Post by Tolbethessar on Jan 30, 2020 0:19:55 GMT
Before we get started on anything... Let me be honest, I need SOMETHING else than 'micro-RP' this, 'micro-RP' that. 
So if anybody got a good nomenclature to apply on this, I would love to have it! 
EDIT: It's now The Mid-America Front RP, situated in the American Civil War.
Okay, this thing that I'm going to be hosting is based heavily on what is known as the Western Theater of the American Civil War circa early-1862. The players will be all together on one side, whichever side that is - USA or CSA. A lot of the warfare will be revolving around transport routes and maintaining advanced supply depots near the frontlines in order to continue fighting. It'll resemble a sort of a node-and-link map. You're still free to wander "off-road" but your ability to march is greatly diminished. A large part of the reduction of distances traveled in the wild is the difficulty of carting the supply wagons to keep up the momentum for the troops. It also takes time to re-establish what modern militaries would term as 'Forward Operating Bases'. Now, it won't be that sophisticated as the way the FOBs are done nowdays, but the lanes of communication and exchange of wounded/fresh soldiers are still important for armies to remain connected to their respective home headquarters all the way to the field headquarters of the field generals. Not to mention that the vast quantities of food (well over 500 tons. Per. Day.) aren't easily obtained in the battlefield via forage in sufficient numbers for the entire army. So the transport routes are essentially the routes where items in bulk can be moved, tying the armies to those vital lifelines in both real history and game history.
Location of the Theater and Supply Routes
This is where the extent of the *cough*micro-RP Mid-America Front *cough* will be played out:
Consisting mostly KY, TN, MS, AL as the main areas of concern.
I've already drafted a rough node map on paper. But I haven't inserted the nodes and the links onto a map on the laptop yet. Not to mention the prettying-up for sake of clarity and ease of gameplay... So while I've the rough idea of how things are here and there, etc, but the map has quite a while to go before it's ready for online viewing.
Some of the larger nodes will be bisected or trisected into multiple pie slices within a circle to emulate the possibility of divided ownership of a city between both sides during a battle, or even in-between battles. Traveling along a route will be limited to one army group at a time. But several routes will be also doubled upon between nodes to represent broader avenues of travel (ie. The Mississippi River) or one route will represent the railroad, and the other, a waterway, both traveling from one same city to the other same city for those two routes as sometimes a route happens to have both rails and boats.
The routes and double routes were partially inspired by A Ticket To Ride (a board game), looking like this: postimg.cc/75hqhPJ9
Plus I needed some ways to allow a bit of leeway in letting multiple armies travel up and down the same route at the same time.
Specific Locations On The Map
Victory Cities
Louisville
Nashville
Memphis
Corinth
Knoxville
Atlanta
Selma
Vicksburg
New Orleans
Home Depots
Resource Nodes (relevant to the Confederate side)
Explanation for the tables above:
Victory Cities - List of 9 locations that USA needs to get at least a super-majority to complete the RP early in a win. CSA only needs to hold onto a majority until the end.
Louisville is preset to be controlled by the Union at the start, and New Orleans will have an event where it may fall into Union hands (the event differs on whether if players are on whichever side).
Home Depots - Different from advanced depots which are much closer to the front and aren't static. Each side has multiple fixed points on the map where long as your army is still linked to one of them. A home base will sustain your army indefinitely, but to remain effective and mobile, an advanced depot has to be established within reach of your army for supply operations. Otherwise, if the army strays too far from the advance depot, it's going to require a very cumbersome supply train of wagons to keep up, and the army will have to slow down to a crawl.
Not all of those home depots are represented directly onto the map itself. The map will not include every single city in the entire Western Theater, only a select fraction. Some of them are still within the area but isn't represented on the map, so thus will be marked as "Near _____" on the HDs list. Some others are close by to have an effect on the theater, but is still considered 'off-the-board', so thus will be marked as "Linked to _____". Capturing the said city that is directly represented on the map will also have an effect on the nearby depots or linked depots in addition as well.
