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View Full Version : Evolving Skirmishes and/or a New Game mode



Saris
08-17-2019, 05:09 AM
Skirmishes have been the main game mode for War of Rights ever since it was first introduced. They are fun when played in moderation but one thing that bothers me the most about the mode is the repetition. After 3 years of playing war of rights with almost 700 hours put into the game, its not that hard to notice patterns that you'll see with every side on every map. Of course you will get the unorthodox attack every now and then but for the most part, union will go from A to B and confederates will defend C. The capture points for the most parts are just randomly place and forces players to defend weird or nonstrategic positions. Before I rant more on the mode lets get into my proposal.

Evolving Skirmishes

I will use Hooker's Push map for my example of what evolving skirmishes is. Now for any person that is fairly knowledgeable of the Battle of Antietam is that almost every place was fought over for hours with attacks and counterattacks involving hundreds of different units. Skirmishes does represent this but in the smallest scale possible, with only 2 regiments on each side in a very limited time frame from a certain phase of the fight. Campfire Games said they would like to add every unit that fought in the Maryland Campaign and at the moment, we have many units that are in the game but are not on even one map, and this will give them more of a reason to add more units. So I am proposing to have up to six units per side that could be in use to represent the different units that fought in that area at different times. This will coincide with my other two proposals of different deployment and capture point locations. This could be an addition to the skirmish maps or even its own game mode. Heres how it works.

Round starts with 45 minutes. The first 2 playable units for each side will be the first units engaged historically. These units will be playable for the first 15 minutes of the map. When the game timer reaches 30 minutes left in the match, the next 2 historical units that fought will be playable and so on until the match reaches the last 15 minutes and then 2 more units will be playable. If a player doesnt die for over 15 minutes they'll continue to play as the said unit until they die which then they'll respawn as a new unit that would be playable at the next phase. This will add to the variety of the units played during any said map. The changing of the units every 15 minutes would simulate the different attacks and counterattacks that would be played out during the actual battle.
Example for skirmishes:

Game starts 45 minutes on the clock

From 45m to 30m these units will be playable:

Union: 2nd Wisconsin & 97th Pennsylvania
CSA: 13th & 26th Georgia

From 30m to 15m these units will be playable:

Union: 12th Massachusetts & 11th Pennsylvania
CSA: 6th & 8th Louisiana

From 15m to 0m these units will be playable:

Union: 6th Wisconson & 14th Brooklyn
CSA: 1st Texas & 18th Georgia

If we wanted to go a step further, with each new phase and units, the locations of deployment zones and capture points can be changed to show the shift in directions of attacks and counterattacks. The playable area can move and fluctuate with the changing of the capture point to allow for the shifting of attack and defense locations and will keep players on their toes. The placements can correspond with the ground that these units would have fought over just like what is shown in the map that everybody would see at the beginning of the round or if they press f2. Example map:
https://i.imgur.com/LkUgqj4.jpg

This can be done for almost any map that is already in the game. I know some maps only feature a very specific attack that took place but there are still many maps that feature ground that would witness countless attacks that would occur during the day's fighting. Another great place to potentially try this out is Bloody Lane.

Frontline

If this would turn into a new game mode i e Historical Mode. It would consist of different locations with each side becoming both the attacker and defender. Both sides would be attacking and they would meet in a center point or frontline. The points would be easy to capture unlike skirmishes which will make rounds more volatile than the regular skirmishes. For an example there are 5 points on the Hooker's Push/dunker church map: Cornfield, East Woods, Hagerstown Road, West Woods, and Dunker Church. Each point would have different regiments playable for both Union and Confederate, once the Union or Confederate captures a point or falls back, new regiments and points would be open to play and capture. Only 1 point closest to the enemy would be open to be captured by the opposing side and when one point is captured, a new point would be open to be capture so there would be no back capping. Players still alive from the last point would continue to play as whatever regiment they selected before until they respawn. If one side is able to capture all 5 they win or whoever has the most be the time the timer ends wins also. This game mode could be up to 45 minutes to an hour long or based on tickets. This will allow for players to explore more of the map and will lead to more unique progressions of gameplay.

This can also work with one side always being the attacker and one side always being the defender.

Example for units playable on each point"
Cornfield:
Union: 6th Wisconsin & 14th Brooklyn
CSA: 1st Texas & 18th Georgia

East Woods:
Union: 42nd Pennsylvania & 114th Pennsylvania
CSA: 5th Texas & 4th Alabama

Hagerstown:
Union: 2nd Wisconsin & 7th Wisconsin
CSA: 1st Louisiana Zouaves & 9th Louisiana

West Woods:
Union: units from this map
CSA: units from this map

Dunker Church:
Union: units from this map
CSA: units from this map

https://i.imgur.com/MGuF1pe.jpg

Poorlaggedman
08-17-2019, 07:34 AM
I'd definitely like to see more fluid battlefields. Especially considering the players load the entire world to get into the game and are merely constricted by desertion boundaries. For example if the Union units overwhelm Burnside bridge then the fight progresses to the Otto and Sherrick Farm and the units which started are gradually phased out.

The entire idea of capture zones I wish could be replaced by a better alternative. Perhaps one which merely calculated the forward penetration of an attacking team overall. Capture zones themselves are a seriously stale concept whereas forward movement towards a common objective makes sense to the characters and might feel less gamey. Capture zones seem particularly arbitrary and lame in the case of "Last Stand" where defenders are "like rabbits tied to a stake." In the case of the Cornfield fighting I would assume the team with the most strength advanced the farthest (minus enemy strength behind them and casualties taken) would be the winner of that stage of fighting. The longer the defender delays the attacker with fewer casualties the more likely they unlock a counterattack objective which allows potential ahistorical scenarios. Meanwhile various new regiments are fed into the fight with different spawn timer variables depending on their strength on hand.

The order of skirmish areas is also iffy in general. I believe it's based on the actual time and since multiple things happened across the battlefield you end up bouncing all over the place. I'd like to see a more fluid experience. Swapping between simultaneous attacks on different fronts is not good for first person games. Either way I'm apprehensive about the future beyond skirmishes since it's not clear.

COL. Patrick R Cleburne
08-20-2019, 09:37 AM
11298

COL. Patrick R Cleburne
08-20-2019, 09:44 AM
11300
i think if you have like a dmz where units group up and then go off to the line of departure before the fights starts but then to focus on ground taken more and the bigger picture moving them closer to an over all bigger campaign objective at the end of the day take a (A)historical point in a hole battle where as you pointed out normally would have been fought over dozens of times in a few hrs and then again a few months later on in a completely different battle mostly do to the fact that supplies had to be moved to the army's thus each army's major goal was to destroy op4 supplies lines and capture them in turn for there own use thus depriving the enemy of there ability to fight raising your army's over effectiveness just like how many plays just don't have the eye or knowledge of true combat and how to gain the upper hand on your opponent in order to win the fight like the use of tarin features to flank or ambush the op4's thus effectively taken them out and then flipping to the attacking force and no longer being the defender in a static position

RhettVito
08-21-2019, 09:12 PM
This would be something pretty cool to be playtested!