New Campaign - Design Document

Since a couple of weeks I am working on a new campaign for the thirdwire series. After my first campaign woe:bc, I wrote a design document, outlining the priorities for my next campaign based on the postmortem I made for WOE:BC.

I use a design document and some other tools to keep the project on track and keep myself focused. This post is based on that original design document, except for one restriction. I won't reveal when and where the campaign will take place (sure I'll give some rough indications but will remain vague on the details). I do this for a couple of reasons: one, I hope it creates more of a buzz in the community. Two, from my experience with WOE:BC, I learned that revealing too much information created a situation where I urged myself to finish the campaign. By keeping exact time and location secret I hope to find a right balance between keeping the community informed of my progress and holding of release untill the campaign is truely finished.

When I started thinking about the new campaign I decided to choose from two options: either go for a campaign with the F-14 as one of the aircraft or go for the 5th generation of fighters. In the end I choose an F-14 campaign, because of the memories of Top gun I have and because not all 5th generation fighters were available at combat ace when I started writing the design document.

Time Period

The F-14 was in service between 1974 and 2006, so any campaign I create must take place during that timeframe. Furthermore I want to have wide range of aircraft besides the Tomcat.

Also for reference reasons I want to place action the around the period of Desert Storm. This limited the period between 1985 and 1995. With a time period set I can choose a terrain

Terrain

Like I wrote in the postmortem, the terrain must be a 3rd party terrain, freely available at combat ace. By selecting a 3rd party terrain, every installation of the thirdwire sim can play the campaign. The terrain also determins the campaign plot.

Campaign plot

The most fun part of campaign building is adding aircraft. The most boring part is adding ground units and determining movement nodes. So in this campaign there will be no ground war. the campaign will also be shorter then WOE:BC, 15 days instead of 30 days. This reduces the amount of missions I have to test and I'll be able to limit the type of missions (without ground war there is no need for CAS or FAC missions.).

For the plot, I used a what-if scenario with some real world events functioned as an inspiration.

Aircraft

With WOE:BC i made the mistake to encorporate too much planes and squadrons. With this campaign I will only include a squadron for each aircraft that the player can fly with. The aircrafts available in the campaign will also be limited. Here is a short list
F-14
F-18
A-7
A-6
F-4
Mirage 2000
Tornado
Harrier
F-104
F-15
F-16

I won't reveal the enemy aircraft yet, except that if I have neough time, will encorporate the red side as flyable.

Conclusion

The campaign will take place between 1985 and 1995, as player you will have the ability to fly at least 10 aircraft on the blue side on a 3rd party terrain.

I can't divulge any more detail, just keep checking this blog and my posts at combat ace for more information.

Happy Flying

KingAlbert