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[DBSights]

Ok, so the warmap.  The ideas are needed

Anyone feel free to suggest features / add topics to the discussion.  Main things I think we have to figure out are:

1. Web-based or stand alone app.

Both have advantages, the web-based one is good b/c there is no reason to remake what we already have, the stand alone is good because it could streamline the EIR experience significantly, making it easier to get into and manage.  ( Ex. See the map, click a company of yours and edit it, see a battle, engage the enemy, DL the battle files, and start EIR all w/o switching apps.  Gives possibility for a cool, unified, clean interface too.

2. Language to use.

Related to above, languages that you think are suited to this type of project and why they are superior to other choices.  I personally wouldn't mind using Java to try it out.

3.  Interface.

Black/ EIR Green/  What kind of colours or theme/tone of pictures do you want for the interface of the map.  What do you want the player to be able to do in the warmap.

4. Map.

Generally what do you want the map to look like.  More spartan w/ only the bare minimum for armies, or fancy graphics such as trees for forests and the like.

5. Information.

Statistics and pictures, cool stuff that the warmap provides such as individual territory/sector/region/country wins/losses/draws/games etc..

6. Details.

How to best display the information and draw the map.  What resolution is best for ppl.  Underlying data structures.  Rules for moving between sectors/attacking/defending.  Maps associated with sectors?  Best number of sectors.  Basically miscellaneous.

Some thoughts to open:

vector images for the map proper! Will give it a printed look and offers the right level of detail across many resolutions.

map squares divided into levels of zoom such as: Country  Territory  Region  Sector with stats for each

visible armies on the field with icons dependent on the doctrine/faction/rank of the player.  Clickable for additional information such as # and stats, maybe the name.

Dead armies respawn at a definite capital.  This capital's fall marks the end of the war.

buttons to auto zoom a player's companies

when hovering the mouse over a company, arrows appear to show where it can move.


UR TURN

[acker]

1: What's a standalone map mean?

2: English, with additional languages as additional options.

3: Background should be dependent on what side you are logged in as. The US might see the Stars and Stripes, the Wehrmacht might see the Imperial German Flag. When the British get implemented, they see the Union Jack, and the Panzer Elite sees the Nazi Flag (or maybe a basic rendition of a red background with the SS Sturmstaffel insignia put in).

4: The Map need topographical descriptions (to determine the conditions of the battle, whether in forest or mountain), a basic overview of who is where/Forces in the region, and, of course, reveals your ammo dumps/airfields.

5: See above. And the aggregate wins/losses of a particular area for the day.

6: I have no idea. I just know that controlling a road/major junction should cut off enemy forces.


An idea; cut-off companies should suffer accordingly. They shouldn't be able to gain resources (Unless they are Airborne, maybe Supply Drop should allow resupply for a higher CP price). Also, after 3 rounds (or days) without a breakout, 50% of thier vehicles should start with engine damage and a 25% reduction in health. After 5 days (or rounds), 50% of the vehicles should have engine damage, and 25% should have Engine Destroyed. The vehicles will, of course, still start with 25% off their health.

[acker]

Double post.

[DBSights]

a stand alone app is a .exe file

2. was more of programming languages, but great point, if we can get translations all the better.

I like the rest of your points, esp. the background dependent and the cutoffs.  Except w/ the current resources cutoffs from what?  I was thinking maybe cut off reinforcements could work for this or maybe cutting off roads makes it take longer for companies to move around.  Associated w/ this is the idea that there are routes of transportation which provide movement bonuses

edit: to ur edit.  vehicle damage is a cool idea, but we will have to see about its feasibility w/ fldash

[acker]

If a company is behind enemy lines (or the enemy encircles the company), the company should suffer penalties for resupply (like 75% of all daily resources lost), or should be completely denied the ability to resupply.

Also, the # of spaces a company can move in a turn should be determined by the # of halftracks (and, to a lesser extent, the # of tanks) that the company has.

[Bonte]

i am wondering what will the warmap be? will it start with the allies in the english channel and all allies have to play a dday map to invade, or the other dday landing site besides normandy that was ruled out (forgot its name)

Or will it start after dday with the allies having a foot hold....Will it contain britian? these are all questions that need to be answered. I think the warmap should use a java based deal because java can easily be incorporated into online based or stand alone apps down the line. Also maybe a map downloader....ex: i select to attack across the rhine, a map of the rhine (custom map) is downloaded if i didnt have it already and then the battle file is created.

