OFFbase: The Barmy Automated Squadron Experience for Over Flanders Fields

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Just posted version 0.6.2, here's the change-log:

 

New Duty Room allows you to keep track of much of OFFbase's complex social dynamics. New mood mechanic, result of encounters spill over so pilots will be more cooperative when treated well by others but take out their negative feelings on others when abused; this allows players to have more influence on how the morale of the squadron develops. Displays full social information when choosing someone to encounter. Bootstrapping simulation increased to 30 days to better develop prior relationships. Starting prestige is now randomized. Mission and simulation results reported by Adjutant, and he's more eager to prompt you to keep the Operational Rating updated since this influences morale. Fixed another bug with naval and some French squadrons. Competent class renamed to Mechanic. Adjutant isn't so proud of your unclaimed kills, thanks Creaghorn.

 

Again, it may take a bit for the admins to approve, but then go get it!

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Just posted version 0.6.3, the focus of which is refinement and bug-fixing of post-mission results. Here's the change-log:

 

Cleanup and refinement of end-mission sequence. New friendly fire mission outcome and encounter to go along with it. Fixed crash bug with friendly fire--guess I finally had to test this one myself, oops! Fixed crash bug with crashed plane and tyrannical leader as flight leader. Fixed a bug where the player's pilot was showing up as "On Leave" in the Duty Room, thanks OlPaint01 and Creaghorn; leave system's still a little flakey so there may be other issues yet. Sorts personality classes by name.

Should be available from the download page shortly once admins approve.

[Herr Prop-Wasche]

Thanks, Lothar, Will get it as soon as it is approved.

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Oops, introduced another end-mission crash bug while fixing others in 0.6.3. So go get 0.6.4 instead. If the bug-fix doesn't convince you, I've also started making mission results affect pilot moods.

[Herr Prop-Wasche]

Oops, introduced another end-mission crash bug while fixing others in 0.6.3. So go get 0.6.4 instead. If the bug-fix doesn't convince you, I've also started making mission results affect pilot moods.

 

Oooh, my current pilot will be in a pretty bad mood, then! Two destroyed aircraft and no kills in his last two missions!

 

Nice addition, though. Does if affect AI pilots, too?

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Nice addition, though. Does if affect AI pilots, too?

Yep! And now with 0.6.5 which I just posted, mission events also effect the mood of others depending on their relationships. So pilots are saddened/angered when their friends are injured/captured/missing/killed, but moods will brighten when the same happens to a bully that everybody hated. No feedback in the UI about it yet, but the Adjutant does report changes to your squadmates status and kills/claims.

 

Big update. Here's the full change-log:

 

• Airfield and lodging quality now affect moods each morning rather than prestige directly. Since the evening mood also affects prestige in the form of morale, the morning infrastructure effects can now be modified by gameplay during the day, rather than simply being added twice. In other words, your situation is more of what you make of it.
• More additions and refinements to end-mission sequence. Adjutant reports what's going on with other pilots after a mission, and you get a potentially free encounter in the mess with pilots arriving or returning from things other than leave. So you can now have encounters with pilots who are "returning" assuming they're back but not yet on active duty. Encounters also display if the other pilot is in a strong mood. Status events now affect moods of pilots in the squadron, good news hurts friends and brightens the day of enemies. Pilots are considered friends with themselves so their own moods suffer when they're captured or missing or injured or whatever, but may brighten if and when they return.
• Correctly tracks a player pilot's confirmed, pending, and rejected claims by reading your claims file rather than simply counting total aircraft destroyed in-game, thanks Creaghorn. Non-player pilots earn prestige from claims and confirmed kills. Less likely to put pilots on leave and those who are on leave are more likely to be recalled when the squad's depleted. Other slight adjustments to leave system, may still be a little buggy so let me know if you get stuck on leave or time doesn't advance as it should.
• Fixed crash bug with hat trick, and non-player pilots also get relationship bonuses from shooting down three or more enemy planes. Fixed bug with squadmates transferring along with you, thanks Bletchley. Fixed minor bug in some outlook calculations. Fixed bug in application of mood to strategy.

 

As soon as the admins approve, go get it!

[Herr Prop-Wasche]

Wow, OFFbase gets even better and better, Lothar!

