Official SEOW

Hi Everyone,

For many years now I have been hugely entertained by taking part in SEOW campaigns set up by groups all around the world. Now that SEOW is largely functional, and with the impending "Manchuria Patch" boasting a large array of maps and important bug fixes, I feel as though it is time to take our experience to the next level.

SEOW can support simultaneous operations across many sectors and, with a little manual work, the sectors can be linked in various ways. To that end I want to open discussions on how we might embark upon a full-featured, multi-sector SEOW campaign set. Some things I would like to put on the table are

1/ rear-area industrial production (in one sector) supplying reinforcements to front line sectors
2/ regular hosting regardless of commander input (the war rolls on)
3/ forward spawning of flights (rapid airbase attacks)

I also want to concentrate on quality of experience, so I would be most interested in finding committed, seasoned and expert SEOW players to pursue this. For this campaign series, I am not interested in people who will only fly red, or must fly this plane or hate that plane etc. That detracts from everyone's enjoyment. If you know SEOW well, if you can operate in Indo-China as easily as in the Baltic, if you are comfortable issuing reinforcements and getting your supplies to your forward units, if you don't mind facing overwhelming odds and taking a beating sometimes, then you have got what it takes. Timezone location is immaterial, so I would be encouraging commanders from USA, Australia/NZ, Europe and anywhere else to get involved. This idea is not for an inter-squad war. This is all about skilled commanders working together for short- and long-term strategic goals, against an equally capable enemy.

In proposing this, in no way do I wish to denigrate the many different SEOW campaigns running around the world. SEOW is flexible and should be used by anyone in any way they please. I have no problems with that at all - I love it! But, in this proposal I am trying to see what kind of experience we can generate with SEOW from the combined skills and energy of expert users.


So how to be involved? Well, this idea will go ahead, regardless of numbers. I already have a few expressions of interest from qualified commanders. If you feel that you would like to know more, feel free to post here or PM me. I am aware that some players may wish to freelance away from squad rules, so I will be setting up a restricted forum for this Aces series (or whatever name it morphs into) if interest is sufficiently high.

There, that's it. What happens now is over to you. Is it a good idea? Is it silly? Could it be improved in some way(s)? I am keen to hear any feedback at all.

Cheers,
4Shades

hi m8 - 102nd squadron would be very much interested in joining this multi campaign - we can also provide COOP_ded server for hosting these missions for NA and Europe missions

we can and will fly all kinds of planes from any side

and now a few questions, how many sectors did you have in mind ? would the campaign run more than once a week in each timezone ? how will we coordinate planesets from various sectors ?

great idea - i may also add that we will need some kind of "joined" statistics (adding results from various sectors together maybe ?)


S!

Sounds cool,i've being out of action for a long time now due to real life overrunning my flying and SE times severly.
But i'll put a message to my Finnish SE group(LLv16 and 34) if they would be interested to join up...

One possible idea for the Aces campaign is to focus on early 1942. We could have simultaneous operations in Singapore, New Guinea, Midway, Imphal, Murmansk, Tunis, Cyrenaica, Moscow, Crimea. Of course, other sectors would have been active too (Gulf of Finland, Manchuria, various Pacific Islands etc).

That timeframe gives us a good mix of aircraft types, a mix of air+sea+ground action, and several quite different theatres. We could use maps like Berlin, Stalingrad, Kyushu, Kuban as industrial production maps (allowing intermittent level bombing raids to suppress production). Produced reinforcements would be allocated by High Command to active sectors, e.g. 50 P-40E to New Guinea, 33 P-40E to Cyrenaica and 17 to Moscow.

So then, how could we allocate humans to the sectors? Draw names from a hat? Or keep squadmates together for timezone purposes. Any ideas on RL scheduling of missions?

Cheers,
4Shades

i think we have to allocate squads on one side - mainly because SEOW is primarily squad event and also because of timezone issues, other thing is that squads should play all sides (but on different sectors) - that way we will have more pilots available daily

RL scheduling is simple in my view - 102nd can play at least 2 or 3 missions a week in our timezone evening hours - which means from 21:00 CET - 00:00 CET on that particular day....

Hi 4Shades,

No doubt we'll chat about this, but are you proposing a series of linked fronts. Eg. for the mentioned 1942 Eastern Front scenario, such as the Crimea, Kuban, Stalingrad, Kiev, Moscow, Leningrad & Murmansk maps. We'd need to setup some sort of international timetable or schedule and make sure this is clearly communicated and adhered to. I'd suggest that we assign individuals a particular staffel or escardrille or Gruppe / Polk to groups. They would be in charge of these aircraft. Take this a bit further and you can assign them to various fronts on the map, with control over the land forces in the sector to which they are allocated. As to who gets what? Maybe an initial purchase point allocation, with some sort of rarity factor that encourages participants to purchase or use the equipment that was historically available.

Regards, Warg

hello.
i did hear that you people are preparing massive multicampaing. Me and some of my friends are very interest. And i can carryout some responsibly planning missions. I'm experienced but how skill full i am. i can't promise.

Hi,
yes from Italy (22GCT-72sq-150GCT-167GA-AMVI-VVG).
As 102nd sq, we also let our 24h automatic controlled server available for this game.
Keep listening to next developements.

S!

This sounds like a great idea. 1942 is the time for intense battles all over the globe.

We can assign point values for various cities, we can put together basic Orders of Battle and hook it out in style.

