SOP Improvements

Hello Commanders!

Today we’re going to take a closer look at the at the improvements we have made in Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War’s (FCCW) SOP system from Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm (FCSS).

Just in case you’re new to the term SOP, it stands for Standard Operating Procedure. In the context of Flashpoint Campaigns (FC) it is how units react under a given set of conditions. As a bit of history, before FCSS (in Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm) the SOP was determined by the type of order a unit received and was not adjustable. In FCSS we changed that to have user defined SOP behavior. This could be adjusted for all orders or on an individual order basis. Later in development we added presets that could make setting the SOP even faster.

With some background established, let’s look at the changes made in FCCW. SOP presented a number of challenges for players, new and old. Some players found them incomprehensible with a bunch of levers and buttons that had no clear consequence. Other players found them tedious to interact with, taking too long to get to the part of the game they found most enjoyable. Many found the enemy AI to be using SOP settings that were non-ideal, resulting in too easy challenges in scenarios

A Redesigned Menu

Figure 1: FCSS SOP Manager

Figure 2: FCCW SOP Manager

It doesn’t take long to spot that there is a lot that has changed. The scope preset at the top has been replaced with a much more straightforward list of orders on the left hand side. This makes for faster one click switching between which order we want to edit the SOP of. The starting selection is now the current order instead of the Default SOP (the SOP settings which every newly issued order will clone). Those handy presets we added later in FCSS? Now fully available as a quick dropdown you can select from right at the top of the Manager. The multiple apply buttons are now replaced with a single apply button and checkboxes to select which things you want to modify. Some background color helps to break up the form and make it easier to read. And if any piece of it is confusing, there are now mouseover tooltips explaining each piece of the form. 

Removed Items

Figure 3: FCCW R&R Form

One of the things we did to make the SOP form smaller was to remove the R&R settings which don’t really need to be set on each order into their own form. Since we were doing this though we could also take the opportunity to give players greater control on which ammo types are important to them. Don’t think the chaingun ammo on your Bradleys are important? Uncheck it! Think smoke rounds for your artillery is cool, but don’t want your artillery stopping to reload because you ran out? Uncheck it! Tired of your infantry running out of grenades and not getting more? Check that!

We did remove the ambiguous Tactical Initiative value from the SOP Manager. It was having a fairly small impact that wasn’t terribly clear to players and could have unanticipated effects for players on the battle

A New, Faster Way to Set It all Up

Figure 4: FCCW SOP Overview

Up til now, we’ve just looked at things that help players do things the old way. And that’s important, but how can we get to hitting that Start button faster where the bullets start flying? First is fairly simple for players: have every unit in the game start with a decent Default SOP setting. Our scenario designers and editors have gone through every unit in every scenario and set the SOPs to something that makes sense for those units to complete the most likely mission the players will want them to complete. That might be one of the SOP Presets exactly, one with slight variations, or even one with lots of adjustments.

But what if you don’t like where we started you off? Introducing the SOP Overview tab. You can find this in the incredibly useful Operations window. It will list every unit under your command with the settings they are currently given. You can use this to inspect your force at a glance and upon spotting something you want to change, simply right click the unit icon and make whatever changes you would like.

Figure 5: FCCW Unit Right Click Menu

Review the Old Fast Changes

Later in FCSS we added those presets, and they are still here, but now we automatically filter them down in the right click menu to just the ones relevant to your current unit selection. All the others are still there if you want, you can grab them through the dropdown menu at the top of the game window.

A Last Note On Focusing On the Important Things

Figure 6: FCCW Unit Dashboard SOP Summary

Figure 7: FCCW Unit Dashboard SOP Detailed

It's definitely easy for players to get lost in the wall of text that a SOP description can easily be. Or they might think that since we’re providing all of this information they have to be able to absorb and understand it immediately to be able to play the game. Both are bad. To address that, the description of a SOP in the Unit Dashboard has been compressed to just show the closest matching preset and the changes to that preset (if any). You can still pull up the full description with a single click by clicking on the name of the Preset in the Dashboard if you wish.

I could probably spend lots more time talking about the many wonderful changes we’ve made to SOP settings and the presets, but we have to stop at some point, and now is as good a time as any. We’ve made a lot of changes that will hopefully address the various concerns of our veteran players and make it easier for new players to pick up the game and start playing.

Eagerly awaiting to share the awesome with you guys,
 - Kevin (SgtZdog)
   Programmer at On Target Simulations