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[pluckyporcupine]

A.k.a. The game I am going to work on when I am slacking on Not So ANSI Sub Game but still feel like coding.

I decided to work on this to keep wargaming out of Not So ANSI Sub Game, directing that energy here instead. I also like the idea of indirectly controlling a warfront, which I first really experienced through STAVKA-OKH. I also really wanted to use Hexels' trixels for something.

Anyways, it's going to be a strategy game where you're a commander in charge of a single front of a war. Your goal is to manage the front and somehow win the war. Turns will be one month at a time. It's not going to be historical in any way, shape, or form.

Not really 100% on all of the details yet, but here is what I mocked up today.



This will be the screen you see the most. You've got five options from here:

1. Check campaign status. This will be a menu where you get to see all of the details of the campaign displayed in one place. You get to see the supplies, morale, and headcount for each front, as well as an overall estimate of how things are going.

2. Speak with the admiral. You'll get to go to a screen like the one below that you use to convince the admiral that measures need to be taken to increase morale (not sure how this will be handled yet), that your monthly supply limit isn't enough, or that a draft needs to be instituted because you're essentially bleeding soldiers.



3. Choose next month's plan. You get to lay out the basic details for next month. Basically, which front to send supplies/reinforcements to and how each front should proceed.

4. Go to the break room. The pause menu. It'll look something like a break room.

5. Check the campaign map (clicking on the table under the options). That will bring up a screen like the one below that will give you an overall look at the current campaign and an the way that your current plan should be executed.



Plans won't be cut and dry though. How well a plan is carried out will depend on morale. If morale is low, then bad things that are undecided will start happening.

And...that's the gist of it that's been planned out so far. Probably going to be worked on at a slower rate than Not So ANSI Sub Game but I needed an outlet for the want to make a wargame.

[Panurge]

I really like this concept. I'd be especially interested to see the interpersonal angle played up as much as possible so you could get a sense of how the wranglings (and perhaps feuds?) of a small group of commanders can affect the course of the whole war. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

[pluckyporcupine]

I really like this concept. I'd be especially interested to see the interpersonal angle played up as much as possible so you could get a sense of how the wranglings (and perhaps feuds?) of a small group of commanders can affect the course of the whole war. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

Thanks! Yeah, the goal is to play out how you influence the war as a person actively making decisions without actually being a strategist. I want it to be more about the careful management of the politics of war and how they affect the people involved than about the strategies that win a war. That being the goal, I do want to work in a lot of interpersonal details, possibly expanding to fighting other commanders for allotted supplies during desperate times and such.

A point I forgot to mention, and this plays into the draft option, is that there will be a strong emphasis on the fact that you are commanding a single battle in a larger war. You may lose your battle but that doesn't mean the nation will lose the war. There are other commanders out there doing the same thing you're doing on other fronts. Bearing that in mind, you can't just ask for a draft and expect it to happen. It takes deliberation.

That opens up a lot of possibilities in a larger campaign setting if I decide to add one, including reluctance to assign you to new battles when you lose yours, more/less influence over other commanders, and/or morale effects based on your level of success as a commander. For now, I think it'll just be scenarios.

[pluckyporcupine]

Got started on actually coding this today by mocking up a cruddy-looking title sequence to kind of map out what I wanted to do with it.



There's more to it than that and obviously I'm not keeping that text or that background but I'm not sure I'm going to keep the sequence in general. It's a soldier in a trench getting blown up and a skeleton being left behind right before the title scrolls down and the "Press Any Key To Start" text scrolls up. Not 100% sure it matches the mood I want to go for, despite matching the art style a bit.

Oh and on another note, I'm officially calling the game Ceannasaí, which is the Irish word for "commander".