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.

This is a pretty insightful and valid criticism; this is something I have also thought about and have some mechanisms in place to counteract. As far as picking missions, the two main factions in the game alternate picking missions, so there will be an equal distribution of missions run by either side. It's not so much an arbitrary timing thing as it is a regular rule in place for the whole campaign.

As far as players being sore losers and opting out, that is a lot harder to regulate. right now, the steps to setting up a game are:

Find opponent

See which faction it's turn it is to pick a mission

Pick mission

Build lists

Play mission

Update rosters

So your opportunity to deny playing comes before you actually see who is choosing the mission and what mission it will be. But a bad player could abuse the system by never agreeing to play while the other team has the mission pick. That will be something to try to prevent by good rules writing.

If I might suggest my friend, Mordheim and Necromunda had bonus XP being awarded to the underdogs of a game, maybe some effect like this? A player with less wins under his belt gets reinforcements from base equaling whatever you are using?

If I might suggest my friend, Mordheim and Necromunda had bonus XP being awarded to the underdogs of a game, maybe some effect like this? A player with less wins under his belt gets reinforcements from base equaling whatever you are using?

We do have an underdog xp bonus for squads that have fewer squad points than the enemy. A little tricky to implement in scenarios where the two sides have different point budgets, but doable I think.

Well, if the overall point budgets are compared, maybe work out a percentage based bonus depending on the gap?

Exactly. The two games I've seen with 'structured' campaign mechanics that I've played a lot are both GW ones - Blood Bowl and Necromunda.

Necromunda is a perfect example of the steamroller effect. I've seen a campaign where one player only made it every few weeks, and by a couple of months in, his gang was literally target practice.

Blood Bowl, by comparison, works very well. Because of the 'inducements' rule, you get a one-off 'payment' of the difference in gold value between your team and the opponents, which can be used to hire in additional 'grunts' as mercenaries, 'star players' to match your opponent's elites, and 'dirty tricks' to match your opponent in other ways.

I'd consider something similar - your opponent gets to increase their squad with extra men, or improve pilots, or whatever, but the other player gets to make up the difference in points with academy pilot or bandit squadron pilot 'reinforcements'...

Exactly. The two games I've seen with 'structured' campaign mechanics that I've played a lot are both GW ones - Blood Bowl and Necromunda.

Necromunda is a perfect example of the steamroller effect. I've seen a campaign where one player only made it every few weeks, and by a couple of months in, his gang was literally target practice.

Blood Bowl, by comparison, works very well. Because of the 'inducements' rule, you get a one-off 'payment' of the difference in gold value between your team and the opponents, which can be used to hire in additional 'grunts' as mercenaries, 'star players' to match your opponent's elites, and 'dirty tricks' to match your opponent in other ways.

I'd consider something similar - your opponent gets to increase their squad with extra men, or improve pilots, or whatever, but the other player gets to make up the difference in points with academy pilot or bandit squadron pilot 'reinforcements'...

That sounds like a decent balance against a steamroller effect. But, depending on how the campaign is supposed to be won, you would have to be careful about setting up a see-saw campaign that never ends. If the goal of the campaign is to annihilate the other side, you need to be really careful about that sort of thing.

How is campaign victory handled in a blood bowl campaign? Are you trying to wipe out your opponent, or are you competing for a championship or something?

I think the best workaround we had was comparing the difference between how many points you brought and what your budget was..

So if you have 190 from a budget of 200, you're 10 under. If your opponent brought 150 from a budget of 175, they're 25 under and would be eligible for a bonus based on 15 points of difference.

My first blush reaction is I don't like making players calculate percentages, but it probably wouldn't be too hard for most people to do.

Just an idea, you could program in individual mission goals that give preset benefits or drawbacks to allies/opponents should they be completed, regardless of actual wins or losses. That gives players who may be behind the curve the chance to effect strategies to hamstring their more "powerful" opponents, and what's more it puts the correction in the hands of the player, making them feel they've overcome potent odds thanks to nothing but their individual skill and ingenuity. For instance, say there's a comm relay in the battle that is controlled by the steamrolling player. Sure the weaker player may lose, but if they can take out that relay then the next game the opponent can't call in reinforcements, so they're squad total is 20 points less or something. Obviously individual balances must be made by you since you know what your game is looking like at that point.

