sell on Steam?

[Pelican Pal]

GoG sells modern games now. They just originally focused on old (pre 2005ish) PC games.

 

Wargame is less Combat Mission and more Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, which I recently purchased on Steam.

 

The maps are gigantic and are essentially the scale of 3-4 (or more) larger CM maps. So you will commonly 2kilometer+ engagements with multiple independent engagements happening at once.

[BlackAlpha]

GoG sells modern games now. They just originally focused on old (pre 2005ish) PC games.

 

Wargame is less Combat Mission and more Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, which I recently purchased on Steam.

 

The maps are gigantic and are essentially the scale of 3-4 (or more) larger CM maps. So you will commonly 2kilometer+ engagements with multiple independent engagements happening at once.

 

I agree. Playing Red Storm is like playing a more realistic version of Wargame. Really liked that game. However, I really, really hate the fact you can't queue up orders in that game. It makes a lot of the missions with high electronic warfare interference impossible to play in a realistic manner. The devs said they will add that feature early this year or so. So, I'm waiting until they add it before I'm picking that game up again.

 

A hex in that game is 500 meters. So the maps are much larger than just 4 times a CM map. There's long range artillery on the map, that's how large they are.

 

Oh and on topic - I also picked it up on Steam.

Edited January 7, 2015 by BlackAlpha

[Mord]

Wait before getting Rome 2 and see first how the new Attila game is like, it's coming out in a month or so. Most of Rome 2's bugs are fixed by now but Attila might be better because Creative Assembly always releases a crappy/buggy game using a new engine and then they re-use the engine to create a good (working) game.

 

LOL Too late, already picked up Medieval II, Rome II Emperor Edition, Shogun II, and Sniper Elite V2 during that huge Steam sale. I did a bunch of reading on Rome and figured with all the patches and mods it would be doable at this point. There was a lot of bitterness to wade through and took a good portion of it with a grain of salt—I know how petty gamer's can be and sometimes they go on these hate-quests that actually cause me to be more wary of them than the game (CMSF and CMX2 taught me that). Youtube was a big help, I got enough pointed criticism and fair reviews to figure I'd be good with my choice...and hopefully they'll throw a few more patches in before they abandon it. I still have three DLCs to get for Rome and about five for Shogun. Which I am gonna do for my birthday this month, I think. Right now I have just been playing around setting up and testing small battles to see how the fighting works and testing mods to see what looks good and helps with actual unit tactics. I'll say one thing, the battles in both Shogun and Rome are engrossing, specially with the blood packs! I love all that carnage.

 

I am interested in Attila—looking forward to getting it. But I will probably wait a while unless it comes out of the gate without a bunch of problems.

 

 

Mord.

[Pelican Pal]

BlackAlpha, I was referring to Wargame when refrencing the map size.

 

I also thought they you can currently link orders (up to 3). Unless I'm misunderstanding your feature request.

 

I do know that they are working on a new game called Southern Storm which has a focus on Southern Germany/Austria and will have a wider array of forces and more engine upgrades.

[Stagler]

It's basically a faster paced version of Combat Mission. So, if that's the sort of thing you think you would enjoy, it's worth checking it out (I'd recommend the latest version, Red Dragon). Personally, I had a lot of fun playing it with friends in multiplayer (against AI and other people). I wouldn't recommend it for singleplayer.

 

Dont get Red Dragon, its horrible. AirLand Battle was nearly there as well.

 

Wargame EE is by far the most superior game in terms of player satisfaction from seeing things come together when a plan is executed flawlessly.

 

The unlocking units mechanic was a gimmick which was removed later. Although it did have a function of stopping new players from picking horrendous selections of units in their battlegroups then throwing the game through inexperience of utilising them in the combined arms battle.

[womble]

I'd consider EE an RTS (rather than a wargame) because it involves building the units you're going to use, during the game, managing the "resources" needed to do so. I didn't buy it, after watching a couple of online vids of the gameplay. I'd probably enjoy it up to a point, but it's not what I'm looking for in a game. It's a "wargamey" RTS, but certainly, in my lexicon, not a "hardcore wargame". Pretty much all my friends and the people I bump into when with them are gamers (playing tabletop RPGs, LARP and computer games, online and off, multiplayer and MM). A few of them class themselves as wargamers, playing figures games alongwith the other media. Some of them play Flames of War. One of them has been persuaded to buy CM, and he just doesn't have the time to get to know the game, even to take up my offer of a sit-down tutorial; his experience isn't going to sell it to any of his friends, either, and he co-runs half a dozen FoW tournaments a year. He has time to play Battle Academy, which I'd class as a wargame, for sure, though. Steam wouldn't increase the exposure-rate amongst my gamer friends; they're not looking for the material in the first place.

