What if? War Thunder & HOI4 could be mixed/modded into 1 game?

[VinceDN]

I had once an idea about game, when there is command chain
one country chief (like HoI IV) who has battleplan system and tells armies what to do
armies commanders who give orders to corps
corps commanders who give orders to divisions
divisions commanders who give orders to regiments
regiments commanders who give orders to batallions
batallions commanders who have RTS (like Company of Heroes) way to command
companies commanders who are now normal soldiers and command by "screaming" orders (like when you press Z in Counter Strike and you would have have "follow me", "attack/defend this" etc.)
soldiers divided into platoons and squads, with commanders and companies' order system, but it would be much more like Battlefield or Arma

And every commander could request backup (like artillery or additional units) from someone above them in command chain

it would be bad propably, but idea isn't bad itself, right?

Have any of you played ARMA 2 or 3 or the popular Battlefield 2 mod 'Project Reality'? It doesn't go all the way up to the strategic level but when everything falls into place you get this amazing semi-roleplaying vibe with over 70 dudes perform their military duties according to rank, squad and specialisation. This means infantry platoons walking in V staggered columns while the squad leader is talking to the commander flying overhead in drones, requesting air support. Hell, there's guys who do logistics for entire matches, this means they drive drucks and don't even fight.

Notice I said 'when all falls into place', as has been said here, you basically need dozens of interested players able to work in team. A single griefer can easily shut an entire server down, and ruin your meticulously crafted hierarchy. When it all comes together though, these games can be a dream. I remember a great two-hour match where I played as the mortar commander of a seven-mortar brigade. The entire game had me leaning back in my chair with a stopwatch in my left hand, passing on coordinates and performing fire missions. My character would just stand idly in a foxhole staring at the horizon, while I blasted commands like 'Mortar teams Blue, ready for round, coordinates ALPHA CHARLIE VECTOR NINER 4, bearing ONE OH SEVEN OH, three rounds, airburst'. I felt like a total badass

But to bring this to a HOI scale would be logistical insanity. Imagine a 64-player match for every province you are fighting on in HOI2, that means a single Grand Commander would require at least two dozen matches a day and over 3000 FPS players at his command.

I mean, I'm down, as long as I get to be artillery commander

 

[EU3NOOB]

For the love of God and Jesus no!

 

[Gorganslayer]

This is the most stupid idea I've seen on this forum.....

 

[Secret Master]

Personal insults are not acceptable.

If you cannot provide reasonable or constructive feedback, a simple "no" will do.

 

[safe-keeper]

Have any of you played ARMA 2 or 3 or the popular Battlefield 2 mod 'Project Reality'?

Doesn't PR have a tournament where there is a strategic layer of sorts? I believe Forgotten Hope does, too.

 

[safe-keeper]

X-Com and Total War battles are still much smaller than HoI-level battles though

Yes, I've said so in this very thread.

 

[Filou]

Some people seem to forget that there is a layer between Strategic and Tactical which is Operational. If HoI battles were to be played out in more details by the player it would be on that level, so we would move battalions or companies around, not individual soldiers or tanks.

And how does the saying go again?
You win a tactical battle by outflanking your enemy, you win an operational battle by outmaneuvering your enemy, you win a strategic battle by bringing more people/firepower than your enemy to the fight.

The player would be faced with boring one-sided fights, because you don't start a fight unless you have superior numbers.
Which incidentally was my experience with Total War. I almost never had an even fight, all were one-sided and there was not much point in playing them. The only interesting fights were the pre-made the scenarios.

Mount & Blade works well because the fights involve a few hundred soldiers, with the odd major engagements where a few thousands face-off. This is not even 1 division in terms of WWII units.
M&B Players that know the game come out of these fights with minimal losses.

Which is another issue with such an idea: it gives the human player so much advantage since not only can you win at the strategic level, but you can win fights were you are badly outnumbered because you can outsmart the AI on yet another level.

 

[varsovie]

This is the most stupid idea I've seen on this forum.....

I'd agree. Loosing a battle because of RNG yes, loosing a battle because Kevin or Troll Clan is playing... Plus a battle that would take 2 minutes, gonna have to wait more, and what about the ones nobody would like to play, like one team invading from 4 provinces with a full tank army with naval artillery and air support versus a year 36 garrison? A game like HOI need consitency in its battles, and having random ones played by random peoples in probably unbalanced senarios....

