Hi guys,

I'm currently working on an extensive PvP campaign, and I wanted to run my solution for a common campaign problem by you.

My impression is that in most PvP campaigns that include some version of a player economy or progression over time, there is the possibility that one player can accumulate enough strength, either economically or otherwise, that they practically cannot be defeated. I call this the 'steamrolling' effect. It often derives from giving players material rewards for victories, as an incentive to win individual games. Strength leads to strength, power leads to power, and so on. It's the side-effect of an economic campaign model.

Often the economic campaign model is based on territory control; a hex board or some similar map with strategic assets is fought over.

It's a natural campaign model, because it might mirror real-world strategic campaigns. The problem with the economic campaign model isn't that it leads to one player winning, but rather that success breeds success, and often the other side is made continually weaker; failure breeds failure. The gradual whirlpool-slip of a campaign into a conclusion isn't necessarily fun (for either side!). What if one player achieves dominance halfway through the playthrough of a campaign?

But economic management of your forces, and/or pilot progression and customization can be a lot of fun, so I don't want to eliminate it from my campaign.

So instead of an economy-based victory, I'm trying to model my campaign as more of a race to the finish. Players still have economic control of their squadrons, their pilots become progressively more deadly (but also more expensive), but the campaign is won by reaching and winning a 'finale' battle first. To reach the finale, players need to win a pair of large-scale missions, which they can only access after winning several small missions. Players can still accumulate ships and pilots, but can only field a certain amount in each battle, limiting the power of a well-managed squadron economy in individual battles.

Any thoughts?

Well in theory you could have it so any planet can be attacked from any planet or something like that so the player with more planets has to spread his resources around more. I suppose that wouldn't work well either though. I've been trying to figure out how to do a territory based economy thing for x-wing as well, although different from how you are now pursuing it. I had the issue of having too many ships in a battle possihly making things slow or something

You could always just limit the amount of ships you can have in a battle. That can also mitigate or delay a steamroll problem, if not solve it.

I think that if you have players investing large amounts of time and thought into a campaign, they should have a realistic chance of victory right up until the last battle they play is finished. I like individual battles to be balanced, and a non zero-sum campaign overall.

There are a couple solutions to this issue. If you are doing a kind of grid control campaign then it kind of works itself out as the player with more territory has to spread resources in order to defend it where the player with fewer resources can mass units to achieve a local superiority anywhere along the front.

In a non-map campaign you can simulate this to some degree by giving the player with less power (by whatever measure you want to use) the strategic initiative by allowing them to choose scenarios that would favor their particular build. This would represent them taking a more guerilla approach and choosing to engage only when they have either the opportunity to a crippling blow or the battle is very much in their favor (like the rebels in EP IV-VI).

There are a couple solutions to this issue. If you are doing a kind of grid control campaign then it kind of works itself out as the player with more territory has to spread resources in order to defend it where the player with fewer resources can mass units to achieve a local superiority anywhere along the front.

In a non-map campaign you can simulate this to some degree by giving the player with less power (by whatever measure you want to use) the strategic initiative by allowing them to choose scenarios that would favor their particular build. This would represent them taking a more guerilla approach and choosing to engage only when they have either the opportunity to a crippling blow or the battle is very much in their favor (like the rebels in EP IV-VI).

Those could be ways to turn a tide against an economic steamroll situation. They could also lead to see-saw campaigns; I guess finding the right balance where it is possible to turn the tide but not easy would be what you would want to do to make those solutions work.

*One nice thing about the 'race to the finish' model I'm advocating is that you can make predictions as to how long a campaign will last, and adjust the length according to how long you want to play, by changing the requirements to reach the finale missions.

what i did for my campaign is that when you won you won about 40 points, and if you lost you'd still get 20points. with fleeing off the board and ejecting i found this to create only a slow trickle even if one person lost constantly.

Also capped the ships you could have at 450, so after that, you wouldn't gain anything more.

ejecting and fleeing allows a losing player to get something out of the mission but then get out before losing too much. pilots retain some pilot money for a free upgrade they can buy for only one misison (very temporary) and increases in PS. The tiny amount of increase are still highly sought after, but change the balance only a little.

what i did for my campaign is that when you won you won about 40 points, and if you lost you'd still get 20points. with fleeing off the board and ejecting i found this to create only a slow trickle even if one person lost constantly.

Also capped the ships you could have at 450, so after that, you wouldn't gain anything more.

ejecting and fleeing allows a losing player to get something out of the mission but then get out before losing too much. pilots retain some pilot money for a free upgrade they can buy for only one misison (very temporary) and increases in PS. The tiny amount of increase are still highly sought after, but change the balance only a little.

