Hey everyone, my name is Ben and I'm one of the Designers working on CoH 3's campaign. Today we're bringing you a quick update on what we have planned for the Air and Naval sections of the dynamic campaign map.

AIR FORCE

Aircraft 

Aircraft are intended to provide you with a strategic tool that can smash enemy positions or deliver vital supplies to your campaign companies on their march to Rome. The Pre-Alpha Preview illustrated that aircraft and airfield abilities were in a good spot, what’s next is to focus the role that aircraft play on the dynamic campaign map. 

Airfields 

Airfields are a special category of capture point where aircraft management, repair and requisition are the chief function of this strategic location. Two airfield sizes will challenge the range that your aircraft can operate in, you’ll need to keep moving forward and prioritize taking those airfields. Otherwise, air cover won’t be possible for the companies that are at the ragged edge of your airfields range.  

Aircraft Abilities 

An ability that has proven to have considerable impact on companies as they advance, is the C-47 Douglas’ supply drop, with it you can reactivate a company that has already launched an assault on an enemy company or captured territory; allowing the re-supplied company to act again in the same turn.  

Something we’ve introduced to airfields is the ability for the C-47 to transport companies from one airfield to another, this will make it possible to rapidly bring your forces to the front line. As long as you can take and hold your airfields that is. 

The workhorse of the Allied airpower is the B-25 Mitchell and it’s Bombing run ability, while not as impactful as a Battleship’s Bombardment they’re still able to pack a punch and can cover an operational space that your battleships may not be able to reach. 

One aircraft ability we’re looking closely at is the P-47 Thunderbolt’s Air Superiority ability. With Air Superiority you (or the Axis) will be able to deny air support and shut down opposing aircraft in real-time strategic skirmishes or missions before they start. 

Death from Above 

Paradropping Airborne companies behind enemy lines was a player favorite in the Pre-Alpha Preview, and although the last airdrop of German Fallschirmjäger was in Crete, we’re introducing the same paradrop ability to an Axis company to create opportunities for surprise attacks. Press the Axis hard and they may become desperate enough to launch a combined assault of land, air, and sea forces.

NAVAL FORCE

During the Pre-Alpha Preview we only had a portion of Naval gameplay ready for you to experience. The iteration of naval units and gameplay has been challenging, establishing their role, maintaining a unique sense of movement, fire control and range has been a hard egg to crack. Developing a new play space (ocean) with a small amount of overlap (coastline) called for a different set of features to challenge naval vessels and to encourage the use of combined arms. Incorporating coastal batteries, sea mines, the threat of Axis U-boats and air power will give you, the Allied player, a significant challenge. 

Seaports 

Naval vessels like the Destroyer or Battleship can dock in the shipyard of a seaport for repairs and aren’t bound to the seaport they are requisitioned from. There are two seaport sizes, governing your ability to repair more ships and improve your resource and population capacity. 

Ship Movement 

Navy is intended to support your companies in the attack, and to assist in amphibious landings. Naval movement is intended to feel grand, and largely unrestricted until a ship approaches an enemy held coastline. Management should be low, once a ship is in position it should have the reach and ability to perform its tasks without any further action. 

To accomplish these, we’ve implemented what we’re calling the buoy system; it is a series of buoys that line the coast and connect to neighboring buoys, creating a small grid around Italy that naval vessels move to and from. With this we’re able to encourage ships into specific positions to support their land forces while also creating points of conflict, creating encounters with obstacles like coastal batteries.  

Most seaports have two points of entry (buoys) connecting them to the map edge for supplies and newly requisitioned vessels, this offers some redundancy, but a seaport can still be blockaded if Axis ships are plentiful enough! 

Naval Combat 

With movement established combat was the next port of call for the naval gameplay. With Navy combat we wanted to capture the individuality of being at sea while also providing the flexibility to support fleets and having the support of additional vessels. 

While naval vessels move individually, they can engage and attack simultaneously. Positioning and preparing your ships at buoys before engaging with the enemy allows multiple vessels to engage at the same time as a single fleet.  

Vessel Types 

When selecting vessels to choose from the most impactful or multi-purposed ships were obvious and their primary focus should be supporting your land forces. Destroyers, battleships, minesweepers, aircraft carriers and submarines as the marquee ships to make up your fleet. 

One vessel we’ve introduced is the British aircraft carrier, equipped with their own unique aircraft, the Fairey Swordfish, and Fairey Fulmar. Aircraft Carriers allow you to build up and maintain a seaborne airfield that can be positioned to support ground or sea forces.  

