1 Game Philosophy (why we don't make you micromanage)
2 Why there is no editor, DYO
3 Game Scale
4 Monitor Information
5 The Orders
6 Keyboard shortcuts
7 LOS line
8 How/why the game ends
9 Why there's no pause
10 Second stories and Elevations
11 Command Radius/Troops not obeying
12 Heroes, Bravery, and Cowardice
13 Effectiveness of MGs
14 Soldier Deployment
15 Soldier Visibility
16 Bazookas and Schrecks vs Infantry
17 AI Cheating
18 Enemy Knowledge
19 Moving a Vehicle in Reverse
20 Mortar Indirect Fire
21 What's different in the retail version
1 Game Philosophy (why we don't make you micromanage)
We wanted this game to be more of a simulation than a
board game. As such, we did not want to burden the
player with having to command each and every soldier and
tell that soldier what ammo to use, what to shoot at,
and where to take cover. Playing the game that way would
take hours and completely ruin the experience of the
game. While that may be exactly what some players want
in a game, it is not the game that we wanted to create.
2 Why there is no editor, DYO
A map editor would be impracticle. We have to preprocess
the map for LOS and even running on a 9500, this takes
special code and 40 or more minutes. And then we have to
see how the map data turned out and tweak it for the
correct behavior.
DYO is a definite possibility for CC2. Being able to
select teams to put in play, victory locations and
values, setup areas, etc is certainly do-able and adds a
lot to the life of the game (posting your favorite
battles). We could not do it easily in CC due to
precalculated setup locations. If we can make the setup
locations dynamic in CC2, we can handle DYO.
3 Game Scale
Scale is dependant on screen resolution, thus, it is
about 15 meters per inch at 800 x 600 assuming 13
horizontal inches of viewing area. The official scale is
8 meters per 40 pixels.
Soldiers are represented at 2x scale and vehicles are at
1.5x scale so that these are more visible.
4 Monitor Information
Team Monitor:
Scroll list on the far left bottom. Sorted by the team
type with the exception that the Company/Platoon
Commander Teams are always at the top. Left side:
Contains Team Icon (pict of soldiers/vehicle), and Team
Quality (a set of bars ranging from none (Conscript) to
4 (Elite).
Top Center: Contains the Team Type Name (general
description). Background color represents the team's
cohesion, or ability to fight. As the color drops from
Green to Red or Black, it represents that the team is
taking losses.
Bottom Center: Contains the Team's Strategic Order. If
this order is Green, it is an order you gave. If it is
white, the team is doing it's own thing. If it is Red,
the team is disobeying you. Right side: Enemy Threat
Compass. It represents the direction that team sees the
enemy. If the center dot is red, then that team is also
being shot at.
Soldier Monitor:
Top Left: Same as the Team Monitor Left Side.
Top Center: Team Name (more detailed than the Team Type
Name) and the Team
Orders. Both of these are similar to the Top Center and
Bottom Center of the Team Monitor respectively.
Top Far Right: Smoke Availability. If not crossed out,
this team can place smoke.
Top Right: Firepower Graphs. These are graphed at 10s of
meters at the number listed, thus the column with an 8
represents firepower at 80 meters. Green, good
firepower, grey line, no firepower. This color will also
show up on the Fire Line as you drag it across the
screen.
Vehicle Info:
For vehicles, a status panel showing the vehicle
condition is displayed. Green indicates functioning;
Red, destroyed; and blank, that vehicle does not have
that weapon or is immoble.
Soldier List:
This has the soldier name, action, status and weapon
info. Most of this is pretty obvious, the key here is to
see if the soldier action is Green, Red, or White (see
Team Strategic Order above).
Ammo Type consists of the following:
AP - Armor Piercing, includes all solid shots such as
bullets.
HE - High Explosive
HT - High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT)
SM - Smoke
SP - Special. This can be anything from Canister (check
the M5 at close range) to HVAP used in the M4A3 76.
Ammo Count is the number of rounds available of that
ammo for that weapon. Note that the rounds are still
divided into clips or belts internally, and that the
time to reload a clip or belt is taken into account.
Watch a soldier with a Garand fire and you will see him
fire off 8 rounds, then sit a reload for a while.
Physical State:
Dead and Incap means this soldier will no longer obey
orders and will just lay there. Hurt means the soldier
was hit but can keep on going.
Mental State:
The soldier can go Berserk, Fanatic, Heroic, Panicked or
Routed. This is adjusted as stress builds in relation to
the soldier's morale and experience.
Fatigue:
As fatigue increases, the soldier can become winded or
later, fatigued. The soldiers desire to follow orders
drops with the increase in fatigue, as does the speed at
which he moves. >
Message Monitor:
You can click on a message and it will center on the
team that issued the message. You can also restrict
which priority of message will appear by deselecting the
color associated with that message priority.
5 The Orders
You can issue up to 6 orders: Move, Move Fast, Fire,
Smoke, Defend, and Hide. Teams that cannot perform the
order (e.g. has no smoke grenades) has that affected
order dimmed.
Move tells the team to move to that location taking the
safest route. The team will scatter to cover if fired at
and will use overwatch.
