Welcome to the second part of my long-winded interview with Amiral Crapaud, the man behind Task Force Admiral, an up and coming wargame from Drydock Dreams Games. If you haven’t read part 1, then you can access it here.

Strategy and Wargaming

You’re extremely well versed in the intricacies of naval warfare and you’ve done your fair share of research within the wargaming scene. I believe one of the main issues with some of the problems related to FOW stands from its extreme abstraction, usually being a binary system of “you either see or you don’t, now make a choice”. Will your AI be able to act on that new dimension of information it’s gathering? And so, scouting parties will now be fundamental to success, as they were in real life I’m curious as to know how you’ll implement that FOW system with things like, say a submarine, which wouldn’t have direct contact with commanding vessels and most like is operating autonomously

Amiral Crapaud

This question leads us to another aspect of Task Force Admiral – that is, going the whole extra mile on the C3i (Command, Control, Communications & Intelligence) business. Normally, you would not be in any measure as a Task Force Commander to order around nearby submarines in 1942. The thing is, if they are nearby, they should not be there – and if they are in position, they are simply not within your reach. Not for radio range reasons or anything like that – simply because they are not placed under your supervision in the chain of command. See, the base unit you command in Task Force Admiral is, well, a Task Force. That is, more often than not, one or two carriers and a screen. This can amount to 20-25 ships altogether, which you can reorganize, or even detach on small or prolonged errands (the likes of Admiral Fletcher sending Admiral Crace’s ANZAC squadron / Task Force 44 forward at Coral Sea for surface action duty). In theory, you are supposed to command these ships and their squadrons – not anything else. You do have friendly forces which are managed by the AI, that is other task forces, bases, or submarines. You might send some of them requests, but it is not always an exact science or an automatic affair.

As a mere example of how the chain of command worked generally in 1942, requesting something from Port Moresby implies that you are sending your request through SOPAC (South Pacific HQ, your local boss when operating in the area) which will have to reach SWPAGHQ (that MacArthur’s Army-led command in Australia) onto SWPA air command (the kind General Kenney, in charge of whatever flies in Port Moresby). Friendly task forces will not update you in real-time about their location, especially if radio silence is observed (about that, don’t forget that whenever you ask for something, you are also breaking radio silence and run a real risk of counter-detection). If some tactical forces are expected to transmit on open frequencies (SOPAC or Midway search aircraft for instance) some others (submarines for instance) will have to go through the chain of command too. SWPA submarines? They will talk to Brisbane, not to you. Midway subs? They will talk to COMSUBPAC (American BdU to you, darn Uboat riders), not to you. Whether these commands relay all information they receive to tactical commands is then a matter of chance set by the mission maker. This emulates real-life problems encountered in such occasions: you could hope to be quickly made aware of a Midway sub report thanks to Admiral Nimitz relaying enthusiastically all the dope he gets (in-game, it means a 100% chance that a COMSOPAC message will be relayed to CINCPAC, and a 100% chance it will be relayed to you, along with minimal delay); on the other hand, results from air searches flying from Port Moresby or Milne Bay might only reach you the next day, if they reach you at all like it was the case during Watchtower. Hell, Fletcher did not even know about the battle at Savo Island until the next day, that is how good communications were within the same force, even though Turner was, in theory, reporting to him as the tactical officer.

It might sound scary to some (and exciting to others, hopefully!) but fear not, we also intend to make Task Force Admiral highly customizable in terms of gaming experience. This system allows us to design Task Force Admiral somewhat along the lines of the traditional simulations and wargames of the 1990s. Realism options will be aplenty, roughly corresponding to three different levels and kinds of gameplay, and will allow to fine-tune difficulty. Everything does happen and take place roughly the same way whatever the level of realism – what we change first and foremost is the perspective of the player and some RNG. As such, you can very well decide to play it fully hardcore, with your external view limited to your flagship, or as in a more traditional strategy game, with the ability to command all allied forces and jump between your units or even order them in the fly, well beyond the nominal reach of your communications.

Here’s a little preview of what is planned in that regard, it should already convey the idea that TFA can be played the same way you used to play your average combat simulator when you’d rather have fun by deactivating the engine torque or the limited ammo. Besides, even if you go for the full-realism settings and accept to play blindfolded with a hand in the back, don’t you worry, you won’t miss the action either! Our replay & analysis system will let you review everything that happened, and how it happened. Plans are to make it along the lines of what you have with flight simulators. The reason for that is simple: if you managed a great victory, you are all the more entitled to enjoy it to its full extent later on and see what went right and wrong, while enjoying the graphics too. Wargame and Simulation players, which form a large part of our player base, are very much After Action Report savvy, and they deserve to have the tools to replay will the action from all necessary angles. Otherwise, why even bother with the cute 3D graphics, right?

Strategy and Wargaming

To be honest with you, I’m more intrigued by playing with the full realism options! My question would now be: how do you plan to translate all that complexity into a readable UI? And can we get a sneak glimpse at that?

Amiral Crapaud

Anything trying to recreate the real world will go for a diegetic approach to some extent – that is, games like ours are prone to attempt to integrate real-world elements into the interface as natural tools for the player to use. As an example, Radio Commander will propose you recreate the world as you imagine it, letting intuitively derive the tactical situation from your appreciation of where you should put your friendly and enemy counters, while Silent Hunter will have you click on the ruler to draw a line on the tactical map. In that regard, we certainly push in this direction, although not to the extent of, say, a pure first-person simulation like Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter or even Highfleet, on a fantasy scale. In the former, the design strives to allow the player to interact with all the tools and machines onboard, while for the latter, the SciFi Fantasy settings allow to assign all needed gameplay functions to fictitious buttons and gauges, providing you with an analogic interface a-la-carte. In that regard, due to our genre, we do not need the granularity of Destroyer, nor do we have the freedom of action in terms of design that Highfleet enjoyed. So we went for a hybrid system.

