Operational - hands that do the work (or in x wing, the dice rolls and modifiers that abstract individuals firing, and their skill levels)

Tactical - minds that solve the individual problems (in x wing YOU. You decide to send the interceptors up the flank to try and counter those a wings, or direct your swarm to chip away at the falcon)

Strategic - the big picture (not in x wing currently. Even epic games are at the tactical level).

Ah, yes, there's the confusion. I've seen that sort of lineup in corporate definitions, with operational lower on the totem pole than tactical. Mine comes from military theory - which, one would think that yours would too, given the naval connection. However, it clearly puts operational between tactical and strategic.

I'm guessing that what you call operational is an addition to my lineup, while what is defined as tactical is the same.

What you're calling strategic, military theory divides up between the operational and the strategic, with the operational level being about logistics and the waging of military campaigns, while the strategic level (sometimes divided between the political and the strategic), involves the overarching political goals of the conflict. You're right that X-Wing currently doesn't deal with this, and epic is indeed at the tactical level.

I have pondered this as well especially when creating the story for my second attempt at building a Campaign. Can you get the participants to agree for the progression of story, environment, or universe to put themselves at a disadvantage and perhaps a gross disadvantage? I can't say that I've found it easy for people to agree to this.

So, either the idea of making campaigns more involved than what DagobahDave has is a still-born idea, or there should be some payoff for the antagonist - if the campaign is about one player.

For my sake, I'd enjoy the chance of playing in a narrative campaign battle, as the foil, even if I knew the odds were stacked against me, because I'd enjoy being part of the story. However, I'm a particular kind of player.

I do think the odds are greater to get people to agree to it, if the story were presented in a compelling way. If the odds are against them, isn't the glory all the greater if they pull off a win anyway? But this feeds into my online platform idea as well. If they choose to participate, the system might send their smartphone an email on which they can read about the stakes from their narrative role.

My galactic campaign really doesn't do what Mikael's talking about. I set up my campaign so that it would have virtually no influence on individual battles or scenario conditions.

I've seen a couple of campaign designs on BoardGameGeek that operate as a series of linked missions, with unique pilots that suffer permanent death, resource management and so on.

Link or it didn't happen!

Also, when I saw the title of the thread I thought you were adding a 3rd dimension to the game, a la Check Your 6.

My galactic campaign really doesn't do what Mikael's talking about. I set up my campaign so that it would have virtually no influence on individual battles or scenario conditions.

I've seen a couple of campaign designs on BoardGameGeek that operate as a series of linked missions, with unique pilots that suffer permanent death, resource management and so on.

Link or it didn't happen!

Voilá

(But you can read the FFG forum thread here .)

I am with you, Mikael. I am more about the story, and if one side is favored for the progression of that story, then I'm down with being the underdog. I believe there's not always going to be a balanced and even fight...if ever.

So what would you like to Propose? Are you trying to develop a system based on an amalgam of ideas that have been introduced here?

So what would you like to Propose? Are you trying to develop a system based on an amalgam of ideas that have been introduced here?

Well, I'd like to steal ideas as liberally as I can.

For my part, however, I want to have a game in the Star Wars Universe - not a galaxy where the Rebellion, the Empire, and whoever else, is on an equal footing. That said, one could set the timeline in the New Republic Era, when the New Republic and the Imperial remnants are on a more equal footing. But that's not my aim.

I think it's also best to design incrementally - to first introduce an operational level side from the perspective of a squad ron commander. For the Rebels that looks very different from the Imperials. Mainly, that's because Rebel starfighters have hyperdrives (albeit with limited navigational abilities in their droids), while the Imperials are dependent upon their carrier craft.

So, I'd like to devise a set of missions in which there is a contested portion of space. My fancy has recently gone to the Sharlissian Trade Corridor area. (For astrographics, see here ) It's in the Outer Rim, where the Imperial presence wouldn't be as sophisticated or ubiquitous. In the first instance, I'd do it just from the Imperial or rebel perspective, run a series of missions where the objectives are set from higher up in the chain of command, but where the outcome of each battle impacts the terms of the next engagement, for good, ill, or unexpected.

Here's something I've been working on, based loosely on the Brental IV campaign that popped up in Stackpole's comics. It may not be as complicated or wide ranging as some of y'all are looking for, but it should serve as a solid two player campaign.

The premise is simple: Rebel forces show up in an Imperial fringe system and begin their efforts to liberate it from Imperial control. They achieve victory by obtaining five victory points and successfully freeing the system. The Imperial player, in contrast, needs to locate and destroy the hidden Rebel base.

