Earlier today I received a PM from a player asking for tips for military actions. Their request got me thinking about how I went about building things in the run-up to the Battle of New Cov (Round 32, for you future individuals looking at this tutorial). Here are some thoughts that I hope will help players new and old.
(1) Intelligence.
I won't sugarcoat this: the campaign process should almost always start at the intelligence and/or reconnaissance phase. Intelligence is a crucial area that tends to be overlooked by most players - even veteran players - because intelligence actions in SWD can be a very tricky thing. Most players tend to use them to achieve very specific ends: infiltration of a government, trying to steal starship plans, hacking files, et cetera. I tend to take more of a broader focus, focusing on watching and listening for unusual occurrences and situations. But I'm also not hesitant to send in an action whose intent is the gathering of specific information on a given situation, if required.
A case in point: several days ago I was told that while a number of players had submitted actions for anti-piracy patrols, I was the only one to send in an action directing an investigation of the piracy situation as a whole. Without that action, we never would have found out about New Cov, or that piracy in the rim was so much higher than the Core, or even about some of the general tactics being used by pirates.
(2) Strategic planning.
Strategic planning is another very-not-sexy thing. In the case of New Cov, once I had a better sense of information in hand, I sat down to sketch out a broad view of the campaign I had in mind. Where was I sending ships and troops? Why was I sending them there? Were there any special considerations the plan should keep in mind? What did I - as the commander - view as critical pieces of information I was lacking? These are all the pieces that go into assembling a strategic plan.
I feel it necessary to point out that a strategic plan is not a battle plan. It is the very broad-scope view of the landscape. It is where you apprise your subordinates of your general idea for the campaign and how they - the fleets, the squadrons - will be contributing to the fulfillment of your goals. In the case of New Cov, the strategic plan was the first military action I fired off once I had better intelligence information.
(3) Keep things at the strategic level.
Many rounds ago, when I was first getting into the realm of military and intelligence actions, I would wrestle with a temptation to micromanage. I've since learned that if you're in command of a moderately competent military - by which I mean planetary stats in the 40s or higher - you should trust in the ability of your military commanders to carry out the mission.
When it comes to planning a battle, you do want to specify a framework: your intentions, what units will carry out the intentions, etc. Precise tactics? Leave them to your commanders, unless you have a compelling reason not to. In the case of New Cov, I specified tactics to be carried out by a specific sub-element because their job was far so outside the ordinary (acting as bait, in this case). That led to mention of things like erratic weapons fire and irregular launches of starfighters. Speed, turning, what ships to fire at when? I left that to the starship captains.
(4) Reconnaissance.
Reconnaissance can be hit or miss for players. It's not glamorous. It's not sexy. It can be very tedious to write out how you want your reconnaissance vessels to be spreading out throughout a system, passively listening for electronic signals and triangulating where they're coming from. Or - in the case of New Cov - how you want them watching ships performing hyperspace micro-jumps and calculating the entry/exit vectors of said ships.
My experience has been that the moderator team approves of pre-battle and battle reconnaissance. They want you to demonstrate flexibility and thinking, and to be using all your pieces in furtherance of whatever plans or strategy you have in mind. And my experience has also been that they tend to reward you for looking, observing, and watching before committing to battle.
(5) Contingency planning.
Remember: when you're building a set of battle orders, you take on the persona of the senior admiral present. Or the general in a bunker far behind the front lines. You are not a starship captain. You're not the lieutenant commanding a tank platoon in urban combat. Your job is to be the conductor, making sure all the pieces fit together and everyone plays their part. Contingency planning therefore falls in your lap.
Stepping back and looking at the big picture - deliberately punching holes in your plans, seeing where there's risk, asking how this can go wrong - is your job. That's why the battle orders for New Cov had a built-in contingency: what to do if reconnaissance elements found a large pirate force lurking elsewhere in the system.
At the same time, don't go overboard with this. One or two contingency plans are good. Five or six or seven? You're probably going to annoy whichever moderator is processing your battle orders.
(6) Post-campaign assessments.
This didn't occur to me until after I'd sent the message to the player. At the end, when everything is over and your ships have returned home, don't forget to have your personnel do the after-action reviews at the "strategic level." You want your admirals and generals, and their staffs, to convene to discuss what did and didn't work. You want to make sure the sub-elements - the army groups, the capital ship squadrons, the carrier groups - go back through and do the critical self-assessments, and forward that information to the strategic planners, or the naval or army academies, or the intelligence agencies.
My experience has been that this is where the "meat" of your level adjustments will come from. If you've fought a successful campaign, you want to make sure the "lessons learned" are indeed learned, remembered, and incorporated into training. And that will eventually reflect in adjustments to your planetary military stats.