Move Fast has the team take as fast a route as possible
and to do so running. This will tire out a team quickly
(Fatigue in the Soldier Monitor) as well as make them
vulnerable to enemy fire.
Fire (See LOS Line below)
Smoke is the same as Fire, but you are placing a Smoke
grenade or shell that will produce hindrance causing
smoke that will decay in a minute or two.
Defend order tells the team to seek cover from enemy
fire based on the angle of the defend arc you select.
Selecting a narrow arc ensures that all the soldiers
will take the best cover vs enemy fire from that
direction but be vulnerable to fire from other
directions. A wider arc will lessen the amount of cover
that a team can get vs any one direction. Think of it as
hiding behind a tree, and which side of the tree do you
want the soldier to be behind. This is the default order
for the Americans and Germans, only the Germans
interpret Defend as an Ambush command in that they will
not fire unless they see an exposed target, are being
fired at, or the enemy is very close.
Hide command will keep your guys from firing unless the
enemy is within 30 meters. It works best if your team
has not been seen.
6 Keyboard shortcuts
The keys z, x, c, v, b, and n can be used in conjunction
with a selected to team to issue Move, Move Fast, Fire,
Smoke, Defend, and Hide orders respectively without
having to click and hold the mouse on the team. This
is very useful for placing mortar fire. Select the area
on the overview where you want to fire, select a mortar
team in the Team Monitor, hit c, then click on the map
where to bring in the fire. No scrolling required.
7 LOS line
The LOS line drawn when issuing a Fire order represents
whether or not the team has LOS to the target, and the
firepower the team can put on that target.
If the LOS line is Red, you have Line of Sight to the
target, if it turns Dark Red, you can still shoot there,
but you cannot see that location due to visual
hindrances along the Line of Sight. If it turns Black,
then you cannot shoot there, nor see there. >
Note that LOS is traced from each soldier in a team to
each soldier in the enemy team you have the fire line
cursor over. Thus if one soldier in the looking team is
standing, he can shoot over the wall while the rest of
his prone team members cannot. This can also cause a
successfully placed fire marker to not cause anyone to
fire as everyone that can fire is no longer in LOS.
Click and drag on the fire marker to recheck your team's
LOS.
If you are not pointed over an enemy team, but over open
ground, LOS is traced to the highest terrain object
within the vicinity. Thus, you can trace over a wall to
a building, but cannot trace over a wall to
open ground.
The color of the dot at the end of the fire line
represents the amount of firepower this team can deliver
at that range. If the fire cursor is over open ground or
an enemy soldier, it uses the Vs Infantry rating. If it
is over a vehicle, it will use the Vs Armor rating to
determine what color to display.
8 How/why the game ends
The game ends when an internal timer set for between 30
and 120 seconds goes off. This timer is started when
either both side's Force Morale is in the Yellow, or one
side's Force Morale is in the Red. Once started, the
Force Morale bars begin to flash. This represents that
one or both sides will to fight has been lost and the
troops will start to pull back. In the case of one side
going into the Red, that side will then start to rout.
The winner is determined as follows:
If one side's Force Morale is Red, the other side won,
regardless of score. This represents routing the enemy
from field of battle. If the other side is still in the
Green, it will be a Major Victory or better, else it
will be a Minor Victory or better for the other side. If
both side's Force Morale is Yellow or both are Red, then
points are used to determine the victor. Victory
location points vary from location to location. The
bigger the font used in the victory location name, the
more it is worth.
This method allows a player to develop a strategy of
either defending / taking victory locations or killing
the enemy. We do not force you to do both.
There is also a game end due to inaction. If no shot has
been fired or no order issued by the player for the past
2 minutes of game time, the battle will be declared
ended due to inaction. If you are playing as the
Germans and are attempting to set up an ambush in the
rear, and the Americans are advancing very slowly, you
can just re-issue a Defend or Hide order every minute to
keep the game from ending. But believe me, in the
campaign game, you want the game to end as soon as
possible if playing the Germans.
9 Why there's no pause
Pausing the game and issuing orders would ruin it. We
actually did useability tests on live subjects, with a
pause feature in the game. We saw the players issue a
lot of orders, let the game run for maybe 10
seconds, pause, issue more orders, etc. This destroyed
the whole feel of the game. Its also totally unworkable
for 2-player network games. If you feel the game is
moving too quickly, try slowing it down from the options
menu.
10 Second stories and Elevations
Elevations / Hills were things we would have liked to
put in the game but the extra graphics needed to
represent them were not possible for us to put in. They
will be in for CC2. Multi-story buildings will possibly
never be put in due to the problems with the interface
(Move Upstairs, Move Downstairs) and viewing multiple
levels (View First Floor, View Basement, View Roof, etc)
causes. Also, imagine trying to tell where enemy fire
came from, directing fire vs different levels,
determining which buildings have
how many levels, etc.
11 Command Radius/Troops not obeying
There is no command radius but the distance from a
leader will affect how well the team obeys its orders.
Given everything else is the same, a poor quality team
moving with your company commander's team is more likely
to carry out it's order than it would if the only leader
was on the other side of the map.