Totally agree with Brandle - we will definitively need "Order of Battle" kind of document and Rule Book prior to start of this mega campaign

would be also a very good idea to test my S.E.X. idea of DB move's maybe ? that way we could have 2-3 COOP servers for hosts with automatic backups

Hello from =69.GIAP=

Of course we will join this massive campaign.
I think that it is a really good idea.
As Brandle and cmirko has write, there must be some kind of "Order of Battle", that probably it is the same that we use to call "Rules of Engagement".
Like everything, simple means fun for everybody.
After the first test we can complicate more and more but the idea of 4Shades must be keep simple for involve as much members as possible.
Our squadron actually has 2 time zones. US time zone (8 active pilots) and Europe time Zone (15 active pilots). Day can be Wednesday and Sunday.
I think that in the SEOW Comunity are enought pilots and squadrons so the Blue and the Red side will be well covered.
I remember that the SEOW Extreme did something like this, but unfortunally i could follow it. Probably that will be a good starting point as you probably has been thought.
I will keep the post.
Unfortunallly we are reaching a period of time where most people get out for some days, so i suggest do not take too many deccissions till pass Xmas.

S!

I like the idea as I understand it. It sounds like a huge sand table exercise for commanders and administrators. Push the envelope and see what needs to happen, analyze the results and offer "lessons learned" to promote a better understanding of the system and attract more players/squads through an enhanced gaming experience. I think you are on to something.

I think we will have members a bit more available than Pavel suggests and have several in training now to become commanders and administrators. Count us in! Questions to follow!

Cheers, Conan

G'day Brandle & coy,

I guess we'll organise and initially run between ourselves, at least till we get it up and running. I've put this on the wider forum, mainly to flesh out the sort of campaign we were discussing last night and raise some issues that others may lend different views or have a greater perspective on.

This will be a June 41 Barbarossa Campaign titled "Baron and Commisar". Three maps, 1: Kurland Autumn, the land battle map, 2: Berlin, the blue industrial resources map, 3: Smolensk, the red industrial resouces map. Mission times will be set for every two hours and all three maps are synchronised for the same time, i.e. they all begin at 4.00 A.M 22nd June, 1941. We'll work it this way. Play the 4.00 A.M. land battle map on the weekend, at a mutually convenient US & OZ time. The two 4.00 A.M. industrial resource maps are played during the week, at times suitable to the defender in each of these. At the end of the week, after all three are played, the allocations and resource phased is worked out. That is, with whats built in the industrial maps being allocated to the land battle map for each respective side. This can then be used as reinforcements, but make sure that this is in the form of topup's & not creation of new units. The 6.00 A.M. missions won't be planned or flown till all 4.00 A.M. missions are done and dusted.

Order of Battle & Deployment. (very rough for now)
Red: This is before the use of Air Armies by the VVS, but I'm thinking along the lines of the Baltic Special Miliitary District. Comprising of 1 x IAD (fighter division), 3 x SAD's (mixed division). This gives us 8 (3) x IAP's & 2 (1) ShAP's to play with. Figures in brackets relate to those upgrading to newer type. Not sure about BAP numbers in this. Nominally an IAD is 124 fighters, including spares and an IAP is about 40 aircraft, making it a rough equivalent of the German Gruppe.
Blue: We are looking at Fliegerkorps I here. This is KG1 (exc. I), all KG76, all JG54, Staffels 4, 5./JG53, Luftgau Erg 52 & 54 (training), 5.(F)/122 - long range recon & Luftgaustabe zbV1, 10 (transport). Needless to say, there will be other small associatted units, but the units above will be the core stuff. Can work out what each of these units flew later on in much more detail.
Ground Forces: Obviously we can't have everything there, unless you really want frame rate headaches. Suggest your earlier Kurland campaign or something like working out approximates for Russian Infantry and German Panzer Divisions. Will need to consult my Osprey Army Group North on this, but will be some of the later attacking more of the former. I know you have ideas on this.

Basically, most of the ground units will be on the Kurland map and full supply rules enforced here. The two industrial maps should only have the factories, concrete runways activated and any AAA that you want to keep back. Try to cut down the frame rate killers here. Of the OoB, each side works out before hand, what units they will commit to (1) fight the land battle Kurland with (2) defence of your industrial map & (3) to attack the oppositions industrial map. They are reserved for these maps and cannot be on two maps at any one time. I'm pretty sure that 4Shades has my information of build costs for various types of equipment, but we'll definitely need some sort of system that can allocate industrial production from one map onto the battle map. Keep everything simple and not too complicated, but would like to see reinforcement coming in as topup's of existing units before any new unit creation. This forces each side, to maintain their units with the same equipment types. Normally, in wartime conditions, re-equipment with a newer type meant withdrawal from the frontline to a ZAP or safe in the Reich for rest and retraining. Have't gone into recon or transport yet.

As I said earlier, the Kurland map will the one where we meet up and "face off" each weekend. The industrial maps will usually mean a mid-week encouter, defending the factories against mostly AI bombers.
Okay, I think I've covered most things here to get us started and my wife is on my case about doing some Christmas shopping. Yuk!i


Regards, Warg

hi all, simple bump - where are we at now ? can we try and incorporate Warg's idea of campaign (which sounds great ) with a DB replication and have another set of missions during euro hours ?

I am still on holiday, back in a few days. Then I will issue a bug patch and will start work on a set of PHP scripts that will provide a web interface to movement of reinforcements between SEOW sectors. This will allow us to associate campaigns in different sectors with a larger strategic war layer for SEOW. I think we need something like that to run multi-sector campaigns easily.

Cheers,
4Shades