 

I like the increase in encounters during the game. Since most of a pilot's time outside of a mission is spent on base (unless he is on leave), he should have the opportunity for several "encounters" with different people each day. Maybe you could insert a random number generator which allows the player-pilot to have somewhere between 1-3 encounters at the beginning of a new day or maybe pre-mission. This would also help me to get to "know" my squadmates a little faster. Perhaps you could also include a modifier which makes pilots in a good mood somewhat more likely to have multiple encounters and pilots in a bad mood somewhat less likely to have multiple encounters.

 

Enjoying your mod, and keep it coming!

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Wow, OFFbase gets even better and better, Lothar!

Two steps forward, one step back sometimes. 0.6.5 has a bug where some people get stuck on leave. Rewriting the leave-handling code from scratch, should have a new version up tomorrow sometime hopefully.

 

I like the increase in encounters during the game. Since most of a pilot's time outside of a mission is spent on base (unless he is on leave), he should have the opportunity for several "encounters" with different people each day. Maybe you could insert a random number generator which allows the player-pilot to have somewhere between 1-3 encounters at the beginning of a new day or maybe pre-mission. This would also help me to get to "know" my squadmates a little faster. Perhaps you could also include a modifier which makes pilots in a good mood somewhat more likely to have multiple encounters and pilots in a bad mood somewhat less likely to have multiple encounters.

Well you do get more with your flight-mates if you fly multiple missions per day. If I end up adding more encounters it won't be the random ones but maybe more targeted at dramatic story-telling to sharpen the focus on relationships between other pilots and how you affect them. Kind of the direction I started by getting encounters with people returning from being missing or injured in 0.6.5, for all its faults, but opening it up to 3rd party relationships. Like: "you notice your acquaintance so-and-so is especially down since his best friend what's-his-name was killed."

[Herr Prop-Wasche]

Imagine getting stuck on leave, having to stay in Paris for God knows how long, going to the Follies night after night after night. Oh, the pain, the suffering!

[Beanie]

Lothar

 

This is excellent - thank you for sharing it with us.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Beanie

[Herr Prop-Wasche]

Lothar,

 

Sorry I have not been back to you about your latest revision of OFFice. As you probably know, I have been finishing up my FM revision to make it compatible with Lima's AI empty weight mod so I haven't had a chance to do any campaign flying for the last couple of weeks. I will try to get back up in the air between the holiday festivities and let you know what I think.

 

Merry Christmas!

[MikeDixonUK]

I've been trying to install version 0.6.5 of OFFbase, but it seems to get stuck at the initial load screen.

 

It gets stuck on the 'Loading and Configuring...' screen and just says 'Loading...' under 'OFF Manager System Registry and 'CFS Config XML'

 

While on REBOL 3 it says: Imput Error: There is no file extension in "C\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1" (Or whatever directory OFFBase is placed in, as I tried it in different folders and none of them worked.

 

I'm also getting the same thing with OFFset.

Edited January 18, 2012 by MikeDixonUK

[Dave63]

I've been trying to install version 0.6.5 of OFFbase, but it seems to get stuck at the initial load screen.

 

It gets stuck on the 'Loading and Configuring...' screen and just says 'Loading...' under 'OFF Manager System Registry and 'CFS Config XML'

 

While on REBOL 3 it says: Imput Error: There is no file extension in "C\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1" (Or whatever directory OFFBase is placed in, as I tried it in different folders and none of them worked.

 

I'm also getting the same thing with OFFset.

 

Same here.

[Bletchley]

I haven't heard from Lothar for a several weeks, so he might be taking a break from this - but I have the latest version 0.6.6 that works on my machine, if the download has become corrupted. I can email it out to you as a zipped file if you PM your email address. There is a bug still (also in the earlier versions, I think) where the number of points for victories starts to accumulate after the third (i.e. the game keeps on congratulating you for a hatrick after each mission, following your third victory, and awards you points for 3 kills extra, so you have to be aware of this and manually edit the points total to remove the extra points each time). Otherwise, it seems fine on my PC.

 

Bletchley

[Dave63]

Tried 0.6.6, as well. Same thing I'm afraid. Thanks though!

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Hey guys. Sorry I've been crazy busy and haven't been able to work on OFFbase lately.

 

They problem you guys are having seems to be OFFbase not being able to properly find your OFF installation or CFS3 settings or something. Any corruption problems with the game? Try running CFS3 config and saving your settings again. If that doesn't work, send me the files in the OFFice\temp\ folder and I'll try to figure it out.

