Campaign Series-CS SCENARIO DESIGN, A SHORT GUIDELINE

This article is a short guideline for those who would like to design custom scenarios. I based the article on my own experience as a designer. The set of guidelines is basically the “best practice” of the scenarios I designed over the past few years. The technical know how and issues of scenario making are not described in this article; you may find them in the manual.

First Step: Finding The Battle.

Before you can design anything, you will need to know what kind of a battle you would like to transform into a scenario. A scenario can find it’s source in the fantasy of your own mind, it can be an historical battle, or it can be a hypothetical battle based on historical dispositions. Personally I’ve only designed scenarios on purely historical events. So I will limit myself as such in this writing.

It is not always easy finding historical battles suited for a CS scenario. Pressing historical significant battles into scenarios just like that, usually doesn’t work out. A good way, as one of the members once said on the message board is: “to let the scenarios come to you” as you are reading historical sources, primary or secondary. Perhaps this is the most difficult part that can’t be taught in an article.

However once you got the inspiration and in your mind you’ve determined the historical time frame and the operational boundaries of your battle you can set out to do some hard work.

Second Step: Making The Map.

Map making is usually the most time consuming part of the scenario design, depending on the size of the map ofcourse. The best sources for a good map are historical topographical maps at a scale of 1:50.000 or 1:25.000. A scale of 1:100.000 may also still do the job, but you might miss some detail. In CS one hex represents 250 meters which means that 1cm on a 1:25.000 map is 1 hex, 1cm is 2 hexes on a 1:50.000 and 4 hexes on a 1:100.000 scale map. If you can’t get a hold on historical maps, contemporary maps may do the job too. Knowledge of the area would be helpful as one always has to question himself “Did this highway exist back then? Was this village not smaller in 1944? Was there a bridge at this spot?” Getting the right maps is often the hardest part. A message on the Blitz Messageboard might help if you can’t find what you are looking for. A good way of getting maps is simply buying them. If one is prepared to spend money for a scenario that is. For Westfront scenarios in Europe you can get probably any contemporary map you wish. Historical maps are a different matter, but a lot of Topographical Services in various countries sell reprints of WW2 era maps. If you have the right printed map, all you need is a ruler and you can get to work. Basically there is nothing to it. A good method is, to start with the towns on the map and place them. Other things you’d have to consider are the “base elevation” and the difference in meters between elevation levels called “delta”. For example in my Ardennes scenarios I use a delta of 20, while in scenarios in flat parts of Holland I use a delta of 4. Try to be consistent in the use of map labels. Personally I use different layout on labels for towns and villages, street names, forest and river names.

Third Step: The Order Of Battle

Making the OOB is nothing more than copying the information you have. Sometimes it is easy to find a correct detailed historical OOB, sometimes it can be really difficult to find what you need. Posting a message might help again. Most important guideline here is that you have be also consistent in your OOB names For example if you name officers with rank, then name ALL officers with rank, not just some; a mistake I often made myself in the past.
I held a poll once here on the Blitz asking to which level the members would like to have officers. Most of the people liked to see officers to at least battalion level, but preferably even to company level. It might not always be possible to find the officers names up to that level though, nor is it necessary to have so many officers. If you do manage to find all the names, it gives a nice feel to the scenario. My own “rule” is that I place every historical officer I can find in the game. More often than not it is easier to find the historical names of Allied officers, especially at lower ranks compared to German officers. Therefore I usually give the fewer German officers higher command ratings.

Fourth Step: Making The Scenario

Once you are satisfied with the map and the order of battle it is time to create the scenario itself. There are a number of things you need to keep in mind:

-Length

First you need to determine the approximate length of the scenario. It is here that you stumble on an issue that is already much debated on the message board. This issue being: What is the time span of an CS turn? The manual states that 1 turn is 6 minutes. If you try to follow that statement rigidly, you will probably find that it is nearly impossible to find any battles suited for scenarios at CS scale. Personally I developed the “rule” that CS turns are highly flexible, therefore 1 turn may represent anything between about 1 minute and one hour, depending on the action of the units. Another average, coming from “best practice” is to see one day of fighting as about 10-20 turns. Again no rigid rule here. A day of fighting might as well be 30 turns. CS doesn’t take into account the slow speed of things in real life, like soldiers waiting for orders, supplying, sleeping, stalemates on certain spots etc. If you utilize this best practice, you won’t have much problems finding the ideal length. You can recreate historical battles that lasted from one day upto battles of several days. It is even possible to recreate historical battles that lasted a few weeks, without having to assign a ridiculous number of turns. Main reason is that in CS you play only the combat action and the action directly needed for going into combat. This speeds up things a lot in comparison with real life. Unfortunately CS doesn’t have dynamic weather conditions, nor does it have both days and nights. In longer scenarios you are limited to a representation of daylight fighting only.

-Objectives

A number of things can be said about the placement of objectives. First: don’t scatter the map with objectives, but try to find out what the historical objectives were. Usually these were villages, towns or important crossroads. Determining yourself which features in the landscape are important (hills etc) from a tactical point of view is not recommended. The players themselves will have their own tactical plan on a certain map. Exception is when certain features in the landscape were historical objectives.

Second: Objective Values. Bear in mind that objectives must be rewarding to the player capturing them. 50 points might be a minimum value. I’ve seen a lot of scenarios with objectives of 10 points or even less. Usually the players who tries to capture them suffers more losses than he gains by taking the objective. I recommend to use objectives between 50 and 500 points, the number of objectives and their value also depending on the size of the scenario. I you do decide to place even more valuable objectives, then be aware that the player might want to get them at all cost, thus sacrificing his entire force in one scenario. This might lead to unrealistic battles. In history units always needed to be able to fight another day.

When you place objectives it might be wise to spread them a little. For example if a village is worth 500 points, it might be wise to place 2 objectives of 250 points in that village instead of just one of 500 points. This way you reduce things like the advantage of the last turn, especially in smaller sized scenarios.

When you finished the Scenario file you are ready for testing. A way of initial testing is playing “hotseat” against yourself to clear out the first bugs. After that it is highly recommend to start testing against some human opponents, primarily to get the right balance. Balance is usually achieved by victory conditions, length and objective values. Altering the OOB in order to achieve balance is not recommended. A good instrument to help you in the testing phase is the Blitz’ H2H productions section. People will test the game for you and write a test report that might give you some hints you would otherwise never have thought of. Be aware though that these test reports are always subjective to some degree.

Once you are satisfied with the test results you can upload your scenario in the Blitz depot and make everyone happy.

Have fun desiging!
By Huib