatively few p.c.'s and garrison them in depth with little to fear from being encircled.
This should thus favor aggressive play, paving the way for bold deep penetrations as well as effective counterattacks.
* In a recent YT match I discovered that medium and heavy tanks only have a retreat range of 1. If they get "trapped" in front of a wall of friendly units, they thus cannot "leapfrog" behind the wall to safety. They will then tend to just "bounce" around in front of the wall until destroyed. Thus players are very reluctant, given the often thick unit density in areas strongly contested by both sides (necessitated by the map scale) to place their strongest offensive units in situations where they can be attacked without a safe retreat path. I plan to give mobile units a retreat range of 3 (all others 2) which, given the less-crowded map, should allow them if attacked to retreat out of danger and not necessarily risk destruction before their pocket can be ground down.
* Not to worry I've strived to counterbalance things on the defensive end. Rivers will now get a very robust increase in defensive bonuses. Scorched Earth will range down to 0% (taking a town or city will drop its supply all the way down to zero). Tanks will get penalties in both movement and combat capability if in hills or mountains. [and I have a LOT more of those than the vanilla maps do]
There are quite a few other changes I am making under the hood (which I will get to not to worry), but the above are the most crucial if you wish to succeed in land campaigns in this scenario.
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I intend to attempt to port this over to the W@W engine (since it and WIE are virtually identical in terms of design principles, terrain, and scripting capabilities). I do intend to at least get an Allied AI up and running at some point later this year.
As for the other game engines, the entire scenario can be ported over to any one of them, tho they will likely require some work to get them functional. For the foreseeable future I reserve the right to work on any WW2 versions, but for other eras I am open to allowing someone to port the basic map data over, BUT require a fairly substantial writeup, including design goals and particulars as well as the years, major powers, and campaigns to be modeled.
Right now I HOPE to get a working alpha up by the end of the month-the main delay now is copying and modifying all the default scripts (thankfully Crispy the designer of the Fall Weiss scenarios has given carte blanche for other designers to use his scripts). I unfortunately have some private business to attend to in the middle of April, but when that is all taken care of I intend to hire a number of volunteers to help playtest it in a private setting (most likely Discord if I am satisfied with its capabilities). This first phase is mainly intended to ensure a reasonable play balance is attained and any major bugs or faulty design decisions are squashed/remedied, so once that is done I'll release my first beta for public consumption.
If you wish to volunteer please bear with me-I will make an official call for you all at some date within the next month or so. Peace out.
Phew.
! Amazing mod Elessar2 & great vid OCB.