Interview with Bohemia Interactive

I've recently emailed MS and he's responded both times, cheerfully. Hope he gets a publisher from his exposure at E3. Also he says a new, cool video will be out before then.

thanks to those above, who provided those links!

I downloaded the video and watched it and I must say that I have mixed feelings about this game. I think that they maybe have gone too far when incorporating every vehicle imaginable into the game. A fine, realistic infantry game would be enough. Maybe have a Jeep, truck, APC, boat or chopper to get the troops in, but then it should be all about infantry ops. Just think of Wargasm, apart from having the worst name ever in gaming history, it just tried to do too much. -Ok, this time I want to have the chopper and you can be the grunt with the peagun... it's just stupid. I just hope that the guys that play the groundtroops get a lot of replacements...cause they will need it.

In the video there seems to be a lot of point blank killing.... tanks shooting up other tanks from 5 meters away ...how realistic is that... maybe it's just some guy who decided to do a trailer with a lot of boom-factor cause then the game will sell... who knows?

I have played the Rainbow Six series a lot and it would be nice with a similar game but with more of a military approach (bigger areas, even less quake-style gameplay).

BUT, I must say that the graphics of Flashpoint look really nice. Just look at that HIND...wow. I'm sorry if I'm not too optimistic about this game, I have just seen soooooooo many companies promise the new groundbreaking fantastic game (sim) ... and then it ends up being just short of crap.

DID was far ahead of the pack. too bad the new titles are still attempting to catch up in some ways.

Man.....I wish they would not let us know about games like this until about a week before release because now I will be constantly hunting for all the latest info until it is released!!!!

This looks to good to be true! I have always wanted a combo sim that would allow you to do so many things! Especially getting in and out of aircraft. Imagine landing your helo or parking your vehicle to go into a building to do some sniping or exploring. Wow, can't wait! Very cool.

As for the servers, here is my idea. We make a map of the flashpoint scenery and then, on this map we grid off squares, each one maybe being 10 miles. Each of these squares would be representational of a server. Of course each of these servers would include all of the flashpoint world, but artificeal boundries would be set in place - for example..when you are server 'x' you are instructed that you are not to proceed past such-and-such road, or past such-and-such village without changing servers. Each server has a spawning area near the rear edge (according to your teams general direction of movement) of the area that it represents.

Now here is the meat of the idea. We have these two large teams (24,960 troops including bots on each team, 49,920 total) and then we come up with a realistic scenario for a war...even with that many troops involved it would be a small war...say a Balkans style fiasco. There are some high commanders for each side who operate in a 'command center' (either over the net or even better in a real world place over a lan) playing some real time strategy game that has the same terrain as the flashpoint 3d world. It is the day of the battle and all the participants are waiting online, in touch with their commanders through ICQ or something. At the battle start time The high commanders send word to their troops to proceed into their assigned servers (locations in the flashpoint world)-- you, as a soldier in such-and-such group log into your assigned server with your bots. You will see all the rest of the 8 players in your team there, with their bots...quite a sight with each player having eleven bots. To your right, ten or so miles you know that another team is getting ready to move out. Should you go over to their location you would see nothing, as they are in another server. There may infact be three or four other units in your location, just not in the same server. 90 miles away, the enemy is in the same situation, in the same servers. the multiplayer code would have to be modified so that if you where on one team you would not know who was in the server with you besides your own team (this a very important detail).

At the same time you got orders to move into the server your in, you got mission orders..say follow such-and-such road to a village, then head more in a more easterly direction until you reach such-and-such a place then await orders to jump into the next server (the geographical location ahead of you). At the same time your executing this mission, 259 other teams are doing the same sort of thing, many in your physical location, but invisable to you because they are in differant servers. According to the commanders however, they all exist in the same space, and they are to be moved around as such, executing mass manuavers blind to all but their own existance. Upon reaching the boundries of their assigned servers, the units would stop and report to their commanders, who would update their positions on a map and send new orders to enter the next server ahead of them. Everyone would exit the game and punch in the IP for the next server. They would then respawn in an area (hopefully) nearby the area which they had just left. They would then keep moving, executing their new mission.