Although there weren’t many in the Mediterranean theater, a vessel that defined Axis presence in the Atlantic, U-Boats, we knew had to surface as a threat. Hidden from your line of sight they require support from Fairey Fulmars or other ships to be spotted and can harass your vessels and supply lines with ease. 

QUESTIONS

1. What naval vessels would you like to see? 

2. What are your thoughts on Air & Naval abilities that can automatically occur every turn until manually deactivated? 

3. How do you think we can bring aircraft to have more presence on the dynamic campaign map?

To give my 2 cents on the questions you asked.

1. I would love to see proper landing craft, and maybe some costal maps were the team that landed starts on a beach head to make their base? I just would love to see that transition from sending craft to land in the campaign map to a skirmish where my troops are landing.

2. I think that abilities such as "air superiority" where a fighter crew  is "lock downing" some air space is cool, but it would maybe be cool to have them act as a bonus off map ability that you can use when you have a battle in the zone. I really just think the biggest thing is maybe the abilites in the grand campaign map will actually affect the battlefields you skirmish on.

3. I think it's going to be interesting seeing how the AI "reacts" to these abilities. With the Air superiority ability as an example I feel like the Air would just have to fly it's forces around the area or risk flying through the area for either some damage or reduced effectiveness. However if there were ever any plans for a 1v1 or multiplayer dynamic campaign I can see players really having fun cutting each other off in the air and using abilities to mess with each others plans 

Very excited guys love these insights.

Danny

1. Warspite. Use that for the UKF Battleship model. She's gorgeous.

Liberty ship for Cargo ships to currently controlled ports.

2 & 3.

Aircraft: 

Instead of having aircraft/ships specifically directed at a target, have them targeting a Region, so when a ground unit engages an enemy it can choose to call in support. I would suggest separate the planes into 3 options, Fighter/CAS dual roles, Bombers, and Cargo.

Close Air Support (CAS) may do either preemptive damage, reduce enemy damage, or provide an in-RTS Off-Map. Calling in CAS burns that plane's action for 1 or 2 turns, so no other combat could use it.

Fighters and AA may let you either deny the strike or do damage and weaken the strike; AA platforms should do similar. Some Fighters may also be CAS and vice versa, but make the player choose whether to choose CAS or Fighter when combat starts. If you have 2 CAS/Fighter multi-roles, let the player and AI draft each in turn with attacker taking first turn; attacker picks CAS, defender picks Fighter, attacker picks fighter. This provides reasons for concentrated aircraft, and therefore, non-uniform air superiority.

Strategic/Tac Bombers could slow units in the zone its controlling, justified as attacking logistics centers. If an assault RTS triggers, it could periodically bomb things like Hold the Line in CoH2 currently does, or force the map into a post-bombed state. The trick is its not player controlled like CAS would be. Fighters and AA would disable the slow effect in the controlled radius and either damage and force back bombers or destroy and allow the bomber to do its RTS effect (sacrificing the bomber). A fun factor would be have a fixed number of bombers per bomber assigned to the mission, so assigning 5 bomber wings results in periodic massive waves of bombers, where 1 bomber does spotty inconsistent bombing.

Cargo planes would add supply to the region even if in enemy terrain, enable paradrops, and fast redeployment.

Ships:

Artillery Ships would act as though Bombers, but with less shells and MUCH bigger explosions. I want to see a bunker hit by 15in shells.

Carriers are just floating air fields.

Submarines would act as anti-Ship Bombers, slowing ships and disrupting their missions with Destroyers countering them. Don't let Destroyers have regional anti-shore, so its a balance between BB/CV for land support, Submarine for disruption, and Destroyer to counter Submarine. Mine-layers will probably be boring, I would avoid them (even though mines REALLY were a big deal).

Conclusion:

The goal with these choices is to make the map REALLY oriented around the Divisions, with everything in support of that.

I would even go so far as suggesting every division combat allow either auto-resolve or RTS play, as we want more RTS play.

Hello @Ben_RE ,

Thank you for the breakdown of the Air and Navy capabilities. Here are my comments in red...

