Sharing the Carnage

When this whole blogging challenge started up, one of the first ideas in my head was to record a play session of…something. It never really advanced beyond that, as I had other things to work on, and other ideas for posts. However, now it’s returned, like an itch in the back of my brain that I can’t scratch (just with a much lower likelihood of driving my stark raving mad). And Chad’s recent talk of doing the same thing for WoW kinda re-awoke the whole concept in my head, too.

So, the initial question…what to play? I briefly entertained the idea of one of my recent Paradox sale purchases, Combat Mission Shock Force, theorizing that watching the results on the virtual battlefield of an incompetent commander who barely knows what in the Hell he’s doing could be fairly entertaining (Hell, I’d probably laugh). The problem with that, though, is that while I’m fumbling to get my tanks out of harm’s way, I’m pretty damn unlikely to remember to take any screen shots or anything. That was actually a recurring issue…until I reached my conclusion.

My game of choice for this will be Company of Heroes, which I fairly recently got back in to. It looks good, it’s fun to play in a skirmish game against the AI, there are a lot of solid map choices available. And most importantly, the game automatically saves a recording as yopu’re playing, meaning I don’t have to even worry about screenshots during my game session. I can go back and watch the recorded game as many times as I want, whenever I want. That means I can watch areas of the battlefield that I wasn’t actually focused on in the game (there are frequently multiple little firefights going on all over the damn place during a session of CoH). I can also pause it and get the camera lined up perfect and generally be a picky fucker. Hell, it also means I can just focus on a part of the replay at a time!

So, that being decided, I have narrowed my map options down a bit, and also decided that I will play the role of the jackboot wearers (I’ll take the Wehrmacht faction). I’ll be playing the game with a Custom AI mod, which means the Brits aren’t completely worthless (several recent game patches have also given the limeys a DESPERATELY needed boost!)…so I might play against them. Since I’ve usually been concentrating on the Americans, who have usually given a better game, it should throw a definite bit of ‘the unknown’ in to the whole experience. Oh, the only other modification I’ll be using is purely cosmetic, the Historical Skins Mod, which just makes the units and vehicles look about a gazillion times better than the rather plain models the base game uses.

For example, in the base vanilla game, most units of the same faction look VERY similar. With this mod in use, that isn’t the case…these fuckers get this dialed down to the point of getting tiny unit insignia correct. For example, here are some US Riflemen and some US Rangers. Note the rather stark differences (you know…aside from the Rangers having Bazookas and Thompson submachine guns).

As for other software, that’s pretty basic. Fraps is pretty much the standard for screenshots and video, so I’ll use it. And I don’t really need anything insanely deep for editing them, so I’ll just use Photoscape to cover that, and to convert all the .bmp formats the free version of fraps uses in to jpegs.

So, with all that out of the way, I guess I’ll need to explain the basics of the game to you lot before I even consider diving in to this sumbitch! I ran a quick test game tonight just to snap some screenshots of the more pertinent things.So first off, let’s take a look at the tactical map of a 2 player map called Wrecked Train (a possibility for being the map I use).

Probably works best if I just leave this as a thumbnail you can click to see bigger.

Okay, I was playing this quick run through as the Americans against the Wehrmacht. The blue area at the top is my starting base…any time a blue map sector is blue, that doesn’t mean it’s US/Commonwealth controlled, it means it’s under FRIENDLY control. The red is the enemy base area. Any map sectors the enemy controls are red. There IS Fog of War to that, so you won’t know you’re at a borderline until you move in to an adjoining sector and actually see the red borderline. Now, the basic stuff…water, roads, buildings, etc., seems pretty self explanatory just from looking at it. Every sector with the white border around it is a sector. Every sector has some sort of a point in it…capturing that point captures the sector. The most basic are simple Control Points. Those are the ones with a single dot in the middle and a circle of dots around that solo one. They look like this in game.

Control Point

Taking these Control Points award some manpower points per second as well as giving the player control of that sector.

There are 2 other kinds of points that award resources…Munitions Points and Fuel Points. The fuel cans are fuel points, and the bullets are munitions points. The numbers next to those…+5 or +10, and some maps do have some with a +15, indicate how many fuel/munitions points the player who has captured that point will get per second to his count. All units cost varying amounts of the three different resources, as do other things in the game that I’ll cover later. Here are an example of each point as seen in the game.

Munitions Point

Fuel Point

Taking any of these points also awards control of that sector to that player. All of these points can be passed back and forth between the two factions during the game, so a capture is never permanent, though they can be fortified with a Listening Post which the other side must destroy before he can take it (and which also provides a bonus. For example, a +10 munitions point becomes a +18 with a Listening Post built on to it). One other thing to explain about resource points…there HAS to be a line of supply back from a point to your base for you to gain the resources. So, instead of me needing to capture a fuel point and munition point from my enemy, if I simply capture another sector BETWEEN those 2 and his base, he still controls them but does not get resources from either. Guerrilla warfare can be a very effective way of doing things.

There is one final kind of point in the game, and these are the ones that win or lose the game. Look back at that tactical map…see those 3 circled stars across the middle? Those are Victory Points. Taking those does NOT also give control of the sector. These bad boys look like this in game.