Yeah, there are replacement mechanics in the current draft of my campaign that are similar to what you're talking about.

Right now, you get 50% of your allotted points budget after you finish a mission, regardless of whether you win or lose. Pilots, ships, and upgrades can be recovered on a die roll after a mission (more easily if you won).

There is a limit on how many ships you can have that is based on the calculated cost of the ship without a pilot. This means that there is an upper limit to how many ships you can have, but you can level them up and have a better overall force if you are really good at husbanding your pilots and upgrades.

If you are giving material rewards on one side, this can be offset with experience points on another. In X-Wing, that could be upgrades for one player but more squad points for the other. In time both are beneficial. Not knowing how you have this structured affects how that would play out. Basically it is the effect of the winner getting the better spoils of war, but the surviving losers become better pilots because they learn from their mistakes.

I guess you could do that through upgrade and pilot points. Upgrade points can be spent on upgrade cards and Pilot points can be spent on pilot cards. If you awarded five points per match, this could be 4 upgrade points to the winner along with 1 pilot point (or 3/2), meanwhile the loser receives 1 upgrade point and 4 pilot points. The spread would be the part that would need to be looked at. If you went for 10 points, a 60/40 split might not be bad, but you might want 75/25... though you may have to figure out a maximum number and divide by sessions and then use that result to determine your split so you aren't dealing in half points.

You might have to figure out if EPTs counted as Upgrade or Pilot though... or both...

What I did here:

http://antipodeangaming.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/campaign.html

Is make campaign rewards worth in-game currency.

Or rather, winning a campaign game gives you more points to spend, but both players still have the same limit for each battle.

For example, each player has a pool of points and ships worth, say, 400 points. The more 'advanced' player who has better ships and has won more games has access to more gear. He can buy upgrades and EPTs etc. But for each battle, he can still only field 100 points of his pool. He has a definite advantage being that he can afford more flashy toys and his opponent has to run naked ships, but they both get an equal number of points for the battle so that advantage is limited.

I also built in an underdog bonus so when facing off against a less experienced squadron, the top dog has more to lose and the underdog has more to gain from winning.

In a non-map campaign you can simulate this to some degree by giving the player with less power (by whatever measure you want to use) the strategic initiative by allowing them to choose scenarios that would favor their particular build. This would represent them taking a more guerilla approach and choosing to engage only when they have either the opportunity to a crippling blow or the battle is very much in their favor (like the rebels in EP IV-VI).

I like the above idea about having the initiative - You could support this by having the imperial player allocate garrison and patrol forces to sectors trying to second guess the Rebel player... Also you could give the rebels a number of High risk- high gain missions to choose from where the imperial player would lose a significant amount of ressources if the rebels succeed but where the risk of faillure and loss of critical ressources is also high. This could be Death star -Yavin style missions, bombing runs on imperial yards - destroying inactive imperial ships being refitted, attacking Cymoon 1 style factories (From the 2015 Star Wars comic ) etc. The point is that ressources should have a different value for the different sides.

In a non-map campaign you can simulate this to some degree by giving the player with less power (by whatever measure you want to use) the strategic initiative by allowing them to choose scenarios that would favor their particular build. This would represent them taking a more guerilla approach and choosing to engage only when they have either the opportunity to a crippling blow or the battle is very much in their favor (like the rebels in EP IV-VI).

I like the above idea about having the initiative - You could support this by having the imperial player allocate garrison and patrol forces to sectors trying to second guess the Rebel player... Also you could give the rebels a number of High risk- high gain missions to choose from where the imperial player would lose a significant amount of ressources if the rebels succeed but where the risk of faillure and loss of critical ressources is also high. This could be Death star -Yavin style missions, bombing runs on imperial yards - destroying inactive imperial ships being refitted, attacking Cymoon 1 style factories (From the 2015 Star Wars comic ) etc. The point is that ressources should have a different value for the different sides.

Something I've thought about doing as a future project is a more 'realistic' asymmetrical campaign, where the rebels fight like rebels, and the imperials fight like imperials. It's not easy to design, but could be pretty fun if done right.

Combine it with a drinking game. The more you win, the more you drink. This not only has the effect of levelling the two sides over time, but also makes it more fun. This works for nearly everything in life.

As long as the winner wins in moderation.

Combine it with a drinking game. The more you win, the more you drink. This not only has the effect of levelling the two sides over time, but also makes it more fun. This works for nearly everything in life.

Haha; yeah it does, doesn't it? .... there's an incentive to win because you want to drink, but it is an equalizer because drinking makes you play worse.