By this time, the enemy may have reached the same physical location, and therefore would be in the same servers as you are in. Upon contact battles would take place, and the commanders would really have to start to work. Should you get killed, you would be perminatly out of the game (another important detail). Should your bots get killed, but you escape, the enemy will not have acheived much as you will come back with a new set of bots. Should they kill you however, you and all your bots will be gone-- not completly realistic, but it makes the game work...and it provides a lot fo fun for snipers who take out the human players, thus killing tham and all their bots for the next battle. The commanders job during these battles would be to coordinate strategic moves, for example, reatreat that rifle platoon out of that server and replace them with a helicopter squadron (all of this taking actual physical movement by the troops; ie, reatreat fifteen miles without getting killed, then quit the server and allow a helicopter squad to join, (they would spawn at a rear air base) then fly into the combat zone and do their job).

I don't want to write a book here, so I'll leave it at that. I'm not sure how well I explained the idea, but if you have any questions I'll answer them. I want to hear your feedback on the idea.

It's got an A-10 and an AH-1S (YES _S_ not no freakin' illogical, unnatural, 'F').

Something I've been arguing for for a long time.

Then they go and pull this 'Raid on Bungeling Bay' nonsense out of their Hind-quarters.

Sigh. I hope that doesn't ruin it.

Massively online, especially with the specs quoted is not apt to leave much room for sophisticated AI and no island on the planet is big enough to contain Soviet Style 'mobile tactics'.

Lets face it: Their whole purpose in life for nearly fifty years was the annihilation of Western Europe that Hitler didn't quite finish.

Ours was the prevention of their doing that.

In process, we managed to line up:

15,650 tanks of seven wildly differing types, in roughly 28 online divisions.

Vs. the bad guys: 133 divisions and approximately 41,295 tanks, hop in one and the next three generations are instantly familiar. (ATGM equipped IFV adds another 27K+).

If we are now too timid of our former aggressiveness, to acknowledge what that could have meant, what have we learned? To be afraid of being afraid? Bah...

SOMEONE, should have the guts do a full-up, NATO-1983, campaign. It should be IN GERMANY (both Germany's and bits of Czech and Poland) for pity's sake and it should involve the full quota of life and death, right up to and including Global Thermonuclear Excession, forceably theatre-started by the player, if he screws up and loses.

Such a simulation would have all the thrill and 'realism' necessary to require a new set of pants after playing and it would not leave me sad that we can draw the airframes but apparently not the world they lived in.

I wish Bohemia well, hope they find a publisher for their rhapsody and will be greatful if I am wrong and it's truly a magnum opus and not just Queen on a bad hair day.

Good Idea, some thoughts...

The guys playing 'Risk', do THEY see the DETAILED movement of forces? Or do the have to rely on some kind of CONREP?

Put another way, tactically, the duration ratio between maneuver for advantage/battlefield prep vs. direct engagement time is directly proportional to the side attrites at disengagement. If you can't scout, you might as well sit still and fortify and this leads to _slaughter_ fit to make Cold Harbor look like a walk in the park.

Somewhere in here you need to establish a level of recon-to-fire technical advantage to give a reason for maneuver.

When you describe the deliberate limitations of your system I think what you're saying is that you don't want the player to be able to 'hit F-11' and run some kind of remote camera view around to dictate the terms of the engagement.

Unfortunately, with any kind of modern weapons system, that is basically the only means available for ensuring survival.

The system you describe either has to have units that move /very/ quickly crossing huge areas of battle space (effectively behaving like subs crossing a thermocline) which will serve to generate a lot of 'meeting engagements' at the sector-server boundaries.

Or they have to have a means of drawing the enemy (with scouts and skirmish parties) into pinning engagements that are faster (in comms) than the main body forces can 'catch up', thus leaving you room for feints and flanking maneuver.

The only alternative I see is limiting the weapons-effects to that of no more than Civil War era musketry and that would get booooring in terms of march-forever precontact drill and having juniour standup and wave his sword only to die screaming "Drive on the Colors Boyz!".