[BlackAlpha]

I'd consider EE an RTS (rather than a wargame) because it involves building the units you're going to use, during the game, managing the "resources" needed to do so.

 

Battle Academy, which I'd class as a wargame, for sure, though.

 

Battle Academy also has that before the mission starts. You pick which units you are going to use using "money". Wargame has a gamemode where you don't have to manage "resources" (the income from capturing territory).

 

That's what I meant with one of my previous posts. Something like Battle Academy gets classed as a wargame while the Wargame series is not. Is Battle Academy only a wargame because it's turn based? Because it's quite arcade, very simplistic and fast paced. The Wargame series is a lot more complex, more realistic, but it's real time and so it doesn't qualify in your eyes? It then gets thrown on the RTS pile instead, which seems unfair.

 

 

 

 

I also thought they you can currently link orders (up to 3). Unless I'm misunderstanding your feature request.

 

 

I meant queuing up different kind of movement orders (like fast move followed by assault) or go somewhere, blow up a bridge and then go somewhere else, or resupply then move somewhere else. At the moment, in a high electronic warfare environment, you can only give them a single order every 30-45 minutes or so, which is a bit lame. Especially if you need them to first move 1 hex, so they move 1 hex and then they sit there for at least 30 minutes doing nothing. It's quite ridiculous.

Edited January 7, 2015 by BlackAlpha

[Baneman]

Battle Academy also has that before the mission starts. You pick which units you are going to use using "money".

Essentially a different name for Combat Mission's QB "points".

 

Wargame has a gamemode where you don't have to manage "resources" (the income from capturing territory).

But building the units you're using is a standard RTS mechanism.

I don't think real-time/turn-based makes or breaks a game's "wargame" credentials.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Baneman

[BlackAlpha]

Not sure what you mean. A standard RTS mechanism is building a base and then building the units. You don't do that in the Wargame series. You have a limited amount of units available that you can send in as reinforcements, they arrive off the map and you then gain control of them. Which by the way makes the game fit in the real time tactics category.

 

Battle Academy is not hardcore, at all.

Edited January 7, 2015 by BlackAlpha

[womble]

Battle Academy also has that before the mission starts. You pick which units you are going to use using "money". Wargame has a gamemode where you don't have to manage "resources" (the income from capturing territory).

 

That's what I meant with one of my previous posts. Something like Battle Academy gets classed as a wargame while the Wargame series is not. Is Battle Academy only a wargame because it's turn based? Because it's quite arcade, very simplistic and fast paced. The Wargame series is a lot more complex, more realistic, but it's real time and so it doesn't qualify in your eyes? It then gets thrown on the RTS pile instead, which seems unfair.

Well, a turn-based game will never qualify for the "R" in RTS, will it? Pre-game selection is hardly "Real time Strategy" either... even CM QBs have that! I did play a demo of Battle Academy, and it seemed to be more firmly grounded in reality than the EE game looked, though, as I said, I was watching a video, rather than playing: do EE units not have "hit points"? My recollection of BA is that it had things "killed" or "not killed" by any given attack, rather than ablative HP, which EE seemed to have. Also, BA tended to look at least a bit historical, in that a given scenario gave you contemporaneous options to choose from, whereas EE seems to blur force composition across the decades, with, again only limited data, it looking like you could field US forces composed of M113 APCs and top-of-the-line near-future Abrams, for example, with the older, less capable kit being there only to broaden the potential range of points spends. It just looked more artificial in its structure and abstract in its mechanics than what I wanted. Note, I didn't buy Battle Academy either And all this is just my impressions of the two games from the material I found about each when I was looking to see if there were any competitors in CMx2's niche.

[womble]

Not sure what you mean. A standard RTS mechanism is building a base and then building the units. You don't do that in the Wargame series. You have a limited amount of units available that you can send in as reinforcements, they arrive off the map and you then gain control of them. Which by the way makes the game fit in the real time tactics category.

That wasn't the game I was assessing. That had base building and that's where your units spawned. Perhaps this was the first generation, or a later one... It was a couple of years ago, I think, now.

Battle Academy is not hardcore, at all.

But it is a wargame and it has no RT elements whatsoever.