The most successful of these types of campaigns for me has been the players on one team and the GM on the other. That way you can always handicap or "overspend" as necessary. When the players still want to duke it out, they are only running training missions or flight sims.

Another way to curb steamrolling is to make the winning players results more random. To break it down in Xwing terms: the winner only gets stuff on hits but the loser is "focused" on the next battle so they get better results when rolling randomly for spoils.

The most successful of these types of campaigns for me has been the players on one team and the GM on the other. That way you can always handicap or "overspend" as necessary. When the players still want to duke it out, they are only running training missions or flight sims.

Another way to curb steamrolling is to make the winning players results more random. To break it down in Xwing terms: the winner only gets stuff on hits but the loser is "focused" on the next battle so they get better results when rolling randomly for spoils.

GM is always an option, yep. I try to stay away from having a GM, so that everyone can compete directly against each other and no-one has a lot more work to do to keep the campaign running than anyone else.

Adding randomness into the win/loss rewards might curb steamrolling, too. I think that there are lots of ways to balance against steamrolling; I think the trick is folding those neatly into a victory condition... There should be a victory that all players are working towards, need to win missions to reach, need to be at least moderately careful with their ships to reach, etc.

I think the real thing to avoid is a zero-sum track to victory. If your victory is based on better economics than your enemy, that's probably zero-sum or very close.

If your path to victory in a campaign relies mainly on destroying or degrading the enemy's fleet by dominating economically, it's a problem, because you either have the steamroll effect, or if you rebalance on the fly against the steamroll effect you run the risk of setting up a see-saw.

Here's a little diagram of what I'm imagining:

[this is for a free-form campaign system only; a narrative campaign with a set mission tree doesn't have these problems]

Economic victory:

(rebel victory) Imperials ----------------------------------> <--------------------------------Rebels (imperial victory)

Either side's victory hinges on destruction of the other side. Destroying your opponent is the goal of the campaign. Too strong of a rebalance against steamrolling could produce a see-saw effect where players cannot practically destroy each other.

Race to the finish:

Imperials----------------->

[victory]

Rebels------------------------>

Players compete to reach the victory condition first, but do not need to completely destroy each other's forces to reach victory (they just need to win missions).

Over on the Armada board someone was asking about way we might use the new Rebellion board game (once it comes out) as a framing tool for Armada campaigns.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/199339-star-wars%E2%84%A2-rebellion-the-strategic-use-for-armada-tactical-campaigns/

I thought my comments were pretty good, so I thought I would repost some of my reply from there, here.

Difficult to say since we don't know a whole lot about Rebellion yet.

Using the Map and playing pieces for an integrated campaign is probably possible, but I doubt the actual Rebellion rules would be of much help, you'd need to design the campaign ruleset from scratch.

One possibility that Rebellion seems to have "mission cards". Its difficult to say right now without the rules yet, but it looks like a lot of the driving force in the board game is based on sending your leaders on specific missions, many of which will probably involve combat. A campaign where the players choose various missions to go on, with each mission being a scenario to play in one of the sub games could work. Give the missions set power levels (or even set lists) so that each sub game is fair with a chance for either side to win, but have progress and relative advantage on campaign map govern which player gets to choose the mission and what option are available to choose from. That way, progress in the overall campaign has an impact on the sub-games but you don't end up with one player regularly attacking 1-2 CR-90s with 5 ISDs.

I like the idea of campaign sub-games being specific scenarios instead of generic battles. Meaning that those games should be balanced by default (unless the scenario is MEANT to be unbalanced), with no warping of the probabilities based on overall campaign success.

Over on the Armada board someone was asking about way we might use the new Rebellion board game (once it comes out) as a framing tool for Armada campaigns.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/199339-star-wars™-rebellion-the-strategic-use-for-armada-tactical-campaigns/

I thought my comments were pretty good, so I thought I would repost some of my reply from there, here.

Difficult to say since we don't know a whole lot about Rebellion yet.

Using the Map and playing pieces for an integrated campaign is probably possible, but I doubt the actual Rebellion rules would be of much help, you'd need to design the campaign ruleset from scratch.

One possibility that Rebellion seems to have "mission cards". Its difficult to say right now without the rules yet, but it looks like a lot of the driving force in the board game is based on sending your leaders on specific missions, many of which will probably involve combat. A campaign where the players choose various missions to go on, with each mission being a scenario to play in one of the sub games could work. Give the missions set power levels (or even set lists) so that each sub game is fair with a chance for either side to win, but have progress and relative advantage on campaign map govern which player gets to choose the mission and what option are available to choose from. That way, progress in the overall campaign has an impact on the sub-games but you don't end up with one player regularly attacking 1-2 CR-90s with 5 ISDs.

