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I'm not sure how much interest there is in roguelikes around these parts, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of treadheads who might be interested.
http://www.armouredcommander.com/blog/armoured-commander-i/
Armoured Commander essentially places the player avatar into the role of a 4th Armored Division Sherman TC during Operation Cobra (the Normandy breakout) throughout the rest of the war in the ETO, all the way to V-E day in Czechoslovakia with all campaigns in-between. You have the usual roguelike, ASCII art and text-based UI, but a surprising amount of detail, much of it cribbed from an old solitaire boardgame Patton's Best. The game plays out on two levels, a ragged tile based campaign layer where you decide where to go, when to resupply, whether to wait on recon to report back or just barrel ahead, calling in artillery/air to soften things up, if you'll advance with guns blazing or save ammo and so on. That gives way to a very abstract hex-based battle layer where you maneuver your tank about a field divided into sectors (based on your tank's orientation, not the compass) with three range bands (close, medium, long). For people who aren't familiar with roguelikes, death is permanent in the default mode and there is a heavy dose of RNG to every battle.
Once in combat, you're the head honcho in charge of fighting your tank effectively. If you want the TC (your avatar) to hang out of his hatch for better spotting and the ability to occasionally pop off at infantry with the 50 cal, you can do that. If you want to leave a hull down position in order to drive up close to infantry in a building and blaze away with the bow gun, that works too. Or you can play things safe, staying nestled back behind your own smoke screen and letting the accompanying (but invisible) friendlies take care of the heavy lifting while you get on with the business of actually surviving the war.
Inside the tank, much drama plays out, as your crewmember's skills kick in and war makes its presence felt. At one point during the early race across France, I got into the habit of having everyone possible turned out of their hatches, enjoying the bonus to spotting and way it prevented some ambushes. But then I drove into the wrong city and two infantry teams plus an MG made me really regret that decision when my TC was wounded and my loader and driver were killed. At one point, I was fighting a Panther in the bocage and my gun suffered a serious enough malfunction that I literally spent a dozen rounds hiding, praying that my supply of HC/WP and smoke grenades (thrown out of the TC's hatch) held out. Another time I was getting so aggressive in clearing out infantry that both my bow MG and my fifty broke from sheer overuse.
It is more detailed than most out-and-out tank sims when it comes managing an actual warmachine.
Armoured Commander isn't really a wargame in the traditional (hex) sense but it really makes war feel like the relentless, grinding affair it is in the real thing. You very quickly realize that medals are inconsistently given (the easiest way to get one I have found is to defend one op tile against all comers during a counter-attack -- out of three attempts, I received a Bronze Star, Silver Star and Distinguished Service Cross in turn, despite not getting appreciably more kills than my other combat days -- and the only real success is getting your tank and your crew through another day. But beyond the next field there is always another river, another town. Not really, since the full campaign is only (heh, "only") sixty-eight combat days, but surviving a full week is a challenge if you don't know when to back down so it feels a helluva lot longer. Even worse when you're Lead Tank for the full task force because guess who gets shot at first almost all the time?
Hint: if you throw a track against a Tiger, don't stay in place, just abandon the Sherman and get a new one with your crew still intact (of course, they can get killed or wounded in the process).
Downsides are that it is brutally simple when it comes to anything not literally inside the tank itself. There are maybe eight different enemy AFV -- Panthers, two flavors of Tiger, two flavors of Marder, a StuG, a Hetzer and a Panzer IV -- at least that I've encountered. There are two different types of enemy infantry (MGs and rifle squads) and three ATGs (50mm, 75mm, 88mm). There aren't many graphics. Everything is abstracted to hell and back, to include the invisible friendly forces that seem to disappear whenever you bog down in the French mud in front of a Panther. Unlike other roguelikes, there isn't as much randomization when it comes to crewmembers; you choose skills from the same blank slate each time, no variance whatsoever, so sometimes they can feel generic. Combat is the same way once you really know what to expect, after a few hours of play. Enemy infantry is strangely reluctant to fire panzerfausts, seemingly preferring (mostly ineffective) assassinations on exposed crewmen instead and accompanying friendly infantry instead. Sometimes the enemy tank AI does incredibly dumb things that allow me to kill them, like dashing out of a hull down on my flank to run across my front and present me with a perfect side shot.