[BlackAlpha]

 

Well, a turn-based game will never qualify for the "R" in RTS, will it?   Pre-game selection is hardly "Real time Strategy" either... even CM QBs have that! I did play a demo of Battle Academy, and it seemed to be more firmly grounded in reality than the EE game looked, though, as I said, I was watching a video, rather than playing: do EE units not have "hit points"? My recollection of BA is that it had things "killed" or "not killed" by any given attack, rather than ablative HP, which EE seemed to have. Also, BA tended to look at least a bit historical, in that a given scenario gave you contemporaneous options to choose from, whereas EE seems to blur force composition across the decades, with, again only limited data, it looking like you could field US forces composed of M113 APCs and top-of-the-line near-future Abrams, for example, with the older, less capable kit being there only to broaden the potential range of points spends. It just looked more artificial in its structure and abstract in its mechanics than what I wanted. Note, I didn't buy Battle Academy either   And all this is just my impressions of the two games from the material I found about each when I was looking to see if there were any competitors in CMx2's niche.

 

Battle Academy is as firmly grounded in reality as the Wargame series is. The unit compositions in that game are not realistic either. A kill or no kill system is not realistic, it's too simplistic.

 

In Wargame they use hitpoints, armor and different kind of damage values to somewhat simulate armor and such. Generally speaking, if something can kill a unit, it will kill it; if it can't kill it, then it might damage it which will impact morale and/or the functionality of the vehicle. If no damage at all is possible, it might still impact the functionality (for example, grenade launchers fired at a tank). It results in more than just a kill or no kill. It's a bit similar to what CM has with partially damaged vehicles and morale but in Wargame it's way more simplified, of course.

 

 

That wasn't the game I was assessing. That had base building and that's where your units spawned. Perhaps this was the first generation, or a later one... It was a couple of years ago, I think, now.
But it is a wargame and it has no RT elements whatsoever.

 

Not sure what you mean with the first line...

 

It's pretty interesting to see what people define as a wargame, there's a lot of variations apparently... May I remind you that the following games fall into the RTS/real-time category: Combat Mission, Command: Modern Air Naval Operations. Yet, they are pretty hardcore wargames. Real time doesn't exclude a game from being a wargame as you can see.

 

Personally, I would never put Battle Academy in the wargame category. It's merely a turn based strategy (TBS) game. For me, a wargame has to resemble real life in at least a semi-realistic fashion. With that, I mean it has to have somewhat realistic engagements. I wouldn't put many so called wargames into the wargame category for that reason; they are merely turn based strategy games that are overly simplified and they are not realistic enough for my taste.

Edited January 7, 2015 by BlackAlpha

[Stagler]

Within wargame the forces are mixed yes. You can set the era of the game you are playing to limit such things, but in covering the entire cold war period allows for this mix of forces being fielded.

 

Its not that abstract however, M1A1 operated alongside M113 in 1991, and continued to do so in 2003.

 

In wargame units have damage thresholds, which are modified by the types of projectile and direction of attack.

 

e.g

-HEAT, HE, APFSDS.

-Front, side, rear, top attack.

So if your M1A1 gets hit by a 12.7mm round on the side, it will do no damage.

If it gets hit by a 125mm APFSDS on the front, it will do damage.

 

Infantry have straight up hit points dependand on squad numbers, which is modified by cover and weapons being fired at them.

 

All units have the capacity to have critical failures upon hit. Damaged optics. Damaged tracks. Damaged weapon systems. Bogged when driving. Fuel leaks. Etc. Leading them to being combat ineffective or having to withdraw them for repairs utilising supplies at your depot or carried in utility trucks.

 

For me, an RTS cannot have these random elements, it is simply a contest of x beats y, y beats z, z beats x and mutables of this formula. THat is what separates wargame from RTS games.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Stagler

[Chazz]

I should make it clear that when I say that I think that Wargame is an RTS, that this should not be taken as form of degradation or insult to the game. As I said before I played it an enjoyed it quite a bit, I still think it is a splendid RTS rather than a wargame though.