I like the idea of campaign sub-games being specific scenarios instead of generic battles. Meaning that those games should be balanced by default (unless the scenario is MEANT to be unbalanced), with no warping of the probabilities based on overall campaign success.

I agree about the games being balanced each time, regardless of campaign progress or a player's success so far in the campaign. I think having scenarios rather than generic death match missions is important for immersion and to keep things interesting and strategic rather than purely tactical. Individual games should always be fair in some respect ( an unbalanced mission might still be 'fair' if different victory rewards counteract an imbalance in the scenario itself for example).

( an unbalanced mission might still be 'fair' if different victory rewards counteract an imbalance in the scenario itself for example).

Exactly.

In a 2-sided campaign that was trying to emulate the Rebellion vs Empire GCW setting of Star Wars, I envision each side having a different "deck" of missions (much like the Rebellion board game when it comes out), with each side trying to progress through various stages of missions to get to its final battle mission first, your "race to the finish" model.

In a multi-player free-for-all campaign that abandons some of the flavor of the SW setting in favor of a more symmetrical empire building campaign, I am thinking all the players would be accessing the same mission deck. Mission success translates to control of more territories on the map, which is presumable needed to win the campaign, but in any given match up the underdog has greater control over what mission gets played, representing the greater logistical control a smaller force/empire has. Still issues of steamrolling vs see-saw though.

My question to you is

Race to the finish:

Imperials----------------->

[victory]

Rebels------------------------>

Players compete to reach the victory condition first, but do not need to completely destroy each other's forces to reach victory (they just need to win missions).

This makes sense and all, but WHAT are the victory conditions in a "race to the finish" economic/territorial/map-based PvP campaign?

Well, the campaign I'm working on is a 4+ player, race to the finish (destroying the other side's bases), where both sides have access to the same mission deck.

The mission deck is also broken down into tiers of missions (mini, skirmish, raid, assault, finale). In order to access bigger missions like assaults, you need to play and win some smaller missions. In order to access a finale mission (where you can destroy an enemy base), you need to win a couple of assault missions. You can also play a counter-attack finale mission if you win a finale mission as the defender.

The idea being that as you play the large missions, you are weakening the defenses of or collecting intelligence on the location of the enemy base so you can attack it directly. I actually have finale missions for 7 different kinds of bases; mountain bases, underwater bases, asteroid bases, etc.

Players who have their bases destroyed are still able to play in the campaign, but will lose about half of their max capacity for ships and cannot attack enemy bases. The campaign ends when all bases in one side are destroyed.

I'm not sure how to set up a race to the finish territorial campaign.

So, just to make sure I understand.

If a player successfully progresses to a base destroying mission and then looses it, the base is not destroyed and the campaign continues. Does that player need to start over from scratch then, are they set back and need to redo the assault missions or can they just take another swing at the base?

It occurs to me that if a base attack is lost, the attacker might be allowed a second try with an "evacuation" mission. The attacker is put at a disadvantage (possibly simply be the defender having easier victory conditions, escape) but if he can win that scenario the base is still destroyed but if he looses a second time has to start over from scratch. Just a random thought.

Another problem I have always found with campaigns (particularly multi-player) is player availability. How many games are players expected to play in a given real world period and game based time period and how do you handle players who can't get in as many games as other players? Does each player play each other player once per campaign round or do they each just fight one player or is it variable. Who decides the match ups?

with your race to the finish format, is a player concentrating on finding each enemy base in turn (meaning he would be playing the same player repeatedly, which doesn't seem right) or are player forces bouncing all over the place (which seems like it would break the immersion of trying to locate and overcome a particular base)?

I've been trying to find a good wargaming campaign system for 26 years, ever since GW's original Mighty Empires set, and I've never found one that adequately addresses the issues being discussed in this thread.

If a player loses a finale as an attacker, they don't need to win two assault missions again to run another finale. They'll need to run a few small missions (each win gives points that you can spend to play big missions), So they can't just try again right away, but they don't lose all their progress either.

Your idea about evacuation missions is kind of interesting though. Right now, the finale missions that I have break down into two categories: evacuation and defense. Evac missions play out like the battle of hoth; you're buying time for transports to get away. Defense missions are more like the battle of yavin: stand and fight. Right now, the type of mission that you play in a finale (as the defender) depends on the type of base you pick at the start of the campaign. Each base type has either a defense or evac mission. I'm thinking about giving the defenders a choice whether to evac or defend, but then I need to write double the finale missions.

