Greetings from lead of Burden of Command Team

A belated welcome @Luke Hughes
A very interesting game concept and it would ' tiggle the fancy' of many of the gamers here.
Just a couple of questions regarding game mechanics.
I take it that each scenario will give options throughout that will risk the lives of your men for operational gains.
I'm just wondering about the reward/punishment mechanics, example "HQ is glad you captured the objective, Old Blood and Guts will pin a medal on your chest for sure" while your men are suffering low morale due to casualties and plan to 'frag your arse' when you sleep in your foxhole.
Will the game reward/punish your choices, failing consistently to capture objectives due to keeping your men safe and your promoted to the supply pool, spending the rest of the war counting boots and beans.
Are there several 'end game' narratives planned?
 
A courteous welcome @Nathangun and then I note you pin the wriggling butterfly to the display ;-)
Answers for now (subject to change of course!):
Think of it as balancing resources:
-- prestige -- like Panzer General or Steel Panzers. You're accomplishing the mission you get this to spend on men, replacements etc. Superiors are happy with you. The men? hmmm. Depends.
-- medals/accomplishments -- subjective reward not necessarily an ingame effect (though I think the writers are already having fun with the implication of these if we implement). This is on the drawing board only right now.
-- trust -- if the men feel you have their best interests at heart you gain this. Improves their morale in the Squad Leader like sense. Earned by your taking fire with them and also by decisions you make that are life saving. Also probably by the casualties in the scenario. These are not yet implement but spirit of.
-- respect - translate as 'experience' in PG and SP sense. Gained by success under fire (win firefights etc).
-- morale -- a unit's morale depends on experience, and casualties and the leader influencing (trust and respect). So if you're getting them all killed its kind of hard for them to build up experience.
-- man power -- dead men mean less squad strength. But maybe your prestige allows to replace because you took the hill. But of course they are green. see point above.
So you can win BoC by focusing on prestige and respect at the cost of trust. Or inversely by focusing on trust (but if you lose missions too much obviously things go south with your career). Probably it is some balance but we want you to be able to play different kinds of leaders. Effective ba@#$@#rd or bleeding heart or something in between.
Please take the spirit of these ideas not hold me to the literal. Lots in flux. This is the vision. The reality will inevitably be something less then I imagine LOL.
As for end game narratives. Yes I believe that is the plan. I'd have to double check with Allen and Paul (they don't trust me with the really important stuff ;-) )
 
As a followup to above. I believe overall in transparency. So I'm being open with my thinking and not pretending I am following the one know true path to success and everything is being executed according to zie master plan. And that nothing will change. War is chaos. Game design and development only slightly less so ;-)
In return for transparency I only ask that you not hold me to anything I've said LOL
 
Luke Hughes said:
As a followup to above. I believe overall in transparency. So I'm being open with my thinking and not pretending I am following the one know true path to success and everything is being executed according to zie master plan. And that nothing will change. War is chaos. Game design and development only slightly less so ;-)
In return for transparency I only ask that you not hold me to anything I've said LOL
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Hell if anyone here was held to account for what they'd said there would be Hell to pay (and Zinzan would probably be in prison, again!! :p).

Anyway...... It's nice to see a developer being so open and honest, even going so far as to tell us that things change :rolleyes: (Well Duh! you just have to look at yourself to see that truth Zinzan!)

It's a very nice vision and most here would settle for seeing it achieved one day.

Direct question/comment: One thingh many of us love about Combat Mission is the upgrade/continuation model - unlike many games (Lookoing at You Football Manager ;) ) that reinvenyt themselves evry few years - CM has stuck (ver 2 at least) with incremental improvments run back into older versions and expanding what already exists. So would this be your plan? eg develope a engine/program that works and expand by adding stories/era/campaigns to base module over time? (Zinzan has ZERO experience of game coding so has no idea how feasible/cost effective this is).
 
You guys are a fun community. Love the repartee.

@Zinzan My long term development vision:
-- v1 -- release multiple campaigns and theater expansions via DLCs.
-- v2 -- introduce dynamic (procedurally generated) campaigns like Steel Panthers had with the twist that a large library of modular story events, triggered dynamically by circumstances and the dice, still make it a fairly strong personal and narrative experience. Permadeath becomes more salient like in Battle Brothers or Darkest Dungeon or the real war.
I'd like to start working on v2 concurrently sith v1 dlc releases.
 
BTW if you want to help us please like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter (@BurdenOfCommand) and of course spread the word. We depend on word of mouth.
Luke
 
mTk said:
@Luke Hughes It just occurred to me that I don't really have any idea how one "wins" the game. What does a player need to do to succeed, besides not die that is?
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LOL. I'm sure that this late in a published release development cycle someone has figured that out! ;)
You know the drill:
1) Mission success (accomplishment of mission, exploitation of opportunity, achievement of commander's intent).
2) Economy of forces (use what you had wisely, maintain unit effectiveness, avoid unacceptable losses).
3) Sound judgements (tactical acumen, effective leadership, advancing when you can, withdrawing when you should).​
Seems to me that scenario's need to be historically based / documented because only hindsight can objectively judge #2 and #3.
 
My apologies @mTk and @Badger73. Somehow I missed your posts. Badget73 does a good job summarizing. We want to emphasize the Men vs Mission aspect. Victory isn't just about the objectives. It's about preserving your force, not only because units persist across scenarios (and gain or lose experience) but because you *care* about them. We have a nasty little bag of empathy tricks we are using to try to help the latter along. Including we hope fairly human portraiture. Speaking of which I wanted to mention our first dev blog is out on "Making the Characters Come Alive." It shows how a character goes from a single row in a spreadsheet to a Mariusz portrait (he does art for Total War as well as us). All of this so you think twice about sending Lt Dearborn up that hill ;-) Please take a look and let us know what you think.
Of course maybe this portraiture crap is only for sissies who don't really know how to push cardboard or animated sprites? ;-) Speaking of pushing cardboard our lead scenario designer Steve Overton's tactical board game is coming along "Fire Team: Red Eclipse." Showing our team can push cardboard as well as the next grognard! And not just in tired WWII, 1980s and 1990s:
A first screenshot from his game (not from Burden of Command) showing finished counters.
 
Only for you @meatgrinder ;) I am probably blowing the seriousness vibe for Burden of Command, but I would love to do a furure DLC in the spirit of Kelly's Heroes or Dirty Dozen :cool: would you guys like to see a Hollywood movie pack?
 
Luke Hughes said:
Only for you @meatgrinder ;) I am probably blowing the seriousness vibe for Burden of Command, but I would love to do a furure DLC in the spirit of Kelly's Heroes or Dirty Dozen :cool: would you guys like to see a Hollywood movie pack?
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Not really. I'd likely pass on that DLC in favor of other ones maintaining more the original vibe.
Call me a contrarian of the Grand Theft Auto Leadership Labs.
 
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