Fact is there are way too many battles in HOI and the emphasis of the game isn't on those anyway. You don't loose or win a war on a single battle unless you've made a big strategic mistake or you are gamey-ing.

As for the "chain of command play" idea, I'd liekt o be able to hotseat a country, you could even divide responsibilities.

 

[Axe99]

Yes, I've said so in this very thread.

Sorry, didn't mean to miss that, and definitely wasn't trying to suggest you weren't aware of that . More that the difference in scale (and gameplay - WT isn't TW or XCOM) would probably matter in the context of doing a WT/HoI crossover, and present game design challenges that aren't in TW or XCOM.

 

[Xsio]

Well there is such game or alike i guess, have you heard of "pacific storm"?

It's not a global strategy and Its about pacific war theater but It gives the idea how 3 types of games could be combined.

There are strategy map where you manage your bases, planes, ships research techs and give order to your flotillas etc. (like in HOI games)
And when the battle takes place you go on a tactical map of battle where you give orders for each ship and plane. (like CnC games)
Also on tactical map you can directly control any plane, or ship, drop bombs, launch torpedoes, fight other planes, use AA on ships etc. (like in war thunder)

Is that what you were thinking of?

 

[Xsio]

There is such game or alike I think, It's called "Pacific Storm"

It's not a global strategy and it's about pacific war, but It's give an idea how 3 game types could be combined in one.

There are strategic map, where you manage your bases, research techs, combine flotilla of ships and squadrons of planes and move them (like in HOI games)
When a battle takes place, you switch to tactical map where you give orders to each or a group of planes, ships.(like in CnC games)
And during battle you can directly control any plane or ship, launch torpedoes, drop bombs, fight other planes. (like in War thunder)

 

[safe-keeper]

Pacific Storm was actually quite fun, still think about it from time to time actually.

 

[Axe99]

Naval combat, in particular, is where you could pull it off, as the number of actors involved is relatively limited, and you didn't have too many naval battles when there were waves of a hundred planes coming in and being intercepted by another 50 or so.

 

[Munin]

In Heroes & General you can fight yourself and have some stratg decsions/influence.

But the scale from HoI is too big imo. So you would have too much battles. Even in TotalWar series it gets pretty repetitive imo to do most battles. And the ai..
So a game with a differnt scale would work better, but not HoI.

No, it is not that you are forced to do all battles: you get me wrong there. You can choose which battles you want to fight out. Much like total war.


And believe me I don't want to have paradox making the same game as total war, I m hoping they can do better.


Maybe someone should jump in the gap that Total war leaves for WWII. There is no total war RTS game with both strategic & tactical gameplay. Maybe something like HOI2 with scaled down battles possible like coh2 battles.

Seeing how succesfull Company of heroes 2 is, despite being milked like all the other total war games now SEGA took it over (super expensive DLC's).



I even believe it is possible to do big scale tactical battles if devs are willing to sacrifice graphics for tactical gameplay. As for Naval battles, it is realistic to implement it as someone else already said. The number of units would be much smaller.

It doesn't have to be war thunder. Other options are viable too
Wargame games show that bigger numbers are possible for these kind of games:

Just too bad some people seem to be stuck in a mindset that games should never change. We'd never have HOI 1 because everyone would say no one would want it, we d never have battlefield games because everyone would say it is not wanted by the large customer base. And Star Citizen proves with a big Fuck You to narrow minded thinkers, that some things are not impossible and actually craved for by a lot of people.

I m sure I won't be able to convince the die hard strategy fans out here who want HOI games to never change too significantly. Untill you put the game in front of them and show them what they really want.
No one wanted an mp3 once with more than 4GB for a very expensive price, look where we are now ...


I think people want a total war game without SEGA ripping you off with a unit/scenario DLC that costs you half the price of a normal game. I am really sure people will buy a game that combines the strategy with the tactical concept. People want to see the stuff they research in action. If they want to see a picture, they can read a history book too

 

[Karlburg]

With the amount of combats in HOI and the realtime nature, the idea of even having a player have to say "yes or no" to a tactical option is flatly ridiculous in UI terms. I don't think you really think through what you suggest, instead option to just be an idea guy. Idea guys are a dime a dozen, particularly those who ask for more bloat, more features.

