Hi, I'm new to the forum, and want to start by introducing myself. I am going to be a senior in high school in the fall, and am working at getting a NROTC scholarship with computer science as a major. I do not know programming yet, but it is something I do want to learn and go to school for. What I am trying to say is that I am not a game developer, and am not trying to develop a game (yet).

So let me say this again. I'm not trying to develop some crazy MMO shooter with no funds and no experience. This thread is only for fun and for discussion about the development of war games.

Now, onto the subject. Ever since I first played Battlefield 2 with my buddy, I have thought about how the ultimate goal of many video games is to simulate a large battle or a war, and how developers try to create an experience that immerses the player into this virtual war. So far, I think that developers have been relatively unsuccessful. Battlefield 1942 got somewhat close, and the evolution and domination co-op missions for ARMA and ARMA II got closer, but neither of them could really create that feeling of an ongoing war or battle that you could see being the subject of a documentary on the military channel. So I created this thread to discuss what it is that makes a great "war game," and what it is that limits the development of battles within the "virtual wars" that these games try to create.

So I'm going to start off by listing goals for a hypothetical multi-player war sim.

1. To cover an entire campaign, not just a single battle.
2. To have a very large map to allow players to be creative with attack angles, and give aircraft room to do their thing.
3. To allow multiple simultaneous battles and player-made operations occurring at different parts of the map.
4. To eliminate the problem of people picking up a vehicle for transportation purposes only, then ditching it when it comes time to shoot, or leaving it abandoned in the middle of nowhere where it cannot be used.

So discuss any ways that these goals could be realistically accomplished. I'll add more goals later, this is just to start us off.

Look at the balances in AI-War. http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php

Easily one of "largest" strategy games. A campaign actually feels like a campaign rather than a battle over a small plot of land.

I like they way you thing man!!!!!
Start of with a online multiplayer version then move up to campaion online or offline.

I want to address the first and second goals.

I remember playing an old combat flight sim called Falcon 4.0, which simulated a war beautifully. The game map was a full scale version of Korea, and featured a dynamic campaign that was always going, and you just picked which of the randomly generated air strikes, sead strikes, BDAs, and patrols that you wanted to fly. And throughout each mission you could hear the radio chatter from the other missions, and look over the horizon to see the pops and flashes from an ongoing ground assault in the distance. I would love to see that kinda of thing, except in a multi-player environment where every operation and battle was created and performed by players.

I did some experimenting with massive player-made maps in Arma 2, and came across a 51km x 51km desert map. It felt like it was the right size for this kind of goal. I also found that 10km is a good view distance for a fighter jet flying at 2000 feet. But this brings up a problem: How would some one go about making an environment where from the air a player could be seeing 100km2 of objects and terrain, and yet have enough detail on the ground to include detailed buildings, trees, and grass to make it believable from the ground?

I'm going to put some thought into that question. I'll also take a look at AI-War.

From an AI or single player point of view, I think it's pretty much impossible to do it on a 1:1 basis, i.e. each unit is an agent at work in the world in real-time. I would have maybe 3 levels: agent, tactical and strategic. The strategic level gives you a 3d planet where you can place your various commands and draw out front-lines or army group lines. Double click a group on the map and you go into tactical, where you can place divisions, stores, etc. Double click again and you go into agent mode, where you can place and direct battalions, regiments, platoons, etc.

The AI for each level has to be different of course and by restricting the really hard grunt work to the agent level with the fog of war you can "zoom in" on a relatively small map with a manageable number of units on it. The strategic, tactical and agent data can all be stored in a database that grows as the game progresses. With modern DBMS, 1,000,000 records (units) is no problem, provided you partition them or index them properly.

I imagine if you zoom out of an agent level battle that part of the world goes into tactical or strategic mode (the AI for it is different and probably based on statistical models, rather than agent behaviour). When you zoom back in to it, the same units are still there (streamed in from the database), but the battle has moved on (units destroyed, moved, i.e. the tactical or strategic model is applied on another thread to on-going activity).

I'd love to try a proof of concept of something like this. I think you could make some truly epic strategy games this way, rather than what we tend to get at the moment (a linear series of pretty small maps with unit caps). But perhaps the reason we don't see it is because it's just too damned hard/slow/impossible to do at the moment.

I've been thinking about but procrastinating on something like this since the Close Combat series (WWII). CC III gave you a strategic map where you could choose where you wanted to fight next (taking Bastogne for example). Playing Supereme Commander II recently made me yearn for much larger maps in games like this as well :p.

I'm talking on about a strictly multi-player FPS here, but I do like your idea for an RTS. It would basically be a game like Battlefield 2, but large scale.

But I have this idea for how a game like this would work swirling around in my head right now, but I need some time to organize my thoughts and get it down. So I'll go over a basic summary of it.

It would feature 2 factions (US and Russia or something) and both would be fighting over control of a theater of war. A theater of war would consist of 3 maps, which would be somewhere between 40x40km and 50x50km each. There would be strategic points (kind of like the battlefield series) that you could capture. These could be towns, military outposts, or airfields. In towns, only light vehicles (Humvees, Vodniks, etc.), military outposts would spawn light vehicles and armored vehicles, and airfields would spawn light and armored vehicles, as well as helicopters and military jets.

So these strategic points would be placed throughout a map, which might be an island or something. Then off the coast of the island would be an aircraft carrier for both sides, on either side of the map. I'll try to go into paint and get a visual for you guys to look at so you can see what I'm talking about.

EDIT: Ok I spent a minute or two making this.
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/5224/islandvg.jpg
The straight lines are airfields, the boxes are towns, and the circles are military outposts. the color dictates the team they belong to, and gray means that they are neutral. The big ovals in the water are moving Carrier fleets that cannot be killed, and they shoot down any enemy plane that gets close to prevent spawn camping.

[Edited by - Heresjohnny7 on June 26, 2010 7:33:16 PM]

Ah, so that's more simulating battles than simulation of a war. To me a war means a world war, or at least something involving very large numbers of units, where things like economy come into play.

Well the thing is, the 3 maps would be played simultaneously, and players could switch between them at any time. The game would be "won" when a faction controls every strategic point on every map.

I agree with most of these exept number 2. I've played battlefeild 1942 and the problem with it is that the players are to far apart that you have to run half way across the feild to kill or at least find a group of enamies. The gameplay would be more intense (you do want to make it intense right?) if the players were shooting from short to medium and long (for snipers) range. So you would have tons and tons of bullets being shot making it more exiting but you would have to make lots of cover so players don't die right off the bat!

[Edited by - MMO on June 29, 2010 5:48:32 PM]

There's a game that does what the OP suggests called WorldWar2 Online:

http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/

How well they simulate an actual campaign I'm not sure, since I haven't tried it. Supposedly it is an MMO-FPS though.