Campaign Management Software Investigation

Weeellllll, a week spent on this investigation and here are some findings to share with you (I will keep the headache and red eyes to myself).

Firstly no doubt a lot of effort has been invested by extremely committed individuals to put their ideas into practice as software. It is not worthy of me to knock them and their efforts, intelligence and sweat in any way whatsoever. I don't have their level of commitment or even remotely the ability to beaver away at the programming but I do know what I want and will tell you at the end.

Secondly, it must be clear that there are different ways of managing a campaign so to clarify:

• Play By E Mail (PBEM) - In these situations players move pieces in accordance with their rule books by on-screen mouse manipulation – this has been described as one level above kidney stones in pain and I concur heartily:
• 2 or more players conducting a campaign not able to play face to face
• 2 or more players enjoying the lack of a God view in a game but able to resolve battles face to face
• blah blah etc
• Real Campaign Management 
  • All the PBEM conditions apply but the pain level is hugely diminished by intelligence built into the software to manage forces, bookkeeping and combat.

Ok, on with it.

In the course of this affair one thing is common to all the software – they all have absolutely terrible descriptions of what they can do and manuals and tutorials vary from semi-useful to utterly ludicrous, but Berthier has some merit here. Which is indicative of the output of highly talented people who did it out of commitment in their spare time for which we extend our grateful thanks and appreciation - except ADC2 which should be noticeably better as a commercial product.

I looked at these but there may be more, please inform me.

Functionality	Product				What I Want
	ADC2	VASSAL	CyberBoard	Berthier
Status	PAY	FREE	FREE	FREE	umm.... just be reasonable
Eye Candy	Yes	Yes	OK	Er, no, thanks to DOS heritage	YES like VASSAL
Graphic Editing	Yes with rocket science degree	Yes, lesser degree	Yes, logical and straight forward	Yes, limited	CyberBoard and Berthier combined
Terrain and elevation definition	Could not discover elevation	Could not discover elevation	No elevation functionality	Yes, limited	CyberBoard and Berthier combined with more
Line of Sight	Possibly but documentation bad	Possibly but documentation bad	No	Yes	Berthier with more
Logistics	No	No	No	Yes	Berthier with more
Unit definition	No	No	No	Yes	Berthier with more
OOB	No	No	No	Yes	Berthier with more
Combat resolution	No	No	No	Yes but basic	Berthier with more
Rule mechanisms	No	No	No	Some for movement and supply	Berthier with more
Management type	PBEM	PBEM	PBEM	Campaign and PBEM	Berthier with more
Conclusion	NOT	NOT	Yes	Yes	CyberBoard and Berthier combined with more

Some more thoughts 'n things about what I want:

• Unlimited terrain types
• Unlimited unit types
• Unlimited units
• Hierarchical definitions of units
• Ability to change component units on the fly during a campaign
• Supply definitions – Berthier is good but more flexibility and options such as POL, LOG and Repple
• Movement definitions more flexibility and options
• Terrain elevations – more
• Line of sight
• Combat resolution per specific tables
• Turn sequences 
• Also ability to choose map layer shapes, e.g. hexes, squares, interconnected circles etc.
• Link sub-campaigns into a parent campaign

Clearly there should be more and this is an inadequate requirements definition, for instance perhaps some sort of work flow mechanism is needed to manage it all. This is intensive, extensive and expensive programming.

I remain in hope..