What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Take command of air and naval assets from post-WW2 to the near future in tactical and operational scale, complete with historical and hypothetical scenarios and an integrated scenario editor.

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Jim D Burns
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What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Post by Jim D Burns »

Back in the Harpoon days I always lamented the inability of that engine to model a WWIII in Europe scope scenario. The engine simply couldn’t handle tracking hundreds if not thousands of planes/ships/missiles all at once. So the first question that jumps out to me on this title is, will a WWIII scenario be possible, or is this engine limited similar to how harpoon was in how much stuff it can handle at once?

If it is limited, what’s the upper limit/scale of what can be modeled? An entire Korea war conflict with room for China and other Asian nations to get involved or just large fleet sized battles as we saw in Harpoon?

Jim
Dimitris
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RE: What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Post by Dimitris »

Technically, there is no upper limit.

Practically, it depends on a lot of things, two examples being the performance of your PC and how "busy" the scenario is (Are half of the units plotting complex nav paths? Are there a lot of long-range sensors? Lots of jammers? Complex weather? Etc. etc.)

Generally we're very satisfied with the performance so far and we consider it to be much faster & more scalable than any similar game available ATM. As an example, in one of the scens currently under development, under very "busy" circumstances and with more than 1200 units on the map, Command is comfortably running at 1-1min acceleration. This is on a mid-range Core i5 under Win8 x64.

Your mileage may of course vary, but we're very happy with it.
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BradOrbital
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RE: What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Post by BradOrbital »

Wow...nice!
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Jim D Burns
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RE: What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Post by Jim D Burns »

Great news thanks for the quick reply.

I always hated it in Harpoon in the large scenario that had 3 or more NATO carriers in it operating in the eastern med (Can’t recall the name been over 10 years ago now). As soon as missiles started to fly it would crash to desktop due to the overload, so now it looks like that scenario and hopefully other larger ones will finally be a blast to play with this title.

Another quick question, does the AI follow scripted move plots only, or can you assign it a box or area of operation and the AI randomly chooses where to go within that area?

I’m thinking of some of those Atlantic convoy scenarios with lots of Russian subs hunting your ships. Once you figured out the scripted move plots the scenario wasn’t much fun anymore. With random AI choices it would be a different battle every time you played it.

Jim
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goodwoodrw
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RE: What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Post by goodwoodrw »

Jim you don't know what slow is, if you haven't played the original Harpoon on an Amiga machine!!! [:D]
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RE: What's the upper limit to scenario size?

Post by Dimitris »

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
Another quick question, does the AI follow scripted move plots only, or can you assign it a box or area of operation and the AI randomly chooses where to go within that area?

I’m thinking of some of those Atlantic convoy scenarios with lots of Russian subs hunting your ships. Once you figured out the scripted move plots the scenario wasn’t much fun anymore. With random AI choices it would be a different battle every time you played it.

Yes, and in the case of aircraft & subs they also vary their throttle & altitude/depth settings according to what they are supposed to do.

For an example of this, try the scenarios "Tee Up" and "Trapped Under Ice".
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