Each player has the following locations under their control at the start of the game:

A Communications Satellite: Worth 1 victory point if captured. If controlled by your opponnent, lose 100 points of campaign resources.

A Munitions Factory or Supply Depot: Worth 1 victory point if captured. If not controlled, you may not equip modifications or munitions.

A Bacta Supply or Bacta Convoy: Worth 1 victory point if captured. If not controlled, you may not revive KOd unique pilots.

A Hangar: Worth 1 victory point if captured. When attacked, the hangar may scramble the fighters and add an additional 50 points of non-unique fighters without upgrades to the dogfight.

A Shield Generator: Worth 1 victory point if captured. Game effect to be determined.

The Imperial Player additionally begins play controlling the Imperial Capital which is worth three victory points if captured.

At the beginning of the game, each players assigns their forces to different districts. They may either defend their own locations or attack their opponents. Players may NOT send more than 100 points to any one district (except when attacking the enemy hanger. Then 150 points may be sent.) The Rebel Alliance player has a total of 400 points to spend; the Empire has 500.

However, while the Empire has superior resources they do not know the location of the Rebel base. To attack the Alliance, the Imperial player must first scout its location. To do this, the Imperial player assigns up to 100 points of ships as scouts. For each 25 points assigned, the Imperial player may roll one attack die. If they roll three or more critical hits, the base is discovered. Each round that the Rebel base is not discovered, you may add one automatic critical hit.

Resolve the dogfights in each location as per a usual game of X-Wing. Afterwards however, make the following changes:

Unique Characters who are defeated are considred KOd and may not be reused again unless you control your own Bacta depot.

Ships may not equip or re-equip munitions or modifications if you do not control your munitions depot.

Ships that leave the edge of the board are not considered KOd for campaign purposes, nor are their munitions considered spent.

That's...pretty much it. Not super complex, but sounds fun. I won't be able to try it until August though IRL, so please feel free to play test it for me.

That's...pretty much it. Not super complex, but sounds fun. I won't be able to try it until August though IRL, so please feel free to play test it for me.

Thanks for tossing that into the mix. I definitely like the "hidden rebel base" idea as something that can counterbalance the Empire's point superiority.

Another idea along those lines, that we might steal from the Empire at War game is that the Rebels are more aware of the Empire's placement (on the campaign map, as opposed to the skirmish mat), than the Empire is of the rebels' placement and movements.

Where my thoughts are currently going is to start the campaign out with the players at low levels of command (e.g. the squadron level), and their forces come into contact with one another, with the outcome of the first battle determining things down the road - but determining things that the players don't get to read beforehand. Also - where possible - with more than two outcomes, so that the tree of possibilities goes wider quicker.

Also, at some point the players get to start making tactical and operational-level decisions between the encounters, that determine some of the things (terrain, placement, other features) that take place in the encounters, as well as have some resource implications, such as the things you're talking about.

So we could look at few progressions here that would work together.

Rough Sketch

Campaign 1:

Location--Outer Rim

Engagements--Small Skirmishes, escorts of supplies, destroying Imperial Garrisons, trying to locate hidden Rebel base,

Imperial Status--Presence is thin and spread out; Goal: attempting to gain a strong foothold, gather resources, hunt and destroy the Rebel Element.

Rebel Status--Gathering up Supplies, Ships, and Able Bodies; Goal: Build up, Develop their own Base of Operations, Free newly Acquired Imperial Locations, Drive the Empire out of the Outer Rim.

Campaign 2:

*Progressively Pushing into the Systems between the Outer Rim and the Core Systems; Larger Engagements, more tactical and organized fights*

Campaign 3:

*Rebels Engaging the Core Systems...escalated fights etc....*

So we could look at few progressions here that would work together.

Yes! By connecting various campaigns, you're kicking it up to the strategic level.

Last night and this morning I've been allowing my mind to really work on this, and I've already got an outline for how I want this to work. It would start with a very simple encounter with set-in-stone (more or less) ships, with one of three outcomes. Those outcomes determine the conditions for the next encounter. The player increasingly gets more choices, but if (s)he does badly (especially for the Empire), the higher-ups don't listen to him as much, and make the operational (and strategic) decisions that the player's character has to swallow. "Do as you're told!" Eventually, there's an "Apologies accepted, Captain Needa" moment.