Resource Nodes - This applies to the Confederate armies and the quality of their supplies only, seeing as the Union's diverse and widespread array of supplies available at the homefront is practically an endless stream by comparison. Overall, materials specifically delivered to the armies are handled by the depot systems, and long as a resource still can be connected to a home depot, the armies of CSA will still have access to said related products (ie. Iron - guns & bullets, copper - cannons, blast caps, etc, so forth). Losing resource nodes could mean a decrease in quality of supplies the armies get, (or long as ONE node is still connected to a home depot, the resource of that type is still flowing). I haven't quite decided yet, but I think leaning toward the later is a bit more balanced, considering how easy it is right now for the Union to simply maintain an advanced depot and a route back home. Plus on the top of that, the Union side enjoys a fair amount of numerical superiority in overall terms (although absolute superiority =/= local superiority, so there's always an possibility for a battle to occur where the Confederates are the larger force).
Commander (or the people you RP as)
For the broader ACW RP... I have been working on this for quite a long, long time, so while I will use plenty of it in the micro-RP, some things might be left aside at the moment, so you won't see all of this in effect, but I'm just letting you guys know what I've already worked on.
Ok, I've already amassed a very large list of various leaders on both sides, and outlined various characteristics and expertise levels of each man. One spreadsheet for the CSA side, one spreadsheet for the USA side. I have it all written down. Age, rank at the start of the war, state of birth/or enlist (important for CSA only, not so important for USA), and sort of a shorthand assessment of each commander's qualities (partially inspired by CK2 and EW4, ie. Mass Fire, Leadership, Engineering, Brave, Stubborn, Zealous, Gluttonous, etc).
The five statistics of each commander are as following: Diplomacy (or Teamwork), Martial, Stewardship, Plotting (or Intrigue), & Learning.
However, as the Learning stat is specifically for technological progress of the country as a nation, this stat won't be included for the micro-RP. Diplomacy/Teamwork is also relatively less important in comparison to the broader RP planned, but still would've had some effect on interpersonal relations between commanders, I suppose. I'll be changing it from a # stat to a simple behavior-modifier for the micro-RP, most likely.
Martial, Stewardship, and Plotting are still vital stats of a commander commanding his troops within a theater of war, not just for a nation-wide effect. So you'll likely to see some sort of effect of those characteristics implemented into the Mid-American Front RP for sure.
Many of your actions that you can take in the game will be greatly affected by your stats as a commander. I'm planning on simplifying most of them, because at the current stage, it feels quite cumbersome for a forum-based RP. In place, I am considering a set of Compulsions, where for a specific action, a certain commander has no choice but to feel compelled to do something specific or to avoid doing something if his Compulsion is applicable. Some of the more aggressive commanders will be quite vicious attackers, but can be making suicidal charges, while some of the more timid commanders will be much more cautious and slow, missing quite a few good opportunities, but doesn't get into hazardous situations that easily, as a good example of how a Compulsion can affect you.
Troops (or the people you lead)
There was considerable differences in quality of troops' ability to wage battle compared in the early parts to the later parts of the war (such as comparing early battles in 61-62 to the later battles in 64-65, with increasing lethality in combat and inflicting far higher casuality-rates on each other for both sides), and sometimes an army commander had no choice but to idle in places spending long months of training between the few battles of the first 2 years compared to the near-constant frequency of clashing and battles in the last 2 years.
Plus to show you a general idea of HOW badly fresh troops were at waging battle, here:
So with that in mind, I would like to implement tiers of quality in how well-trained the troops are, roughly 5-7 tiers. Starting with Recruit, then Novice, Experienced, Seasoned, Veteran, Battle-hardened, then finally Elite troops are the absolute best kind of troops to have. Various tactics are locked off to the raw recruits being limited to point-blank, but as the level of experience gets higher, more options becomes available such as skirmish, sharpshooters, siege, etc. If a commander wishes to set aside time in training his troops, he will have to sacrifice multiple turns of not moving or engaging in battle in order to raise the troops' level by one without risking combat.