Try toying with game format.

epic aces are cool at 100, get weaker at 120 and get swamped in dice at 150

see someone steamrolling? Alter the course and laugh manically.

don't tell players the order of missions, it must always be a secret present

give bonus cards for special achievments. Pilot survived with last ditch 1 hull point? GIVE THAT GUY A SPECIAL EPT

and so on

Also the funny thing about missions... 3 aces is lousy at defending a target vs say 4BZ.

2 aces is terrible at defense, good on offense.

Optimal ranges matter too.

Try toying with game format.

epic aces are cool at 100, get weaker at 120 and get swamped in dice at 150

see someone steamrolling? Alter the course and laugh manically.

don't tell players the order of missions, it must always be a secret present

give bonus cards for special achievments. Pilot survived with last ditch 1 hull point? GIVE THAT GUY A SPECIAL EPT

and so on

This is definitely something that'll be happening in my campaign. For one thing, all pilots will be starting at PS0, and working their way up from there. Also, the campaign mission structure is set up to require players to play objective-based missions of varying scales in order to win.

How is campaign victory handled in a blood bowl campaign? Are you trying to wipe out your opponent, or are you competing for a championship or something?

It has varied some over the years, but its some variation of a league. You play a number of games over a period of time and then win/loss records are compared to determine some number of players to play in an elimination championship.

something that just occurred to me after reading That One Guy's post, If you could structure each mission with multiple objectives, or have players choose or be assigned several objectives for a game, they underdog could be given more potential objectives to score than the steamrolling player. Say, each mission has a primary objective for each player, but then the underdog gets 1-3 additional, secondary objectives (depending on how outmatched they are). Each objective completed provides a campaign benefit, meaning that the underdog has a much greater potential for gain, if he can complete several of his objectives.

That would scale based on just how uneven the sides are and sounds more thematic and plausible than simply "Your behind, so here, have an extra 20 points". The only real problem would be coming up with enough, different objectives to be meaningful.

something that just occurred to me after reading That One Guy's post, If you could structure each mission with multiple objectives, or have players choose or be assigned several objectives for a game, they underdog could be given more potential objectives to score than the steamrolling player. Say, each mission has a primary objective for each player, but then the underdog gets 1-3 additional, secondary objectives (depending on how outmatched they are). Each objective completed provides a campaign benefit, meaning that the underdog has a much greater potential for gain, if he can complete several of his objectives.

That would scale based on just how uneven the sides are and sounds more thematic and plausible than simply "Your behind, so here, have an extra 20 points". The only real problem would be coming up with enough, different objectives to be meaningful.

I'd say that would be theoretically possible but practically speaking it sounds like a lot of work, and it could be difficult to define how much of an 'underdog' someone is. Also, in regard to the campaign victory condition, it might create a see-saw effect if you're operating on an annihilation victory model. It could be useful in a 'race to the finish' victory model, if there is a significant threat of your forces being degraded from attrition in the course of the campaign.

It's definitely cooler than a flat underdog bonus, although I think underdog XP bonuses for leveling up pilots are justifiable thematically. I'm just not sure how I can/if I want to add in a set of optional objectives for each mission in my ~20 mission library.

Right now I think the ideal model for a 'campaign metagame' is:

Race to finish victory

-players build to an attack on the enemy base. If the attack fails, the enemy can counter-attack your base.

-players who lose their base can still play and affect the outcome of the campaign (they could still fight battles to expose enemy bases to attack), but cannot mount attacks on enemy bases

-campaign ends when all bases from one side are destroyed

Flexible mission choice

-from a library of missions, generally requiring players to play small-scale missions in order to access large-scale missions but allowing many choices of small and large scale missions.

Significant economic pressure (forces players to be careful about wasting their pilots/ships),

-include some missions that can be played to relieve economic pressure (supply runs that give you a lot of ships/upgrades/pilots) [this is an anti-steamroll measure]

-STREAM OF THOUGHT ON TRYING TO PREVENT PLAYER ABUSE OF CAMPAIGN SYSTEM-

One thing I definitely want to figure out is a non-obtrusive mechanism to prevent players in the campaign from being tempted to game the matchmaking system.