In terms of implementation, I'm cogitating on an online engine that would provide all the information. I can write rudimentary .php and SQL in addition to .html, which would allow the players to input the necessary information (and maybe unnecessary information, just for fun) and lead them to the next stage.

At some point, the players will also have operational/strategic ideas that are not pre-set. They could email those to me, and I could add it in for them, and for anyone else playing the system after it. It would be a way of crowdsourcing how this could play out. This might include custom characters, etc.

This could be really cool!

Okay, so I've developed things a little further in my mind.

What I want to do is create an online system that will essentially present a decision tree with different player decisions and missions as splits in that tree. The Empire player will see one thing and the rebel player will see something else. Other than the outline of the mission, they should not be seeing the same material, nor should they discuss the privileged information with one another.

It's not going to be a campaign in which the players are both holding territory and building resources on an equal footing, the way we see in real-time strategy games like Empire at War or countless other computer games of that nature.

I've also developed the barest outline of the specific setting, which I'll start to roll out soon as I offer up my first mission for public scrutiny/critique/playtesting. That mission is called 'Flight of the Orokeet', and I'll probably post it in just a little bit.

Initially, it's only going to be a description that you can read here on the forum, but eventually, I want to build it into a website on which you log in to get your state of play that only you and I know about, unless you let other people see it, or someone hacks in, or whatever.

As you and your chosen opponent(s) play out missions, you let the system know what happened, and then it will present you with the next mission. For the first people playing this, they might have to wait as I figure out what happens in your particular case, but the more people do this, the more missions will be pre-written. At some point, I'll probably want assistance on the back-end, so I'll be happy to take volunteers.

Just a quick update.

I have a name: ' Sharlissian Campaign '

Thus far I've worked out the first mission ( Flight of the Orokeet ) sufficiently to have four significantly different outcomes out of nine narratively different outcomes, and numerous detail -level outcomes.

For right now, I'm cogitating on those four significant-level outcomes, and an engine to handle the details and narratives. That engine (a website) is starting to take shape, and I'm seeing if I can get some server space from a friend. Right now I'm just operating on a WAMPserver on my laptop.

Substantively, the idea is this. Each game has two players. The commanders of a small imperial fighter wing aboard a heavy cruiser and a rebel fighter group. (To call it a wing would stretch what it actually is.) They're embedded in a particular situation and a chain of command. For starters, they'll be in charge of tactical-level decisions in combat situations, but as things move forward, they'll have imput on operational level and eventually (micro-)strategic level decisions, depending on their performace. If the battles are not successful, after all, nobody would trust them with higher-level decisions.

Developing this is getting to be quite fun.

EDIT: Oh, and every mission a pilot survives, (s)he gains a PS point.

I have a name: ' Sharlissian Campaign '

Substantively, the idea is this. Each game has two players. The commanders of a small imperial fighter wing aboard a heavy cruiser and a rebel fighter group. (To call it a wing would stretch what it actually is.) They're embedded in a particular situation and a chain of command. For starters, they'll be in charge of tactical-level decisions in combat situations, but as things move forward, they'll have imput on operational level and eventually (micro-)strategic level decisions, depending on their performace. If the battles are not successful, after all, nobody would trust them with higher-level decisions.

Am I right in interpreting this as meaning that successful players eventually be able to affect other players 'below' them in their faction's chain of command in some way? Such as sending them on specific missions and giving them extra resources? Sounds pretty cool!

That is not specifically what I was thinking, but it might be a good idea.

I'm not completely sure how it might all play out.

Am I right in interpreting this as meaning that successful players eventually be able to affect other players 'below' them in their faction's chain of command in some way? Such as sending them on specific missions and giving them extra resources? Sounds pretty cool!

Ah, I'm on a real computer now.

What I mean by multi-level is not that there are multiple levels of players, though that's not an inconceivable construct, and might be interesting.

What I mean is that war conceptually plays out on three levels - tactical, operational, and strategic. In the miniatures game, we only deal with the tactical level. In our campaign threads, we're talking about adding the operational level to this.

Okay, in order to breathe some new life into this thread, let me just give a report on how my system is developing. I've been plugging away on the code for over a week now. (I think.... I've lost track of time.)

Anyway, I have a system that allows the rebel player to choose several rudimentary ships, while the Imperial is stuck with TIEs until he earns the use of more advanced ships. That fits the narrative of the campaign that I am writing.

If this thing works, it's entirely possible to amend it in order to facilitate different narratives. Hell, someone with some technical ability could even design their own campaign, and work with me to upload it into the system. Right now I'm just working on the proof-of-concept.

