https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/01/steel-division-normandy-44-rts/
QuoteEugen team with Paradox for tactical RTS Steel Division
Paradox have announced a new strategy game, Steel Division: Normandy 44. Created by Eugen Systems, the studio behind clever clogs WWII game R.U.S.E. and the Wargame series, it contains "400 different real-world vehicles and units designed with careful historical detail and accuracy" and maps based on aerial recon photos of 1944 Normandy. Mmmmm. Lovely authenticity. It's the tactical tricks that make it sound so appealing though.
Here are the tastiest morsels of information, direct from the warhorse's mouth:
Real-world Tactics: Battles rage over three distinct phases, where different units unlock over time, mimicking the movements of real-world armies and adding variety to the ever-changing theatre of war. A dynamic front line illustrates the ebb and flow of the conflict. Pin down your opponent's infantry to gain the advantage and force a retreat, or push through with a perfectly executed plan,
Outplan, Outsmart, Outgun: From battlegroup customization to troop positioning and maneuvering, winning battles requires cunning and strategy, not just raw firepower. Each unit lost presents a growing tactical disadvantage, and players will need to fight to gain — and keep — the upper hand.
Eugen's most recent release, Act of Aggression, didn't receive a warm reaction from Rob Zacny on these pages, but it felt like a throwback where so much of their work had been quietly innovative, pushing the RTS genre forward. Steel Division already sounds like a more interesting proposition, with its dynamic front line and combat phases, so here's hoping it's a return to form.
As well as multiplayer "up to and including 10-versus-10 battles", Steel Division will have a full singleplayer campaign mode. We'll know much more in the very near future.
RTS :bleeding: Clickity-clickity-zerg.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 01, 2017, 12:17:34 PM
RTS :bleeding: Clickity-clickity-zerg.
ZOMG T34 RUSH WTF
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 01, 2017, 12:17:34 PM
RTS :bleeding: Clickity-clickity-zerg.
If they go for the Wargame approach, then the gameplay will be pretty slow compared to AoE or Starcraft. https://youtu.be/JTTHbgrl3lw?t=405
Destroying whole columns of T-55s with a few well-placed ATGMs was always my favorite thing to do in Wargame. It was beautiful.
I always preferred launching a game of EUII online, and losing the game in 40 minutes after the cavalry-only zerg rush from Burgundy, or France, or whoever, it didn't matter.
http://www.pcgamer.com/steel-division-normandy-44-is-a-realistic-ww2-rts-coming-this-year/
QuoteSteel Division: Normandy 44 is a realistic WW2 RTS coming this year
The creators of Wargame and RUSE announce an all-new strategy game focused on division-level warfare.
Publisher Paradox Interactive and Wargame/RUSE creators Eugen Systems are on a mission to make "the most authentic real-time tactical game" set in World War 2. At least, that's how Eugen's Alexis Le Dressay introduced me to the upcoming Steel Division: Normandy 44 in a Skype call filled with talk of impassible French hedgerows, the stress of being under machine gun fire, and making 1:1 scale maps from aerial photography of Normandy taken during the actual conflict in question. It's a tall order, as historical accuracy doesn't always equate to enjoyable gameplay. But Le Dressay sounded inspired by that challenge.
Combat in Normandy '44 takes place at the division level. Rather than selecting a nation, you pick from a number of Allied and Axis divisions that fought in Northern France near the close of the war (though the actual beach landings won't be included), each with a unique unit roster and play style. Among the names dropped were the US 101st Airborne and the German 12th SS, with England, France, Poland, Canada, and Scotland also represented. Some nations have multiple divisions to choose from, with each falling into a broad category of armored, mechanized, or infantry.
While your division serves almost like a deck of cards that you select prior to a battle, the troops you will actually be taking into the field, called a Battlegroup, are 30-40 units chosen from this roster on a mission-by-mission basis. These can include anything from a superheavy German Tiger tank (which are controlled individually), down to a platoon of infantry (which are controlled as a group of roughly 10 riflemen or a single machine gun crew, rather than as individual units). These units will attempt to push and pull a dynamic front line that moves as you take and lose terrain, with victory points assigned based on how much of the map you control.