When you implement tactical battles well, the game has to be designed around them. Total War is, XCOM is, HOI is not. There are games with tactical battles that were not designed around them and they're generally bad. For example, Imperialism has tactical battles, but they aren't very good and tend to disrupt the flow of a game that is otherwise about foreign policy and economics. Total War makes specific design decisions that allow it to have tactical battles. For example, it's turn-based, the province count is relatively low, the management of non-military affairs is fairly streamlined. They also stick to pre-modern eras where decisive tactical battles actually happened in a way that, say, Brecourt or whatever famous tactical battle were absolutely not decisive in WW2. Putting tactical battles in a scale that you would expect in WW2 would be closer to having a Total War game go down to a single duel in a battle, and then having the result of that duel decide the entire thing.

If you really want to see what you'd be getting, there's a game called Axis and Allies RTS, and it's awful. There are other ww2 games with strategic and tactical layers, but you probably haven't heard of them because they without fail suck.

 

[SpanglishEmpire]

I always fancied a mix of hoi and close combat but the sizes of the battles make it unwieldy with smaller and more numerous provinces you could do something but individual battles would not mean as much in the grand scale of things and to play every battle would probably take a lifetime.

 

[Chromos]

No, it is not that you are forced to do all battles: you get me wrong there. You can choose which battles you want to fight out. Much like total war.


And believe me I don't want to have paradox making the same game as total war, I m hoping they can do better.
...

Hey Munin,
I didn't meant you have to do all.
But like you and I wrote about it in TW, you also can skip the battles for ai.
And that was my point. The battles are for me quickly not that important anymore.
Only if you need to take over command manually as the ai can't do what you can do with fewer units etc..

But making such a system and a godd ai for it would need quite much dev time(money).

Heroes & Generals has the differnt approach. FPS with operational features where you can decide where to use your units and fight then on your own in the battle. I think that works much better that way.

And afaik there is an indie game out where you can have what you want though. But it is prety old by now. Might find it in my saved links maybe.


A TW style game in WW2 setting would maybe nice for some people.
Your point/wish has been brought up several times since HoI1 and TW are out. So you're not alone.

It is just also quite different from the HoI series.
Most here are maybe already happy if we get more tactical options for the ai resolved battles like we got with the latest HoI3-Expansion.

 

[Moppy771]

You could try WWII Online, but expect to die a lot and only see your killer 1% of the time. :rofl:

 

[safe-keeper]

Story of my life in War Thunder tank mode .

 

[sermaciej]

Have any of you played ARMA 2 or 3 or the popular Battlefield 2 mod 'Project Reality'? It doesn't go all the way up to the strategic level but when everything falls into place you get this amazing semi-roleplaying vibe with over 70 dudes perform their military duties according to rank, squad and specialisation. This means infantry platoons walking in V staggered columns while the squad leader is talking to the commander flying overhead in drones, requesting air support. Hell, there's guys who do logistics for entire matches, this means they drive drucks and don't even fight.

Notice I said 'when all falls into place', as has been said here, you basically need dozens of interested players able to work in team. A single griefer can easily shut an entire server down, and ruin your meticulously crafted hierarchy. When it all comes together though, these games can be a dream. I remember a great two-hour match where I played as the mortar commander of a seven-mortar brigade. The entire game had me leaning back in my chair with a stopwatch in my left hand, passing on coordinates and performing fire missions. My character would just stand idly in a foxhole staring at the horizon, while I blasted commands like 'Mortar teams Blue, ready for round, coordinates ALPHA CHARLIE VECTOR NINER 4, bearing ONE OH SEVEN OH, three rounds, airburst'. I felt like a total badass

But to bring this to a HOI scale would be logistical insanity. Imagine a 64-player match for every province you are fighting on in HOI2, that means a single Grand Commander would require at least two dozen matches a day and over 3000 FPS players at his command.

I mean, I'm down, as long as I get to be artillery commander

I played Arma 2, but alone. I heard about people playing it in way you described, but I didn't ever do that myself. This, but on much larger scale, was what I meant. And it's propably impossible, which is kinda sad.