What are you cooking ?

[Romavatandasi]

I have been quite long time since last dlc, what do y'all cooking there ?

[terminator]

Do you have a recipe to cook ?

[bru888]

Hah, good reply, terminator. Indeed, what would the recipe be for further expansion of OOB? In my opinion, OOB has covered all of WWII with its DLC.

Now, those of you readying your flamethrowers, kindly hold off while I explain! What I mean is, there is no more room for any continent/theater-wide DLC such as the U.S. Pacific/Rising Sun/Blitzkrieg/Burma/Sandstorm/Winter War/Red Star/Allies campaigns. I would want no more offerings such as Blitzkrieg II or something.

That leaves localized actions but there are problems:

1) Releasing a bunch of individual scenarios for purchase is not going to fly. Too much work to produce to sell them at, what, $2.99 each? I would buy them but would probably be in a tiny minority. Campaigns are what have driven interest in OOB DLC. What campaign would you suggest at this time that wouldn't be a rehash of existing offerings?

2) Say they chose to do a Battle of the Atlantic campaign. Would you pay for that? And, even if they thought you would, they would need to change the way the game works, particularly submarine offense/defense and detection. (Believe me, I have tried to make scenarios along these lines and they are tedious and boring.) That would upset the balances in existing DLC.

3) Or they thought of doing a campaign focused on, say, the Philippines.

"Sorry, boss, but that won't fly. That guy Erik already did a pretty good one for that, and it's free."

"Okay, switch to New Guinea, then."

"No good, he did that too."

"Yeah. And I happen to know about his Sea Lion. That's out. How about the Desert Rats? Boy, I can see possibilities there!"

"Nope. Erik scored big with that."

"For crying out loud, is there anything in WW2 he hasn't done?"

"Well, there's Antartica but that's likely to resemble his Winter War / Continuation War because we don't have true arctic graphics. Leaving aside the ahistorical aspect, of course."

"Martian Chronicles? Just kidding. Okay, never mind. I give up."

There is a hint in that dialogue. As I have stated before, the best recipe for Order of Battle at this time is to take a gamble and expand it into other historical eras or even hypothetical conflicts. Sure, it would be a significant investment and risk but the basics of gameplay are already there, proven and solid. I would love to see OOBs for WWI, the American Civil War, Vietnam, and the Napoleonic Wars. Even war on Mars!

But they (whoever "they" are, which is another issue) have to take that gamble, make a commitment of resources, and follow through. And soon, before Slitherine decides to move this game to its "Classic Games A-Z" category.

"Alright, I just had an inspiration. Why not come out with a Korean campaign? It's only 5 years later and we could reuse a lot of the units that we have already. A few new ones, some skin mods, a couple of flags, and we're there! Well, at the scenario design stage at least, but doable. Let's get on it!"

"Umm, boss, Erik . . ."

"Now YOU are kidding. Tell me you're kidding!"

[silence]

"Spanish Civil War?"

"The good news there is, somebody ELSE did a great mod and campaign on that. Not Erik for a change!"

"Oddly, that is a relief."

Erik's Korea and LNDavoust's SCW mods/campaigns demonstrate what could be done with OOB if official developers put a mind to it. Erik and LND are talented but amateurs without a profit motive. Imagine where very talented, motivated, and supported professionals could take OOB in the future.

[conboy]

Bru,
I think there is a virtual universe of WWII content that Slitherine has not even scraped (or Erik for that matter). Most of their campaigns are Front or Theatre Levels, but there is a hell of a lot of content to be developed at operational level. For example:
US/Britain Italian Campaign
Operation Fall Blau
Korsun Pocket
Operation Bagration
Courland Pocket
Army Group North to Leningrad (1941)
Army Group Center to Moscow (1941)
Army Group South (1941)
France from Jun 44 – Sep 44 (D-Day to Dijon link-up)
These just bounced off my head, there are many more operations below theatre level that could be covered in detail by the Artistocrats. Each of these could range from 10 to 20 scenarios. (Well, maybe not Korsun or Courland, but they could be 6 - 10 scenarios for these two campaigns.)

My point is that Slitherine could go back and delve into significant operations and develop OoB campaigns and detailed battle scenarios for them based on historical sources and dive deeply into them without skipping around. Artistocrat campaigns are fun, but they skip too much historically important battles and don't provide much historical military context. (Unlike what you did for the Free French). I guess the Pacific Campaigns are an exception, but maybe not because I haven't delved deeply into them independently.

Respectfully,
conboy

[Celeborn]

My love of OOB is substantially a function of multi-player offerings, and thus I have not even opened 90% of the campaigns. (I have and will continue to buy all DLCs anyway)

I have fantasized for some time that campaigns could be played MP and am consequently enormously grateful to the MP developers (Erik in particular) for designing some amazing MP scenarios (esp Market-Garden and Bulge) but also adding functionality to his MicroMod esp the ability of infantry to build MG nests and Engineers to build Bunkers.

So I guess that's my pitch...give us more ways to match wits with each other in the existing universe of DLCs and give the existing game engine a facelift starting with all of the great things Erik has in his MicroMod.

Respectfully

Steve (aka Lord of Lothlorien)

[Pwnerade]

I would definitely buy an Allied Atlantic campaign. Kriegsmarine was fun, but wildly ahistorical. The submarine mechanics could indeed use improvement, though.

[cutydt02]

After thousand hours in OoB, i think the best move is focusing in OoB 2 instead of more fictional ahistorical campaigs or division level/minor countries. The best news i want is OoB2 is in progress.
No theatres left for now, we even have ahistorical line to follow, contents are drained badly.
New mechanics are unavailabe at this point. I really wish to have something like general promotion, random effect or better naval gameplay.

[Romavatandasi]

What are you cooking devs ?

[Zbrozlo]

I think they aren't cooking anything. Now is the time of fasting... or starving.

[bondjamesbond]

https://foto-history.livejournal.com/6318509.html

Isn't the game's development officially finished !?? So all hope for moddels , for example I am delighted with Eric's mod about the war in Korea 1950-1953 although there are no helicopters and jet aircraft .....
https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=99650
although I would even buy additional paid DLC about the civil war in China 1946-1949 or the Arab-Israeli war 1947-1949 good all kinds of weapons were from the Second World War used in these military conflicts )
https://en.topwar.ru/88336-interesnye-f ... kitae.html
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Арабо-изр ... 1947—1949)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7554