💥 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread

[TheDog]

@black_elk and others

Naval movement is probably the most abstract of all the abstractions going on in A&A

Maybe we could redesign some of the ship units?

WW2 1941 3Q+ sea battles were broadly split into two actions;

• Convoy, transports moving 10-ish knots with Corvettes and Frigates protecting them from submarines.
• Fleet, surface ships and carriers at speeds of 20+knots. Cruising speed was less.

Transports could move 2 and give them isDestroyer for the Corvettes and Frigates, so just 1 unit.

Destroyers currently are overpowered with their 4"ish guns and multi-role AA, torpedoes, anti sub, jack of all trades and master of none, move 3. Attack reduced to 1/1

Cruisers typically 8" guns, currently not good value for their PU compared to Destroyers, move 3, Attack reduced to 2/2 (twice the attack of Destroyers)

Battleships 15"ish guns with very long range get First Strike

Carriers and Subs listed for completeness.

The above has not been tested, just floating ideas (pun intended )

Thoughts ?

Ship		PU Atk Def Mov  Notes
Transport	8   0   1   2   isDestroyer  (cannot attack surface ships or aircraft)
Destroyer	6   1   1   3   Blockade 1, Bombard 0, isDestroyer
Cruiser		8   2   2   3   Blockade 1, Bombard 2
Battleship	18  4   4   2   Blockade 1, Bombard 4, FirstStrike, 2HP
Carrier		14  0   1   2   2 aircraft, 2HP
Fleet-Carrier	18  0   1   3   3 aircraft, 2HP
Submarine	8   2   2   2   Blockade 2, isSub, FirstStrike

@Black_Elk
My Sub - poor placeholder.

Seeing Patton's helmet, maybe we could do caps/helmets, for the national commanders? You're in charge of graphics, your choice! (some would call that passing the buck)

[Black_Elk]

@thedog Right on!

I'll make a few just in case

[TheDog]

@black_elk
They look good! You will have to scour the the web for these;

Required HQ are;

Britain, Italy, Japan, USA = Air, Army, Fleet HQs
German = Air, Army, Submarine HQs
Finland, USSR = Army HQ only
China = none

[Black_Elk]

Will do. Here's a quick cap/helmet concept for G army, air, navy if you wanted to do something like that more generic?

WW2 in Color? lol

Whatever, you get the idea. In Iron Blitz I think the Generals for Germany were Rommel 5 star, Manstein 4 star, Kesselring 3 Star. I think USA had Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley. Each nation had 3 I think which were the AI players for each Nation. But sorta like pick two or three and throw in an Admiral I guess for good measure right? hehe

We could embellish them with little frames or something, with a secondary color outside the national tint to indicate the type (Navy might have a blue frame for example, Army red frame or whatever), and then steady the contrast of the tiny photographs, isolate the backgrounds so they're more uniform, make sure all the faces and circles are at the same size and such. But that might be kinda cool. Instead of rating them by stars which was the Iron Blitz way of indicating AI difficulty levels, they could just be more abstract command units that get to move around like envisioned. Each nation having only a handful, but just kinda giving that national flare in the unit graphics.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Currently the maxBuiltPerPlayer is
HQ-Air = 1
HQ-Army = 3
HQ-Fleet =2
HQ-Submarine (Germany only)

However Germany can have more HQ-Army than 3, these are given as national themed reinforcements.

For player simplicity and AI purchasing only one icon per HQ type.

Profiles pics look better than just hats.

[Black_Elk]

@thedog

Sounds good. I banged out like a dozen or so mini portraits, not sure if they fit the bill, but if not I can just keep them in the misc graphics. I was trying a few different options, sometimes I think they look cool against the dark background for a bit more drama. Like here's Ike showing that sort of effect heheh

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Thinking about this more can;

• Axis look left
• Allies look right
• The commanders portrait looks as lifelike/good as possible (not tinted/coloured)
• The portrait is bordered by a circle(porthole) or square(picture frame) of the nations tint/colour.
• Images are 54x54px (could be bigger but they will be truncated in the Battle Calculator, so you decide)

What do you think?

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good. Not sure where I was getting was getting 66 from. I thought that 66 was the max height, but maybe it's just cause Frostion's larger factory unit doesn't display in the calc lol. It's too bad cause 54 is a bit small. I'd go no borders and try to crop in on the face as close as possible in that case, so they still read at that size. I'd think a colored border would probably just get lost in the fuzz. I'll see if I can get something decent going. Here are some quickie examples at 54px

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Just done a quick test in TripleA 2.6 with the image below in the Battle Calculator

The7 horizontal bars are 68x68px (with no truncation) the infantry are the usual 54x54px.

So this means you can have the HQs as bigger images.

[Black_Elk]

Perfect! I'll do them like this for everybody then...

The first set is at 100%, then 150% upscaled with no halo, to show how it would present in game at those scales. I think they look pretty decent. Should cover the bases for people who like a larger unit display.

100%

Upscale 150%

[Black_Elk]

Here's one for G

Upscaled 150%

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Showing my lack of ww2 US commanders, I cannot identify them all. I would have the same problem with all nations including Britain. :flushed_face:

Although it can be done(in the xml), having 6 individual faces for the the 6 US commanders in the purchase panel, it takes up a lot of screen space for just one unit x6. Also they would be called HQ-Army-1, HQ-Army-2, HQ-Army-3 etc.
In the ToolTips they could be individually named and have a small bio. But this should be for all nations.