 

There are some reasons for that and I can only speak for myself as to why I think that way. The pacing is one thing that is quite obvious. There is also a considerable effort from the devs to balance things out, not only between factions but also between different platforms. The easiest example of this is the implementation of Naval warfare. Again, this is not a bad thing per say, it simply makes the game fun for everyone. Otherwise, someone would just have to plot a missile cruiser in the middle of the map and proceed to shoot down every single air unit in the entire map, sink other naval vessels before they even showed up on the map and wipe the floor with any ground unit that its gunners can see. Crucially in multiplayer, while good positioning and tactics gives you an advantage, an even bigger advantage is with the player who can click the fastest. Yes it is not quite the dreaded 'apm' fest of something like starcraft, but still doing more all over the map is better than having better tactics. The amount of micromanagement required for its scale is sometimes unbearable especially without the ability to pause and issue orders or something like that. Furthermore, while there is some rudimentary armor modeling like others mentioned, everything in the game essentially functions on hit point basis. Still there are many nice wargame-like elements in it though, suppression, spotting and supplies, even though they go beyond abstracted to the point of superpowers sometimes, that is still fine. Doesn't automatically makes it a wargame though. 

 

For me an introductory wargame is one that even though it is simplified and streamlined it can still teach you a lot of great concepts to apply in their more complex cousins. Games like Unity of Command or Naval War: Arctic Circle or heck even combat mission in some of its easiest modules and missions.

[BlackAlpha]

 

 

Infantry have straight up hit points dependand on squad numbers, which is modified by cover and weapons being fired at them.

 

 

Not exactly. Each men gets 1 HP (anything can kill it), that's true. But the primary weapons are simulated on each person in the squad/team. As their numbers drop, their anti infantry capability decreases. So, a 15 men squad is more effective at killing other infantry than a group with only a single person (everybody else in his group died) or a two person sniper team (at AR range).

Edited January 7, 2015 by BlackAlpha

[von Luck]

This topic has meandered far from its original path ...

 

The Wargame franchise is a splendidly complicated RTS that offers much more depth than your average RTS.  Sans base building and your left with commanding units, marshalling reinforcements and exploiting weaknesses.  Wargame is not like your average RTS in more ways than it is like them.  with well over 1300 units it sits rather comfortably in the wargaming genre.  All of this being said you will still run into things like X being a hardcounter to Y however this is sensical.  Helocopters equiped with ATGM's are certainly a hard counter to tanks - which is why you need to bring mobile AA solutions with your breakthrough forces.  It draws heavily from mechanics and themes you would expect to see in a wargame not an RTS. 

 

That being said the community for that game is quite bad.  The forums are open enough and people are willing to discuss but if you jump onto the lobby dont expect anything more than trolls.  This complicates things as the learning curve is tremendous.  Similar to CM in that the user will now have to memorize a great many differet types of units, the mechanics that drive them, and the strategys to use them.  The aforementioned helocpters are an exceptional hardcounter to tanks however you can easily lose them to careless play and they represent valuble assets.  If your looking to play wargame be prepared for hours of frustration - the game takes time to master. 

 

I would also disagree with Stagler in saying that EE is a better game.  EE is a simpler game RD is certainly the refined course of the game - many many mechanics changed and most for the better.  BUK M1's no longer represent pinical helecopter killers - instead they sit in their rightful place as huge threats to fixed wing assets.  Basic values went from 0-10 to 0-30, so for example the extrapolation of an M1A1's armor in EE was 9 while in RD its 17.  This leads to considerable changes to the quality vs quantity dynamic.  Its much less likely  your M1A2 in RD is going to die to a horde of T55's - still possible but much less likely. 

 

 

Wargame is a solid game but I recomend playing Multiplayer with a group of friends.  The experience is 300% less frustrating.

 

 

von Luck

 

 

PS:  Stay away from destruction mode ... unless you like being gratified with numbers floating up from kills this game mode is bad.

Edited January 7, 2015 by von Luck

[Battlefront.com]

As I've said before, there is no cast-in-stone way to classify a game. Some games are easily categorized, others are more open to debate. Generally speaking, and this isn't specific to gaming, if I must categorize I tend to look at the people who identify most with that category and see what they think of it. A funny example from my past...

I was driving a friend back from college (LONG drive) and asked her what sort of music she wanted to listen to. She said "heavy metal", I said fine, put some. She had some tapes with her (yes, it was that long ago) and popped in some horrid big hair band commercial pop metal crap that made me want to veer of the road at 80mph and end my suffering! Instead I suggested that what she considered "heavy metal" was nothing more than pop rock with amps turned up to 11 to drown out their lack of talent. She didn't get it. So I wrestled around and popped in a tape with the first track being (and why do I remember this so vividly?) "Surf Nicaragua" by Sacred Reich. The next song was probably Metallica of some sort, going strictly by odds and not memory. "Now that's heavy metal!". She looked at me and said something like, "oh, so how about we listen to something else?"

