rmacrae - thank you for the very thoughtful post. You bring up a lot of good points and things that we have discussed many times in the past.
I was originally inspired by Simulation Canada's Main Battle Tank (MBT) game which was an 1980 text-mode game that had a design philosophy very much like what you describe. There was a lot of information hiding in the sense that you could not see the battlefield as it was right now, but only as it had been reported on at various points by various units in the past. You had to truly evaluate the reports (often fragmentary) that came in and piece them together so as to construct a mental map of what must be happening in real time. This was a deliberate design feature of that game and the SimCan developer told me that it was meant to be chaotic and confusing because that what a real command viewpoint was like. He advised me to keep the unit count low and the number of possible operations small in the new game otherwise any reasonable person would simply by overwhelmed and give up.
A lot of this thought went into the initial FPG / FPRS design but playtesting pressure gradually squeezed it out. It was just too hard to tell if the game was running correctly or not based on what the playtesters were telling me. That might sound like a stupid reason but I could not release a game I could not be sure was running even approximately correctly!
For example, I would have a reporting doctrine for friendly units. They would report in every x minutes or whenever they spotted the enemy or did certain actions. This was all configurable per unit and the Unit Description Panel would say on it when the current unit report had been received at. Frequent reports would be more accurate but much more likely to give the enemy valuable sigint info up to practically inviting an arty stonk on both parties to the conversation. (That was particularly tough on HQs trying to coordinate a lot of subordinates.) Trying to find a reasonable reporting doctrine and then to know when to change it for altered circumstances added a lot of bookkeeping to the game. People would be lazy and ignore it and so the UDP would frequently it would be out of date and inaccurate. Then I would get all kinds of bogus complaints. That whole information management game was so frustrating that I eventually had to turn it off.
This came right after I had read Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon where he made such a point that Napoleon's superior ability to construct and track a battle in his head was one of the secrets of his genius. Trying to actually portray that though just led to a lot of frustration.
More recently we have considered units disappearing or becoming semi-transparent ghost units if they go out of command or red-line due to morale / ammo / readiness issues. We would also like to show timestamps again so that we can tell how old spotting reports are, etc.
I like your three map suggestion as that really makes it clear what is intended.
"More doctrine flavour" and personality settings. I would like to start adding more of these in future versions. Right now I have a general 'national doctrine' that governs local initiative and risk aversion. They apply the same to all units. With named leaders I could create modifiers that would shape subordinate units. Per your suggestion some of the modifiers might be known in advance (this particular commander is known to be unusually by-the-book or otherwise wrt local initiative) and some would be unknown (perhaps something like how many subordinates he can effectively control at once in a combat situation). You would then start to assign missions to leaders who seemed better suited to the requirements of the mission.
If I could figure out a cluster of new options that would convey some of this command simulation viewpoint then I could roll it out as a new game option - something like a "Nightmare setting". This would allow people to get used to the game gradually and then try out this more realistic option when they were ready.
Yes, there is lots to consider. Thanks for your suggestions, Rob C
ORIGINAL: rmacrae
On my wish list is that the game become even more of a command simulation. There needs settings for those who want that type of experience to restrict the information flowing the to player to be no more than what a brigade commander and his staff in the 1980’s would reasonably know. More chaos, more uncertainty, less direction to manoeuver units, greater use of chain of command, less fretting over pK's, 'viewpoint' focus for the design.
The map should display the only the last known/reported location of my units i.e. this may not be where they actually are located, as well as the contacts with enemy units as communicated by my units: communicated with varying degrees of accuracy: recon- high; units with screen/hold orders- medium high; hasty move orders -low accuracy, etc modified by veteran, green, etc class.
The hex by hex crawl of my units as they execute orders is not shown on my map, e.g. If a unit is sent on a road move of 10 km, the player would not watch it snake hex by hex over the 10km of road, he would see it in its start location, could toggle to its ordered location, but may only see an updated actual location on his map if it reports its arrival at its destination; if it is destroyed en route, and it fails to get out an ‘enemy contact’ flash, the player would never know its fate.
Frequent communications with HQ (if you wanted to view a hex by hex crawl) generates EW identification for display as a possible unit location on the oppositions map and a candidate for artillery.
There needs a setting whereby I can display on my map all enemy sightings and strength estimates in the last 15/30/60 /90 /120 minutes. Now an enemy icon appears and disappears, and I have to remember where I saw it. And I should only know of contact if it is communicated up the chain of command, not the mere act of engagement. The game in essence manages three maps, one- which is not visible to the players, is where all the units of both sides are actually located,; two – player 1’s map that shows the last reported locations of his own units, with a toggle to display their orders or ordered destinations, plus the last reported locations of enemy contacts as communicated to HQ; three – players 2’s map, which is like players 1’s, mutatis mutandis .
It would be nice to have more doctrine flavour displayed by the units in their execution of orders. The West trumpets the initiative of their soldiers. This is to be implemented by units unilaterally changing their orders – and not just under the pressures of a combat result. Initiative is not just executing exactly what you are told, but faster. This feature would operate by having some Western units changing their screen orders to hold orders, or a deliberate move changed to an assault, or adding another way point to a move etc, initiative being displayed as a bias for more aggression. These order changes would not communicated to the commander (player) until the post game debrief. Units could have personality settings for its commander, thereby giving the player an estimate of who will be reckless. While the West accommodates an extremely hostile EW environment with initiative, the Soviets rely on well-practiced drills to perform battlefield evolutions with the minimum of command input. In these circumstances the Soviet order cycle should be shorter than that of the West. This could be implemented by allowing the Soviet player to give orders at each waypoint, e.g from start to waypoint 1: move hasty, to way point 2: move deliberate, to way point 3: assault. The rigidity of the drill is displayed by the formation being religiously held until the next way point is reached even if the encountered opposition warrants a stop ,or screen, or in this example, an earlier posture of move deliberate than waypoint 2. Except for their recon units, the typical Soviet unit would be slower to send intell and contact info up the chain of command. The Soviets may be faster in their formation evolutions, but would be slower than the West in integrating a 'big picture' view of the battlefield for the player (commander).
As a general interface paradigm, during the orders phase, a nice option would be to have the core of the screen present reports on units in a tabular format, with a small side window that bounces around the map to show the location of a units selected(clicked) on the report., e.g unit ID on the y-axis, measure (status, orders, morale, ammo, etc) on the x-axis. This way I can review entire battalions/regiments with one screen view . (this info would be of varying degrees of accuracy as determined by when units last reported, etc.) and other reports of enemy contacts, location, estimated strength, direction, etc.