Right now, players set a date to play, determine who gets to pick what mission they play, pick the mission, build lists, play, and update the books.

I could see players who fear that they will lose their base soon being tempted to game the system, and try to only play missions when they will be able to pick the mission, thus denying the enemy a chance to play an assault or finale mission to finish them off.

Since the two sides in the campaign alternate picking missions, it would be easy to know when you would have the mission pick or not.

One option could be moving from a faction-based mission picking mechanic to a player-based one. (Each player alternates picking/not picking every time they play). Both factions would still be balanced in terms of how many picks they get, but there is a practical problem where if two players both have/don't have a pick and want to play, then there would need to be a tiebreaker.

Maybe I'll move to a hybrid picking system where players individually alternate picking/not picking, with ties being broken by a faction-level mission picking tracker thing.

-END STREAM OF THOUGHT-

I have a pretty solid campaign system and while it is quite a bit different than the one being discussed the following things I have found are probably pertinent. I put it together for similar reasons I suspect - 100 point battle with an optimised list where most everything dies can get a little sterile and not very thematic where named pilots drop like flies.

One thing we did do is drop the 50 point small battle limit to 48. At 50 points you can have Whisper, Poe, Luke and a few other aces at or near their optimal configuration plus a 12 point blocker. Large ships (if they are allowed) also have to shed some upgrades.

Variety in scenarios

Variety in the scenarios is important as it should translate creates list variety if this is what you are aiming for. Depending on how the scenarios are constructed this may also breakdown meta list.

Fleeing / Ejection Mechanics

Fleeing mechanics are good so that a player that is losing doesn't feel compelled to chuck assets away in a losing cause. May not be important for your system depending on how points are tracked but if a losing player can salvage something it tends to feel less like a loss. Ejection mechanics can keep named pilots alive and make the eligible to best rescued via missions or returned as a reward campaign success.

Limiting Named Pilots

May not be at all relevant or useful but with my campaign you get 4 named pilots. There is no experience points or tracking like that. If a generic pilot gets a kill, completes an objection etc you can add a named pilot to your list. Limit of one promotion per scenario. A relatively simple way of rewarding success without an overhead in tracking and little interruption to a flow of the game. Also breaks down some meta lists eg Palp + 2 Aces. Something will die and won't be back next battle. Also makes committing Aces to a battle a strategic decision.

Small Bonuses or Semi-useless ones

Steamroller effect is important to prevent but some little bonuses can provide some colour. Some simple list building bonuses such as "You can build a list to 102 points as long as at least 4 points of missles, bombs or torpedoes are carried."

I really like this idea and I think I have some thoughts on the matter.

For one, the problem that I have found to be the biggest in any campaign system is that one side gets so many benefits that they just steam roller the others. If they get a point bonus in a match then it's hard for the defender to come back from that. So, I don't recommend winning to give a player bonus points.

Another problem could be that one side's aces get too powerful and no one can defeat them. For that, I think there has to be a decent mechanic to kill a pilot for good. I can see a side that is losing a campaign to one ace can throw the mission to hurl everything to kill that ace. Yes, they lose the mission, but now have a chance in the greater campaign. It's like being able to take Soontir Fel out of the campaign for good to have a chance.

With that in mind, you do need to have a mechanic that can reward people for winning. Perhaps the winner gets to pick the next scenario type. Then, they can pick two missions that they want to run, but let the defender pick which of those two? That way it's not so heavily pushed on the defender at that point. Being able to assault a base requires so many victory points or control points, but you also need to win a match to be able to choose the assault mission. Someone on the defensive might be able to stall and play cat and mouse games if they can win a number of skirmishes as they fend off the attacker. Or....maybe you need to have a difference in VP's to make the assault? Only when you are so many VP's ahead of your opponent can you attack their base?

I might also suggest the missions have degrees of victory. Solid win gives max points. A win gives most to victor. Draw gives either both the same or none. This way a defender might just barely lose, but not make it a total catastrophe.