[Dave63]

Thinking it might make a difference, I dumped the unzipped .6.5 version in the OBDSoftware\CFSWWIblablabla folder. When I run the OFFBase bat the two windows come up. The top two boxes I get the "Loading" message, the bottom box three dots...

 

The Rebel 3A dos window has an error message at the bottom stating "There is no file extension in "C:\OBDSoftware\CFSWWI"

[lederhosen]

Salute

 

 

 

no mater what I do, if I start a career before june 1917 the "office" changes present date to June 1917

 

 

 

Led

 

Salute

 

 

 

no mater what I do, if I start a career before june 1917 the "office" changes present date to June 1917

 

 

 

Led

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

no mater what I do, if I start a career before june 1917 the "office" changes present date to June 1917

Hey led. It's probably because you already have a (possibly dead or captured) pilot in that same squadron in June of 1917. In OFFbase, all pilots in the same squadron are automatically synced to the most recent one. If you want to start a new campaign before then delete the old pilot in that squadron.

[chrispdm1]

My keeps syncing every pilot to March 11, 1917. I've tried deleting every pilot and starting a new one earlier, but nothing keeps it from syncing to that date.

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

My keeps syncing every pilot to March 11, 1917. I've tried deleting every pilot and starting a new one earlier, but nothing keeps it from syncing to that date.

Curious chrispdm1, with lederhosen having a similar issue. Every pilot, even in different squadrons? I've been so far unable to replicate the problem.

 

That date has to be coming from somewhere. As well as deleting every pilot in OFF manager, I'd try a clean installation of OFFbase (just delete your pilots\ and squadrons\ folders). Also make sure there are no lingering Dossier, Log, and Claims .txt files in your CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\campaigns\CampaignData\Pilots\ folder.

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

Version 0.8.4 is now available for download.

[JamesL]

First off I want to say I'm astounded by your concept that simuates squadron life so well - absolutly brilliant - it lives!! Deux ex Machina, its the ghost in the machine!

 

(that was my 'submissive/open' approach, now i'm being 'forward':)

 

Based on my initial impressions I have some questions & suggestions. Forgive me if I haven’t yet discovered what I've suggested due to my short time playing OFFbase.

 

- Maybe I haven’t been playing long enough, but I was so engrossed in getting to know my squadron that I didn't visit the hanger for a mission for days for fear of going west & loosing it all! Anyway this question is about mission allocation - shuly I cant choose when to fly. This is the military, pilots are allocated to missions & they have to fly them. They cant avoid flying & choose when to turn up for duty. Would it not more realistic to have a corporal or orderly inform me I’m required in the hanger for a mission at xxxtime?......(unless I feign illness!)

 

- There does'nt seem to be a "squadron leader" in charge. His influence & command style would impose a strong dynamic for better or worse depending on his character. He could initiate events like 'morning PT' or 'a party in the mess' ect which would challenge bringing out reactions & events in the other ranks. Some pilots could support & others resent his style of leadership. A squadron leader's reputation & goodwill would be an important indication of the overall impact he has on the squadron as a whole.

 

- The historical squadron aces from the main OFF game arnt present. Is this because all characters have to be simulated rather then real?

 

- A very nice feature would be if somehow the damage report which you get in flight could be saved & imported into OFFbase so you can inspect the damage to your plane in the hanger after a mission at your leasure.

 

- Mood seems to indicate the level of moral or good spirits which is affected by interpersonal encounters. But does this also cover stress? The more action, danger, close calls a pilot encounters the more nearvous/psycological stress he suffers. The less stable types would be more prone to it. His behavior would reflect his strain ie - becoming withdrawn, erratic, going 'sick', getting 'engine trouble' hitting the bottle ect - until he cracks up. A sympathetic medical officer or Adjuent could get him extended leave or transfer to a training squadron before he finally looses it.

 

- I'd like to see character type(s) included in the in the psychological profile & to be able to see the profiles of any squadron member I know at any time, not just when I occasionally get a list to choose which character to interact with. This would be really useful!

 

- It would also be really useful to have an ongoing automatic record of your encounters & observations of each squadron member. It could be attached to the psychological profile so you can see your impressions so far in one place. I know you can write this yourself in the journal but often there are too many forgotten details & the observations get spread over different entries so they loose cohesion.

 

- By subjectively studying a photo you can see what types they visually suggest. Often they are spot on for the character concerned, often they are not. The stock of portrait photos could be programmed with tags to various character traits. Once a character is generated he is randomly assigned a photo which is tagged to include one or more of his traits. This way he will always look the part! Each photo would suggest numerous traits so every type could be covered. (If you do decide to do this I'd be happy to suggest trait tags to a large collection of photos!)