One external possibility is a proximal expansion system that would essentially 'magnify' the battlefield by cell-netting sectors when blind units blundered into each other. 'F-11' then would have equal advantage to both sides in the actual battle while the Risk Players could chuckle or groan over how smooth they had brought 'invisible' small unit forces into play.

Another would be making your 'key' system of sector transfer more of a one-way random teleporter and having forces choose axes/emplacement advantage vs. overwhelming force or superior maneuver. You would still likely have to limit the number of axes that a defense could statically invest.

Yet another might be 'group telepathy so that scouts could send back data from widely deployed locations like a grouping of sonobuoy 'triplines', but could still not see more than a man could. Especially if you required some kind of 'relay system' so that getting data back thru sectors and then literally across servers, soaked up manpower.

Having scouts on form your tripwire could give you an 'activity' warning and let you shift prime forces to new fighting positions but particularly if it there was limited numbers of (frontage) sensors, you would have a hard time establishing strength and continuous bearing advance.

Lastly, as I mentioned, you REALLY need to consider your fire effects. There are really three types of fire in two categories:

Point, The infantry rifle or a squads worth.
Ultimately the most lethal weapon on
the battlefield, to the line of sight
or ballistic range limit, because
they put individual, aimed, fire from
too many sources to be
simulsuppressed.
Except by other rifles. A player
could survive this without much
effort, if he didn't stick his head
up from the exactly the same area of
fire.
Stream, The LMG/SAW support weapon cannot
stop spread point fire but can keep
it from advancing with superior
(constant) automatic fire and a heavy
barrel to keep that fire hosing
across the legs and chests
of the targeted unit movement. A
player could survive this but only if
he led-from-behind.
Box, Can be a ballistic unitary kill weapon
(A Gatling) but is more typically a
fragmentary/flechette system delivered
by 'bus'. At the local level this
is a handgrenade also at the 'local'
level (depending on the recce and C2)
it's a 155mm howitzer round. This
doesn't hit a point target, it
rototills hectare squared areas of dirt
and the volume airspace above it.
A player cannot survive this, unless he
is at nearly the same (no-thrill)
'standoff' as the Risk Players
controlling his precontact maneuver.

LOS: Line of Sight
I see you I kill you and you do the same.
ILOS: Indirect Line of Sight
You get told I'm at XX/YY UTM on the map and start pointing the catapults for the coordinates.

If I can dump a battery mission of APAM (duhhh but 644 M-77 HEAT is similar, X12 rockets 30-70km off the grid square) or even launch a spread of M255 flechette rockets (2,500 darts per rocket, 2km effective range) off that helo you're sending in, I can kill whole levvies of troops and the 'precision' of a sniper be damned, bots and the players will lie dead together, instantly, in the hundreds.

Without any possibility of 'gameable' reaction that is of tactical import or even strategic control.

You either need to limit your firepower or (artificially) increase the 'powers' of your bot layer distance-control relationships so that concentrated, modern, weapons effect doesn't just blow _people_ away, together with the surrounding acre of landscape and AI cannonfodder.

Combat is about assassination and killsac slaughter. No hope, no chance, no fair fights. Period.

Gaming is about struggle and intuitive guesswork and 'fun'. With a seconds hit of adrenaline chaser after.

If you cannot provide both a challenge of present but imperfect tactical recce and an endurable reward for surviving combat by 'making the right guesses' from the intel generated, you'll never get much player loyalty.

At the same time, you've got to avoid the danger of 'systems management' scooting around between sacrificeable bots while cowering in a deep hole. If the apparent danger of death doesn't seem near enough or if too much time is spent issueing orders, they'll lose interest.

I play RSP without touching most of my team for this very reason.

But if the terrorists would 'learn' to shoot through walls (make use of modern weapons effects) and fight top-down through floors instead of down stairs, I would be in trouble lonewolfing...

Secondly, you mentioned modern weapons systems...I never planned this war to be a modern 'gulf war' or kosavo scenerio, with the ammount of troops involved it's certianly not that! Its more like a chechnya or a serb vs albanian type war.

You raised a lot of great issues and your comments are greatly apprieciated. If this dream of mine where to come true I would need people like you.

