Order of Battle: Pacific has now an official release date

[airboy]

I am so glad I read these comments before buying this.  It looked so good to be so bad.  Saved me money, and more importantly time.
O0

[Richie61]

I thought it was a mildly fun game for a few hours of amusement, but it has absolutely nothing to do with WWII or the Pacific Theater other than having the right chrome. It didn't hold my interest enough to get to the end of the tutorials. It did sell me on buying JTS Midway though, as well as the PTO Squad Battles games.


Probably not what the developers and Matrix intended...

Don't mind me asking, but do you like JTS Midway? I have always wanted a JTS naval game, but I heard they can't be played PBEM. I am thinking more for solo gaming.

[Cyrano]

JTS Midway is a continuous time game making PBEM all but impossible.

It's a basic game from an appearances perspective, but we've had LAN games of the big battle with 5-8 players and it's a remarkable experience.  Nothing quite like hearing the folks in the other room giggling a few moments before the IJN shows up where you didn't expect it.

It's always felt to me like a 2D Silent Hunter in that you're interspersing planning and preparation in something approaching real time with stretches of much accelerated time as the two sides feel about the Pacific in search of each other.

If you look around on E-bay and the like you should be able to find it fairly cheaply too...

[Wolfe1759]

I am so glad I read these comments before buying this.  It looked so good to be so bad.  Saved me money, and more importantly time.
O0

+1

I've been on the verge of getting it recently but no longer.

[mirth]

I am so glad I read these comments before buying this.  It looked so good to be so bad.  Saved me money, and more importantly time.
O0

+1

I've been on the verge of getting it recently but no longer.

+2

[Crossroads]

One of the teasers had the coolest boardgame 2D look in them. I've been basically waiting for it to be implemented before jumping in...

The engine was created to support both a full 3D and "boardgame style" 2D mode from day one. However these visuals still require a lot of extra work - particularly creating the 450+ unit icons in this "drawn" style. It may not be available in the initial release, but then definitely shortly after in a first patch. We are well aware there is a strong fanbase for this

I've seen no mention of it though after the sreenshot was posted so I guess it was put on to backburner then?

[mirth]

That boardgame style is gorgeous. Too bad it hasn't made it in.

[panzerde]

Wow, that's a damn shame they didn't implement that. Just having that view might have been enough to make me overlook some of the other issues.

[panzerde]

I thought it was a mildly fun game for a few hours of amusement, but it has absolutely nothing to do with WWII or the Pacific Theater other than having the right chrome. It didn't hold my interest enough to get to the end of the tutorials. It did sell me on buying JTS Midway though, as well as the PTO Squad Battles games.


Probably not what the developers and Matrix intended...

Don't mind me asking, but do you like JTS Midway? I have always wanted a JTS naval game, but I heard they can't be played PBEM. I am thinking more for solo gaming.

Jim's answer is pretty much my response, too. I enjoyed playing it solo and felt like it was a pretty detailed examination of WWII carrier ops. It has a bit of a learning curve, there are some UI issues, and it's a little quirky about some aspects of flight ops, but it's a good game. More complicated than something like Carriers at War, but not as elegant in execution as the NWS Steam & Iron games - which admittedly don't handle air power at all.

[Richie61]

Thanks for the comments on JTS Naval sims. I am looking for solo games. I have Carriers At War and never played it. Maybe I should start there first  :)

I have Order of Battle and I thought it was ok. No Pacific PC, but fun to play. I liked the carrier operations the best. I did lose interest after a few weeks of playing it, but I do that a lot with other games  ;D

[jomni]

Burma expansion.

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=78311

With the upcoming release of Burma Road DLC for Order of Battle, we wanted to take a moment to fill you in on what's been developed by The Artistocrats in association with Demon Wings Interactive.

Order of Battle is returning to the war against Japan in the region of Southeast Asia. Many battles were across the Malaya Peninsula, India, and of course Burma as the Japanese sought to acquire war materiel such as oil and rubber while the British and Allied forces stood against them.

Unlike the island hopping campaign of the United States across the Pacific, the Southeast Asian conflict was coloured primarily by ground warfare. Such warfare was markedly different from the land war of Europe and Afrika as dense jungles were ever present and presented a major obstacle for both sides. That's not to say the entire campaign consists of skulking through the jungles of Burma, battles such as the action at Imphal in 1944 were sizeable affairs fought with many armoured units engaged in major fighting.

One very important campaign tenant is the concept of presenting degrees of success in almost every battle. Because of the nature of a game like this, where a Pyrrhic victory is as good as a defeat since it effective ends your ability to continue a campaign, we've taken extra measures to help lessen the seriousness of such a situation.

These degrees of success are very important and very prominent throughout the campaign, and to explain them succinctly, they are bonus objectives that reward special units, commanders, resources, and specialization points are very challenging to acquire, especially for a player trying to acquire every single one of them, while primary mission objectives that continue the campaign progression are more accessible to complete. It's up to the player to find the difficulty level that suits them best, and then within that difficulty level, they can still experience many degrees of success ranging from simple scenario finishing or true scenario domination with all bonus objectives fulfilled.

On the other hand, if the player is struggling they might want to hold their forces back from full committal for a scenario or two, focusing only on the minimum objectives required and not over-extending their forces in an attempt to grab all the glory. Then once they are back to strength, they can start hunting for those extra difficult bonus objectives once more in the remaining scenarios!

Not your typical "beat the clock" Panzer General?

[airboy]

This is really interesting.  I've not bought Kriegsmarine - but I have purchased and played through everything else except the Japanese Pacific main campaign.  All of the other releases have been excellent.

[ComradeP]

I'm not sure what is so "new" about this approach. The original PG games also had non-VH towns and villages you could capture, OOB also always had secondary objectives.

There are still things that you have to accomplish to win. Flexible victory levels have also been available since the original OOB in the sense that the final result did not always just depend on capturing all VH's, but also on meeting other requirements like destroying a certain number of units.

I haven't bought Kriegsmarine as it received poor reviews, mostly because the naval combat system still doesn't make much sense. I'll probably buy the Burma DLC at some point.

As an aside, it would also be nice if they finally manage to optimize the way the game runs, as it's rather sluggish compared to Panzer Corps.

[Apocalypse 31]

Not your typical "beat the clock" Panzer General?

I uninstalled this a few months back after the Blitzkrieg module was released.

I just couldn't do it anymore. The scenarios were just awful - rather, the win/lose conditions were awful.

I think my final straw was the German Dunkirk mission where I'm was playing whack-a-mole against French units in my rear area while simultaneously trying to beat the clock to locate and destroy EVERY British unit on the map. NEVERMIND ACTUALLY CAPTURING DUNKIRK! The win conditions were just really gamey - which I found that to be the case with every scenario.

This is a case where scenario design can just kill a game, and for me, it has.

[Gusington]

I've only played the very first campaign and didn't go back exactly for the reasons that Apocalypse posts above. I was hoping that things would change but it sounds like they are exactly the same.