There is also the idea of spending VP's to get access to better ships in the game. Perhaps someone is doing well, but he spends 2 pts to be able to get Tie Defenders into the campaign. Maybe use VP's to unlock better options? Or maybe a set number of options, like 4 Tie Defenders. If those 4 are destroyed, then they are used up. This is explained by a side using necessary resources to further the campaign, but at a price.

You could also go with the idea of only having so many rounds. After that many rounds you count up the VP's. That would prevent it from going on un-ending.

Just some thoughts.

I have a pretty solid campaign system and while it is quite a bit different than the one being discussed the following things I have found are probably pertinent. I put it together for similar reasons I suspect - 100 point battle with an optimised list where most everything dies can get a little sterile and not very thematic where named pilots drop like flies.

One thing we did do is drop the 50 point small battle limit to 48. At 50 points you can have Whisper, Poe, Luke and a few other aces at or near their optimal configuration plus a 12 point blocker. Large ships (if they are allowed) also have to shed some upgrades.

Variety in scenarios

Variety in the scenarios is important as it should translate creates list variety if this is what you are aiming for. Depending on how the scenarios are constructed this may also breakdown meta list.

Fleeing / Ejection Mechanics

Fleeing mechanics are good so that a player that is losing doesn't feel compelled to chuck assets away in a losing cause. May not be important for your system depending on how points are tracked but if a losing player can salvage something it tends to feel less like a loss. Ejection mechanics can keep named pilots alive and make the eligible to best rescued via missions or returned as a reward campaign success.

Limiting Named Pilots

May not be at all relevant or useful but with my campaign you get 4 named pilots. There is no experience points or tracking like that. If a generic pilot gets a kill, completes an objection etc you can add a named pilot to your list. Limit of one promotion per scenario. A relatively simple way of rewarding success without an overhead in tracking and little interruption to a flow of the game. Also breaks down some meta lists eg Palp + 2 Aces. Something will die and won't be back next battle. Also makes committing Aces to a battle a strategic decision.

Small Bonuses or Semi-useless ones

Steamroller effect is important to prevent but some little bonuses can provide some colour. Some simple list building bonuses such as "You can build a list to 102 points as long as at least 4 points of missles, bombs or torpedoes are carried."

I'm right with you on variety in scenarios. Especially in a campaign, where players should be thinking strategically in addition to tactically. In my campaign I'm aiming for 20-30 unique missions of various scales.

About unique pilots:

I definitely agree with the general sentiment of limiting named pilots in some way in the campaign.

My personal solution is a bit more extreme than a death/recovery mechanic, or limiting the number of unique pilots available (although these are perfectly good mechanisms). I definitely will have death/recovery mechanics in my campaign.

What I plan is to get rid of both the named pilots and generic pilots supplied by FFG, and the EPT system, and replace it with a system where each player builds their pilots up from scratch as the campaign progresses. EPTs and unique pilot abilities are replaced with a pilot ability system that separates pilot abilities by flavor, into broad categories that are accessible by certain types of ship (bombers get access to bomber-type abilities, interceptors get access to fighter jockey-type abilities). Pilots can obtain these abilities as they level up.

I really like this idea and I think I have some thoughts on the matter.

For one, the problem that I have found to be the biggest in any campaign system is that one side gets so many benefits that they just steam roller the others. If they get a point bonus in a match then it's hard for the defender to come back from that. So, I don't recommend winning to give a player bonus points.

Another problem could be that one side's aces get too powerful and no one can defeat them. For that, I think there has to be a decent mechanic to kill a pilot for good. I can see a side that is losing a campaign to one ace can throw the mission to hurl everything to kill that ace. Yes, they lose the mission, but now have a chance in the greater campaign. It's like being able to take Soontir Fel out of the campaign for good to have a chance.

With that in mind, you do need to have a mechanic that can reward people for winning. Perhaps the winner gets to pick the next scenario type. Then, they can pick two missions that they want to run, but let the defender pick which of those two? That way it's not so heavily pushed on the defender at that point. Being able to assault a base requires so many victory points or control points, but you also need to win a match to be able to choose the assault mission. Someone on the defensive might be able to stall and play cat and mouse games if they can win a number of skirmishes as they fend off the attacker. Or....maybe you need to have a difference in VP's to make the assault? Only when you are so many VP's ahead of your opponent can you attack their base?

