Thread by @KarelMoricky

I remember playing the #OperationFlashpoint demo in 2001 and noticing attack vectors for entire battalions on the map. My imagination ran wild—was the game really that big?
Let’s talk about how we invent forces to create the illusion of a large war… and to run wargames! (1/11)

Wargaming—whether through board games or computer simulations—is used by real militaries and governments to play out scenarios, test strategies, and predict outcomes. It prepares armies for all eventualities. Why couldn’t it prepare game developers too? (2/11)

It’s during #Arma3 development when we started playing wargames for research. For each stage of the campaign, we discussed how the conflict could unfold. @IvanBuchta then prepared maps showing the movement of main forces, even if you could never encounter them in the game (3/11)

This groundwork proved invaluable when developing DLCs like Laws of War and Tanks, which portrayed the East Wind campaign from different perspectives. Thanks to our wargame preparations, we had a clearer picture of what was happening across the island. (4/11)

But it’s not just about knowing where the armies are; it’s also about understanding what they consist of. That’s where the Order of Battle (ORBAT) comes in—a diagram showing the types and sizes of forces within a military unit. The example below shows the Dutch Army 🇳🇱(5/11)

When planning a large-scale multiplayer mode for #Arma3 (which was eventually canceled), the multiplayer designer sketched out the ORBAT of the ideal military unit for the operation. He drew on his own military experience, as it was none other than @rocket2guns! (6/11)

Later on, fascinated by these diagrams, I implemented an in-game ORBAT viewer as a side project. The illusion we’d used since Flashpoint became interactive, with map markers linking to carefully analyzed previews of whole armies. (7/11)

I originally made it to give players a better idea about what forces are involved in campaign missions. What I didn’t anticipate is how informative it would be also for us. (8/11)

For example, plotting the Altis Armed Forces (modeled after the Maltese army) made us aware of how tiny the army is: a thousand men, a dozen tanks, a handful of helicopters. This made mission designers more cautious about casually sending precious vehicles against players (9/11)

Once we had the viewer, we realized we could give some units a custom identity. That’s how the US invasion force became the 111th Infantry Division, and CSAT’s army was named the Griffin Regiment. Shoulder insignias helped reinforce this in-game. (10/11)

https://x.com/KarelMoricky/status/469814986471403520

Wargaming maps, orders of battle, unit identities, those are just some of the tools we use to plan authentic conflicts. Only a fraction of this preparation ends up in the game, but it's as important as it's fun to do. Expect us to continue this tradition in the future ;) (11/11)