In addition to a singleplayer campaign, Normandy '44 will support up to 10 vs 10 in online multiplayer, with the most colossal brawls taking place on maps large enough that they can be broken into chunks and used piecemeal for smaller engagements. Ranked and casual matches will be available, across a "tremendous" number of maps. I wasn't provided with any hard numbers, but Eugen assured me it would be "two to three times the usual" in similar games.
Each battle takes place in three phases, which is where one of the most interesting strategic elements comes in. Certain units in your battlegroup will only be able to be deployed in certain phases based on their strategic speed, which is modeled after real-world logistical realities. You can't, for instance, blitz the map off the starting line with heavy tanks. In the first phase, only your quickest and lightest units will be available.
The devs stressed that this gives certain divisions distinct advantages and disadvantages that must be considered. The 101st Airborne, for instance, can deploy quality infantry in phase one and seize a lot of territory quickly. However, the Airborne doesn't have as much support coming in later phases, meaning they'll have to hold onto their gains tooth-and-nail. The German Panzer Lehr, on the other hand, will struggle in the early phases until their superheavy armor shows up for the grand finale to blast away all opposition. Since each phase matters in calculating ultimate victory, not every match is going to come down to who has the bigger and better army. A commander who plans for each phase properly and looks at the big picture can overcome what is, on paper, a superior force.
The core combat revolves around the concept of stress. Similar to games like Company of Heroes, units will act with self-preservation based on the battlefield situation. Light infantry under fire from a heavy machine gun will become pinned down, unable to move or contribute much to the battle, which allows a smart commander to take units out of the fight indefinitely without necessarily routing or killing them. It is also possible, of course, to force a unit to take so much stress that they start to withdraw from the battlefield (or at least to a more defensible location). It's also possible to capture enemy units by surrounding them and forcing them to surrender.
Key factors that influence unit stress include terrain, position, experience, and leadership. Terrain plays a large role in each battle, and is largely modeled after actual aerial photographs (but tweaked in some areas for balance reasons). France's large, dense hedgerows present impassible barriers. Units can take cover both behind obstacles and inside fully-destructible buildings. Lighter forests, such as orchards, allow tanks to barrel through, crushing hapless apple trees all the way, while thicker areas of vegetation only allow infantry to pass and may be used to stage ambushes. Line of sight is elevation-based—a sniper in a church tower is much more valuable than one in a valley.
Experience isn't something units earn in the course of a match, but different available units in your division start with different experience levels. Composing a battlegroup of the most hardened troops will cost a lot more, but experience has a large impact on a unit's ability to withstand stress and keep fighting. You can also bring along command units, which aren't as good at fighting as their counterparts, but provide the benefit of an extra experience level to all units in a small radius. The devs want commanders to be a tactical asset rather than a strategic one, applying their bonuses only to a very small area rather than enabling any kind of battlefield-wide general abilities. In addition, units near a command squad will ignore the normal penalties for being encircled, enabling daring escapades behind enemy lines.
Aircraft will also feature on the battlefield, drawing from period accurate fighters, close air support, and light bombers modeled with realistic speed and maneuverability stats. Heavy bombers have been excluded, as they didn't play much of a role in tactical warfare. Commanders will also be able to call in off-map artillery strikes, as well as naval bombardments on coastal maps.
Modding tools are also planned, with a particular eye toward the World War 2 geeks who can't stand having a patch on a British artillery officer's uniform being in the wrong place. Paradox's Peter Cornelius also billed this as a way to fix the inevitable, "My grandpa's division isn't in the game" problem, indicating that division rosters themselves will be fully customizable.
Eugen's desire is to skew towards historical accuracy over what they referred to as the contrived, 'rock-paper-scissors' balancing of other RTSes. Whether the three-phase battle system and strategic considerations will allow them to make such a detailed recreation fun and balanced remains to be seen. We'll be able to take command of Steel Division: Normandy '44 some time later this year.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated Steel Division would include "full mod support," which was inaccurate. "Specific modding tools" are being planned.
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I love all those close up screenshots, when you'll probably spend 80-90% of the game at a zoom level like in the last two screenshots. :P
Normandy is such a tired campaign.
Not going to lie, pretty disappointed they are starting there and we're going to have to wait until 2020 for the Soviet Front DLC.
Quote from: Alcibiades on March 03, 2017, 02:04:44 PM
and we're going to have to wait until 2020 for the Soviet Front DLC.