AIR FORCE

Aircraft 

Aircraft are intended to provide you with a strategic tool that can smash enemy positions or deliver vital supplies to your campaign companies on their march to Rome. The Pre-Alpha Preview illustrated that aircraft and airfield abilities were in a good spot, what’s next is to focus the role that aircraft play on the dynamic campaign map.  This and Navy should really be secondary to the RTS game so I'm hopeful that the Air Force and Navy do not get bogged down in micro-managing groups of airplanes/ships per region, hundreds across the country. It's tempting to get carried away I think if Aircraft/Navy "meta" gets overtly involved. As tempting as it may be with the potential to add strategic elements to this new terrain in a dynamic campaign, I really feel like most players aren't wanting to spend copious amount of time managing Air/Naval units no matter how "cool" or innovative they may be on the campaign map. As another poster mentioned simpler is better even at the cost of seeming contrite for not making it as capable as technically sophisticated as it can be. I would rather keep Navy and Airforce more basic at launch and expand upon as feedback comes in post launch than get overtly technical and really turn off the campaign mode with an elaborate and complicated new theatre of war. RTS gameplay has to remain at the forefront of every decision, how to improve and continue that aspect of the COH series is essential. 

Airfields 

Airfields are a special category of capture point where aircraft management, repair and requisition are the chief function of this strategic location. Two airfield sizes will challenge the range that your aircraft can operate in, you’ll need to keep moving forward and prioritize taking those airfields. Otherwise, air cover won’t be possible for the companies that are at the ragged edge of your airfields range.   I am torn on the Airfields range and capabilities. On one hand I would like to see a far reaching, a very impactful air force, as it was a huge factor in the war during this phase. On the other hand, I don't want it to ruin the RTS gameplay by Airforce being OP every match taking away from the tactical gameplay.  Not to get too off topic but AA is going to have to be heavily improved from the pre-alpha it was implemented but very weak and non-impactful to avoid using aircraft. If AA is heavily improved upon, it leads me to wondering if it should be able to be built wherever players decide on the map OR if only in limited strategic locations with some flexibility on location but at significant cost. I do not know the answer but if people spam AA or they are made to be too OP then it'll ruin the balance of the dynamic game. However, from pre-alpha AA/flak guns were just for appearance, the damage was minimal, no one would waste time building them or destroying them if they were left untouched. I would think the DPS of the attacking force should be severely limited or bombers off target or AA guns should get much more powerful. They then become targets on the campaign map, and it shouldn't be as easy as take out AA and then attack with air. Some AA should be heavily defended and the Airforce should still have an impact but mitigated at same time. It's a tough balance but that's my opinion.

 

Aircraft Abilities 

An ability that has proven to have considerable impact on companies as they advance, is the C-47 Douglas’ supply drop, with it you can reactivate a company that has already launched an assault on an enemy company or captured territory; allowing the re-supplied company to act again in the same turn.  This sounds like a second turn capability similar to "Run and Gun" in X-com series. Some sort of checks and balances would need to be implemented such as not repairing health and just supplies or long cooldown timer, something to avoid it becoming OP.

Something we’ve introduced to airfields is the ability for the C-47 to transport companies from one airfield to another, this will make it possible to rapidly bring your forces to the front line. As long as you can take and hold your airfields that is.  I like this comment, I like that the AI may be trying to retake airfield and push their own agenda. I also think the AI is the key, it cannot try to take the Airfield at the cost of losing it's overall strategic defensive strategy just because the AI is scripted to retake Airfield with overwhelming force as a script in the gameplay, it should be able to be countered and it should be realistic. Very nice.

The workhorse of the Allied airpower is the B-25 Mitchell and it’s Bombing run ability, while not as impactful as a Battleship’s Bombardment they’re still able to pack a punch and can cover an operational space that your battleships may not be able to reach. Boom! This should maybe be harder to hit with Flak than fighter planes so greater survivability not sure if that's historically accurate or not due to higher altitudes? 

One aircraft ability we’re looking closely at is the P-47 Thunderbolt’s Air Superiority ability. With Air Superiority you (or the Axis) will be able to deny air support and shut down opposing aircraft in real-time strategic skirmishes or missions before they start. I watched the movie Thunderbolt per Sacha's thread. I like the impact of RTS matches, that will be very critical to the main theme I started with, impacting the RTS in almost every regard.

