GDW Assault Scenario Creation

[ctcharger]

Any way we can model something like GDW's Assault scenario creation system. For a give scenario, each side rolls a die which determines their force structure. In some cases, you may get a lot of troops, in others, hardly any. The other side doesn't know what you have so you can bluff your size or try to hide how large your force is until it is too late. Would be for head to head play only and the victory calculation up to the players. Looking at the scenario structure, a force could have an X% of being included in the scenario. The recon force would always be included in the scenario while the other forces would vary from say 75% to 25%.

[CapnDarwin]

This leads to the battle generator question, and we are not really built for that mechanic. First, you need a map. Sounds easy, but folks will want options for the type of map (size, terrain elements, etc.) That means somehow adding or extracting metadata from the maps, filtering by user inputs, and then rolling a die. Where things really break down is defining mission objectives. You need them, but how do you define them on each map? Being head-to-head solves the AI needing planning, but single players will want to have the auto-gen battles too. This will mean dealing with adding battle plans for a random force on a random map with a random set of objectives. Not a small order. The next part is getting those random, but structured forces. If the saving of force groups can be improved to package multiple force structures in a named save, then you might be able to build a set of realistic forces in a quasi-random fashion. Then they need to be laced on the amp. Finally, a set of autogenerated orders and all of the intel bits would need to be created similar to what is in the game's scenarios now to explain the battle. That would include operational graphics. Again nothing small or easy here. This would be a great feature, but it is a very tall order requiring a lot of design, coding, and testing to make it useful to the masses. Probably not going to happen in 23, but it is on our radar, at least.