Are we? :hmm:
Looks kind of like Operation Star with a UI
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2017, 12:41:17 AM
Looks kind of like Operation Star with a UI
It's literally this game with different skins and less vehicles:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/251060/
Quote from: The Brain on March 02, 2017, 01:50:38 PM
Normandy is such a tired campaign.
We need more Med campaign stuff: greaseball dago wops versus foppish snooty pommies.
Boopa-dee bappa-dee, what what
Somebody just make The Longest Day into a computer game.
Quote from: Alcibiades on March 05, 2017, 10:03:26 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2017, 12:41:17 AM
Looks kind of like Operation Star with a UI
It's literally this game with different skins and less vehicles:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/251060/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/251060/)
I have that game, but this looks a little different.
Preview on RPS based on GDC demo:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/06/steel-division-normandy-44-preview/
Quotehttp://I can appreciate a carefully crafted digital tank rolling into combat as much as the next war game fan, but there are few things I enjoy more than a visible front line. Not the actual troops huddling beneath hedgerows as explosions tear up the dirt, but an actual line, drawn onto the map, bendling, flexing and breaking as the battle plays out.
Steel Division [official site] has authentically modeled units and detailed rules of engagement controlling their clashes, but it's the front line that got me all excited when I saw a demo last week at GDC.
RTS games often frustrate me. If the foundation of a game encourages me to click fast and think occasionally, I'm unlikely to enjoy it for long, and if every unit is disposable, every encounter can become a numbers game with little tactical or strategic interest. Early in the presentation, even before deployment is complete and the first bullet has been fired, I'm relieved to hear a Paradox representative summarising what kind of RTS Steel Division is: "Clicks per minute doesn't matter. This is tactics over twitch."
Alexis Le Dressay, chief executive of Eugen Systems, is running the demo, playing the mission live. He explains that units will respond to your decisions but will also make choices of their own, responding to the changing situation in the field. If they come under fire, they'll look for cover, and if you tell them to advance on a heavily defended enemy position with shells raining down around them, they might just break and head for the metaphorical hills.
By ensuring that units react to combat situations in a believable fashion, Eugen want to make sure the player is only responsible for "interesting tactical decisions", Dressay says. "Babysitting isn't an interesting tactical decision."
So, then, what are the interesting tactical decisions? They begin with a choice of division. Rather than picking Axis or Allied forces, you select a specific division, with the selection including German, US, British, French, Polish and Canadian forces. The US 101st Airborne offer a very different set of tactical options than the 12th SS Panzer, and there's a deck-building aspect to the actual make-up of your troops. Essentially, each Division has a set number of points to spend on units for each of the three phases of battle, and those phases are one of the key systems that affect Steel Division's flow.
As far as I can tell, the phases will provide a sense of momentum, not quite mirroring the construction of bases in a traditional RTS, but allowing each battle to progress from early recon and skirmish phases to consolidation and heavy armoured warfare. Some units will only be available in later phases, reflecting the time it takes to move them to the front and deploy them, while others can enter combat in phase one, securing strong tactical positions and attempting to hold them until stronger reinforcements arrive.
The 101st would likely have an advantage against the 12th in phase one, able to storm the map with rapid infantry assault units that are able to capture key positions. As the battle moves into its later phases, however, armoured units will start to arrive and the Panzer will be attempting to turn the tide in their commander's favour by breaking and dislocating the Airborne while their own backup scrambles onto the field. One of Eugen's aims is to avoid the common RTS pattern which sees one side gain an advantage early in the game which is almost impossible to overturn. The phases should give battles ebb and flow.
An example of an unexpected change of supremacy involves a stealthy infantry reconnaissance unit. Left behind enemy lines early in the battle, where most units might see their morale shattered before long, they retained their composure and scouted the area. Their allies were losing ground in the centre of the map, taking heavy damage and unable to withstand the bombardment of enemy artillery. Unable to make any impact even if they approached from the rear, due to their inability to penetrate armour reliably, the recon unit was all but forgotten as attention shifted to the frontline.
Until, late in the third and final phase, the recon unit spotted a munitions truck, deployed to resupply the artillery. It never made that supply run, cut off and taken out of commission by that forgotten recon unit hadn't taken it out of commission, causing the assault to falter. On the whole, it's unwise to leave troops isolated behind enemy lines, as they can be captured or killed easily without support to back them up, but the rules of engagement in Steel Division are flexible enough to allow for this kind of twist.
