Now, I''ve hardly played any wargames, but I was wondering if anything like this has been done: You play as a commander. Perhaps throughout the game you can advance to command larger numbers of troops. You CANNOT get anything other than a first-person or maybe a close third-person view. No minimaps. You CANNOT communicate with (or command) someone all the way on the other side of the board, unless you have special equipment (radio, etc) that allows such communication. Your information about the battle would come from: - What you can see and hear. - What your troops report back to you. You would play by issuing commands to people, who would then use them to go control other people and resources on the battlefield. If you want a group of grunts to take a hill, you might tell them yourself, or you might tell a subordinate officer to make it happen. You can choose to move around to various areas of the battle, at your own peril. Your soldiers have AI. They may (individually) be aggressive, alert, slow, fast, untrustworthy, good shots, bad shots, panicky, etc. The information you send (and receive!) might get mixed up in translation across the battlefield. So, the game would be not about overseeing a battle with godlike powers of observation and control. Instead, it would be about managing people and strategy on the battlefield, as best you can with the information and resources available to you. Once a battle is concluded, you could rerun it and walk around wherever you please, with some sort of ghostlike avatar. This would let you see what happened from every angle and learn from it. What do you think? I don''t have a specific setting in mind, but I think this would be a whole new way of playing. - gollumgollum

I don''t know if it''s an original idea, but if you managed to do a game like that well it would be an original implementation.

Moreover, I really like this idea. Cut out the micromangement, and focus on the overall strategy in a simulated battlefield command situation. I think that you would have to have some overland view, but you could limit it to maps and such, color coded for enemy and friendly controlled areas - perhaps with information such as what contingents were based there/held the area etc - without actually issuing any orders with the map. You would naturally need to see the lay of the land even if your orders were issued to subordinates rather than a god''s eye view of the world.

____________________________________________________

"Two wrongs do not make a right; it usually takes 3 or more."

Yeah, you would have the same sort of materials a commander might have, and that would include things like maps, rumors or reports of where the enemy was, etc. You might even have some soldiers who were familiar with the terrain because they lived nearby...

Maybe a good compromise would be a map that filled itself in in a clear, color-coded way, but only based on what you could see or hear. So, if someone told you that the evil Sir Hackenslash was stationed on the hill, then his icon would appear on the map. That way, it wouldn't give you any magically omniscient information, but would help you remember. And the information could still be inaccurate.

- gollumgollum



Edited by - gollum on September 19, 2000 5:45:32 PM

Yeah, I know that one, it''s called RealLife(tm) Battlefield... it''s still in beta test, and I am desperately trying to get *OUT* of the beta testing phase ... to no avail so far, I am supposed to start my own test period for 10 months around December. Unless I find some cool excuse like studying ...

other than that, I don''t think it has ever been done, and personally I am not sure I''d like to try it, unless it''s while sitting in a chair in front of my computer.

youpla :-P

(sorry, couldn''t resist)

It''s been done - very old wargame called "Austerlitz" (I think - I''ve seen it on theunderdogs). Can''t remember the designer. It featured a text driven orders interface, and the player played as either Napoleon or Czar Alexander; the player received reports (delayed) from his corps commanders and could issue text orders. It featured "3d" vector graphics (one of the very first 3d game, IIRC), and the player could only see what his general could see.

It wasn''t a very fun game (too frustrating - especially issuing orders), and damnably hard as well.

I think the designer made a simmilar game on Waterloo.

Ah, then you should also look up all the PlayByEMail games (even play by snailmail, actually). They all have this principle of issuing written orders, and getting a report every turn of the known situation (sometimes with a map to give you positions of known units).
Pretty hardcore stuff though

That sounds pretty cool, I have been thinking (im an artist so I just bitch to my programer friend to try and do shit BUT) thinking about how Close Combat would play as a first person shooter/RTS. When I play I keep thinking man this would be so cool in 3D. Stalking a sniper through a field of grass. Ambushing those pesky recon units from the second story of a barn, Running down krouts in your flame equiped crocodile tank, he he he my fave

As Mr Cup always says,
''I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.''

There was a game like this, i belive the title was Man of war, but im not sure....

Anyway the game place you in the position of a fleet commander (it was in pirates times) You plan the order than you look at the battle from the deck of your boat...

I like your idea...a cool stategieu would be to find were the ennemie comander is and go kill him1 another would be to try to misinform your ennemies...

Delisk :0

I forget if it was the American Revolutionary War or the American Civil War, but there was a commander who was greatly outnumbered, and he ordered his small force to march for much of the day in a circle, around and around in front of a small clearing. From the other side of the clearing, they looked like an endless army marching by. This halted the opposing force, giving the commander time until reinforcements could arrive.

I''d love to see a game where you could actually use trickery like that.

- gollumgollum