But also to emulate the concept of regiments struggling to fill up ranks to replace losses because they were competing with new regiments for recruits. Typically, the new regiments ends up being fielded entirely without veterans to set an example to the fresh troops and the old regiments limp on at partial strength. Often a large number of the badly damaged regiments were either disbanded and sent home or were bundled up together more and more packed into a brigade to maintain at least a decent number of men in compensation for lower numbers per regiments in that said brigade, while another brigade sometimes is reorganized with the fresh, larger regiments being rotating in, and by rotating the older, smaller regiments out. So when a commander is running low on men and needs to replenish his manpower, the overall level of his troops drops by 3-4 levels rather severely.
(Non-infantry troops)
Quick note: expect CSA to have an edge in Cavalry, but USA to have a solid advantage in Artillery, owing to the initial conditions in the war. The Mid-America Front RP is set in a time when it's still fairly early in the war (1862).
So if anybody got a good nomenclature to apply on this, I would love to have it! 
EDIT: It's now The Mid-America Front RP, situated in the American Civil War.
Okay, this thing that I'm going to be hosting is based heavily on what is known as the Western Theater of the American Civil War circa early-1862. The players will be all together on one side, whichever side that is - USA or CSA. A lot of the warfare will be revolving around transport routes and maintaining advanced supply depots near the frontlines in order to continue fighting. It'll resemble a sort of a node-and-link map. You're still free to wander "off-road" but your ability to march is greatly diminished. A large part of the reduction of distances traveled in the wild is the difficulty of carting the supply wagons to keep up the momentum for the troops. It also takes time to re-establish what modern militaries would term as 'Forward Operating Bases'. Now, it won't be that sophisticated as the way the FOBs are done nowdays, but the lanes of communication and exchange of wounded/fresh soldiers are still important for armies to remain connected to their respective home headquarters all the way to the field headquarters of the field generals. Not to mention that the vast quantities of food (well over 500 tons. Per. Day.) aren't easily obtained in the battlefield via forage in sufficient numbers for the entire army. So the transport routes are essentially the routes where items in bulk can be moved, tying the armies to those vital lifelines in both real history and game history.
Location of the Theater and Supply Routes
This is where the extent of the *cough*
Consisting mostly KY, TN, MS, AL as the main areas of concern.
I've already drafted a rough node map on paper. But I haven't inserted the nodes and the links onto a map on the laptop yet. Not to mention the prettying-up for sake of clarity and ease of gameplay... So while I've the rough idea of how things are here and there, etc, but the map has quite a while to go before it's ready for online viewing.
Some of the larger nodes will be bisected or trisected into multiple pie slices within a circle to emulate the possibility of divided ownership of a city between both sides during a battle, or even in-between battles. Traveling along a route will be limited to one army group at a time. But several routes will be also doubled upon between nodes to represent broader avenues of travel (ie. The Mississippi River) or one route will represent the railroad, and the other, a waterway, both traveling from one same city to the other same city for those two routes as sometimes a route happens to have both rails and boats.
The routes and double routes were partially inspired by A Ticket To Ride (a board game), looking like this: postimg.cc/75hqhPJ9
Plus I needed some ways to allow a bit of leeway in letting multiple armies travel up and down the same route at the same time.
