Building a Campaign

Note: Work in progress...

ALiVE excels when it comes to building large scale dynamic campaigns. Instead of a single, short, highly scripted linear mission, an ALiVE campaign consists of multiple missions played over several sessions with progress automatically tracked and saved to the War Room. This short demo is based on a popular campaign created for VOLCBAT that ran for over six months on Reshmaan province. It covers campaign planning, the technical build and also an example of the Op Orders and Reports written by the participants as the campaign progressed. It assumes you already know the basics of mission editing.

The process, in short, is deceptively simple: think up a vaguely credible scenario, plonk some ALiVE modules and press go. It takes about an hour to do the whole thing from scratch and uses no scripting other than what ALiVE provides out of the box.

Campaign Planning

The first step is to define the context for your campaign.

1. Pick a map. Check the list of Supported Maps to ensure it works with ALiVE.

1. Think up a high level scenario and overall missions for both OPFOR and BLUFOR. The missions don't need a lot of detail at this stage e.g."OPFOR are invading because reasons; BLUFOR are counter attacking because NATO."

1. Choose one of the [Supported Factions] for each side of the conflict. These all have groups properly defined by you can also manually [Declaring Faction Mappings|declare faction mappings] for unsupported addons if you wish. Ideally you want 2 or 3 different Inf groups, Motorised, Mech, Armour and Air. AA, Snipers and other specialists are best configed as SF groups so you can control their numbers easily.

1. Work out a starting Order of Battle (ORBAT) for each faction. For example, OPFOR has 3 battalions of light infantry supported by 3 attack helicopters, 1 artillery battery and a special forces group. BLUFOR are a company of mech inf with 4 support helicopters and 2 fast jets for close air support. Jot this down on a notepad for reference. The player group and any supporting assets should be subset of the BLUFOR ORBAT. This is lends a lot of flavour and credibility to the campaign without needing mountains of text and also massively helps with tracking campaign progress later.

Preparation

Next up, create a mission in the editor.

1. As a minimum you need to place one playable unit and a marker named respawn_west as well as the [ALIVE (Required)] and [Virtual AI System] modules.

1. Place down an [Military Placement (Military Objectives)] and [Military Placement (Civilian Objectives)] with debug on. Hit Preview and screenshot the results. This provides a useful reference of all the Objectives on the map. If there are any massive gaps in areas where players are likely to go, you can fill them in with one of the premade [Military Placement (Custom Objectives)] like road blocks, field camps, heli FARPs either manually or using the Random Camps option.

1. Define [TAOR] zones on the map for each faction group. In the video example, I've placed 3 very large rectangles covering East, Centre and West of the map (coloured Orange, Red and Brown for easy reference) and a fourth Blue rectangle covering the start base for BLUFOR.

1. Place additional Mil Placement, [Military AI Commander] and [Military Logistics] modules, selecting the size/type/mission/supply level and TAOR/Blacklists as per the ORBAT you planned earlier for each faction. Run another debug preview and screenshot it - this provides a snapshot of the campaign start state and is helpful for writing Op Orders and INTSUMs.

1. Finally, place any supporting modules you want, such as [Combat Support], [Logistics Support], [ALiVE Player|Player Support].

Orders

No campaign is complete without a set of orders to provide context for players and some direction for what they need to do.

1. Make up a Mission Statement for your player group to kick things off. Note that "Missions" are not the same as "game sessions". It could take several sessions to complete a single Mission. A realistic way of doing this is to set a high level Commander's Intent and then break it down into specific missions and tasks for the player group to carry out.

“Commander's Intent

Dominate the AO. Maintain Patrol Bases at strategic locations in order to limit OPFOR movement throughout the province with the aim of pacifying the area. Maintain control of the Main Highway in order to allow movement of traffic N-S through the Reshmaan Valley.

Mission

Patrol within boundaries to find enemy locations and determine strengths and dispositions

Tasks

• Conduct clearance patrols within 1km of the Forward Operating Base
• Recce enemy locations and determine dispositions immediately North and West of the FOB
• Conduct route clearance up to 5km from FOB, concentrating on bridges and vulnerable points
• Identify suitable locations for Observation Posts, Patrol Bases, Veh Check Points and Defensive Strong Points”

'Main Effort

Defence of the Forward Operation Base

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1. Each Mission consists of a number of patrol tasks for the player group, which you can add with the Task Manager from the [Command & Control] module.

1. Setting boundaries and a Limit of Exploitation is important for controlling the mission and preventing players going to areas that aren't ready yet.

4. Op Orders, SITREPs and INTSUMs pretty much write themselves. For a regular month long campaign you'd only need one and just update Taskings occasionally to move things along. Getting people to write patrol reports also helps (latest ALiVE now has persistent Reporting in game for this, sadly not yet exported to the website but it's coming).

Tweaks

1. As the campaign progressed I made a few tweaks. Mostly this involved reducing the Mil Placement group levels (cos persistence wasn't working properly) and increasing the BLUFOR TAOR to simulate A Coy expanding our zone of control. Updating missions in this way takes all of 5 mins tops.

2. Keeping a record of player gear if you don't want or don't fully trust Persistence to work is easily done on a spreadsheet or forum post (see the LOGSITREP posts). This can also be an good way of limiting some kit for a period of time.

If we did this as a regular campaign, I think it'd be fun to get a couple of people to play an Int Cell. It'd be their job to build up a picture of enemy dispositions and activity from patrol reports, and suggest appropriate Tasks to HQ.