Pacific Theater?

[Deepstuff123]

Hi. Just recently bought the Combat Mission bundle and I'm very impressed. I've played a few WWII strategy games, but this one is probably the best one I've seen in my opinion. Fog of war, real-time action, tons of scenarios and maps. It can cover a range of scales, from small scale skirmishes to large scale warfare. The computer AI is very good. The editor for map and scenario creation is intuitive and easy to use. Realistic action. And the best part, it's a lot of fun to play.

I'm looking forward to the additions for the Eastern Front, as well as the Battle of the Bulge. I'll buy all the new packs and addons for Combat Mission.

To complete the Command Mission WWII coverage, I'd like to see the Pacific Theater some day. Maybe a "Combat Mission: Battle of Iwo Jima". Any plans for this?

Thanks for an awesome game... Jeff

[Duckman]

I'd love the PTO too and I actually think the CM engine could do it well, but from what I've gathered the developers don't think so. We'll see what the others say.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Any plans for this?

Nope.

_______

[womble]

BFC haven't got the same interest in PTO action as they do in NWE and the OstFront. They've consistently said that it's so low down on their priority list as to effectively not be on it. The lack of armour v armour is, ISTR, one of the factors.

I believe someone has made a mod, though, for it.

[YankeeDog]

I don't think it's so much that BFC is completely uninterested in Pacific Theater, as that Pacific Theater is less interesting to them than what's already on the development slate in the ETO/Med/East Front theaters. Since what's on the announced development slate its several years' worth of work for a small company like BFC, logical conclusion is that PTO is not in the foreseeable future.

A probable secondary factor inhibiting BFC from taking on a PTO game is that developing a proper PTO game would be a lot of work: A completely new major nationality (Japan), with lots of unique weapons and uniforms. Major new U.S. TOEs and equipment (USMC). Major new terrain. Major new modeling issues like landing craft, direct lay naval gunfire support, cave fortifications etc.

As much as I'd love to play e.g., the Battle for Bloody Nose Ridge in CMx2, I can completely understand why BFC has declined to take this on.

[niall78]

I don't think it's so much that BFC is completely uninterested in Pacific Theater, as that Pacific Theater is less interesting to them than what's already on the development slate in the ETO/Med/East Front theaters. Since what's on the announced development slate its several years' worth of work for a small company like BFC, logical conclusion is that PTO is not in the foreseeable future.

A probable secondary factor inhibiting BFC from taking on a PTO game is that developing a proper PTO game would be a lot of work: A completely new major nationality (Japan), with lots of unique weapons and uniforms. Major new U.S. TOEs and equipment (USMC). Major new terrain. Major new modeling issues like landing craft, direct lay naval gunfire support, cave fortifications etc.

As much as I'd love to play e.g., the Battle for Bloody Nose Ridge in CMx2, I can completely understand why BFC has declined to take this on.

Put it on kickstarter and I'll - and I'm sure many others - will help Battlefront pay for the development of a PTO Combat Mission.

I personally think the CM format is perfect for PTO battles and campaigns.

[kuri]

I shudder at the thought of fighting in pacific jungles as forest battles in european woods already make me pull my hair in frustration.

[Pewpewchewchew]

I think they'd have to drastically revamp the infantry combat for it to work. IMO close combat isn't something the CM engine handles very well. For the jungle terrain, they'd have to really tie down the abstractions to what the players see or else it'd be really frustrating advancing forwards. Aside from that, the infantry would also need to have a very good tactical AI that uses rugged terrain and suspected enemy locations to a much greater degree.

[YankeeDog]

Put it on kickstarter and I'll - and I'm sure many others - will help Battlefront pay for the development of a PTO Combat Mission.

I personally think the CM format is perfect for PTO battles and campaigns.

At the very least, BFC would have to bring on an additional coder to make this happen without seriously delaying other titles. Probably an additional producer/project lead and at least one new model/art person as well.

That's a lot of salary money, much more than I think you'd be likely to raise doing a Kickstarter campaign targeting hardcore wargamers, which is a pretty small niche market.

Overall, I'd say a more likely route for a PTO game to become a reality would be if an outside team approached BFC with a proposal to license the engine for a PTO game. I think this is very unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

[Sequoia]

What every body else has said plus here is what they have said they'd like to do that as far as we know they haven't even started:

3 more Ostfront games and their modules.

Battle of the Bulge and modules through the end of the war in the West.

A reboot of Combat Mission Shock Force.

That's already years of work. The Theater that's not on the list they are most likely to do would be North Africa I'd say. For anything else the most likely chance we probably have is a Third party doing something like Combat Mission Afghanistan

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Vietnam would be good..

Generally I am a WWII fan, but for Pacific... Vietnam would get my vote over WWII.

Unbelievably lucky to have CM at all... ,

All the best,

Kip.

[Davek555]

Korean War would be interesting too....but I can see where it might not have the appeal to everyone outside of the US.

[majorbly50]

Put it on kickstarter and I'll - and I'm sure many others - will help Battlefront pay for the development of a PTO Combat Mission.

I personally think the CM format is perfect for PTO battles and campaigns.

I vote for this way. Put it on kickstarter and see if there is enough support to make it. I'll certainly contribute. There's a mod for CMx1 for the japs and the Pacific War land battles (Guadacanal since AH days) are my favorites.

[MikeyD]

Steve has expressed little interest in getting his hands dirty working on the impossible Japanese TO&E that would revolve around Pacific fighting. But as the game engine building blocks fall into place perhaps Pacific theater could become more attractive. The big-un would be amphibious capability. Getting over that hurdle, the likelihood could shift from 'No way in h_ll" up to "It might be worth considering."

[Vanir Ausf B]

Things can change, but in the past Steve has said he doesn't want to work on games based on subject matter he isn't interested in and he's made clear he has no interest in Pacific theater land combat.