Specific Locations On The Map
Victory Cities
Louisville
Nashville
Memphis
Corinth
Knoxville
Atlanta
Selma
Vicksburg
New Orleans
Home Depots
| CSA HDs | (represented on map as) | USA HDs | (represented on map as) |
| Atlanta | (Is on map) | Cincinnati | (linked to Louisville & Lexington) |
| Columbus, GA | (Near Opelika) | Louisville | (Is on map) |
| Huntsville | (Near Decatur) | St. Louis | (Linked to Cairo) |
| Montgomery | (Is on map) | Chicago | (Linked to Cairo) |
| Jackson, MS | (Is on map) | New Orleans* | (Is on map) |
| Little Rock | (linked to Ft. Hindman) | *note: | After the fall of New Orleans |
| Alexandria, LA | (linked to Port Hudson) |
Resource Nodes (relevant to the Confederate side)
| Cattle/Pork Supply | Salt Supply | ||
| Little Rock | (Linked to Ft. Hindman) | Saltville, VA | (linked to Knoxville) |
| Alexandria, LA | (Linked to Port Hudson) | Manchester, KY | (Near Danville) |
| Louisville | Mobile | ||
| New Orleans | |||
| Luxuries from Europe | Pensacola | ||
| Mobile | |||
| New Orleans | Iron Supply | ||
| Pensacola | Nashville | ||
| Richmond | (linked to Knoxville) | ||
| Coal Supply | |||
| Central AL | (Near Selma) | Copper Supply | |
| Northern GA | (Near Rome, GA) | Ducktown, TN | (Near Chattanooga) |
Explanation for the tables above:
Victory Cities - List of 9 locations that USA needs to get at least a super-majority to complete the RP early in a win. CSA only needs to hold onto a majority until the end.
Louisville is preset to be controlled by the Union at the start, and New Orleans will have an event where it may fall into Union hands (the event differs on whether if players are on whichever side).
Home Depots - Different from advanced depots which are much closer to the front and aren't static. Each side has multiple fixed points on the map where long as your army is still linked to one of them. A home base will sustain your army indefinitely, but to remain effective and mobile, an advanced depot has to be established within reach of your army for supply operations. Otherwise, if the army strays too far from the advance depot, it's going to require a very cumbersome supply train of wagons to keep up, and the army will have to slow down to a crawl.
Not all of those home depots are represented directly onto the map itself. The map will not include every single city in the entire Western Theater, only a select fraction. Some of them are still within the area but isn't represented on the map, so thus will be marked as "Near _____" on the HDs list. Some others are close by to have an effect on the theater, but is still considered 'off-the-board', so thus will be marked as "Linked to _____". Capturing the said city that is directly represented on the map will also have an effect on the nearby depots or linked depots in addition as well.
Resource Nodes - This applies to the Confederate armies and the quality of their supplies only, seeing as the Union's diverse and widespread array of supplies available at the homefront is practically an endless stream by comparison. Overall, materials specifically delivered to the armies are handled by the depot systems, and long as a resource still can be connected to a home depot, the armies of CSA will still have access to said related products (ie. Iron - guns & bullets, copper - cannons, blast caps, etc, so forth). Losing resource nodes could mean a decrease in quality of supplies the armies get, (or long as ONE node is still connected to a home depot, the resource of that type is still flowing). I haven't quite decided yet, but I think leaning toward the later is a bit more balanced, considering how easy it is right now for the Union to simply maintain an advanced depot and a route back home. Plus on the top of that, the Union side enjoys a fair amount of numerical superiority in overall terms (although absolute superiority =/= local superiority, so there's always an possibility for a battle to occur where the Confederates are the larger force).
Commander (or the people you RP as)
For the broader ACW RP... I have been working on this for quite a long, long time, so while I will use plenty of it in the micro-RP, some things might be left aside at the moment, so you won't see all of this in effect, but I'm just letting you guys know what I've already worked on.
Ok, I've already amassed a very large list of various leaders on both sides, and outlined various characteristics and expertise levels of each man. One spreadsheet for the CSA side, one spreadsheet for the USA side. I have it all written down. Age, rank at the start of the war, state of birth/or enlist (important for CSA only, not so important for USA), and sort of a shorthand assessment of each commander's qualities (partially inspired by CK2 and EW4, ie. Mass Fire, Leadership, Engineering, Brave, Stubborn, Zealous, Gluttonous, etc).
