what are the good war-games sites now that Wargamer.com really isn’t a Wargame site any longer?
I played many of his games. Rest in peace, John.
This is true. I suspect that if someone had the wherewithal to convert these games to something like Unity it would really give them new life. The research and scenario building is often very solid, and even the underlying mechanics are workable generally. The ancient bitmap-based graphics and primitive mouse stuff would be fixable with an actual game engine as the platform.
You tipped me over the edge! Thank you! Buying it!
Me too…love operational wargames…been a few years since I bought a Matrix game but used to buy all of them so might as well try this one!
The WarPlan dev got into making games by modding SC2, and he actually made the two expansions Assault on Democracy and Assault on Communism. He then made his own engine and made WarPlan which is heavily inspired by SC. But it has significant differences like no 1UPT. WarPlan Pacific is the sequel to WarPlan. He is also planning WarPlan Global which will be similar to SC:WaW.
How does Warplan Pacific deal with the island warfare? You can usually make a good Europe/North Africa game but getting that right for the Pacific is usually a little tricky. I think SC suffers form this in it’s world wide scope. I have concerns that Warplan Pacific will as well. Naval warfare in general is hard to abstract into something like this. It’s one of the reasons I was so eager to see how Atlantic Chase did it.
Sad about John Tiller’s passing. RIP.
Thanks.
We just need to get Bruce to write more :)
Combat Mission Cold War is apparently available for all Battlefront customers, but the Steam version isn’t out until June.
I’ve never checked out any of the John Tiller Software titles, but after he passed I took a look and they have a series called Modern Air Power which looks totally up my alley. Has anyone played them?
I dabbled with them a while back. IIRC they are interesting, if somewhat abstract, simulations. Very much not like the sort of one-counter-per-plane dogfighting games that used to be popular. More like a turn-based approach to Harpoon/Command-style control, I guess that might get at it. But I haven’t really fiddled with them in eons.
They looked reminiscent to the old Flight Commander games and I loved those. Thanks!
I see now why I was confused after Googling. There’s also an old War Plan Pacific game. Not to be confused with WarPlan.
We’re really low on wargaming names.
I took a quick look on the page and this strikes me more as a Harpoon / Command Modern Operations kind of game as opposed to the Over the Reich / Flight Commander style of really tactical flight management. But, I haven’t played so can’t say for sure.
I played the free version and it’s DEFINITELY more in the Harpoon camp than the Flight Commander camp.
They are a bit different. I think his air and naval games are real time instead of turn based like flight commander was. IIRC Flight Commander was a computer adaptation of the 1980s Avalon Hill boardgame Flight Leader. I have the Midway game, and I should spend more time with it at some point.
@BrianRubin you reminded me of this game I got and then lost back in the 90’s
I remember it being Avalon Hill’s Air Force but, you know, Star Wars.
Thanks for linking Star Warriors. I’d never heard of it, but I liked what I saw of it over on BGG.
I also worry about this, though I was generally happy with SC’s worldwide game. I still haven’t found a naval system I enjoy more than the Uncommon Valor / War in the Pacific / AE trilogy.
Have you tried Atlantic Chase? It does seem to be an effort to do something different.