 

In fact I'd also like to lend a hand with any dialogue or event ideas needed. Despite the atrocious standard of English I've displayed in this post I can assure you I'm quite an accomplished writer! This system you've built has endless possibilities & depth. I belive it should keep on developing so any help in its evolution needed just ask.

Edited January 13, 2013 by JamesL

[+Lothar of the Hill People]

First off I want to say I'm astounded by your concept that simuates squadron life so well - absolutly brilliant - it lives!! Deux ex Machina, its the ghost in the machine!

 

(that was my 'submissive/open' approach, now i'm being 'forward':)

 

Based on my initial impressions I have some questions & suggestions. Forgive me if I haven't yet discovered what I've suggested due to my short time playing OFFbase.

 

Sure, and thanks James. I can see you've given a lot of thought to the possibilities here.

 

- Maybe I haven't been playing long enough, but I was so engrossed in getting to know my squadron that I didn't visit the hanger for a mission for days for fear of going west & loosing it all! Anyway this question is about mission allocation - shuly I cant choose when to fly. This is the military, pilots are allocated to missions & they have to fly them. They cant avoid flying & choose when to turn up for duty. Would it not more realistic to have a corporal or orderly inform me I'm required in the hanger for a mission at xxxtime?......(unless I feign illness!)

 

More realistic, sure. One of the things I wanted to do though was give players more control over the clock. Ultimately I'd like the current freedom to be something earned in game--high-ranking aces would be able to go hunting on Lone Wolf missions whenever they please while that Flieger's got artillery spotting to do come hell or high water.

 

The new mission system that's been in testing will ultimately make it possible to attach timers and encounters to missions with rules for various conditions. For starters... Still grappling the the possibilities that've opened up now that the next version of OFFbase completely takes over the mission files.

 

- There does'nt seem to be a "squadron leader" in charge. His influence & command style would impose a strong dynamic for better or worse depending on his character. He could initiate events like 'morning PT' or 'a party in the mess' ect which would challenge bringing out reactions & events in the other ranks. Some pilots could support & others resent his style of leadership. A squadron leader's reputation & goodwill would be an important indication of the overall impact he has on the squadron as a whole.

 

- The historical squadron aces from the main OFF game arnt present. Is this because all characters have to be simulated rather then real?

 

These two go together. I'd like to use the lead ace of a squadron as the leader, whom the Adjutant aids by handling flight assignments, discipline, etc. It'd even be easy to pre-set the personalities of famous aces in your squadron, so MVR has a background in the cavalry and served on the eastern front etc, and behave accordingly.

 

The reason aces haven't been OFFbase-d along with the fictional squadmates is because the extensive historical data of ace movements exhaustively collected by the OFF team is protected from snooping around in the game files from the likes of less savory types than me. I now have some of this data, but won't use it in OFFbase until I'm confident it's secured.

 

But eventually, squadron aces will be mulling about intimidating the rookie pilots, while one of them runs the show.

 

- A very nice feature would be if somehow the damage report which you get in flight could be saved & imported into OFFbase so you can inspect the damage to your plane in the hanger after a mission at your leasure.

 

That would be cool. CFS3 basically just tells OFF Manager if you crashed or not (severe enough to damage the plane). By setting Dead Is Dead in the Workshops, OFFbase basically passes this info through (ignore the dead pilot end of campaign message in OFF Manager) and trigger it's own crash-handling code, but there's no way to track any detail about the damage. OFFbase just does a roll based on the self-reported severity of the crash (and things like your pilot's Aerial Skill) to determine damage severity and how many days off, if any, result from a need for repairs/replacement. This system is bare-bones at best (only spent a few minutes on it), and definitely could be extended with more detailed damage modeling. Time is the only constraint.

 

- Mood seems to indicate the level of moral or good spirits which is affected by interpersonal encounters. But does this also cover stress? The more action, danger, close calls a pilot encounters the more nearvous/psycological stress he suffers. The less stable types would be more prone to it. His behavior would reflect his strain ie - becoming withdrawn, erratic, going 'sick', getting 'engine trouble' hitting the bottle ect - until he cracks up. A sympathetic medical officer or Adjuent could get him extended leave or transfer to a training squadron before he finally looses it.

