Scenarios

[Cyan]

Something that might add a bit more spice to the game is some pre-set scenarios similar to what was seen in "Wargames." For example, when the WOPR was 'fighting' against itself, you notice a lot of different named nuclear war scenarios such as:

"US First Strike", "USSR First Strike", and then more obscure ones, such as: "Iraq Sovereignty", "Lebanon Interdiction", "Chile Confrontation", "NATO Alternate", etc.

It'd be interesting to have these scenarios as small one-player games (i.e. player vs. the CPU) that would have certain conditions per scenario. For example, in "USSR First Strike", if I were playing the USA, then I wouldn't be allowed to launch anything before the first USSR nuke left its silo. I think these "scenarios" would work rather well for multiplayer games as well.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames , there are over 150 scenarios in total.

I understand that some of them may be difficult to implement, considering that Defcon really has no notion of "individual countries", so trying to run a scenario involving a set country might be difficult or cumbersome on such a huge map. Then again, that might be reason enough to implement different smaller maps depending on the scenario.

-RS.

[OutOfAmmo]

Excellent idea. Another possibilty is to focus on a small part of the map, such as breaking up South Asia to fill the whole screen. That way, individual countries could be used without cluttering up the screen.

[courier]

The obvious way to do this would be to have certain regions of the map "unlock" different features at different times -- essentially different DEFCON progressions for different areas. For instance, to simulate a North Korea/US conflict, the pacific rim might progress through the DEFCON states normally while other areas would stick at DEFCON 4 until a conventional unit entered their territory or DEFCON 2 until a nuclear unit entered their territory. This would pose a strategic dilemma -- you would want to post silos in the early-unlocking areas so that they can operate early, but not at the risk of having too few to go around. It would also add a layer to diplomacy, as allied sides might look for ways to get their still-locked neighbors unlocked and into the fight, eg via naval provocations.

Lots of possibilities here. A system of scripting DEFCON levels by region would go a very long way.

[desktopsimmer]

I like that idea of the 'Wargames' Scenarios, but have it based on RL countries (not regions) Numbers and capabilities of Nuclear, naval, and airforce units, i.e. US would have a lot of nukes, north Korea would have only 10. The diplomacy game would be little more interesting with 32 countries/players .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... ar_weapons