I might also suggest the missions have degrees of victory. Solid win gives max points. A win gives most to victor. Draw gives either both the same or none. This way a defender might just barely lose, but not make it a total catastrophe.

There is also the idea of spending VP's to get access to better ships in the game. Perhaps someone is doing well, but he spends 2 pts to be able to get Tie Defenders into the campaign. Maybe use VP's to unlock better options? Or maybe a set number of options, like 4 Tie Defenders. If those 4 are destroyed, then they are used up. This is explained by a side using necessary resources to further the campaign, but at a price.

You could also go with the idea of only having so many rounds. After that many rounds you count up the VP's. That would prevent it from going on un-ending.

Just some thoughts.

Partial victory rewards might be do-able on a by-mission basis.

Overall I think the motivation for winning each individual mission should be either moving you closer to defeating an enemy squadron, or occasionally a material benefit that can replace your losses - I think there should be economic pressure on players, so that they feel the need to spend their pilot's lives wisely, but that it shouldn't be the deciding factor in the campaign unless you let things get out of hand. Economics should be a significant but manageable problem for players, I think.

In a campaign that requires you to utterly annihilate the enemy, you often pass the point where the campaign is decided before the campaign ends, which sucks. The system I'm proposing should ensure that players are playing in balanced games right up until the finish of the campaign, and there is always a real chance that you can ****** victory from the jaws of defeat (if an attack on you base fails, you get a chance to strike back at the enemy base).

That idea of a limited economic impact in the campaign pairs well with my 'race to the finish' design, which doesn't even require any sort of economic damage to the enemy for you to win. You just need to keep winning missions in order to win. With a pilot death/recovery system in place, you need to pay attention and not throw away your pilots, so that you don't run out. With a pilot leveling system also in place, experienced pilots can become a commodity all their own.

In the BFG campaign you had sub-plots that could score you extra points in addition to your actual scenario objectives. They were things like launch a boarding action on a particular ship, shoot a particular ship with another ship, etc.

In X Wing you could include a similar thing. Each player has a secret objective in addition to their regular ones, and they could be things like 'make one of your ships acquire a target lock on a particular ship' or 'make sure a particular ship of yours surives' or even 'make sure a particular enemy ship survives'.

They can be a great way for the underdog to score points even while they're losing the mission.

And finally, I think the best way to end ANY campaign is with a massive, winner takes all battle. There are many ways to score a final battle of this kind, especially if you're incorporating campaign points or victory points. You could say that the side that has the most points AND wins the final battle is the winner. If a side wins the final battles but does NOT have the most points, then it counts as a minor victory.

Then you can have certain special missions run during the campaign that can affect the balance of the final battle, giving the dominant side better odds. But the important thing is that it isn't over until the fat lady sings. And more importantly than that, people will remember a huge epic battle that went all day much more fondly than a campaign that just peters out or finishes with a dry point-counting exercise.

Extra objectives might work, yeah.

As far as a final battle goes, I'm more or less on the same page as you. The final battle should be a huge blowout, and the outcome shouldn't be pre-determined.

I want to set up a PvP campaign system that can support more than 4 players total, so I didn't think that requiring a 4+ player blowout to end the campaign was.... responsible. My current model requires players to win a huge 'finale' battle to *knock out* another player from the campaign. If you launch one of these attacks and fail, the defender gets to respond in kind and gets a shot at knocking you out, so not only do you have to be careful about launching these missions, there is a lot at stake because if you screw it up, you might get knocked out yourself.

That counter-attack mechanic is also a great balancer and reason to keep fighting even if things aren't going your way in the campaign. You could screw up the majority of a campaign and still win.... if you can win two huge finale battles in a row.

The individual missions are all about building to those finale missions, and the incentive to win those missions is tied up in the fact that there is a huge advantage to getting the first attack on an opponent's base (because you get the chance to destroy their base and prevent them from destroying yours).