US Controlled Victory Point

Okay, apparently I lost my screenshot of a neutral one…that’s one after I had captured it as the US side (other points look similar when taken, with that faction’s flag now on it). At the start of every game, each side gets a number of Victory Points (you can also play until one side is destroyed, but that can take hours, so almost nobody does)…the standard number is 500 apiece, so I’ll use that in my game. Anyway, so long as one side controls more VP’s than the other, the side with fewer sees it’s VP total drop. If the number is equal, both VP scores remain stagnant. If the other guy takes the advantage, now the first guy’s VP total drops. Once one side hits 0, it’s over.

So, that’s the basics of what you’re fighting over. Each side will start the game with one units (Engineers for the US and Brits, Pioneers for the Germans) who can built structures…Barracks, Weapons Support Centers, Krieg Barracks, etc. All of these structures have a cost in Manpower/Munitions/Fuel, as to whatever units they produce.  A lot of units also have individual upgrades that cost money. Some are force wide…for example, the US player spending 250 Manpower and 50 Fuel points on Browning Automatic Rifles will upgrade every squad of Riflemen he has from using bolt action rifles to BARs, which are fully automatic and nasty pieces of work. On the other hand, an individual Engineer unit can be upgraded with either Minesweeping equipment (35 Munitions) or a Flamethrower (50 Munitions, and much more fun).

I love the smell of a screaming Klaus in the morning

All units can be suppressed when under fire…for example, our roasting German friend here. They can also be pinned. A pinned unit is pretty much fucked, covering their heads and crying in to the mud while bullets and grenades spray the air all around them. However, ANY group of soldiers can also do a retreat where they run headlong back to base. At the base (or at any structure that has been converted to a Barracks in the field), new units can be made (with the production options at a Barracks being affected by what structures have been made at the base) and also, for a Manpower cost, have replacement troops brought in. ANY unit near a Halftrack can also reinforce in the field, as can Paratroopers ANYWHERE on the map. Aside from that, they have to be near a base/barracks.

Vehicles also have upgrades…tossing a .50-cal machine gun turret on top of your Sherman tank, for example. Or maybe removing that infantry halftrack’s ability to carry Grenadiers by filling the passenger compartment with a 6 tube ‘Walking Stuka’ rocket launcher. Vehicles can’t retreat…they have to manually be pulled back. And you have to be careful, because facing counts…a unit’s rear armor is ALWAYS weaker than the front plates. This is especially true with tanks.

Back to infantry…a few types can be ‘stealthed’ at any time. Snipers from all sides, German Storm Grenadiers, German anti-tank guns…I know there’s a British unit that can do it as well. This doesn’t cost any points but DOES reduce the unit’s mobility to probably about a third of what it would normally be.They can be pretty damn devastating while hidden, though. Here’s a stealthed German sniper (apologies for the not so great screenshot).

Ja! Amerikaner Must Die!

Those riflemen aren’t targeting him, by the way, but a group of German Volksgrenadiers they just routed. I was so happy! Haha! Recaptured the control point and drove off the Huns! Never knew the fucker was there.

Another one bites the dust

When he shoots, he briefly becomes visible…if I had a unit closer to him he would stay visible (actually, get a unit close to a stealthed unit PERIOD and you can now see them). However, if you do a quick check you’ll see that, yeah, he’s been busy. Counting the boor bastard whose head he is in the process of blowing off, all but one rifleman are dead on the ground. I had lost one guy before this sniper started wackin’ dudes, which means he killed four. I retreated the last one. I had been busy managing an asskicking of the Germans near the Central VP and missed most of this (this was over near the Left VP).

There is one other thing to cover…Command Points. These are earned by engaging in combat and by winning in combat. You use them whenever you want to purchase upgrades. For example, as the US player, my first decision is what sort of Command to go with : Infantry, Airborne or Armor. Once you choose your branch you’re stuck with it. Within each branch are a total of 6 upgrades split in to 2 3-part sub trees. To reach the most powerful upgrades at the bottom of each sub-tree you have to not only have enough Command Points to buy it, you also have to already have bought the two upgrades above it. These upgrades for all sides include everything from permanent additions to units (defensive upgrades, for example, let infantry build almost as many things as engineers can), to actual units (those Rangers I pictured much earlier were an off map unit bought this way. First, I had to spend the 1 Command Point to buy what was above that. Then, when I had 2 more points, I spent it on Rangers. That permanently unlocked the ability to purchase a squad of Rangers to any friendly area on the map…for 400 manpower). You can purchase air strikes, heavy tanks, rocket batteries, all sorts of crazy shit. It tends to cost a lot, but it tends to also be potent…especially if used properly. For example, on the other sub tree in the Infantry Command choice as the US, is the Artillery Barrage. First I had to buy the 1 CP-costing upgrade above it, then spend 2 CPs on it. It then costs 150 Munitions points to call in a strike (and you can’t just use it again and again…every Command Point purchased upgrade has a cool down time after use, during which it cannot be used again). However, when used at the right time, it can be devastating. Here, I was forced back off the Central VP by a group of Grenadiers with an MG42 Machine Gun in support. Ask them how they like the results! Shell one takes out half a squad, blowing one guy apart. Shell two eliminates the entire machine gun unit.

[youtube]l4K9UU4u2YM[/youtube]

Incidentally, I don’t know if I’m going to do a lot of video in the final post…it’s kind of a pain in the ass.

Anyway, there ya go, you know what you’ll need to know. And hey…it’s Wednesday!