Task Force Admiral News

Hey there chaps !

Some fresh publisher-related news today, with the announcement of Regiments as a newcomer in the Microprose-published line of simulation & strategy indie games.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1109680/Regiments/

This is a most satisfying & welcomed news indeed. The developer of Regiments, Mikhail, is the epitome of the passionate, hard-working indie dev who never shied away from a challenge. A self-learning achiever, he learned code from scratch years ago in order to develop the game of his dreams. He got there all by himself, and I for one was very touched and impressed when I got to try the demo of his game during the Summer Steam festival a few weeks ago. He embodies everything we believe in, and it is little surprise that we were among those who supported his addition to the line-up.



Any fan of Wargame & Steel Division, World in Conflict & Ground Control or even Company of Heroes will find many things to love in Mikhail’s innovative take at the genre. Straying away from conventions, he managed to develop a smart, original gameplay that is completely new, and yet will feel familiar to long-term players of the aforementioned classics. Regiments adopted the Cold War gone hot as a setting reminiscent of Wargame and World in Conflict, but with a new approach that isn’t based on deck building or micro-management.



The player gets to buy “task forces” with points gained by occupying objectives. These ad-hoc company-sized forces come from a list generated from the unit type picked at the beginning. These task forces can be a comprehensive or overly specialized assortment of platoons and support missions, depending on what you need at a given point. Altogether with the initial force chosen by the players, three additional Task Forces will be added successively each time a timer runs out, bringing your regiment up in size. Considering these reinforcements cannot be bought in advance, the meta is entirely in the hands of the player, who has to find a way to dictate the pace to the enemy while reacting to the AI’s choices at the same time. It results in a very dynamic gameplay where force conservation, smart maneuvering and combined arms warfare are the key to victory.



Learning to play Regiments was a very easy yet satisfying, rewarding process. The complete customizable time speed allows you to play that game the way you like it, together with an active pause. As such, it gets only as Real-Timey as you will let it become, which makes it a very acceptable pick for turn-based grognards. The easy-to-learn, well-thought interface with its intuitive functions are certainly part of this comfortable learning curve. It is made so that you’d have to micro-manage only the important part. Need to withdraw and refit your unit? Just click the corresponding button, and your platoon will all by itself initiate a fighting retreat towards its rear maintenance area. Wanna fortify? Just leave your platoon in place with the right orientation, and the unit will prepare defensive positions if left inactive.



Well, the only problem with all that is that you cannot blame the game for your own failures, and there can be quite a few of them failures seeing how uncannily efficient the AI might be at time. As a non-nonsense being, it doesn’t care much about your feelings and will not hesitate to push its advantage. Sometimes you get the right combo, and you end up winning hard, crushing the enemy – but sometimes the AI does you, and it hurts! But it’s never truly lost: destroyed units come back as reinforcements for a price, and it is not rare to see the frontline move back and forth. Again, a truly refreshing experience that I advise you to try out when the next demo will come out (who knows, might be soon!).



In the meantime, be good chaps and go leave the maker of Regiments a wishlist & a follow, he certainly deserves your attention as much as he deserves my fandom.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1109680/Regiments/

Cheers and see you around soon for our next update for Task Force Admiral !

Eagle Six, Out !

[h2]I heard you liked 'em smart collabs...[/h2]

If you have been following us for some time, you probably know that we harbor a dutiful bias in regard of how history should be recreated in the frame of a video-game. In the particular case of Task Force Admiral, we are of the opinion that the game should be faithfully forged around history, rather than have history twisted around gameplay as a pretense rather than an homage.



I am happy to say that we might not be alone in this vision, for the chaps at Grand Tactician are apparently thinking pretty much the same!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/654890/Grand_Tactician_The_Civil_War_18611865/



Hats off to their own dedication in making the deepest, most advanced depiction of the American Civil War to date. Grand Tactician was only just released in early access last week, and the road to its ultimate goal is still long, as highlighted by the roadmap just above. Still, anybody involved in either making or playing it will tell you that it resonates with unmatched love and potential for the era.



[h2]Your chance, here and now![/h2]

The same way we did earlier this summer with Carrier Battles for PC, we thought that associating ourselves in a small collab event with like-minded history buffs would be a good opportunity to showcase their work to our own community. And there you go Ladies & Gents, here we are!

The Grand Tactician team kindly gave us two game keys that we will gift to you. The only thing you have to do is drop the name of a battle from the American Civil War in the comment section, we will then proceed to get in touch with the winners after a lucky draw.

As always, post only once – people who post more will be automatically eliminated from the draw. You have exactly 12 hours to take part to this draw from the time of publication – we will lock the thread after that and ignore any participation beyond the aforementioned 12 hours.

Good luck to you all & take care, TFA sailors!

Hello there Dear Followers,

We have been through Summer without much ado – apart from the usual weekly content on Twitter & Facebook. Therefore, we thought it would be a good idea to post a few clues about our progress on our Steam page before we release an actual bigger Summer update, hopefully by the end of this month. We haven’t sat idle throughout July, no worries about that. As you will see, we kept advancing on all aspects of the game and delivered on some crucial features. Time to keep you entertained with some nice nuggets of interest too!

[h2]Them Dastardly Pilots in their Flying Machines[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

First of all, a little video feature about what we’ve been trying to achieve when it comes to Artificial Intelligence behavior when it comes to air to air combat. Wasn’t necessarily the easiest thing to implement, but so far so good, we’re pretty happy with the result. Our pixel pilots answer to changes in their tactical situation efficiently. More importantly, sometimes they make subtle or obvious mistakes, and they also take advantage of mistakes others make, making any engagement a random, dynamic outcome. No better way to illustrate this in a Pacific Theater environment than by showcasing the Thach Weave, the emblematic defensive dogfight maneuver named after its creator John S. Thach and used at Midway and Santa Cruz with spectacular results.