[Tkaudi]

i am wondering what will the warmap be? will it start with the allies in the english channel and all allies have to play a dday map to invade, or the other dday landing site besides normandy that was ruled out (forgot its name)

Or will it start after dday with the allies having a foot hold....Will it contain britian? these are all questions that need to be answered. I think the warmap should use a java based deal because java can easily be incorporated into online based or stand alone apps down the line. Also maybe a map downloader....ex: i select to attack across the rhine, a map of the rhine (custom map) is downloaded if i didnt have it already and then the battle file is created.

making the launcher download maps is bad, but a map pack that includes all areas is a good idea just make it a exe that extracts on its own and host it on filefront that way eir doesn't spend the bandwidth on exporting it

[Bonte]

yea but that mappack would take 48hours to download and im sure my conn would cut out with 10seconds left leaving me screwed

[Migi]

I would like to see a stand alone map  with just with traditional tactical map markings just basically showing where our armies were forced to retreat or advance. I will link an example.

As for maps i think we should be limited to a set map pack of vcoh maps and approved customs. I think which map we are playing needs to be chosen by the by the launcher not the people playing as some favor one army or another and i could see this causing some disputes.

Here is a good sitution map, this one is real from the US 12th army, if one of these could be superimposed over a Union Jack forexample that would be awsome. I think there should be key maps that have to be won to advance, an example would be the taking of certain hills to advance through a valley section, thus granting armies a short repreive to maybe get a few wins defending a tough map to take when being over run.



I think the players should be able to roughly decide which way they want to go, but not actually pick the sector , just be able to click on the northeast section in the interface some how to allow us to decide to push this way or that way, but not pick maps of there choosing, except where they run into choke point maps as I mentioned above. just some ideas 

[Kolath]

In a perfect world, I would want the map to have the zoom and drag features of google maps.  I'm fine with it being just a color coded political map rather than a topographical (plus it would be easier to make).  If everything could be a standalone program, that would be cool, but since the devs have already invested so much time and effort into the web system, I'd say stick with a web-based warmap.

I think there should be a map downloader in the launcher, and I believe that is on the to-do list for the devs.  This would be great because it would make EiR much more user-friendly because no one would have to go to an external location to get map file and they would not have to install the map themselves.  Also, a map downloader ensures that everyone will always have the latest version of maps.  Now I know some of you are concerned about bandwidth, but honestly, maps are usually under 4 mb, if we had say 20 custom maps that would be 80 mb, which is not large at all.  I suppose it would be for dialup users, but then again they can hardly play the game.  But one possible way to ease bandwidth fears is to have the launcher include a list of available custom maps and the user could select which to install and keep up to date (much like how the firefox 2.0 extensions work).

[acker]

Map downloader is a good idea.

[rabbidhamster]

So far it seems like we are talking about players moving their battalions individually yes?  This will cause a lot of, shall we say, extra issues.  Besides determining movement we would have to figure out things like stacking, methods of communication, how to coordinate attacks with multiple battalions, what to do with a players battalion if they go on vacation (don't want to see it get cut off), what if you attack some one and they aren't available for days, just to name a few.   Imagine if WWII had been fought with each division working independently... it would have been a mess!    Individual movement and control would be fun but adds IMO, excessive complications.  I'd love to see it, but it would require ALOT of work to come up with a system that is somewhat clean.

Something simpler might be to abstract actual battalion positions.  When players agree to a battle the attacker can choose where on the map they will attack (this would determine terrain type).  A launcher could then choose a map within that type and the battle would begin.  The amount of terrain lost or taken over could depend on the number of units involved (one sector per player involved?).  encirclements etc could cause global penalties to the side it happens to. But should therefore be hard to complete.  There should also be a short time that allows for a 'breakout' before penalties are assessed.     
It may be possible to abstract players into 'army groups'  and give them zones of activity.  This would give more of an individual feel to the map

[Smithy17]

The warmap could actually give a use for unupgraded halftracks as fully mechanised companies could geta speed boost. Also there could be the option of buying trucks which you don't get in the battle but make your company faster.

[salan]

yea but that mappack would take 48hours to download and im sure my conn would cut out with 10seconds left leaving me screwed

and you would rather someone have to download the map pack while you wait for the game to start?

anyways my point about it being bad is a logistics one, the bandwidth is NOT free, this so far is a free MOD of a game.  To do anything that costs them money when they are not making anything in return as of yet, is silly to say the least.   Host the map pack with ALL maps needed on filefront, and make it part of the installation process when they first sign up or the war first starts. 

it is not a good idea to increase the download rate on the launcher unless you really want to start paying bandwidth costs that would incure.

[roflmao]

Hello DBSights. I am the one who is currently working on the warmap, any suggestions are welcome.