Actually, Im not really going to persue it until I actually see flashpoint :-)...I have had this idea for a long long time and it could really work with any game - or assortment of games since the differant freindly units arent going to be seeing each other anyway. Keep the comments coming tho, they are much appriceated.

I hope you get there. I'm sure the folks into 'massively online' have dreams like this all the time and if you wrote something up, you could do well.

Sorry about the sticky-tonguey face; that was supposed to just be 'bot hyphen dash player' link.

I think you'll find as the U.S. did once the AK came south in numbers after Tet, that the the command:intel linking factor in 'smallunit' (up to company size) warfare is pretty much horizontal, at best. A bullet does between 2,800 and 3,500fps and 30 of them in 2.5 seconds doesn't leave much room for grande maneuver. Again, unless you have a REALLY wide field of control between bots and you can just doppelganger your way between them like switching channels monitored TV camera system.

Vertical trickle down tends to be to late to do anything but react from unless you have just a HUGE area of precontact observation of maneuver to play with (in which case, bring on the artie and flares!;-), on the order of 2-3,000yards, at a minimum.

Unless you're playing robin hood in a forest, or other exceptionally short-LOS environs, you could achieve this through by adding some standard field security elements like ground surveillance radar (here since the 60's and a definite factor in the Balkans) and acoustic/seismic remote lines but if you want to Really Challenge the player, you have to give make him divide his resources into Mk.1 eyeball sensor posts and maneuver traps and then 'adjust' forces with scratch teams as the enemies battle plan becomes apparent in the number of axes and timing of his attack (20-30 seconds from leapoff usually).

The only thing 'higher command' does is tell you which chunk of dirt to bleed on and send the dustoff for the body bags and bleeders when you're ready to walk back out.

Never had just oodles of respect for any SOF teams ability to effect an ongoing 'real-war' battlefield of this kind.

At best I would think you would use them as static implants to observe traffic and designate for smartbomb/artie/ambush interdiction fires.

Their best defense is in a lack of expectation of their presence and with the numbers of participants you first described...

Of course if you went 'hi tech'... You might consider the new 'inviso suits' that are EO-adaptive in terms of repeating images front to back of the surrounding environment (Getting into SOF in such a case being 'survive long enough and we'll give you the equipment to live a little easier' REWARD...).

I've heard that BATF and the FBI are working on these but you'd either have to measure multiple eyeline perspective across servers or generate a fixed-radius proximity system and either one could start tasking your processor curves if you're moving lines of bots across a suspect area in skirmish formation.

On the otherside, comovement would still kill you in all but the most passive of static-defense position envelopements and survival in a multiLOS builtup zone, would be a toss of the dice.

SAR (assuming Search And Rescue) is just a way to waste good men as two separate 'raids' have proven in our recent history.

I can see how it might form an interesting variant on Capture The Flag (the flag bleeds), but the big problem again would be linking-server thing where you could have teleports of HUGE numbers of threat forces behind-around you at a critical junctures of ingress-egress.

And for those who aren't in on the rescue team it becomes just another 'holding action' slaughterfest.

Perhaps a separate series of games and 'minicampaigns' which you signed up for and which had locked servers for the duration?
Such would make your Strategic Controllers the equivalent of storywriters, adding twists to a larger campaign based on 'a chapter a day' basis and they in turn would need a 'game master' type filter agent to help coordinate the number of forces likely to be coparticipative in any given subplot, without over or underachieving the levels of surprise. Rarely is a reallife cake walk not 'cool', virtually it's just boring.

Anyway, having been there, I hope you keep trudging on your project. If Flashpoint survives maybe it will give you some additional ideas on how wide a vista we can now paint for ourselves.

Maybe it would be better to make different games similar to Gunship! and M1 Tank Platoon II! that could be linked to a "virtual battlefield"!

- a Infantry simulation with a set of usable trucks and jeeps
- a helicopter simulation with a set of usable transport and attack choppers
- a tank simulation with a set of different recon and fighting tanks
- an airplane simulation (e.g. A10)
...

Every simulation should to be played lonestanding but also to be linkable into a "virtual battlefield"!