One nice thing about the race format is that you can adjust the campaign length by adjusting the requirements to reach finale missions. Right now I require 2 assault wins to access a finale. My estimates place campaign length at around 40 games per player for a 4-player campaign, with the 2-assault win requirement. But you can easily reduce that length by requiring only 1 assault win, or removing the assault win requirement altogether. I think the 0-assault win campaign would last around 10 games per player.

In the race format, as written now, the way finale missions become accessible is when a player loses two assault missions against any combination of enemy players. One a player loses two assaults as the defender, they are vulnerable to finales (their base can be attacked). Teams would naturally concentrate their assaults on one player, but the smaller missions leading up to that could be against any enemy player. This is actually one thing I am not satisfied with, but haven't come up with a better alternative to.

I'm on a phone right now, so I'm not going to give a link to the draft of the rules yet, but here is a section from my rules draft about the campaign missions system. ' CPs' are campaign points; which you gain from successful missions and spend to access mid-to-high tier missions.

"Each type of mission has a cost to play and a reward for victory, which is measured in ‘Campaign Points’ (CP). CPs represent the amount of intelligence gathered, military damage and political pressure you have exerted on your enemy. You’ll need a lot of CPs to access the missions that might bring an end to the campaign.

There are many specific missions that can be selected, such as “Supply Run”, or “Junkyard”, but they can all be categorized into five basic types of mission that can be played. They are:

Mini-missions:

~50 point battles.

Cost:0CP

Victory reward- 1CP to the winner

Mini-missions are the only mission that can be picked without changing the faction initiative over. (It does not use up a player’s mission pick to play). Mini missions can only be played if both players agree to play a mini mission.

Skirmishes:

~100 point battles

Cost: 0CP

Victory reward- Choosing player: 2CP

Victory reward- Non-choosing player: 0CP

Skirmishes are a low-risk selection for a player to make. They cost nothing to play, and carry a low risk to your squadron’s well-being. The payoff is modest, but there is also no risk of the enemy benefitting from a win.

Raids:

~150 point battles

Cost: 3CP

Victory reward- Choosing player: 8CP

Victory reward- Non-choosing player: 2CP

Raids are risky missions, but can be worth the risk. Raids cost 3CP but yield 8CP if you win, which is a respectable 5CP conversion. However, if you lose, the enemy gains 2CP! Be careful choosing when and which raids you play.

Assaults:

~225 point battles

Cost: 8CP

Victory reward- Choosing player: 4CP

Victory reward- Non-choosing player: 2CP

Assaults are large-scale battles that are costly in terms of CPs even if you succeed, and put a large portion of your squadron at risk. However, once a player has lost two assault missions as the defender, they can be targeted for a ‘Finale’ mission.

Finale:

~300-400 point battles

Cost: 18CP

Victory reward- Choosing (attacking) player: 10CP

Victory reward- Non-choosing (defender) player: 4CP

Finale missions are enormous battles that have the potential to cripple a player permanently and move the campaign one step closer to its conclusion. It also carries serious risks for an attacker, however.

If a player loses a Finale as the defender, their maximum hangar capacity drops to a total basic ship cost of 200, instead of the normal 375. They may not play any more Finale missions, as the defender or the attacker.

If a player loses a Finale mission as an attacker, enemy players may target them for Finale missions.

Basically, you’ll want to play a lot of Mini, Skirmish, and Raid missions early on to build up your CPs and level up your squadron, and then move into the heavy missions when you’re ready. Assault and Finale missions are expensive in every sense; they cost more CPs to pick than any other mission and their rewards for winning are not enough to cover their cost, and you will surely lose many ships and pilots in playing these missions.

Be careful to not rush into the Assault and Finale missions, but keep in mind that if your opponents spring a Finale mission on you first, you’ll stand a good chance of being knocked out of contention before you get a chance to do the same to them. It’s always better to be the first one to pick a Finale!"

when a player loses two assault missions against any combination of enemy players.

Interesting. Sounds like the goal of the campaign is less "the first person to win" and more "the last person to lose". Not sure what I think about that, but it is certainly unusual, I don't think I have ever heard of a structure like that before (at least, not in those terms).

My problem with a race style format is that players need opponent, and if each player wants to advance his own 'track' then he will be less willing to play games that are on his opponents track. For instance, if I and my opponent are both one game away from our finale, then who's game do we play? No matter which game we play, the other player feels like he lost due to an arbitrary timing issue or dice roll rather than because he was out played.

Real life and real life politics too often get in the way when there are prescribed scenarios to play. Especially if those scenarios need to be fought against particular opponents. I know if my roster is being unkind, I can be out of action for a couple of weeks and it's not fair that the whole campaign grinds to a halt because one player needs to run a finale game against me.