rules and format for a VSF campaign

[leadfool]

likely this has been discussed before, but we are talking about a fromal campaign game set in a VSF world.  I may end up in charge of running it.  What I am looking for from the collective Borg brain of LAf is a system to run the campaign.  We have the rule set, I will make up the period, and world (that is the fun part), etc. 
The campaign would involve several players in each game that need to have their own objectives and casualties and losses.  In other words in one game the Prussians, the French and the parrot men are fighting against the British, the Americans and the Japanese.  But the next week the Prussians and the Americans team up to fight the Spanish and the Japanese. 

I am not explaining this very well sorry.  Anyway any thoughts on systems?

[Froggy the Great]

Which rules are you using for the games themselves?

[Chairface]

I would have a look at the Atlantis sticky - lots of good things happening there. Maybe PM REd Orc for some advice.

[Red Orc]

Happy to provide any info or ideas or just be here to bounce things off... I love campaigns, it was the fact that Fuzzywuzzieswiflasers was talking about setting up a VSF campaign that stopped me being a lurker here and got me to take the plunge and start posting.

I suspect that you'll have to write your own 'campaign system' but really that's not very hard. The system for the Atlantis campaign is so simple that I could explain the basics in about 2 minutes. But though there has been a mass battle of the type you're talking about, that was difficult to fit into the main flow, as were the aeronef battles that were fought. It's best for one-on-one land battles, it seems. So I wouldn't advise the Atlantis campaign system for your battles.

Objectives are a great way of keeping track of campaigns though - physical objective markers (captives, ammo, food or fuel dumps etc) on the field can be a very handy way of 'keeping score' (in Game 1, the Japanese take 3 objectives, the Parrotmen take 2, the Prussians and the British 1 each, the French and the Americans none - the relative success of the different armies is easy to see in that case); or objectives can be less literal (the Prussians get 5 campaign points for completing their objective, occupying the Automaton Factory; the French also gain 5 campaign points for capturing General Piddling-Ninny, the British commander; the Americans gain 3 campaign points for destroying more than half, but not all, of the Prussian Klankentruppen, etc).

These kind of sytems make the 'win or lose accounting' easier - and armies can complete their objectives even if they suffer massive casualties, or converesly can emerge relatively unscathed from the battle but fail to complete their objective.

Anyway, soem quick and unstructured thoughts on objectives and rewards... hope some of that helps you out anyway. Honestly, I'll happily discuss ideas about how to organise campaigns until the Morlocks come home, PM or post questions and I'll eagerly waffle on for ages.