I'm not a huge fan of knocking players out of the campaign altogether. It can leave a bad taste in a players mouth, and some players can feel victimised if they get knocked out early. Also, if you have one or two players who are just really good, then they're just going to knock everyone else out sooner or later and it's just a waiting game to see how long it takes.

I think leaving everyone in the campaign right up until the last minute works a lot better because people still feel like they've got some skin in the game until the last minute.

I also think teams work a lot better than individuals. Logistically, teams are easier to work with since anyone on team A can play anyone on team B, and when you factor in work, family and other real life commitments it makes the campaign flow a lot more smoothly if you're not all waiting for Tim and Bill to play their match, while Tim is on three weeks holiday and Bill is doing night shift for the next four weeks after that, as an example. And thematically it makes more sense to just have Rebels, Imperials and Scum. It can be a bit off, thematically, to have an Imperial player effectively step over the rebels, to attack another Imperial player. Imperials should fight rebels, and vice versa.

I'm not a huge fan of knocking players out of the campaign altogether. It can leave a bad taste in a players mouth, and some players can feel victimised if they get knocked out early. Also, if you have one or two players who are just really good, then they're just going to knock everyone else out sooner or later and it's just a waiting game to see how long it takes.

I think leaving everyone in the campaign right up until the last minute works a lot better because people still feel like they've got some skin in the game until the last minute.

I also think teams work a lot better than individuals. Logistically, teams are easier to work with since anyone on team A can play anyone on team B, and when you factor in work, family and other real life commitments it makes the campaign flow a lot more smoothly if you're not all waiting for Tim and Bill to play their match, while Tim is on three weeks holiday and Bill is doing night shift for the next four weeks after that, as an example. And thematically it makes more sense to just have Rebels, Imperials and Scum. It can be a bit off, thematically, to have an Imperial player effectively step over the rebels, to attack another Imperial player. Imperials should fight rebels, and vice versa.

I basically agree with everything you're saying!

I should have explained a little better; when I say 'knock out', it's really more of a crippling, or taking a player out of the main contention, but leaving them with a sizeable force that can still make a difference to their team. And everyone would be in two teams; most likely Imperials and Rebels, with the option for individual players to play as scum and villainy mercenaries fighting for either side.

When a player loses their base in my current system, the maximum amount of ships they can have in their whole fleet roster drops to about half of what it would normally be. In the current draft, this might look like going from a roster with 30 TIE fighters to a roster with 15 TIE fighters. They can still play missions, and help their team by opening up enemy players to a 'finale' base attack mission, but they would not have enough ships to kill a base themselves. I'm debating whether they should be allowed to try to attack en enemy base in what would effectively be a suicide mission, or not. Like you said, completely knocking people out of a campaign would suck. But I don't think having one finale battle for the whole campaign is feasible, if I want to have more than 4 players.

To be clear, this system of 'finale' missions where individual players can lose their bases is a compromise. I think I would rather have a massive final battle to end the campaign, but I just think it would be a nightmare to organize, especially if I want it to truly feel like an all-in battle. Like I said earlier, players are going to have a lot of ships in their rosters, and I want the final battles to really feel all-in, and force you to bring a majority of your forces. That could easily end up being a 3,000 point battle if you had 6 or more players, which is bananas! (the people I have lined up for this campaign live in different areas, and we'd be playing over vassal for the majority of the time. I think a 3k point battle on vassal with 6 players might literally take 24 hours).

I would also have to drop the counter-attack mechanic, because as hard as organizing one battle like that is, it would be even harder to organize two. Losing the counter-attack mechanic means that the final battle has to be able to result in a campaign victory for either side. That might really screw with the incentive to reach that mission in the first place, which is supposed to be the driving force behind players wanting to win individual missions.

So that's why I went with the individual bases and individual 'finale' missions where you're attacking/defending a player's base. The advantages are that these missions are much more manageable, that every player gets to pick what kind of base they have (which is cool), and I can have the counter-attack mechanic, which I think preserves the incentive to attack an enemy base and allows players to make last-minute comebacks.

I want there to be real consequences for losing your base, but I'm probably flexible on what those consequences should be. It made sense to me that you could retain about half your total force, and should be able to contribute to your team's chance for victory, but in a diminished way.

