Perfection?

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Hello gdrover, it's great to have another new member!

PLEASE, PLEASE, DO make a larger scenario... and do it soon...I can't wait.

Heh, I need to agree with Davin for the most part here. The system in its current incarnation would have trouble with such a monster scenario, notwithstanding that flowy gameplay means you would be able to handle 100+ units easily. OK, maybe watching the AI move a hundred of his would get tedious, but it would still be bearable.

Off the top of my head, here is what would not work:

• supply could not be free over rail as it is currently, it could lead to outrageously unrealistic situations
• units would need the ability to embark and travel over rail (that could probably be a theater asset)
• modeling air support as a theater asset would not be realistic for the entire eastern front (could still work for a single army group maybe)
• at that scale, we would probably want FoW even for single player (but then we need to teach the AI how to exploit it)
• AI would need a whole new "strategic" brain. Currently it's a purely opportunistic operational monster, but strategically it's pretty dumb

We will be making new content though, but most probably simply more campaigns with about the same scope as what we currently have. In the meantime (I'm referring to your post @Matrix forums) you could try to complete the Soviet 1943 campaign completely. Hint: if you get a Brilliant Victory in "Don Offensives" another branch of the campaign opens up, one that is historically the most exciting and by far the most difficult in the game. Enjoy!

[raykhughes]

Tomislav,

That sounds like a major rewrite. While that does excite me, I realize that probably, with your current resources, it could be anther couple of years before we would see something like that turned out.

I for one would be more interested in more localized operational scenarios, ones in which you offer a slightly different theatre but of the same size. These I suspect, could be turned out in months and we could see a series of operational DLC through Europe peppering the next year or so... just a thought

And by the way I am really enjoying your game - it has taken me away from Battlefield 3 and Skyrim for a while - now that is a feat in itself.
Ray

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Yes, this is our current thinking... we will look to produce more campaigns of similar scope with only gradual improvements to the game system and the code base.

We've made no decision on exactly which campaigns yet. We also don't know whether it's going to be DLCs or some other format. This is all to be decided, probably in December or so. But it does look like there will be more

[willgamer]

Without a doubt, a poll will show up on this eventually, but my preference would be for scenarios of about the same size to cover other theaters/battles.

This would include, but is not limited to, Poland, France, D-Day, Cobra, Ardennes '44, Africa, Italy, and (not WW2) Korea.

[Imperial Dane]

Well i think the western front would be on a smaller scale compared to the eastern front, more battalions and companies rather than entire divisions. But glad to hear more content is coming

As for much larger maps.. err, i think the size we have at the moment is good enough If something must be added, perhaps some sort of meta-game for the campaign ? Besides just handling prestige that is. Perhaps adding in a staff to manage ?

[gdrover]

Perhaps for some, but I believe that many wargamers would love the ability to play this system, but bigger/ longer.

Not sure what the dev time on something like would be, but I imagine that this isn't an either/ or situation. I would guess that 2 x 2 could offer both more linked small scenarios as well as a few bigger ones.

[Spooner]

The problem is that you are asking for a different game; Increasing or decreasing the scale isn't just a matter of adding or removing units. In fact, if you wanted to change the scale of the game you'd make the units represent larger or smaller formations, so the number of active units and gaming experience stay the same. Games which give you hundreds of units to move are actually, in my opinion, very poorly designed (In particular, that philosophy ignores the fact that battles are fought with more than one officer in a chain of command and that generals that spend their time commanding individual platoons lose sight of the big picture )!

Actually, on a more constructive note, if the game was to be redesigned with a lot more pieces, I'd strongly advise using an tiered AI system similar to that used in the Airborne Assault/Command Ops games. In that, you have AI commanders at each level that will move their subordinate units for you if you don't want to micromanage - you just give the commanders their orders and they manage the fiddly bits for you (although this seems like added implementation complexity, this would just be a mirror of the way the opponent AI managed their troops).

[Tomislav Uzelac]

on a more constructive note

huh, and I thought we were on the Internet here

We have not ruled out bigger scenarios, but the fact is that as the scenario gets bigger, it gets more and more difficult to balance. This in addition to the concerns from my previous post which are mostly about keeping the game reasonably realistic historically.

For example, on the current Stalingrad scenario I've read 2 or 3 reports on the net where people finished just-in-time for turn 24. This is part of the learning experience and is just fine - but on the other hand I also read a report where someone did it in 6 turns (!) although apparently by spending prestige lavishly. So things can diverge sharply over the course of a releatively short scenario.

Again, I think our best bet is to gradually add things to the game system and code base. If we do things right, we might eventually be able to create really big scenarios that are also realistic and balanced. But I think it would be overly ambitious to try that just now.

[gdrover]

I don't think it would be too much of a stretch. What I'm talking about is just scaling up the size of the map, number of units, and number of turns a bit.
Instead of commanding 30 units for 10 turns, you would be commanding 60 - 80 units for 40 - 60 turns.

Since giving commands is really easy in this system, it would still be very playable on a slightly larger scale.

The upside would be that the player could reap the rewards for their breakthroughs and encirclements with a more fluid follow-up of the initial breakthrough.
The run-and-gun feel of the War in the East.

From a dev point of view, making a larger scenario would be a pretty easy task, requiring only a tweak to the rules allowing prestige points to be gained during the scenario for the capture of important objectives rather than at the end. It would also require good balancing of reinforcements (especially for the Soviets), so that once the Germans break through, they can eventually be slowed down and perhaps counter-attacked by the new units.
Not sure if the current AI would be especially good at husbanding these reserves and falling back until a good opportunity for a counter-attack presented itself, but it seems pretty good at spotting opportunities now.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Not sure if the current AI would be especially good at husbanding these reserves and falling back until a good opportunity for a counter-attack presented itself

Probably not. Then again, the Soviet command at the time had problems with this too. Ill-planned and wasteful counterattacks were pretty much the norm well into the campaign covered here: there was the debacle in the Crimea (which set the stage for our intro scenario) and of course 2nd battle of Kharkov itself.