But overall, I give it a 8/10 if you're into roguelikes on account of the in-the-turret details and unique setting.
http://www.armouredcommander.com/blog/armoured-commander-i/
Armoured Commander essentially places the player avatar into the role of a 4th Armored Division Sherman TC during Operation Cobra (the Normandy breakout) throughout the rest of the war in the ETO, all the way to V-E day in Czechoslovakia with all campaigns in-between. You have the usual roguelike, ASCII art and text-based UI, but a surprising amount of detail, much of it cribbed from an old solitaire boardgame Patton's Best. The game plays out on two levels, a ragged tile based campaign layer where you decide where to go, when to resupply, whether to wait on recon to report back or just barrel ahead, calling in artillery/air to soften things up, if you'll advance with guns blazing or save ammo and so on. That gives way to a very abstract hex-based battle layer where you maneuver your tank about a field divided into sectors (based on your tank's orientation, not the compass) with three range bands (close, medium, long). For people who aren't familiar with roguelikes, death is permanent in the default mode and there is a heavy dose of RNG to every battle.
Once in combat, you're the head honcho in charge of fighting your tank effectively. If you want the TC (your avatar) to hang out of his hatch for better spotting and the ability to occasionally pop off at infantry with the 50 cal, you can do that. If you want to leave a hull down position in order to drive up close to infantry in a building and blaze away with the bow gun, that works too. Or you can play things safe, staying nestled back behind your own smoke screen and letting the accompanying (but invisible) friendlies take care of the heavy lifting while you get on with the business of actually surviving the war.
Inside the tank, much drama plays out, as your crewmember's skills kick in and war makes its presence felt. At one point during the early race across France, I got into the habit of having everyone possible turned out of their hatches, enjoying the bonus to spotting and way it prevented some ambushes. But then I drove into the wrong city and two infantry teams plus an MG made me really regret that decision when my TC was wounded and my loader and driver were killed. At one point, I was fighting a Panther in the bocage and my gun suffered a serious enough malfunction that I literally spent a dozen rounds hiding, praying that my supply of HC/WP and smoke grenades (thrown out of the TC's hatch) held out. Another time I was getting so aggressive in clearing out infantry that both my bow MG and my fifty broke from sheer overuse.
It is more detailed than most out-and-out tank sims when it comes managing an actual warmachine.
Armoured Commander isn't really a wargame in the traditional (hex) sense but it really makes war feel like the relentless, grinding affair it is in the real thing. You very quickly realize that medals are inconsistently given (the easiest way to get one I have found is to defend one op tile against all comers during a counter-attack -- out of three attempts, I received a Bronze Star, Silver Star and Distinguished Service Cross in turn, despite not getting appreciably more kills than my other combat days -- and the only real success is getting your tank and your crew through another day. But beyond the next field there is always another river, another town. Not really, since the full campaign is only (heh, "only") sixty-eight combat days, but surviving a full week is a challenge if you don't know when to back down so it feels a helluva lot longer. Even worse when you're Lead Tank for the full task force because guess who gets shot at first almost all the time?
Hint: if you throw a track against a Tiger, don't stay in place, just abandon the Sherman and get a new one with your crew still intact (of course, they can get killed or wounded in the process).
Downsides are that it is brutally simple when it comes to anything not literally inside the tank itself. There are maybe eight different enemy AFV -- Panthers, two flavors of Tiger, two flavors of Marder, a StuG, a Hetzer and a Panzer IV -- at least that I've encountered. There are two different types of enemy infantry (MGs and rifle squads) and three ATGs (50mm, 75mm, 88mm). There aren't many graphics. Everything is abstracted to hell and back, to include the invisible friendly forces that seem to disappear whenever you bog down in the French mud in front of a Panther. Unlike other roguelikes, there isn't as much randomization when it comes to crewmembers; you choose skills from the same blank slate each time, no variance whatsoever, so sometimes they can feel generic. Combat is the same way once you really know what to expect, after a few hours of play. Enemy infantry is strangely reluctant to fire panzerfausts, seemingly preferring (mostly ineffective) assassinations on exposed crewmen instead and accompanying friendly infantry instead. Sometimes the enemy tank AI does incredibly dumb things that allow me to kill them, like dashing out of a hull down on my flank to run across my front and present me with a perfect side shot.
But overall, I give it a 8/10 if you're into roguelikes on account of the in-the-turret details and unique setting.
