Thread: Tactical squad game

Mech Commander 1 & 2 is tactical alright. And one could consider it squad too. But that's about it. The game is horrid. Just because there aren't many it doesn't mean I can't be picky

Rome: Total War and Command & Conquer are strategic. Not tactical.

Final Fantasy is an adventure/RPG game, Sentral. C'mon!

Suikoden Tactics never heard before. Went to check it... it's not a tactical squad game either. It's some mixture of RPG, battle and item hunting. If every game that had characters fighting as a team could be considered tactical squad based, I wouldn't be complaining.

Originally Posted by twomers

That an 'any day now', or an "any day now"?

Ah, I see... let me use another power phrase. It will be done, when it will be done

But seriously, development is comming along mate. Not as fast as I would like. Trust me it is not due to lack of motivation. I just have been handling daily issues that have kept me away from the computer.

Three other factors have been influencing its development:

- These things tend to always get more complicated than we antecipate. Ideas flow and we start wanting to incorporate some of them into the game, or in the least (as I have done on a few ocassions like having multiple computer controlled adventurers also playing the game) alter the code so that they can be incorporated later.

- It's my first C++ game, It's also my first game. The closest I ever was to develop a game before was when I was once asked to make a stock management software.

- I'm learning about AI, threads, ncurses, sqlite and... c++ (surprise!)... as I move on. Usually things flow. But I have been known to do things like wasting 2 weeks trying to understand (which I eventually did) how neural networks work, or realizing after 3 months that I still make gross mistakes when using threads, or that ncurses is as cool as it is a pain.

I'm having though the time of my life. I'm just not ptomising anything anymore. I should probably change my signature. It will be done. That I can promise.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Mech Commander 1 & 2 is tactical alright. And one could consider it squad too. But that's about it. The game is horrid. Just because there aren't many it doesn't mean I can't be picky

Rome: Total War and Command & Conquer are strategic. Not tactical.

Final Fantasy is an adventure/RPG game, Sentral. C'mon!

Suikoden Tactics never heard before. Went to check it... it's not a tactical squad game either. It's some mixture of RPG, battle and item hunting. If every game that had characters fighting as a team could be considered tactical squad based, I wouldn't be complaining.

WHATTTTT? I don't understand the difference between tactical and strategic! But Mech Commander is made by Microsoft! MICROSOFT! Rome Total War is part turn-based and so is Final Fantasy! MANNNNNNNNNN!

Final Fantasy Tactics..

Tactics deal with detailed decisions and maneuvres. While Strategy deals with elaborate plans of war.

In strategy you worry with things like war-time production, resource management, unit (division scale) deployment, supply lines, etc... You make strategic decisions in the sense you conduct war.

In tactics you worry with things like terrain, weather, unit (squad scale) deployment, artillery range, plan of action, line of sight, men moral, and mission objectives. You make decisions in the sense you conduct a battle.

Tactics is the operational part of the war in which you try to meet the objectives set by the Strategy.

Visually, imagine Iwo Jima invasion during WWII. It was a small island. Strategy dictated by the US armed forces placed that island as a very important objective since it would allow for take-of and landing of the B-52 bombers in range of Japan mainland. Strategy also dictated the composition of the naval and marine forces alloted to the taking of the island, along with reinforcements, supplies, and air support.

Tactics dictated how and when the troops would disembark and how they would move in the hostile terrain. It was tactics, for instance, that decided to send ahead the previous night an EOD squad to dispose of mines on the beach. This was a typical tactical operation. Later, during the invasion of the island, decisions had to be made at squad level by the squad commanders on how to engage the enemy forces as they progressed in the terrain.

I see, thanks for that! I think I might have some now. My reccomended games would be: Commandos, Soldiers (the first one), Eastern Front (not the board game ). I like war themed games, but these are "tactical" as you might say

Rome's battles are tactical, by your definition.

If your computer can't handle America's Army, you'll have a hard time running Rome, though.

Is Wesnoth a tactical game? How about UFO: Aftermath?

For oldies, I recommend Battle Bugs, Battle Isle, Panzer General, Fantasy General, Sid Meier's Antietam. Although maybe you might call some of them strategy rather than tactical.

Tactical squad based *sigh*
Just forget it... I found the game I needed. thanks everyone.

There is a little squad based game that uses an updated version of the XCOM engine and XCOM Apocalypse era engine. It's by Microprose and it's called Squad Leader. It is essentially XCOM in WW2 but be warned it is not half as fun as XCOM. The first level is Normandy and you'll die millions of times before you even get to the end of the level.

The game did not do well but has some interesting features like letters from home for each of the soldiers. You can track their personal lives between missions and it does begin to get you involved in the game..........if only your morons could survive long enough to get more than 1 letter from home.

Some events from home and in battle will affect your troops morale. If a guy's woman breaks up with him, his wife leaves him, or his wife is having a baby, etc, etc it will affect your guy's morale negatively. If his wife supports him and good things are happening at home, etc, etc...then your guy's morale is boosted.

The engine is dead slow however. It suffers from the same problem that XCOM and every game after it did. When you get to the upper tile layers/levels the game is horribly slow. XCOM UFO only had 4 levels max, Apocalypse had a max of 9 (thankfully you never used that many) and Squad Leader has a max of like 14. The engine is clunky, slow, outdated even for it's time, and the interface is anything but good.

But if you really want to try it PM me and I'll tell you where you can get it. It's an oldie and abandonware (hell it was abandonware 2 weeks after it was released) so I don't mind showing you how to get it.

I still have the boxed copy in my collection but haven't tried it on XP. If it suffers from the same fate as XCOM: Windows edition you will need a patch or need to create one to take into account the pitch of your video buffer. But Squad Leader was coded in DX using DirectDraw so it should be ok.

XCOM Windows Edition suffers from horrible drawing issues b/c it assumed that each pixel was one byte making the buffer pitch 320. However on newer cards a byte based buffer pitch does not fit well into the architecture and so this has been changed for all resolutions.

The old school DOS games assumed this: y*width+x=offset ---> for 320x200 then y*320+x = offset.
But for Direct3D/DirectDraw games you should always do this when accessing a buffer: y*Pitch+x=offset.
Pitch does not always equal width.


I don't recommend Squad Leader but it's not horrible once you get past the first few levels. It actually gets easier as you go along. But you will get horribly upset when your super uber elite gunner gets shelled in mission 4 by the Germans. So just like XCOM you build up your troops only to see them die a horrible death later.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Tactical squad based *sigh*
Just forget it... I found the game I needed. thanks everyone.

Praytell, the winner? I'm betting on my JA2 horse!

Yup. turn-based, squad based, tactical based.