Command Ops engine applicable to Operational/strategic level?

[nicdain]

This is a question both submitted to Arjuna and the other guys at Panther Games as the developers and to the community to open a debate.
In the italian wargaming forum (www.netwargamingitalia.net) a debate on wargames engine systems is going on in these days. The main theme of the discussion is about which could be the best mechanism to be used to develop the action in an operational wargame: IGOUGO, WEGO or RealTime.
Some people, which have been positively impressed by the Command Ops real time (and almost continuous space) engine, is wondering if it could be somehow applied (with the necessary modifications) to an operational level wargame (say at the TOAW or WITE scale).
I know it is mere speculation, but I would be curious to know if the guys at Panther Games have ever thought about it.
Thanks and best regards

[Phoenix100]

I think they get asked this a lot, nicdain, right here in this forum. About 2 weeks ago Dave said this, for example;

Re Squad Level. We continually get requests to apply our engine to different levels. On the war-historical bews group the other day I was asked if we could up the scale to Bn sized units and covert he east front at that level. The military want us to drop scale down to Pl level for their purposes. Whatever level any change involves a lot of work and hence a lot of investment. To be frank, there is simply not the return on investment in this niche of niche markets to make it viable. So for now we are sticking with the Coy level.

[Phoenix100]

I'm very happy with that, I should add....

[nicdain]

Thanks for the reply Phoenix. Actually, as I said, it is mere speculation, just to know if the Real Time/Continuous Space combination could be feasibly applied to higher levels.
I am aware of the great effort that this change would require and I don't expect Panther Games to go in that direction in the near future. On the contrary, I hope that they will focus on an Eastern theatre game with the present Command Ops engine.
Apart from Panther Games projects, the main question could be: in the future, will operational wargames shift from "turn/hexes" to "Real Time/Continuous Space"?

[Phoenix100]

That would be great, wouldn't it - if they got rid of all those hexes and went for RT/CS? I might start playing them again then. I used to, but it was hard to be interested after HTTR came along with actual real maps and real (ish) time. I would love Panther - as would many others I'm sure - to develop in all directions, of course, down to squad and up to Bn or higher. There's room for it all and with good AI (as Panther alone have, I think) it would all be interesting. But the reality is that we've been waiting for the second patch for, I think, almost two years, and we are probably resigned to waiting three or four years for an Eastern Front iteration, because they all have day jobs (I hope) and, as Dave says, it's a niche within a niche. We're lucky they're still interested enough to produce it despite that. It's a great shame other developers don't do more with the AI. The big name big sales companies producing slick (but still, at the end of the day, highly unrealistic) graphicsfests have some excuse (they're getting rich on that formula), but the little wargames companies really don't have that excuse. The AI is everything for a game, I think. It was interesting that the game MINECRAFT (something completely different) won an award recently and boasts over 3.5 million buyers. It has crappy twenty year old blocky graphics, but is addictively playable (at least for my six year old) because once you're in there the graphics don't really matter. That said, there's no AI worth speaking of in that game either, so ultimately it feels like a silly waste of your time (fun before you get to that point though).

I'll be very happy, myself, if Panther manages to get out patch 2 and the HTTR add-on before christmas.

[Lieste]

How do you get 'nearly two years' for patch 2? The initial release was only ~18 months ago, and the first patch was some time after that...

[Phoenix100]

Was it? Sorry. Silly me.

[Lieste]

It's ok, I had to check

It think it has something to do with choruses of 'are we nearly there yet?' It has a way of distending time

[Phoenix100]

Yes. It certainly doesn't feel like only eighteen months since BFTB arrived.