Death from Above 

Paradropping Airborne companies behind enemy lines was a player favorite in the Pre-Alpha Preview, and although the last airdrop of German Fallschirmjäger was in Crete, we’re introducing the same paradrop ability to an Axis company to create opportunities for surprise attacks. Press the Axis hard and they may become desperate enough to launch a combined assault of land, air, and sea forces. I loved this part, I like the idea of surprise attacks and keeping the player on their toes, and not just so they turtle leaving forces to guard every strategic airfield "just in case" the AI does a scripted para drop behind enemy lines but actually attacking at our weakness specifically that match. I don't think the AI should be like how it is in COH 2 though where they have no fog of war limitation, no pathfinding terrain issues, very precise with artillery/mortar etc. It should play like a human which makes mistakes and doesn't have an obvious programmatic advantage. 

 

NAVAL FORCE

Ship Movement 

Navy is intended to support your companies in the attack, and to assist in amphibious landings. Naval movement is intended to feel grand, and largely unrestricted until a ship approaches an enemy held coastline. Management should be low, once a ship is in position it should have the reach and ability to perform its tasks without any further action.  Wow I love the management should be low comment, great to hear.

To accomplish these, we’ve implemented what we’re calling the buoy system; it is a series of buoys that line the coast and connect to neighboring buoys, creating a small grid around Italy that naval vessels move to and from. With this we’re able to encourage ships into specific positions to support their land forces while also creating points of conflict, creating encounters with obstacles like coastal batteries.  

Most seaports have two points of entry (buoys) connecting them to the map edge for supplies and newly requisitioned vessels, this offers some redundancy, but a seaport can still be blockaded if Axis ships are plentiful enough!  I think I understand but really just gotta try it out to understand completely how the buoy system works, I know it's necessary to compartmentalize the Italian coast. 

 Naval Combat 

With movement established combat was the next port of call for the naval gameplay. With Navy combat we wanted to capture the individuality of being at sea while also providing the flexibility to support fleets and having the support of additional vessels. 

While naval vessels move individually, they can engage and attack simultaneously. Positioning and preparing your ships at buoys before engaging with the enemy allows multiple vessels to engage at the same time as a single fleet.  I get the concept but not sure I understand exactly how fleet vs. fleet actions will work just yet, is it more of a stacking power number of sub vessels OR is it more of a grouping of those specific vessels eligible for attacking in the same turn. Either way has it's pro's/con's but not sure yet on this.

Vessel Types 

When selecting vessels to choose from the most impactful or multi-purposed ships were obvious and their primary focus should be supporting your land forces. Destroyers, battleships, minesweepers, aircraft carriers and submarines as the marquee ships to make up your fleet. Sweet!

One vessel we’ve introduced is the British aircraft carrier, equipped with their own unique aircraft, the Fairey Swordfish, and Fairey Fulmar. Aircraft Carriers allow you to build up and maintain a seaborne airfield that can be positioned to support ground or sea forces.  Even sweeter!

Although there weren’t many in the Mediterranean theater, a vessel that defined Axis presence in the Atlantic, U-Boats, we knew had to surface as a threat. Hidden from your line of sight they require support from Fairey Fulmars or other ships to be spotted and can harass your vessels and supply lines with ease. The Sweetest!

QUESTIONS

1. What naval vessels would you like to see? I like how you went with U-Boats although contrary to historical accuracy I think it's good to always lean towards fun gameplay over realistic historical accuracy in a video game. Just don't go get extreme like C&C did with Dolphins wearing lasers getting all crazy on us. I like the U-boat idea and I do like maybe keeping to the historical limitations of the Regia Marina being capable but severely outnumbered and limited movement due to fuel limitations. The limitations in air warfare for the Axis should impact their Naval capacity as well.

2. What are your thoughts on Air & Naval abilities that can automatically occur every turn until manually deactivated? I love this idea because it supports my opening theme of everything supporting the RTS gameplay not taking away from it. Thus, automation will be a welcome feature to where manual deactivation can let players customize a specific strategy if they so choose but not get bogged down in micro managing abilities of each unit.

3. How do you think we can bring aircraft to have more presence on the dynamic campaign map? I think I am sounding repetitive now but Aircraft should bring a distinct advantage for Allies but without ruining RTS engagements completely. A nice call-in, or a nice reinforcement, or recon feature will be good enough. I'm thinking perks, but just completely annihilating the Axis forces or making the RTS battle very easy is not the way forward. If you do want to make air warfare more of a presence then AA will need to be effective as well making the player get more strategic. It shouldn't completely redirect aircraft (i.e. making the AA too OP) but it should be a big deterrent or potential of significant expenses paid or losses incurred if outright ignored.

- Art of War