 

Sure does. The set of events that can be reported for your squadmates is small, but what happens to them (and your own character) on missions such as crashes or injuries, being captured, going missing or being presumed dead, all affects their mood. Not only that, but friends will be upset by the happenings as well--though one's enemies may relish such struggles.

 

The behavioral model is the heart of OFFbase. The procedurally-generated rule-based AI allows far more complex, unique, and dynamic behavioral responses to emerge than are currently expressed in OFFbase's admittedly limited interface. There are a number attributes besides the basic six displayed in the interface--reflecting stability, sociability, and other factors that are used internally. Rooted in behavioral economics, agents have reference-dependent risk preferences, and thus feel losses more than gains. The result of all this is that stress is cumulative, affects everyone uniquely, and spills over through the social networks that develop within your squadron--all dynamically and naturally.

 

But once a character is Fuming and Disrespected pretty much all they do is piss everyone off until they're forced out with a transfer, hopefully for a better go of it with another unit. Adding encounters with the chaplain and medical officer that are triggered for characters in dire straits is a great idea, and with the new encounter system it's easyto trigger changes in status such as leave as a result of encounters. It'd even be possible to add more mental "injuries" and maims like stressed, shell-shocked, whatever (right now there's only a Brain Damage maim and a Vegetable disability).

 

- I'd like to see character type(s) included in the in the psychological profile & to be able to see the profiles of any squadron member I know at any time, not just when I occasionally get a list to choose which character to interact with. This would be really useful!

 

There is such an interface but it's only enabled for debugging for me. I don't want to give everything away--actually learning details about your squadmates bit by bit and having to use your memory is an important part of caring about what happens to them in the air. But I'm working in the direction of making more detailed info more often available to players of more socially-intelligent characters. That way if your gameplay style is to focus on micromanaging managing your men and the morale of your squad, you'll have more encounters, more choice in who you encounter and what you do, with more detail on your squadmates displayed frequently. Whereas if you play as an anti-social introverted slob that people leave alone so you can concentrate on the killing, you'll rarely seen any detailed info on your 'fellow' pilots.

 

- It would also be really useful to have an ongoing automatic record of your encounters & observations of each squadron member. It could be attached to the psychological profile so you can see your impressions so far in one place. I know you can write this yourself in the journal but often there are too many forgotten details & the observations get spread over different entries so they loose cohesion.

 

It would be useful to be able to have file or something for each of your squadmates with their picture, detailed psychological profile, and notebook to write entries about them. Perhaps this is something that could even be earned if you rise to become Adjutant yourself (something I'd eventually to be possible when the mission system is advanced enough, letting you actually build your own missions and assign individual members to flights).

 

As for an automatic record, that would be do-able but a much lower priority.

 

- By subjectively studying a photo you can see what types they visually suggest. Often they are spot on for the character concerned, often they are not. The stock of portrait photos could be programmed with tags to various character traits. Once a character is generated he is randomly assigned a photo which is tagged to include one or more of his traits. This way he will always look the part! Each photo would suggest numerous traits so every type could be covered. (If you do decide to do this I'd be happy to suggest trait tags to a large collection of photos!)

 

Such a system's in place already, actually, but it's a bit cumbersome and needs to be updated for the new encounter system. Basically traits are attached to each photo, and when characters need to choose a photo they randomly draw an unused pic, then are rated how they feel about the picture with the same system that rates how they do at individual encounters. This score feeds a modified dice roll to keep the pic or toss it back and try again.

 

But as I said, it's cumbersome, and very little metadata's been entered so far (more-so for the Germans). If you can help, great! I've also added a button to the next release which you can click to force another character to draw another pic, at a small prestige cost (higher for high-ranking npcs, lower for player characters with good people-management skills).

 

In fact I'd also like to lend a hand with any dialogue or event ideas needed. Despite the atrocious standard of English I've displayed in this post I can assure you I'm quite an accomplished writer! This system you've built has endless possibilities & depth. I belive it should keep on developing so any help in its evolution needed just ask.

 

That would be excellent, James. I'm not going to have much time to work on it myself, and it definitely needs more encounters and other such content. The possibilities for the game are endless, but each individual encounter has 36 possible different outcomes of how prestige and mood are affected--though very little is expressed in the text because writing all that is so time-consuming. But the new encounter system allows much more dynamic results, which will be seen in the next release.

 

So I'll be in touch!

[JamesL]

Me too!