The main hub is your flag plot, not unlike the tent in Radio Commander or Radio General, reminiscent of the main bridge view in Task Force 1942. This 3D in-game dynamic interface allows you to interact with several stations serving as interfaces for the main command functions: a radio shack for comms and intel, a maneuvering board for formation management and fleet defense, a roster panel for offensive air ops and air searches, another one for squadron details, hopefully (not there quite yet though I am afraid it’s in the plans!) an Ouija board for aircraft management… Besides, although the flag plot is not supposed to be a free-roaming mode, we will still allow you to step out and have a look at the flight deck from the nearest railing – the kind of function you will welcome if you are indeed playing without external views! And I have been told there is no better scenic spot to be when a Val is hell diving and your carrier is doing the snake dance…

All these stations can be accessed by clicking on the corresponding item/door/board, or simply through more mundane non-diegetic means – right now, as designed, F-keys. We might keep a classic drop-down menu too, so that everyone plays it the way he/she likes it. The most central item of interest is naturally the main map. It is there, at the center of the table. The main map is strategic in nature, allowing you to give instructions to groups of ships, groups of planes, and perhaps even bases if you decided to control allied units. This is also the place where you check the weather, and the winds, and follow contacts made by your scouts or reported to you. It is roughly comparable to the view you had in 1942: The Pacific Air War’s Carrier Battles mode, and very much akin to the style you’d have playing a board wargame like Carrier or Flat-top.

It is complemented by a dynamic tactical 3D view, which is comparable to the sensor’s view in the Homeworld series. Much like the latter, you can automatically switch from the 3D world to the tactical view & vice versa. The tactical view replaces the ubiquitous traditional 2D tactical map, as you can access it immediately, everywhere. It is a much-enhanced version of the concept too, as it allows you for instance to easily assess elevation, which is a rather important item in a game with so many planes flying around. We made sure to keep a rather old-school look for it, so ships and planes end up looking like small figurines, the sort you’d use with tabletop rules. It is, after all, the interface you will use for surface combat encounters when you are entitled to give orders at the division and the single-ship level. If we end up with an effective system, this will also allow you to give orders to your planes at the lowest level of realism.

Strategy and Wargaming

You’re firing on all cylinders. Sounds to me like you’re aiming to create the ultimate Task Force Admiral experience. The models you’re working on are fantastic, to the point they were being shared around Facebook. How have you guys come to do that?

Amiral Crapaud

Thank you again for the kind words. Regarding research material for ship models, there are several ways one can use to access them. As far as American ships are concerned, a lot of the original booklets of general plans (which are used to build the ships proper) are freely available in the US National Archives, so there’s nothing too tough about it. Then you have business ventures like Profile Morskie which offer fantastic plans of all sizes that you can acquire for a very honest price, especially during sales season. In other cases, we could count on the help of a few supporters who were willing to assist us with plans, some of them taken directly from the relevant archives and unavailable online. Concerning how we do it, our dear 3D lead artist Rizki, a very talented young man, makes the ship first, along with the plans which are available to him. He uses Blender for it, which used to be frowned upon in the profession – but him being a proficient self-taught artist, we are all very comfortable with somebody who excels at one tool instead of forcing himself to use one he is not acquainted with. Once the basic ship model is ready, it is time for our rivet counters (our benevolent experts) to say what is wrong with it: armament, masts, lifeboats… Everything has to be reviewed and goes through a meticulous examination that might involve putting it back on the workbench a couple of times, sometimes more for the most complicated ships. Indeed, to set ourselves apart from what already exists out there, and because having an extra radar or AA battery does affect the flow of the battle, we decided to work hard on providing everything carrier, battleship and cruiser-sized on the US order of battle with distinctive sub-classes and refits. What it means, is that a given class can have several sub-classes, and each sub-class will have usually between 2 and 3 refits for the period.

Add the historically accurate camos to the mix, and you end up with the sort of unsuspected diversity few games out there (besides War in the Pacific: Admiral’s Edition) have been willing to tackle. People would easily believe that all ships in the same class are clones, mainly because they have rarely been told the opposite. Limitations in that regard were understandable in the 1990s, but I’d say they are now more often than not the result of an acceptance of a certain laziness as a standard when it comes to research. We hope to object to this paradigm at our humble scale. At the end of the day, those who do cherish ships and planes of the era do appreciate the effort, from my understanding, and this game is meant to be a love letter to them. Hopefully, it will also inspire new, younger players the same way the games of old did the trick for people like me back in the day! Finally, although we keep our polycount under control, we still do our best to make the most of it. We end up with very optimized ships, which will allow us to maintain a certain level of detail, even with the required 200 ships or so some of the scenarios might need to feature in a given single instance.

Part 1

Part 3

Up Next

I would like to let everyone know that a Kickstarter is expected to start during the Winter, and there’s a possibily that there might be something… playable *wink wink* for potential backers. However, Task Force Admiral team states that the Kickstarter isn’t necessary to finish the game, but instead will be focused on creating new gameplay options, and the creation of a boxed edition of the game along the lines of a Microprose product from the early 1990s. If you were to ask me, yes, I want to have a big box of Task Force Admiral alongside my game collection in my office.

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