Systems: Mission System Expanded

[Saifoda]

Pre-emptive caveat: I know this is really sloppily written -- I've got a lot going on this week but I wanted to get this out in the open and figured most people will be able to read through my garbage quick-thought writing.







Missions expanded:
Have "missions" be of various levels. Basically the idea with this is that you don't want all your CR5's going "bring an ANT over here;" "take a tank to this ridge," etc... That's tactical stuff for the boots-on-the-ground leaders; the squad leaders and platoon leaders. Since I don't know what the leadership system is going to be in ps2, my thoughts on this will be limited but I will try to maintain some flexibility (and point out where something can be made flexible for various mechanisms that SOE might put into ps2).



3 levels of missions: Campaigns, Operations, and Missions(other word?). Campaigns would be your sort-of CR5 level stuff -- the top commanders/generals/whatevers calling the big shots. This would be your "Campaign to Capture Leza" or "Campaign to Conquer Amerish." Anywhere from a single-base (maybe? maybe has to be more than that?) to entire continents. This could also just be an Outfit level thing which only Officers of an Outfit are allowed to do; this would not necessarily preclude non-outfit players from taking part in missions, as they may be members of a squad who's squad/platoon leader is participating in an Outfit Campaign. There's a possibility in here for the Campaigns to be multi-phased as well, for example if Leza is locked by hexes the first phase would be to breakthrough to Leza and the second phase would be to capture the base itself. Those different phases, of course, leads right into the Operations level.

Operations are the key parts which make Campaigns happen. Let's just take an example with an Operation; I think that's the best way to explain how they work. Operation: Double Door (gotta have them fancy names for Operations, after all). Could be where you're saying "Ok, Leza has 3 towers, one is on a ridge overlooking the base, one is behind a small hill obscured from the base, and the other is opposite the base and doesn't have any strategic advantage. The objectives for this Operation are to capture the ridge and hill towers, and then move in from both sides." The Operational objectives would clearly be to take the two towers and then to take the base (and could be put into the mechanics of the game -- after all the whole objective of this is to make it so it's in-game content already and we just play with it). Here is where missions come in; gotta connect the dots between "take this continent" and "take out the sniper."

Missions would be largely platoon generated stuff, or even squad level. Mission comes from platoon/squad leader to his guys "OK our squad/platoon's objective is to take this tower. Orange squad (or Green or Alpha or 1 or whatever) take the hill (waypoint given with bonus xp for fulfilling objective obvi) overlooking the tower and put fire on any enemy in the area. Purple Squad, grab a GAL and be ready to drop on it when i say. Yellow Squad on my mark assault the tower." So at this point (if all goes according to plan -- and remember, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy) the PL might say "Ok Orange Squad get into position and be ready to pop up and provide fires. Purple you guys got a GAL yet? Good, land it over here [safe area close by] and stand by to drop on the tower. Yellow Squad give me a redcon 1 when ready....Everybody in position? Ok Yellow start your assault, Orange get into good firing positions, Purple get up in the air and drop on the tower." And you can imagine how the rest of it goes -- not at all like described right? :-P

Obviously with these three levels of missions actually being related to each other (or they don't have to be -- could be more run-n-gun/spray-n-pray, as it were) there will need to be organization beyond platoon level. This would be waaaaay too big of a logistical nightmare to actually have company level units put together (players joining and leaving all the time, people not wanting to follow "orders," etc...It was hard enough to keep a platoon together in ps1) but you COULD do something internally with Outfits and actually have the Outfits put together different "sections" or "Corps" or whatever (Battalion, Company, Regiment, you decide what it's called). This would give motivation for people to join outfits (more content available at no cost) and could make command and control easier, as with a soldier in real life (I abbreviate as IRL a lot for future reference) if you disobey an order you get in trouble, in ps2 or any game if you disobey an order, well, who cares? Certainly not the guy disobeying. But if this is an outfit thing, then there is possible punishment to it (as well as the negative of not having the advantages of bonus xp) in that you can kicked from the outfit, and you'll miss out on the bonus content. This might leave a sour taste in people's mouths, but this is a community game; everybody likes trolls (funny ones), almost nobody likes a bad player; in the end might be better to get rid of one bad player than have that one affect the gameplay of dozens of other players and detract from their experience. Just my opinion, and I digress.



Squad Leaders and Platoon Leaders would not necessarily need to be part of an Outfit's Operation or Campaign, and can generate their own missions as well if they so desire -- bonus XP and all. The added benefit to being a squad leader who makes a mission (tactical order, whatever) that is part of an Operation which is part of a Campaign is that if the mission fits within the parameters of said Campaign and/or Operation, then you get additional bonus XP from that as well. Say for example, with Operation Double Door on Campaign to Capture Leza, if you're a Platoon Leader and you order your Alpha Squad to put fires on the tower from the ridge line (as discussed earlier) then the members of that squad that go along with the plan will receive (for example) +5% bonus XP for participating in the Campaign, +5% bonus XP for the Operation, and +5% bonus XP for the mission, for a total of +15% bonus XP (or 10, 10, and 10 for 30% or whatever the number scheme will be). This will give you even more incentive as a Platoon Leader and Squad Leader to participate in Campaigns and Operations.