Anyway, my point is that when someone views themselves as being part of group X they have more say in defining what is, or isn't, included in category X. That is not to say that there will ever be 100% agreement within X, so a consensus is the way to go.

For wargamers, especially hardcore wargamers, anything which is realtime only is immediately presumed "not wargame" until proven otherwise. The more that realtime game shares features with other realtime games already classified as "not wargames" by wargamers, the less likely they will change their minds.

A game is the sum of its parts, which means that one can not go through checklists and definitively say that because it has X, Y, and Z it is or isn't a particular type of game. It has more to do with the overall feel that comes from the individual features. It would appear that many here feel that Wargame feels like an RTS and therefore should be classified as such. Yet they also acknowledge that it is more like a wargame than other RTS games. So it's somewhere in the gray area inbetween genres. By definition that means it is *not* a hardcore wargame because you can't have something that is wobbling between two genres be considered solidly in the heart of just one category.

Combat Mission is somewhat different. It is absolutely and unequivocally *not* a RTS game because it shares almost nothing in common with that group as a whole. Some within wargaming think of it as more of a general wargame because it is "too pretty" to be a hardcore wargame. Others disagree because CM's portrayal of warfare is *vastly* more deep and realistic than pretty much any other tactical game that has ever been made by anybody in any form. So if CM can't qualify as a hardcore wargame, then nothing can.

Abstraction itself, or the lack of it, is an unimportant aspect of wargame classification. All games, even Combat Mission, must use abstraction to some extent. The important thing to examine is how abstraction is applied and to what standards the abstraction is trying to hold itself to. A game that abstracts the most basic stuff and is designed to "balance" things is at most a Beer & Pretzels wargame (which is NOT a negative categorization). A game that abstracts in a way that is designed to mimic real life might warrant being called a hardcore wargame if other elements also ring true to that grouping.

Steve

[borg]

One more turn addiction - WARNING!

[Pelican Pal]

The topic has wandered, and personally I find this path much more enjoyable.

 

Like Steve said every game will have some sort of abstraction. When does that abstraction lead you from wargame to RTS is a gray area.

 

Generally I think that games (not all, but quite a few) have a lesson that they want to teach, or a key point that they feel is important. That the game will emphasize one thing at the loss of detail in other areas. A way to put is "What is this designer trying to tell us, what do they think is important".

 

Wargame (and if you pick one up I would buy Red Dragon) is a game about strategic maneuverability. It doesn't care whether the guy with the RPG is on the second floor looking out the rightmost window to the west. It does care that your platoon of tanks is out of position by 3 kilometer or that you didn't properly provide for anti-air coverage for the 10KM of supply lines from your board edge to the battlefront.

 

On the other hand CM emphatically cares where that private with the AT4 is, or whether a squad is out of position by 50 meters.

 

Flashpoint Campaigns thinks that command and control is paramount. Does it matter if you have a company of M1 Abrams if you can't contact them?

 

Unity of Command says that supplies lines are critical. It doesn't really matter what is in this panzer division. What does matter is if you can get them ammo, gas, and food.

 

Anyway. A one size fits all definition of a wargame isn't particularly useful.

[Doug Williams]

The topic has wandered, and personally I find this path much more enjoyable.

 

Me too. Way to turn a bad thread into an interesting one. Bravo! 

[Lacroix]

multiplayer is dead , thats why steam is nessesary. i play this game because of multiplayer, not scripted AI

[Stagler]

Still though, steam is the lighted path

[Doug Williams]

multiplayer is dead , thats why steam is nessesary. i play this game because of multiplayer, not scripted AI

 

Multiplayer is dead? Probably 75% of my CM gaming is multiplayer (PBEMs), and I play almost every day. I typically have three or four games going.

 

If you're having trouble finding reliable opponents, you should join a club, such as FGM and/or WeBoB.

 

 

Edit: Wait, I forgot this is a "modern" forum. WeBoB really only caters to WW2. Not sure about FGM.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Doug Williams

[Stagler]

There is a problem with CM multiplayer.

 

It needs matchmaking or a lobby system. A basic lobby system where games can be seen and chat exchanged between players to set up battles would pay dividends for playability.

[Jock Tamson]

I found the learning curve for the Wargame series much much steeper than Combat Mission.  Probably some of that is to do with the pace.

 

For me, CM multiplayer needs a server executable handling replay creation etc in TCP/IP Wego.  The server could be run on the hosting player's PC.

 

And I really, really, hope that at some point the QB creation process is given some love, especially for single players where it is almost impossible to apply any mystery to the AI's force composition.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Jock Tamson