Myself I'd love 18th century battles simulated in 1st person, and then I'm especially thinking of battles like Poltava etc. *drools*. A battle in such a simulation would offer a good combination of cannon balls/shrapnel, muskets, hand grenades and close combat with swords (errm not really swords any longer by that time, in Swedish they're called "värjor"). As far as the units go you would have infantry, cavalry and artillery. However, the limitations I see are technical ones; if you try to simulate a battle with 100 000 soldiers you better have good hardware. Otherwise you will have to cull almost all of the epic scene away by reducing visibility to laughable distances.

mmmm the 18th century battles dont sound that bad, actually it would be more frenetic action, trying to load your musket while cavalry charges toward you, as an example.
actually the hack&slash mechanic could be adapted to any of the periods involving some kind melee-warfare.
great idea thanks.

unwise owl, could you give me sources of were I cold get info on the military weapons of the 18th century?

You know, you should really [google] before asking.

This looks interesting
Whole index

One of my very first posts to this forum was about Historical based FPS games. I had suggested something like the American Civil War or perhaps the British Colonial war period of the late 1800's.

But a Napoleonic era or 30yrs War era would be interesting as well. Heck, why not do a Queen Anne's War (French and Indian War for us Americans), American Revolution game? The pacing of the game would be quite a bit different and require a totally different style of play. Only being able to fire a few times a minute, and having to be brave enough to reload while being charged would be a totally different experience.

I'm hesitant about the melee combat part though. While you could integrate a fighting game component if it's a 3rd person view, the switch to a different perspective would be very unsettling. Doing melee in the 1st person is in my opinion just not doable with current technology (so when are we ever going to see VR environments that can track our head or eye movements to give us a broad field of view or have biofeedback devices to measure motor responses that can be linked to good kinematics of the character?).

While Rune was a reasonable success, the 3rd person perspective still left me detached. So I think doing a melee only era might not be the way to go.

Quote:

Original post by Anonymous Poster All my books on the Great Northern War which was my primary thought was in Swedish. However (sorry but I don't remember how to link directly and the FAQ seems to have left that out): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/greatnorthernwar/ http://www.neva.ru/EXPO96/book/chap2-1.html I realize this is not precisely weapon info, but that I suppose you can easily find by google just by searching for "musket" etc.

That was me posting.

By the way, these guys (although no history buffs in many cases), can possibly dig up some interesting information:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=44

You'd have to register though.