Sunday, August 30, 2015

Combat Operations - Supplementary Material

Matt, the indie developer of Combat Operations was kind enough to share with me these annotated figures that will help to follow the action mentioned in his presentation of last Monday.



These figures are pretty much self explanatory so I will just let you enjoy them.








Cheers,




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wholeheartedly I support the idea. And yes, there is a 'but' in here. The ability to see the counters. From the screenshots it looks bad. Hardly recognizable. I believe this needs some fixing otherwise it will be really bad for the eyesight and the project itself.
Furthermore working with the real map has one issue, the knowledge of the terrain. In many cases the troop COs had either little clue on the ground and needed some recon or had quite knowledge of the terrain. This project does not seem to address this issue (in truth haven't seen a game that does it). And we are very limited with the map while commanders used all sorts of maps.
Another question is how the system will deal with rivers and such? Any chance on explaining the ideas behind same unit holding two sides of river.
Also would support this on KS :)

RangerX3X said...

I kind of agree with the previous poster in that it is hard to see what is going here with these screen shots. The background map itself seems way too busy for me, and at least needs to be muted somewhat so that the counters can stand out prominently. This is obviously just my personal opinion, but I feel graphics wise the counters should always be paramount to everything else.

Anonymous said...

I like the map. Looks like real WW2 maps.

Anonymous said...

To add to my first post. Well ideally I would see some 3d map. I know that this would be ahistorical however we are ahistorically replying the IIWW.
The 3d view would allow for more clarity in general. The unit is covering the portion of the ground that is different from the unit counter (might be larger or smaller). I've been playing around with the analysis of the IIWW gaming quite some time and to me this is one of the biggest issues so far. Thus for example life case scenarios of units passing each other by a 100 or so meters (specialy in the cities) are not represented in the wargames.
Another thing I wanted to ask is how the comms between units will be resolved. The Germans were often flying completely blinded in Normandy and the exchange of info between units was often problematic. In any game we usually are in god mode, who sees and controls all. The Commands Ops are very close to correctly simulating the issues with the comms.
Regards,
Chris Adamus

Choppin said...

Regarding the visuals, please don't get too hung up on that yet. These are early visuals without thorough analysis on color schemes, etc. This is NOT complete by any stretch, and they will continue to evolve. They do paint a rough sketch of what the game will be: a 2-D map view with commanders issuing commands to their units. Being an indie project, going in to the 3D is way too much $$$...at least at this point.

The map is "busy" to most people, but you are looking at an authentic topo map of Carentan in 1944. This is what the real battlefield commanders were using! Ideally we will find a way to toggle the 1km grid lines off and on, and some other features. The nice thing is that visuals can be easily altered over the course of development...and we will likely include options for different visuals to suit player tastes without changing the game at all.

Recon and such: the scope of this game is far too deep for me to fully explain everything, however it is most definitely accounted for. This is an operational level game (i.e. you are a regimental commander or higher) so you are not burdened with dealing with all the little nuances that occur at the lower levels. These items are accounted for by various command delays that occur. You issue the command, then it takes time for that command to filter to the troops with all the planning involved, and if that command involves combat and or coordinating with other units, then that makes the planning that much more lengthy and complicated.

Holding two sides to a river...not sure what to say other than it can be done! :)

Comms...this is an important aspect too, and is way too deep for me to discuss fully. In a game like this you will have the god mode issue...however the game mechanics themselves will mitigate the issue to a certain degree. For instance the Allies will have FAR more intel to work with when making decisions on where and when to strike.

Finally, we are live on kickstarter and we need all the support we can get to make this game a reality! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/490387448/combat-operations