However I think it would be better to have just 3 images HQ-Air, HQ-Army, HQ-Fleet. Meaning for the US the
HQ-Army could be used 3 times
HQ-Fleet could be used 2 times
HQ-Air could be used 1 time

So I do not know what is best

• portraits of real commanders for each nation or
• an icon representing that HQs function

both have their merits?

[Black_Elk]

So for the little portraits I did the 3 US Generals from Iron Blitz, but also added MacArthur, Nimitz, and Marshall. Sorta like a couple for each theater and the homefront. Like an Iron Blitz plus hehe.

For G I did the Generals from Iron Blitz, then added Doenitz, Guderian, and Valentine Hube just so that those two images would balance with the same number of dudes. Probably everyone would just choose Rommel and Patton I'd guess if it was like pick one in dodge ball lol.

For the Brits I think it was Montgomery and Alexander. Pick two in dodgeball might be fun. I mean instead of pick 6, just depending on how much screen real estate one wants to dedicate to redundant graphics that just add flare.

It may not be useful in game, but it looked cool so I figured might as well bang some out. Abstract symbols for Army/Navy/Air command is better for what you have in mind probably. Still it'd be fun if the game had some commander flavor so who knows maybe someone can figure it out at some point heheh.

[TheDog]

@black_elk

It may not be useful in game, but it looked cool so I figured might as well bang some out.

lol, so yeah carry on doing the art assets, we can all share in them!

For my part I will be using some of the portraits as I really like them, I will pick 3 for each nation, then add a small roundel/flag for the nation identifier and add a small abstract icon for Air, Army, Fleet, Submarine HQ.

So thanks!

[Black_Elk]

Ok I did the pick 6 for the Big 6 there. I tired to veer a bit more towards golden age Hollywood vibes, like out at the movies in terms of the selected dudes. Dipping into the B string a bit and trying to sorta avoid the political figureheads in favor a few randos that just sorta capture a certain look that felt cool. It's not a statement on the best generals or whatever, but just trying to give a spread that felt good. I figure for many people there might be like one or two faces they might recognize, but the others just becoming like generic commander dudes. People can go crazy with it all they like, but A&A style gaming isn't really Hearts of Iron, and there's kinda limited RP potential beyond what they player brings to the table. Still, I tried to nab a few heads that would be palatable, cribbing a few from the A&A Iron Blitz CD mentions but also just sorta looking for the right vibe.

My thought was that by putting em all together in sheets, it'd be easier for me to go in and remove the roundels or do a tint set or whatever, for people who don't want the national roundel. Just seems less insurmountable when it's not like 200 tiny images one at a time, but something I can get a glance on hehe.

I'll do it for the minor nations like Anzac and France and China tomorrow. But least wanted to get us into like v3 territory there

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Oooh shiny, Commander HQ units look the part :thumbs_up: :thumbs_up:

[Black_Elk]

Tried my hand at making a slightly larger infantry unit. Not sure if it fits the bill?

I wanted something that looked a bit closer to that TripleA dude at the top of the screen lol

I'm about half way through removing all the roundels to create a sticker set that's easier to manipulate. Like for people who prefer to do a uniform tint and colorize by nation, or to flip the units.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Yes, a lot of the infantry are at ease, so the action pose does look better.

Check your "chats".

[Black_Elk]

Right on!

Here's a new German Infantry Unit...

He just needs a little more drop shadow to match the others. I'll probably have to paint it out for that. Frostion's drops are kinda tricky to replicate in GIMP, since he had em all in pretty deep perspective. There's probably a plug in or something for that, but I just wanted to get em cranked out, so I went with the default there, hard and fast lol.

I figure the other infantry type can be retained as a paratrooper or whatever hehe.

Here's the big 6 sans roundel....

And then below that is a quick color mask.

They could be colorized to any color really, but just to give an example. I went with the darkest shade of gray I could find for Germany that still had a kiss of color information. So sorta halfway between the boardgame black, and the gray/blue of older editions. For the others just tried to find something reminiscent of the gameboard, so USA is green, Brits are Khaki etc. Trying to make Japan orange like OOB they started to drift pretty close to Italy's brown, so I kept them more in the ochre range. We could spend a bit more time on the mask there and fine tuning the default shades for that, but I just went for something that would give a general vibe. Here's an example with the Germans in a slightly lighter shade of bluish-gray.... This one reminds me a bit more of Classic. I'm sure I could nitpick minute variations on shades of gray forever. We can fine tune it for the final, whatever peeps think makes for a good default.

Here's the quick tint...

Basically I just wanted to see how far I could push it with German blue-gray to almost black. Players might prefer something more midrange, but I just thought it looked kinda cool. Reminiscent of the sculpts in the old box lol

Catch ya on the next round!

Elk

[Black_Elk]

Made a quick dude for Japan. I just upscaled the current default so it would look a bit more familiar, then reworked and repainted it to try and fit the vibe of the others.

I did him here at 54px scale, but gave him the 68px frame to fit that long ass bayonet for the extra menace hehe

Here's an example of a tint where Japan is more in the orange hue range, for people who prefer a vibe more like the gameboard. Not sure which I prefer, there's only a few shades of orange that really register as distinct from the higher vibrancy browns, but this one almost works at a glance. I think we could play with it in the masking if I do it for each unit individually. They also register a bit differently against a colored background depending on the hue/vibrancy chosen for the ownership color. So depending on those choices we might want to punch up or down in the vibrancy, but just to give a general idea of the sorts of things we should be able to pull off.