I won't go into too much details about this part of it, but this can also extend down to Team Leaders. Team Leaders would be members of a Squad who are selected by the Squad Leader to be a Team Leader, and each Team Leader will have certain members of the Squad placed under his/her "command." The Team Leader will have the added control ability of placing particular "waypoints" which their team members will follow for bonus XP (gotta keep the incentives coming if we expect players to "follow orders.") So, to take the squad on the ridge example again, let's say the squad leader gets up there and he has 3 teams of 3 in the squad (plus himself, making 10; or with a squad of 12 or 8 or 6 or whatever) and there are three areas of cover that provide various enfilade/defilade fire positions onto the tower (3 teams and 3 areas of cover; how convenient!) The Squad Leader can tell his Team leaders "Team A, go the far left, Team B you guys go to the far right, I'll be in the center with Team C" and then the Team Leaders will place "Go Here" type waypoints which the team members will follow for bonus XP when making kills etc... Let's say then, that you have a team leader that's uncooperative. As Squad Leader you can just fire his ass and make somebody else team leader (since team leaders are appointed and not self-selected). Ultimately in the end if this doesn't seem to be working out, it's quite easy to just type "/leave" and you're done with your stupid, broken squad.

I know I said I wouldn't be going too much into it, so uh...yeah, oops. But yeah I'll be making a separate post regarding new leadership positions I think could be made, including the Team Leader. I just wanted to post this in here because I figure the mission system questions might come up regarding the team leader.

[Saifoda]

Sorry that looks like homework guys lol.


If you don't want to read it, just watch this; it'll explain everything:

[MightyMan]

Ima be likin' dat idea.
Could have all 3 levels combined like this:
[CAMPAIGN]
Capture the ice biome
[OPERATION]
1. Capture the tech lab on A2 (coordinates) (+20% EXP)
[MISSION]

a. Capture tower A3
b. Capture tower B2
c. Prepare Galaxy and launch at bio lab at command.

2. Capture tech lab on C5 (+10% EXP)

a.Prepare 2 sunderers, with 4 anti vehicle MAXes and 1 liberator to ground bomb.
b.Gather near tower B6 (already captured) and launch at command.

And so on....

[Saifoda]

Yeah exactly, and like I said towards the end of the first post the "area of responsibility" regarding who can issue what type of missions or whatever is something that can be changed up, and I like your ideas on it you mentioned. I just wanted to get the general concept going of a tiered and modular mission system. It just seems to me like mission-spamming could become an issue, and not only is this a way to deal with that (spreading out the missions) but also it let's lower-level "commanders" (squad/platoon leaders) be a part of the player created content of the mission system; gives them another way to help out and cooperate as well.

[kaffis]

I've been harping on how the mission system needs to offer both granular levels of control and detail (destroy THIS turret, target enemy tank formations in THIS area), as well as hierarchical structures so that higher tiered commanders (whether that's by straight certs, or ideally by adapting Higby's twitter-esque follower model and integrating the hierarchical tiering with the follower system, so that missions that get sub-missions created to support them count the sub-mission creator's followers towards the parent mission's creator for a while) can organize broad campaign-scope goals that lower tier commanders can then break down into manageable goals for their outfit and/or squad, which can be broken down again, etc.

Being able to see what other missions created to support the bigger mission is, of course, a necessary tool for those sub-commanders.

In other words, what you describe is very similar to stuff I've been talking about for a long time, and thus it's no surprise that I support it. Ideally, I'd love to see a hierarchical mission system actually *replace* platoons by instead allowing squads of even strangers to, naturally and organically, divide up "bigger" missions into squad-size pieces. Organized outfit play wouldn't be hurt by this, as they'd naturally seek to support their own outfit's missions with sub-objectives by their own squads -- if anything, this could easily end up being MORE versatile than platoons organizationally, since there's no arbitrary cap on the number of squads that could create squad-sized supporting missions for the outfit's core objective.

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by kaffis

I've been harping on how the mission system needs to offer both granular levels of control and detail (destroy THIS turret, target enemy tank formations in THIS area), as well as hierarchical structures so that higher tiered commanders (whether that's by straight certs, or ideally by adapting Higby's twitter-esque follower model and integrating the hierarchical tiering with the follower system, so that missions that get sub-missions created to support them count the sub-mission creator's followers towards the parent mission's creator for a while) can organize broad campaign-scope goals that lower tier commanders can then break down into manageable goals for their outfit and/or squad, which can be broken down again, etc.

Being able to see what other missions created to support the bigger mission is, of course, a necessary tool for those sub-commanders.

In other words, what you describe is very similar to stuff I've been talking about for a long time, and thus it's no surprise that I support it. Ideally, I'd love to see a hierarchical mission system actually *replace* platoons by instead allowing squads of even strangers to, naturally and organically, divide up "bigger" missions into squad-size pieces. Organized outfit play wouldn't be hurt by this, as they'd naturally seek to support their own outfit's missions with sub-objectives by their own squads -- if anything, this could easily end up being MORE versatile than platoons organizationally, since there's no arbitrary cap on the number of squads that could create squad-sized supporting missions for the outfit's core objective.

win. I'm just really excited to see how beta (and eventually of course launch) will look so we can make more meaningful and detailed suggestions, cause at this point I'm sort of out of the "big" ideas.