[J Bennett]

Much as I would like to see Pacific theater CM, I agree with whats been said. In particular

the amphibious combat simulation seems to be something BF doesn't want to attempt.

We dont have any beach landings at all in any of the CM games. We don't really even have river crossings. We probably wont see a "Crossing the Rhine" either I guess but it might be a way to get a foothold on amphibious combat. But like the previous fellow said, if he doesn't want to do it, its not going to happen and that's that. As for me I have every CMx1 and CMx2 game and module that covers WW2. Modern warfare CM doesn't interest me but as long as BF makes more WW2 Cm games, I will buy em. Whatever theater they do.

[Rambler]

I always thought the Philippines campaign of '44-'45 would make a decent CM. Plenty of fighting that doesn't entail needing actual amphibious landings. Thinking about it, landings could be approached in the same manner as the USMC campaign in SF for the most part. You've got varied fighting environments, including urban, from which to draw from. Too bad BFC despises the PTO.

[Erwin]

I note that the majority of existing wargames on the WitP topic are strategic in nature, or emphasize the naval and air aspects.

Perhaps one amphibious invasion is much like another, one desperate fight on an island jungle pretty much the same as the others... What has been fun in the CM1 and CM2 series has been the mobility aspects of armored warfare. Other than the Russo-Japanese aspect of the conflict, my reading of the Pacific War land war aspect was that it was one hellish experience drowning in mud and rain after another.

If you saw the Pacific War TV series it wasn't nearly as entertaining as Band of Brothers. I think one problem was that all locations looked the same, the battles seemed the same.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Pacific Theatre (including Burma) and Vietnam woud be nice. As would an Arab Isreali Wars game, 1980s Cold War Europe, 2nd Korean War etc. For WW2 I would like to see Early Blitzkrieg and Western Desert

Battlefront could consider running a poll split into WW2 and Moderns as a means of market research.

[PanzerMike]

Yeah, early days 1940 would be great! Much less lethal, lots of new toys. Minors like the Dutch and the Belgians.

If BFC make that I will make a campaign about the fight between the Dutch and the Germans (lots of SS) around the Grebbe Line, near the place where I live. Promise!

But 1940 ain't gonna happen I fear.

[Bulletpoint]

The Pacific would be perfect for the kind of attacks against dug in defenders that we already see so much of in the Normandy game. So the PTO is a better match for the engine than the Eastern Front where both sides generally manoeuver.

[YankeeDog]

The Pacific would be perfect for the kind of attacks against dug in defenders that we already see so much of in the Normandy game. So the PTO is a better match for the engine than the Eastern Front where both sides generally manoeuver.

Can't say as I agree. In many (but not all) of the Pacific Island campaigns, the defenders were *extremely* well dug in, with fortification and underground complexes far beyond what was typically seen in the ETO, except perhaps in a few very limited areas of the ETO campaign such as the Omaha beach fortifications and the forts around Metz.

The engine currently doesn't model these types of underground defensive complexes as at all. Currently, we just have solo bunkers, and fairly weak ones at that. The Japanese were notorious for retreating into subterranean levels of bunker complexes when they came under heavy direct fire, only to reappear (sometimes at an entirely different surface location) minutes or hours later once the heavy fire had lifted. You couldn't model iconic PTO battles like Iwo Jima or the Shuri line in CMx2 as it is right now any more than you could model Metz. Difference being that I don't think modeling stuff like the fights for the forts around Metz is absolutely essential to an ETO game -- it would be a nice addition, but an ETO game can get by without modeling heavy fortification complexes as they actually were only involved in a minor proportion of the ETO fighting. But a PTO game that didn't have the game features necessary to model Iwo Jima and Okinawa would not sell well, methinks.

The techniques for dealing with such heavy fortifications were also different in the PTO. For example, at Iwo Jima, the USS Texas engaged enemy bunkers with direct lay fire aimed by telescopic sights mounted directly on the turrets of her main battery at a range of a mere 3000m, which is nearly point-blank for 14" naval gunfire. This technique was also used at Iwo and elsewhere by other ships. Note that this type of naval fire support would be very different from the kind of naval fire support we currently see in CMBN -- we're talking directly aimed, 1-ton shells coming in at shallow angle, not high-arc indirect fire called in and corrected by a spotter.

On many of the smaller island landings, it also wasn't uncommon to have smaller ships come in close to shore to provide support from light guns -- 40mm and less. Some of the islands were small enough that lighter ship-mounted weaponry like 40mm Bofors could provide direct fire support over a significant proportion of the land mass, and this was done to very good effect in some situations. Again, nothing like this currently exists in the engine. I'm sure it could be done, but it would definitely take new coding.

This is just a start; it doesn't take much imagination to see how there would be lots of other new features and coding to really get a PTO game right.

BFC doesn't half-ass things. Modding CMBN to look like PTO is one thing, and I applaud the efforts of those who have done this. But actually designing and coding a dedicated PTO game would be in a whole different league.

[Erwin]

"Arab Isreali Wars game, 1980s Cold War Europe, 2nd Korean War etc. For WW2 I would like to see Early Blitzkrieg and Western Desert..."

+1

Not sure why we may never see 1939-1940's era. That was Blitzkrieg/maneuver war in its purest form. The Allies had better tanks, but awful doctrine.

[Michael Emrys]

But 1940 ain't gonna happen I fear.

It might happen, if nothing arises to impede it, but my guess is that it is a long way down the road and all kinds of things could happen before then.

Michael

[Combatintman]

Korean War would be interesting too....but I can see where it might not have the appeal to everyone outside of the US.

Not sure I agree - the 1st Commonwealth Division comprised reasonably sized contingents from the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Might even appeal to the Chinese market.