If that team you ordered to move got shot at, its
possible that they decided against moving. Or they
started to move, got shot at, and decided to run back to
cover. A lot depends on their experience level and their
surrounding terrain. In either case, the team will
constantly re-evaluate their ability to make that move.
If they decide its safe, or they decide to obey
the order, they'll try again.
12 Heroes, Bravery, and Cowardice
Heroic soldiers don't become Audie Murphy, and they are
likely to "recover" from it. Unlike ASL, when a soldier
goes heroic, he does not gain special abilities. He's
just more likely to stay functional in the heat of
battle.
Bravery points are awarded for when a soldier goes
heroic, fanatic, or berserk. The soldier also gets
bravery points for taking a victory location.
Cowardice points are awarded when a soldier routs or
becomes panicked.
Leaders get bravery and cowardice points for winning or
losing the battle (the bigger the win/loss, the more the
points) as they are responsible for the outcome. Note
that you are represented on the battlefield as the 2nd
Lt. that commands the first team listed in the Team
Monitor. In the campaign game, you get to name that
soldier.
13 Effectiveness of MGs
An M4 cannot be killed by an MG but can be killed by the
Panzerfaust that the loader in the MG team carries. Rule
#1 of survival with American armor: Never move closer
than 60 meters to a potential german location. Even
120 meters is too close if there is a Panzerscreck team
near.
As for the MG killing halftracks, this is why the M3 HT
series was known as "Purple Heart Boxes". With only 6mm
at a 20o slope of frontal chasis armor (10mm effective)
and 12mm at 20o slope frontal upper structure
(17mm effective), the German MG42 could easily penetrate
it at close range (less than 200m or so). While the MG
won't necessarily destroy the M3 HT at this range, it
can injure or kill the occupants resulting in a soft
kill.
Also watch out for the MG42 when you are in a wooden
building at very close range (50 meters or so). That gun
(as well as the US 50cal) can rip right through the
walls making it much safer to be outside the building in
some nice big shellhole or foxhole.
One of the strategies a tester came up with is to deploy
a couple of MG42 teams in the interior of a large stone
building so they could not be shot at by the Americans
until they entered the building, at which time the
MG42s opened up, shredding the interior wooden walls
between them and the Americans as well as the Americans
themselves.
14 Soldier Deployment
The amount the team bunches up depends on their
experience and the amount of cover in the area they are
trying to deploy in. Inexperienced teams will tend to
bunch up more and even experienced teams will bunch up
if the cover within their "deploy zone" is limited to a
small location. The deploy zone consists of a rectangle
about 8 meters wide and 24 meters long, perpendicular to
the axis of advance.
15 Soldier Visibility
If you are having trouble seeing your soldiers, try
using the Team Monitor to select the team. Double
clicking on a team in the Team Monitor will center the
map on that team and highlight it.
Enemy soldiers may be hard to see just because they are
shadowed. If a team has just been spotted but no one got
a good look at the team, they will initially be
displayed as shadows to let you know something is there
even if you don't know what it is. As more information
comes available, they will change into visible
soldiers.
16 Bazookas and Schrecks vs Infantry
Bazookas and Panzerschrecks were used quite often vs
infantry in buildings / behind walls. The Germans even
referred to the Bazooka as a shoulder 75. The game will
limit usage of these weapons in this fashion if there
are tank assets that have yet to be dealt with.
17 AI Cheating
The AI does not cheat. We put a lot of effort into
making sure that the AI is playing with the same rules
as the player. Move Out does NOT equate to AI control.
The AI performs many other actions to try to coordinate
attacks, provide suppression fire, etc. Move Out causes
your troops to move forward to engage the enemy, and
then they will keep on trying to advance.
18 Enemy Knowledge
Selecting an Enemy Team will display varios information
about that enemy team. The amount is dependant on how
well spotted the enemy team is. Knowledge accumulates
about an enemy team as time progresses and the enemy is
doing things in LOS of a friendly team. It is also
affected by proximity to the enemy and the cover the
enemy is in. Thus, a just spotted enemy team in a
building will only give you what type of team it is and
number of soldiers. Only if you get close, or spend a
long time in LOS of this team will this knowledge
increase. If this is not the case for you, make sure
the enemy intelligence option is off in the Custom
preferences.
19 Moving a Vehicle in Reverse
Vehicles will use reverse, but only if they are given a
Move command, not a Move Fast command. The move also has
to be of a short range. Using Move Fast will cause the
tank to get there as fast as possible, not a safe
as possible.
20 Mortar Indirect Fire
The indirect fire model for mortars was simplified so
the player would not have to be concerned with spotting
rounds, etc. They are handled abstractly. The rate of
fire of a mortar is about 1 round / 6 seconds, but note
that the delay could be much greater if the mortar team
repositioned themselves due to incoming fire, the mortar
firer was suppressed by enemy fire, or the mortar jammed
(fired a dud round).
21 What's different in the retail version
The sounds file used in the demo is a subset of the
sounds in the game. Two sounds, the Berserk scream, and
the out of armor sounds were left out due to their
size.
Also, the Save Replay, Campaign Game, and all the other
Maneuvers are enabled in the retail version as well as
the Help system which is really immense.
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