Cooperative multiplayer...Interesting? Possible?

[Thorondor]

For quite a while I have been pondering on the posibilities of cooperative/team gameplay for CM.

Allowing platoons and companies to be comanded by different players, lots of exiting opportunities would be opened, like team coordination and comunication, fog of war (While it is true that you dont see a great sign floting in the sky over enemies someone else has spotted, it is also true that there is more than one person capable of making decitons in a battalion, regardless what the colonel thinks), and playing larger scenarios in real time.

So, the questions are if it is tecnically doable, and if it is something people other than me would like to see?

[c3k]

Oh, I think that a cooperative multiplayer COULD be great. Assign each player the role of a specific tactical HQ, say a company each. The hurdles would be, and are, quite large!

Would it be realtime or email? Wego? How would players find a server? Guilds? Clans? Etc.

The upside exists; the obstacles are huge.

Ken

[dakuth]

Really? None of those seem like very serious obstacles.

The answer to all of them is: Yes.

How would it be different from vs MP at all?

i.e. realtime: yes

email: yes

wego: yes

How would players find a server: same way they do now

guilds: who cares?

clans: who cares?

etc.

Certainly there would be some coding required - and the devs may decide the effort is not worth it, but the design seems straight forward.

[chaos49]

u can do it in wego, each commander save after he had plot turn for his men before press done, and then send the save game to the next comander.

so all u need is a person who keep track of the battle and disposition the men to his commanders.

[JonS]

Certainly there would be some coding required - and the devs may decide the effort is not worth it, but the design seems straight forward.

More than 'some.' But BFV've said they're keen to do it, but they've also said that it is way, way down the priority list. As in: not in CMN, not in Bulge, and probably not in whatever comes after that.

[Tactical Wargamer]

pity though would have been fantastic. Playing against the AI for anything but tutorials is a waste IMHO. Never seen any AI in 20 plus years that could hold its own against even an intermediate player.

[Destraex1]

I always wanted this. Without a decent AI it may be kinda moot though.

[Tactical Wargamer]

True but if you could have coop play on both sides it would be great. More and more wargames are offering cooperative play.

[tdogg]

Great Idea for large senarios, even do head to head coop, 4 vs 4 red on blue

[The_Capt]

And here I go breaking my own vow of silence. I am a big fan of this idea, not just from a gaming point of view but I think it has military training applications. We have been asking for something like this for quite awhile and it looked like it was going somewhere with the abortive CMBB CM Campaigns attempt. I think that this will be the closest to an e-version for quite some time, if not ever.

If you are talking about old-fashion pen and paper though, this type of play has actually been tried repeatedly with varying degrees of success. Having been on three of these (there was a fourth but it died so quickly it doesn;t even count), I can tell you that a multiplayer campaign can be the most fun one can have playing CM in any form. When it gets moving and you and your unit(s) become part of a larger picture, the tides of war can create some really interesting battles and scenarios.

The closest we ever got was the old CMOC (Combat Mission Operational Campaign) 1943. It was set in Sicily and covered the Primosole Bridge episode of OP Fustian. We had roughly eight players (4 aside) and a Game Manager (GM). Each player commanded a BG or KG sized element. One player would act as overall commander for their side, issue orders etc. It was entirely up to the unit commanders how they followed orders, laid out their troops etc. We would conduct operational map turns and then resolve any battle scenarios where both sides would "bump".

Helluva good ride. We had airborne cut-off in depth and running out of supplies, British and German armour smashing into each other...all good.

The down-side was the game management. The GM was quickly loaded down with tracking resources (ie losses and resupply), operational map management and then had to create the game maps for actual combat. This was a LOT of work. We ended up going thru a couple GMs (I was the last) in the process. The whole thing unfortunately died when my PC thundered and took all of the GM files with it (this before the days of easy cheap back-up HDs and big mem-sticks). We were damn close to the end...probably 5-10 turns left but had to call it.

If you are going to try it, some friendly advice:

1. Pick a relatively simple operational or even large tactical campaign.

2. Get a decent and easy large operational map to work from.

3. Get some basic rules to handle movement, arty/air support and logistics. Keep these as simple as possible and keep them Exec based.

4. Get at least two GMs. This will make map building/scenario production much easier to manage.

5. Get people who can dedicate a year or more to the campaign. This is not the shallow end of wargaming.