It looks like XP will not be a starter, not enough participation. We will setup the accounts for those who are interested in pre-registering their names, having a warfleet email, etc. HOWEVER, Battlegroups is going to be running a singleplayer experience based on what we planned to do for XP:All we need now is a definitive answer from TAG if they can issue some type of security in the scoring system, and if they will be creating missions that players have not already practiced ad infinitum, and finally if they can automate the process so scores would be tabulated, judged and organized, uploaded thru a webupdate program of some type.
Some other things that need to be addressed.
Lets say two people get the same tonnage.. not entirely out of the question, they sank two of the same ships.. is it a tie? Or is the winner decided by least amount of time on mission?
Is it necessary to add additional measures of success, like who has most hull strength left? Or who has not wasted any torps..? Five merchant ships needed to be sunk and you started with 30 torps.. one player has only 20 torps left over, the other has 25.. someone was more skillfull, dont you think?
TAG has the ability to output an encrypted text file to assure security in scoring, and if they also know the internal game values such as hull, torps, etc.. it would be nice to have a few of these incorporated into the judging system.
I hope I am not asking for too much, just want to show people that there are some interesting ways to make this challenging and informative.
1) We will be releasing a patch that activates the new Campaign Series. This will contain all new missions (Designed by the Battlegroups guys), each mission set built off the previous (to my understanding).
2) The scoring will be based on your playername and the correct mission. You will not need to have completed a previous mission before playing the latest one (for newcomers).
3) Scoring accuracy will primarily be honor based, but we will (schedule and budget permitting) be adding some security to these files to give some protection.
4) Scoring method: I'm not sure what they plan, but I'm guessing in your "Tie" scenario it will be a combination of all the players who play the scenario and their timeline based accomplishments.
5) I'm hoping the loadouts will be RL accurate. I'm not sure how the "# of shots" should apply, that will be up to them.
--East