I think there are a lot of things you can do with scenarios. There is the idea of having a huge number of scenarios, just to keep things from getting boring, but there are other options, as well. You can make some scenarios quite varied in how they are set up. This means you can have fewer scenarios, but perhaps they play out differently each time. Give players multiple starting points or a variety of where to place objectives (asteroids, debris, or specials). That might mean you can have fewer scenarios with a greater variety.

The scenarios, themselves, can have built in tasks with them. You can throw in multiple objectives or tertiary objectives that can still give a side points if they lose. As in, "they destroyed the shuttle, but we captured the beacon. So, they get 3 pts and we get 2". Or...you can have a deck of secondary objectives that each player gets to pick one secretly before the match. Things like "kill the highest PS enemy" or "destroy someone with ordnance" or even "pick one enemy ship and don't destroy it as it's a spy". These can give you bonus points and liven up scenarios in different ways.

Oh.....each player has their own base and they can lose it? Hmm....I've always found you get better participation when you really lump all the players on a side together. As soon as someone loses their base, their desire to participate tends to wane and it's harder to actually get them into games. I'd probably have one base per player, but some sort of overall economy for each side.

I think there are a lot of things you can do with scenarios. There is the idea of having a huge number of scenarios, just to keep things from getting boring, but there are other options, as well. You can make some scenarios quite varied in how they are set up. This means you can have fewer scenarios, but perhaps they play out differently each time. Give players multiple starting points or a variety of where to place objectives (asteroids, debris, or specials). That might mean you can have fewer scenarios with a greater variety.

The scenarios, themselves, can have built in tasks with them. You can throw in multiple objectives or tertiary objectives that can still give a side points if they lose. As in, "they destroyed the shuttle, but we captured the beacon. So, they get 3 pts and we get 2". Or...you can have a deck of secondary objectives that each player gets to pick one secretly before the match. Things like "kill the highest PS enemy" or "destroy someone with ordnance" or even "pick one enemy ship and don't destroy it as it's a spy". These can give you bonus points and liven up scenarios in different ways.

I'm going to play around with modular missions/objectives a little bit and see if it's feasible. I like the idea in theory, though. It could amplify the variety in missions without a lot of work.

Oh.....each player has their own base and they can lose it? Hmm....I've always found you get better participation when you really lump all the players on a side together. As soon as someone loses their base, their desire to participate tends to wane and it's harder to actually get them into games. I'd probably have one base per player, but some sort of overall economy for each side.

Having a shared economy on some level is an interesting idea, although I would hesitate a little at giving everyone access to the same points account, because that may lead to ugly arguments over who is spending/contributing the most if there are limited resources.

There needs to be a strong incentive to protect your base. I was thinking that the incentives should be 1. You lose a lot of ships, upgrades, and pilots if you lose your base. 2. You can't (realistically?) attack an enemy base after you lose your base. 3. Your maximum amount of ships is cut in half. And 4. Your team loses if all its bases are destroyed. (Also 5. If you win, you can counter-attack the enemy base).

Ideally, players should feel like they are still 'in' the campaign after they lose their base, but they should desperately want to avoid losing their base. It's a psychological question in a lot of ways. Would the fact that your team is closer to defeat make you fight desperately to protect your base, or would you need the extra motivation from the other incentives I listed or some other incentive you can think of? And, would you lose interest in the campaign if the max size of your fleet was cut in half and you couldn't destroy anyone else's base anymore (but could still fly the missions necessary to pave the way for a teammate to attack an enemy base)?

I'm not a huge fan of knocking players out of the campaign altogether. It can leave a bad taste in a players mouth, and some players can feel victimised if they get knocked out early. Also, if you have one or two players who are just really good, then they're just going to knock everyone else out sooner or later and it's just a waiting game to see how long it takes.

I think leaving everyone in the campaign right up until the last minute works a lot better because people still feel like they've got some skin in the game until the last minute.

Also, maybe the multiple individual-player bases system should only be used in campaigns with over 4 players, since the main reason I cooked it up was to support a campaign with that many people.

I like where you're heads at. I reckon you're going to come up with a really great campaign, just make sure you share it here for the rest of us!