It sets up an opening scenario - in this case the Flight of the Orokeet. Once that battle is fought, both players submit their results into their own login on their computer. The computer verifies that both players have submitted the same results. Once it's verified this, it logs the damage to the ships, and the +1 PS to the participating pilots. That's all behind-the-scenes number crunching.

Based on up to four outcome variables from the previous mission, it calculates what the next mission is. The Orokeet mission has three such variables. Once that is calculated (along with the number crunching, which just takes a split-second to show up, but a whole night to code ), it offers both sides their strategic, operational, and tactical readiness briefings on an information page, and it has some maps on a map page.

When both players are ready to have another battle, they click on the mission page, get the low-down as far as what's next. There they are either assigned forces or they get to choose which units to deploy, based on the mission conditions. From there, they click 'fly mission', which then gives them the precise conditions of the mission, as well as the opportunity to fill in the results once the battle is over.

Anyway, I'm having people over to playtest this in a week and a half. When I've seen to the bugs, I can make it available to all. You'll have to PM me to get a login and a link, though.

I'd give it a try but I can't build the squad you've designed for the first mission....

I'd give it a try but I can't build the squad you've designed for the first mission....

Well, maybe by the time the engine is finished you'll have the required miniatures. That, or you reconfigure the missions to suit what you do have, and just don't let me know - because if I do fine out, I have an army of flying monkeys who will find you and flog you with wet noodles.

I assume we're talking about the HWK-290. After the first mission, I'm not requiring it - and it may be destroyed during that mission. The more structural requirement are the TIEs. At the start of the campaign, TIEs are pretty much all the Empire player has - and the Empire has LOTS of them - and if he wants to be able to requisition different fighters, he's going to have to perform. The rebel player has more freedom.

I guess my approach is responding to what I see in my local meta, where the players around me seem to have pretty much multiples of everything. Okay, not the Tantive. People some 'only' seem to have one of those each, and I'm not (yet) planning to bring it into the campaign. I am strongly urging the transport, however.

That said, not all fighters will be engaged in all combats. So, just because the Empire player will narratively have two squadrons of 12 TIEs (each), he's not likely to want to field them all in once go.

The other idea is that because you're playing this with others, you might ask to borrow a mini or several from your counterpart.

Okay, just a little bit of an update.

We did a playtest this last weekend. DagobahDave and another friend played some of the missions, and suggested some tweaks and edits. A good time was had by all.

I'm currently working on the tweaks and edits, and I have paid for the server space to host the online engine once's it been tweaked and edited.

When that's done, I'll be interested in having people remote from me getting accounts (PM me) and playing the scenarios without me hovering over their shoulders answering questions. That way I'll know that it's sufficiently intuitive.

Wow, it's only been two and a half weeks?

Okay, so I've been burning the midnight oil on this project. Those tweaks and edits have been taking me a while. Also I've been having to incorporate a little Java scripting. (My brain hurts now.)

Basically what I've created is a more fully automated upgrade requisitioning system (which, for story purposes, will only be for the Rebels, initially). Those requisitions won't come in until the rebel manages to get a freighter (GR-75s are best!) past the Imperial Navy. And even then, there will be a chance the rebel agents will not have succeeded in procuring the goods on the black market. There are few certainties in the life of the Rebels.

The Empire has more certainties. The first certainty is that the Imperial wing commander has TIEs. Lots of TIEs.

Those Academy pilots will get better over time (1 PS per mission flown), and at PS4 pilot will get a elite talent slot. If the Imperial wing commander proves himself adequate in the field, then he will also earn the opportunity to send his PS4+ pilots to trainings in order to learn those elite talents. Once learned, the pilots will have those talents permanently. Lost TIEs will be replaced (with pilots fresh from the Academy) once the carrier pulls into its base and takes on replacements. Again, if the Imperial wing commander proves successful, he may be allowed to requisition superior fighters.

If the Imperial Wing Commander proves unsuccessful, the Empire may have to hire bounty-hunter scum to fulfill the mission at hand.

Also, I have the webspace, with the link: here .

For whatever reason, I don't have FTP access to my server at this point, so I can't upload my latest, but I can incorporate people who want to register with me by PM, and look around.

In order to register, I will need to know the following:

What your Wing Commander's name is (this will be your username),

What your preferred password is,

And who your opponent will be. (That opponent will have to also register with me.)

This, just like XMG, is a two-player game, after all.

Okay, that's the latest.