The five statistics of each commander are as following: Diplomacy (or Teamwork), Martial, Stewardship, Plotting (or Intrigue), & Learning.
However, as the Learning stat is specifically for technological progress of the country as a nation, this stat won't be included for the micro-RP. Diplomacy/Teamwork is also relatively less important in comparison to the broader RP planned, but still would've had some effect on interpersonal relations between commanders, I suppose. I'll be changing it from a # stat to a simple behavior-modifier for the micro-RP, most likely.
Martial, Stewardship, and Plotting are still vital stats of a commander commanding his troops within a theater of war, not just for a nation-wide effect. So you'll likely to see some sort of effect of those characteristics implemented into the Mid-American Front RP for sure.
Many of your actions that you can take in the game will be greatly affected by your stats as a commander. I'm planning on simplifying most of them, because at the current stage, it feels quite cumbersome for a forum-based RP. In place, I am considering a set of Compulsions, where for a specific action, a certain commander has no choice but to feel compelled to do something specific or to avoid doing something if his Compulsion is applicable. Some of the more aggressive commanders will be quite vicious attackers, but can be making suicidal charges, while some of the more timid commanders will be much more cautious and slow, missing quite a few good opportunities, but doesn't get into hazardous situations that easily, as a good example of how a Compulsion can affect you.
Troops (or the people you lead)
There was considerable differences in quality of troops' ability to wage battle compared in the early parts to the later parts of the war (such as comparing early battles in 61-62 to the later battles in 64-65, with increasing lethality in combat and inflicting far higher casuality-rates on each other for both sides), and sometimes an army commander had no choice but to idle in places spending long months of training between the few battles of the first 2 years compared to the near-constant frequency of clashing and battles in the last 2 years.
Plus to show you a general idea of HOW badly fresh troops were at waging battle, here:
Prior ... in the mid-19th centuries, armies simply could not expend large amounts of gunpowder for training. As a result, the average infantryman simply did not have extensive firearms training beyond simple maintenance and loading drills. The infantryman simply did not know how to aim his rifle at long distances—eyewitnesses report entire companies aiming their rifles at a 45 degree angle facing the sky and discharging their rifles at Bull Run (Guelzo p. 59). Such untrained soldiers could not be expected to engage an enemy much further than point blank range with any level of accuracy.
So with that in mind, I would like to implement tiers of quality in how well-trained the troops are, roughly 5-7 tiers. Starting with Recruit, then Novice, Experienced, Seasoned, Veteran, Battle-hardened, then finally Elite troops are the absolute best kind of troops to have. Various tactics are locked off to the raw recruits being limited to point-blank, but as the level of experience gets higher, more options becomes available such as skirmish, sharpshooters, siege, etc. If a commander wishes to set aside time in training his troops, he will have to sacrifice multiple turns of not moving or engaging in battle in order to raise the troops' level by one without risking combat.
But also to emulate the concept of regiments struggling to fill up ranks to replace losses because they were competing with new regiments for recruits. Typically, the new regiments ends up being fielded entirely without veterans to set an example to the fresh troops and the old regiments limp on at partial strength. Often a large number of the badly damaged regiments were either disbanded and sent home or were bundled up together more and more packed into a brigade to maintain at least a decent number of men in compensation for lower numbers per regiments in that said brigade, while another brigade sometimes is reorganized with the fresh, larger regiments being rotating in, and by rotating the older, smaller regiments out. So when a commander is running low on men and needs to replenish his manpower, the overall level of his troops drops by 3-4 levels rather severely.
(Non-infantry troops)
Quick note: expect CSA to have an edge in Cavalry, but USA to have a solid advantage in Artillery, owing to the initial conditions in the war. The Mid-America Front RP is set in a time when it's still fairly early in the war (1862).
).
. But then I realised that they're only somewhat better than a Militia, and that seems very realistic.
