New Features for COTA

[Major Disaster]

Having been playing HWTTR jus yesterday I though a cool feature to add to some future version would be the ability to add text to an objective as a mental not of what the order is far. So if for example one layed down a defend objective for a battalion plus an attched engineering unit in a town one could annotate the objective with the text message, "hold town until releaved by regiment HQ, then unattach engineering unit and advance to to town such and n such". Currently all this planning has to be kept in one s head and being able to include some memory joggers would be really nice. This also would give the GUI based point and click orders a bit more look and feel to verbal/written orders and thus give them a more of a historical flavor thus one has the conveneience of point and click orders but can also augment this with words attached as a text file. Another terrific function would be that an ETA could be generated by the code that would be a guess on when the unit might reach the objective (if all goes well).

Perhaps the way all this would work is one opens up the oders objective where one can change the mode of tarvel (shortest, safest, etc) of the orientation of the defence (east . west, etc one could also have a small text window that can be edited by the player to record the textual part of the order.

Finally, (perhaps at the risk of being a bit greedy and wanting too much), it would be neat if these textual orders could be displayed as part of the event log (and declutterable features) inserted such that one could see what the orders were form a chronological standpoint. This would be great for AAR's and in fact (to be enven more greedy) one could add a AAR box with each objective where before issue new orders for a unit one could dash of a sentense or phrase on how the current order panned out such as "took the town easily because the Huns abondoned it without a fight" And even cooler (and at the risk of going beyond dreaming to wild fantasy) if this AAR window would then be inserted into the log would and the log would remember the location of the order along with its time of creation so that it could be called up by clicking on it so old orders are thus achieved as part of the embedded AAR. Thus one could have an embedded AAR capability integrated into the event log atht captured both the reason for the order (or as it is called today, commander's intent) plus a record of the AAR both filed in a chronological order within the event log and is archived so that once the order is canceleld or superceeded by another rather than going into the great bit bucket in the sky it is retrievable as part of the embedded AAR function. And if all this archiving drives up memory storgae perhaps the function can be enabled or diabled for those who are short on memory.

Thus the event log might look something like this:

event 1'
event 2. etc

10:20 Order 503/ 3rd Bn/34 Reg/5th div + attach ETA 11:00 go to location:
Attack town with Bn plus Eng attached and hold until relieved by reg HQ.

event 3
event 4
etc

11:20 Order 503 AAR 503/ 3rd Bn/34 Reg/5th div Go to order
Town attacked but enemy bugged out. Relieved by Reg HQ issuing new orders.

etc

Sigh.

However, I would just settle to have COTA come out for now!

[Arjuna]

Major Disaster,

Nice suggestions. Allowing a free form map overlay for the user to draw on/ write text on has been on the wish list for a while now. However, what you really want is not a free form overlay but a list of text entries tied to the Orders you issue. That would be a nice feature for those interested in tracking the flow of decisions and outcomes over the course of the battle. Anybody else like this idea?

[wodin]

Good Idea.

[Major Disaster]

That would be a nice feature for those interested in tracking the flow of decisions and outcomes over the course of the battle.

Exactly! In part it is the historian in me that likes that because I am thinking that one can use this to role play a historical based game where insteasd of making what one considers the best move from the game standpoint (and it rules of what it models and what it doesn't) one can based on the historical accounts act as the commander did historically and capture this in these notes and at diffenet levels of caommnd. For example one might if playing a Stalingrad battle one can not try to pull out once the Russiam counter attacks and add the note. "We need to bug out! But rats! Hitler says no". That way one can still be a gamer and play to win but at the same time impose house rules on oneself and have these be recorded in the game so that the logic of the game is upheld but the historical context is too.

The other reason I like this is that one can create a dialog between oneself between different levels of command so when we the gamer changes hats (as the player oplays many different commanders and not one) one can say as a Bn commmander . "Yikes I need help!" but as the regimental commander one can then say, "sorry, but you ain't the only one who needs help, we all do". As a player we think all these things in our heads as we are formulating our orders but I think that being able to capture some of these thoughts might enhance the gaming experience for some.

In saying this another thought came to mind that these little notes can be more than something that are archived in the event log and embedded in the orders dialog box but could be treated as message traffic between the layers of command where the human player can send messages to himself as in respect to the different roles. Thus these notes could be addressed to the various comamnders with a to/from adress so that the Reg comamnder can view his "EMAIL" from his Bn commanders, etc. For instance the Bn commader might say, "Am facing lots of tanks from the east, I need you to attach me the reg AT gun unit", and thus when one clicks on the Rg commader and rather than having to remember , "Oh yeah, I need to send that AT gun unit down to help out those poor devils in 3rd Bn" he wouild have this nice little EMAIL in his in basket from 3rd Bn begging for the AT guns to thus remind he the player sas he now is wearing the Reg cammander hat what he was thinking about when a few minutes earlier what he was thinking while wearing the Bn commander hat (and when one is commanding a whole corps this help comes in handy in that there is a heck of a lot of hat changing) . And all this is just a matter of allowing the user to create text files and providing a browser that is organized around his chain of command and orders so we are not talking about rocket science but rather a bit of book keeping.

Now posting notes to oneself in the game structure might offord a simple means of adding this dimension to play. Also, it might provide a way of capturing the game plan in that say for an arty pice rather than just have it assigned to firing at some spot on the earth one can post the little note, "when you are finished shooting move to such and such so that you can shoot further the next time" so that when the mission is over one can remember what one had in mind to do next. This would be in some ways like eye candy but on the other hand most of us like a bit of eye candy. But at the same time it might go beyond eye candy in that it is a way to capture what was going on in the players head so that it helps the player not only think it out his plan, and remember what it is as the plan unfolds, but to savor the whole process later in an AAR and comment on whether it actually worked or not by viewing all this "EMAIL" traffic as events in the event log nestled along with all the other events in the log.

edit. fixed a few typos

[wodin]

Intsead of email it could be made to be teleprintout or radio message.