Improving on RtW's Campaign

[Barley672]

We know very little about the UA:D campaign, but what snippets we've seen bare a striking similarity to Rule the Waves. I figured I'd just throw this out their since A) I'm bored and B) I think it's worth discussing some of the flaws with RtW's campaign mode.

One of the largest is the shear amount of Randomness the game throws at you in a way that artificially increases difficulty. Players of the game know what I'm talking about: Random Missions putting ships in situations they're not designed for, older and slower battleships mixed into Flotillas alongside fast battleships, you're newest and greatest Battleship getting caught out by the enemy without its escort...all the result of a mission Generator that relies on randomness first and foremost. The best control you get before battle amounts to which ships are in which region. Now, obviously the player doesn't need TOTAL control over what they bring to engagements. Indeed, the random mission Generator is kind of good for simulating those "Isolated enemy fleet units stumbling into each other" situations seen in WW1 & 2.But finding the equivalent to the Yamato out on a shore bombardment mission with only a single Cruiser for escort? C'mon!

But I was watching Yahtzee's video about the pitfalls and usefulness of randomness and came upon an idea: What if missions and setup were still random, but players could influence the RNG in their favor in such a way as to prevent "stupid" outcomes. To that end, I drew up the concept of a "Fleet Org Chart" for Players to use. I attached a crude mockup below. The idea being that you drag-and-drop ships you've built into the various boxes. The Yellow Star is the Fleet Flagship, Grey Stars are Flotilla Leaders, Black are the leaders of Raiding Squadrons. Any player's ship can be dropped anywhere on the board, though obviously some ships fulfill roles better than others.

So the Org chart would influence the randomness of a generated mission in a few ways.

Battle Fleets: Your primary command unit on the campaign map. The battle fleet has several traits: Location is where they are, Mission is what they're doing (looking for Raiding Flotillas? Shore Bombardment? Invasion Escort? Hunting Enemy Battle Fleets?), Readiness is how battle-ready the fleet is (i.e. How many ships may are ready to respond in the event of a battle), Stealth is how visible the fleet is with stealthier fleets more likely to get superior engagement conditions with the enemy, Vigilance is how ready the fleet is for submarine attacks or picket skirmishes, and Moral is there just in case Mutinies are a thing. These stats are mostly dependent on you're fleet's composition and size.

1) The Designated "Flagship" always appears with its Flotilla and 1 other Flotilla. This represents that Flagships never deploy alone, unless they are literally a fleet of one. A player could create a Fleet of One by creating a new Battle Fleet and putting a single ship in it, though doing so wouldn't be a good idea.

2) Ships are more likely to be selected to join a mission with ships of their own Floatilla, and if their are any other ships in their Floatilla selected for a mission they will ALWAYS be grouped together at match start. This is superior to Rule the Waves which just rams any ships of the same type (BB, BC, etc) together in a command group without any consideration for speed or armor characteristics, BUT is better than assigning all ships of the same class together because it lets players mimick real-life floatillas that often had ships of different classes working together. Examples: The British had Flotilla leaders for their Destroyers that were larger up-gunned variants of the destroyer class they lead. Also, the Kongo was often guarded by its own picket of Destroyers.

Note that the whole Flotilla need not spawn: Maybe one or more ships was somewhere else at the time, or undergoing refueling or stuck on a sandbar or who knows what else. You can also have multiple flotillas in a battle that are themselves incomplete (say, some cruisers were nearby who could join the destroyers in said scenario) The only guarantee is that if two ships of the same flotilla DO spawn, they always spawn grouped together with the Flotilla lead in the front.

3) At the bottom there are "Picket Duty" slots. Ships placed here spawn entirely independent from each other. They represent ships placed in a large ring around the fleet to detect threats to said fleet. They can both get caught out alone or show up in the context of a larger battle between 2 attack fleets or anything in between. The more picket ships you bring, the better your vigilance and Battle Readiness as these ships detect incoming threats early for the fleet. Destroyers make great picket ships because they're cheap and can run if they're caught out in a picket skirmish.

Raider Flotillas always spawn together and are completely separate from (read: never spawn with) Battle Fleets. These guys have the sole mission of raiding convoys and are always doing so together. So the Scharnhorst always attacks the Liberty ships with its destroyer escort, for example. Of course, they can't do missions other than convoy raiding and their effectiveness (i.e. ability to find and catch convoys) decreases as they get bigger, slower, and/or more conspicuous. Because there's only 4 or 5 ships, they're also vulnerable to being found and overrun by an enemy Battle Fleet in the area.

Convoy Escorts defend convoys from submarines (passive) and Raider Flotillas (active missions). You can have anything from Battleships to cheap destroyer escorts protecting your convoys, with different costs and benefits associated with them.

 

Now, obviously the game designers probably already have an idea in mind on how they want the Campaign to actually work, and they probably even have a better idea for how fleet command and mission generation works than me. They might even let you take direct command of each Fleet's movement and missions like in Victory at Sea. But I was bored and wanted to get this off my chest, and couldn't help but notice some of the directions the game was taking were strikingly similar to the great but RNG-fueled RtWs. And if the designers get any ideas from this meandering little speech of mine I invite them to use it.

[Tankaxe]

Yes the RNG in RtW is a pain (don't you just love when the battle generator feeds your CLs to enemy CAs and having to convoy raid with a grand total of 3 destroyers that's escorted by CLs)

One of my major beef with it is how it handles cruiser battles. You don't get a proper cruiser task force and instead get these incredibly odd 1v1 or 2v2 cruiser battles with a destroyer escort here and there. It doesn't make sense and since the AI can have up to 20 CAs and more CLs all these single cruiser actions can be very exhausting.

Things like convoy raiding and bombartment missions should require an entire taskforce of cruisers if they expect a similar number of enemy cruisers in the area.

So IMO if the game can make cruiser actions bigger with missions that are important would be useful

[Commodore Sandurz]

Wars between AI nations as well please. The lack of them in RtW (aside from those allied to the player) is another serious campaign flaw there.

[AML]

Being able to create divisions/flotillas rather than making do with whatever combination of ships RNG decides to throw your way would be very welcome and imo makes things much more interesting for the players. 

In a pure RNG system certain ship types like flotilla leaders aren't practical to build. A big DL design getting treated like its any normal DD is a waste while a small Tenryu-esque cruiser design getting matched up against a fleet cruiser is futile so why bother building either? 

I know things never work out as planned and that's fine, a little RNG representing engine problems etc. combined with the fortunes of war will force players to adapt in much more entertaining ways than just rolling the dice. 

 "Hmm, between battle damage and maintenance needs my 1st BC squadron is down to just 2 active ships...should I reinforce it with some older ships knowing they will slow down the unit or risk keeping it a small but homogenous unit?" Vs. "Here's your scouting group of 3 different classes, deal with it." 

 

 

 

 

[brucesim2003]

A lot of the issues with the RtW campaign I raised before RtW1 was release. I argued for some sort of squadron control, based on the 'mixed ships' problem. The designer gave repeated assurances even back then that it would never happen. Yet, years later, here we are. 25 knot light cruisers screening/scouting for 28 knot battlecruisers. "It'll never happen" he said.