1. Currently it is a webapp, and I personally think it should be. All of EiR is managed on the web, it makes no sense to have the warmap (which is a key part of the whole modification) be offline, harder to handle.

2. I am currently using flash for the whole project, its what I know and seems to suit our needs. Flash will be client-side, and Javascript server-side.

3. Not sure yet . Personally I think EiR green would be wonderful, but I am sure there are a bunch of people who'd disagree.

4. Simple, but at the same time stylish. The more it looks like a actual ww2 map, the better.

5. Sure!

6. I don't think it is going to be fullscreen, you should be able to run it within the website. It's actually going to be relatively small.

a) Yes, most of it is in vector .
b) Yes

Rest are advanced features which should be included, but in the distant future.

Any help is greatly appreciated and welcome, keep on posting suggestions!

[Kolath]

I think the best bet for figuring out how to do the gameplay side of the warmap is to look at other web-based, map-based MMOs to see how they do it.  Purely web-based MMO strategy games have the advantage of being entirely stat based.  So battles can occur whether a person is present or not.  But with EiR, players obviously have to be present to play battles.

Therefore, I think our best bet might be to use an abstract system...

The Setup: A map of France, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany divided into sectors which can either be axis, allied, or disputed.  The outcome of battles affects the ownership of sectors on the warmap.

The Problem: If each company/battalion is tied to a specific sector, the game will be paralyzed by the difficulty of getting everyone together to fight specific battles between specific players.  It would just be a huge headache and would slow the pace of battles to maybe a few a week (not what we are looking for).

A Possible Solution: Player battalions not tied to specific sectors.  The allies and axis are able to launch attacks into enemy sectors that border their territory.  This could perhaps be controlled by elected commanders or some other mechanism.  But once an attack is launched, a battle is opened up for people to join.  The size of the battle would be determined in advance by a TBD mechanism.  Anyone can join the battle and then ownership switches on a victory for attackers, ownership unaffected on a victory for defenders, or ownership switches to "in dispute" if a draw.

The advantage of this type of system is that it would provide opportunities for a lot more games.  However, it is of course less realistic.  Though I think this is a case where gameplay > realism.

[roflmao]

Look, I don't know if the warmap is going to be used only for displaying, or for actually issuing strategical orders. The first version won't have any strategical orders at all.

Currently, I have the 4 countries you mentioned sectored (on a temp map), something you lot cannot see, dev's only . I will probably be replacing the current map but if strategical orders will be issued on the warmap, then logically batallions won't be tied to sectors.

Very first version will consist of the player choosing what sector to fight over. (no battalion movment)

[Kolath]

We should look into how these problems were overcome in previous services like Boneyards for Total Annihilation.  PhoenixWorx appears to be another TA web-based MMORTS.  Also, check out Dreamlords, a 2007 MMORTS that, according to wikipedia does base construction and purchasing through a web-app and battles through a client (sounds familiar...).  I wonder how they do it?

[DBSights]

hey dudes.

Thinking about movement around the map.

An idea is to handle the movement as an effective radius instead of fixed point to point moves.

What this means is that a company's movement factor (determined by its composition/abilites/etc ) changes the radius of a circle with the company at the center where it can attack/defend.  Call this its effective movement radius.

Basically, a company could move anywhere on the map though territory sectors that are directly linked and owned by its faction. However, in order to impose penalties on dead companys and prevent stalemates, this movement occurs over the period of 20 mins, during which time the company is locked from all actions.  It doesn't matter how far the company is moving, this time is static.  This way players can get around the map without undue delay and the opening battles of the war don't take long to start while also preventing endless stalemates where every attack is met by all the possible defence.

The effective movement radius of the company is the area in which a company can attack defend w/o incurring this penalty.  So if an attack occurs within a companies effective radius, it can be defended against.  This is also how the sectors that can be attacked are determined.

When a battle is initied, the defenders have a set amount of time to show, those that do defend, if not they are evicted, therefore a company must be close to assist or start a battle, but can move any where

What this radius means is that while company's can not respond fast enough to defend against attacks on the other side of the front, they can get there b4 that entire side is destroyed.

Attacks can use strategy such as cutting off an area, thus preventing reinforcement, b4 attacking or attacking poorly defended territories b4 the defenders can mobilize there.

Companies already there must fight it alone or retreat and wait for reinforcements. 

Also, this gives advantages to haveing a mechanized company past moving to the front.  These companies will be able to defend larger areas and attack more places as well.

srry if its not too clear, explain better later, gtg to work

[|-|Cozmo|-|]

to solve the problem of attacking players who are away, why not only show players who are online.

that way everybody will be able to fight.