That kind of dramatic turnaround might be rare, but head-on confrontations won't just be a case of chucking stacks of units at the enemy. They come with their own tactical tricks and Eugen's ballistic system is a key part of them, underpinning all of the game's encounters. When selecting units you can see precisely what kind of weaponry they use, and the penetration power of projectiles. Shells and bullets can be seen punching through armour, or deflecting, and the difference between impacts can be seen visually as well as predicted by those with historical knowledge or an eye on the stats.
Thanks to the three phase system, which is an abstraction of the wider logistics that allow units to reach the battle, light tanks will have their uses, helping to clear out infantry or the spotter units that allow artillery to operate (all artillery units are off-screen, the spotters being their physical representatives). If heavier tanks arrive in phase three, it might be wise to pull lighter vehicles out of their path, sacrificing some parts of the front to concentrate your efforts elsewhere. Because the frontline changes shape dynamically, reflecting the course of the battle, you can see where reinforcements are needed, the points where the line is buckling, even if you don't have direct line of sight to get the full picture.
It's too early to say precisely how Steel Division will play out, particularly in its campaigns, which give players a group of units that they must lead through a series of missions without relying on reinforcements. Multiplayer will support up to 10vs10, with a wide range of maps built using historical recon photography. The most impressive aspect of the game, from what I've seen so far, is how the phase system and positional tactics combine to create a pace that allows for reactive play. Even when air support comes into play, making the screen even busier, battles shouldn't feel too chaotic.
There is chaos in these clashes, of course, but from your commanding position you can read the situation and do what seems best, trusting your units to carry out instructions to the best of their ability. Along with all of the other elements that help to maintain the pace and sense of control, there's the way in which many units are taken out of the fight. Rather than simply raining fire down on each other, vehicles will often fight until softened up, pinned or otherwise disabled, and then you'll be able to move in another unit to capture them. The emphasis on shutting units down and removing them from the fight rather than destroying everything outright makes flanking, retreating and countering much more valid than in a game where the winner is whoever brings the biggest (or the most) guns.
With around 400 types of unit and genuine tactical differences between them, Steel Division should be a strong skirmish combat simulation if nothing else. The deck-building division customisation is intriguing as well and if it works as well as I hope it might, it'll allow for all kinds of approaches, from bombardment to stealth, and from control of zones through carefully placed snipers to storming with aerial and artillery supremacy. And that dynamic frontline brings in a lovely reminder of Eugen's R.U.S.E., allowing for a quick read of any battle based on incomplete information.
The phrase "World War II real-time strategy" doesn't entice me, but if Steel Division's tactical cleverness and smart phase structure work as well as this initial demo suggests they might, this'll be a winner.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 06, 2017, 12:11:41 AM
Quote from: Alcibiades on March 05, 2017, 10:03:26 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2017, 12:41:17 AM
Looks kind of like Operation Star with a UI
It's literally this game with different skins and less vehicles:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/251060/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/251060/)
I have that game, but this looks a little different.
...it's even made by the same people... :huh:
Well, I gave it a try and it's too twitchy for me. I rather play more Combat Mission games.
Quote from: Syt on June 02, 2017, 03:33:20 PM
Well, I gave it a try and it's too twitchy for me. I rather play more Combat Mission games.
I'm waiting for Budapest '45: A Beet Too Far.
Quote from: Syt on June 02, 2017, 03:33:20 PM
Well, I gave it a try and it's too twitchy for me. I rather play more Combat Mission games.
I still have found nothing that beats them.
Quote from: Ed Anger on June 02, 2017, 07:43:26 PM
I'm waiting for Budapest '45: A Beet Too Far.
Operation Beetgration.
My PC currently cannot handle Steel Division. In waiting of an upgrade I play the Wargame series instead. Gameplay is about 90% similar, but modern armament.
This begs for an Eastern Front version, in time. With a Finnish Winter War battlegroup deck. :licklips:
Quote from: PDH on March 05, 2017, 11:35:23 PM
Somebody just make The Longest Day into a computer game.
http://johntillersoftware.com/PanzerCampaigns/Normandy44.html
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John "I can't program AI for shit" Tiller. :P
wow, the functionality of Win98 never ceases to amaze
If you have to go Tiller for it, at least go with Panzer Battles Normandy.
MY EYES! TILLER GRAPHICS!
Oh the agony.