[h2]Reefs of Steel in a Coral Sea[/h2]



On other topics, 3D work on the models is proceeding fine. As you can see our Coral Sea battle set is nearly done – it will be our first step towards a fully playable showcase scenario. Any fan of the battle can certainly easily identify the major combatants with a little bit of research – knock yourself out!



Our recreation of historical battles will be without concession: don’t expect any artificial unit limit to break the immersion with a token representation of what the actual order of battle was. Any ship, any plane involved that day will be there for you to command... or to fight.



We also intend to make sure that everybody there is made as accurately as possible. We despise cloning ships, and beyond that many ships went through one or several refits in 1942, with dramatic improvements for some of them (radar, new AA suite, etc…).



Just take HMAS Australia, as an example – here before and after her mid-1942 refits. And that’s just her, as HMAS Canberra will feature too with her own configuration (she went into the war before getting the same refit as her sisters – an interesting case study, by all means!). At the end of the day, research is not so much about aimlessly collecting books and storing them on some dusty rack. What matters is what you do with them.

[h2]Flying Colors[/h2]



The air is getting colorful above the Coral Sea too. Here you can check out a large selection of Zero camos, from the Zuikaku, the Shokaku, the Shoho and the Tainan air groups. As you can see, we’re making sure that everything looks as authentic as possible down to individual planes. Same with the camo scheme of every ship, of course – which will be customizable in the mission builder from the get-go. That’s how committed to historicity we are - and we sure hope that this game will be played by the kind of audience that appreciates the idea of going the extra mile. The kind that can tell the difference between sincere dedication & canned stuff!



[h2]Please Say Hi to the Lady![/h2]



Finally, our 2D artist is using his free time at the beach between two sunbathes (and two Zero skins...) to progress on the design of our dearest, charming brand ambassador – Taffy!

No worries, she won’t be a character in-game or anything (you can lower the pitchforks now history buffs) but we wanted a kind, appropriate face for our female narrator in a series of small incoming video featurettes, and she will do the job! Her name is a story in itself already, one that carrier fans know and cherish, and we hope that you will be kind enough to accept her friendship and her presence in the larger family of Task Force Admiral.



This isn’t much in regard of what is yet to come, but it’s better than nothing while waiting for the bigger update. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend and, above all, take good care!

Nothing too fancy today, we just wanted to give you a sneak peek at what's brewing right now. Things are going well enough, and new content is so numerous and diversed that it's hard to keep track. Still, here are a few highlights.



[h2]Shooting stars[/h2]
Our dev has been busy with AI over the last few weeks - more specifically air to air behavior. It delivered pretty cool results that those who've been following us on Twitter and Discord have probably seen by now. Here's a little bit of a tease for you - but it gotta stay in the shape of a link, because otherwise Steam will tear us a new one (watch out if you're using a phone, it's GIF time!):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2144353172

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2144370355

We will also let you have a look at our prototype AI for the Thach Weave - another affair that isn't exactly easy to orchestrate. We sincerely hope you will appreciate the work that is being done to make it happen!

[h2]The girls are alright[/h2]

Kate & Val (and their friends) are making themselves pretty in the meantime. We're trying to get our plane roster up to speed so that we can cowardly make the most of our 2D artist free time these days. Here are a few screens showing the magic happening:



When it comes to gentle Kate's dive-bombing sister, we actually have a video that we released just today for Screenshot Saturday. If you're into plane art, hopefully this one will talk to you!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The Aichi D3A Navy Type 99 Carrier Bomber, otherwise known as "Val" by the Allies from 1942 onward was the standard carrier-based and shore-based dive bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1941 to 1943. It will naturally feature as the player's counterpart to the SBD Dauntless for the duration of 1942, having served in every single carrier battle of the era. Hits were achieved on USS Lexington, on USS Yorktown at Coral Sea and Midway, on USS Enterprise at Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz, and finally on USS Hornet at Santa Cruz, which included two suicide runs by damaged planes.

This D3A wears the colors of the Zuikaku air wing at the time of the battle of the Coral Sea (early May 1942).

Here! That will be all for today - come back in a few days from now for the update proper, hopefully we'll have a couple other gems to show you (spoiler: we will). In the meantime if your weekend is boring (I sure hope not), don't forget to have a look at our past updates. The April-May one can be checked in this previous post.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1281220/announcements/detail/2229791404494717955

And here's a direct link to the content itself:
April/May 2020 update - dev website

Please enjoy whatever is left of your weekend, and see you soon for some additional stuff!

Cheers and take care,

The DDG Team

First of all, because it's Midway Day - decades ago, sometime around this very moment (don't cringe, I am not very good with time zones), dozens of SBDs were hurling themselves down at the Kido Butai, altering dramatically the balance of power in the Pacific and inspiring generations of wargamers and history nuts since then. I am ready to bet that every single person reading these lines has seen a movie or a documentary about the battle, and we will all agree that it was iconic enough a date to deserve some special love.

Secondly, because it's the day we chose to give a big shout - and a big hug - to Cyril Jarnot's own carrier wargame, the much awaited Carrier Battles 4 Guadalcanal. A bit of context, if you please.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1163340/Carrier_Battles_4_Guadalcanal

Cyril is a very hard-working, brave French wargame designer (like us - at least, the part about him being a French wargame designer that is) who is passionate about the Pacific War, and especially them carrier battles, and decided to roll up his sleeves and make his own dream game - another trait we share, as you might have guessed by now (you clever lot).



After releasing his first version of the game on iOS years ago, he undertook the great journey that is bringing him now to the doorstep of your desktop or laptop computer with a new version improved in every single way. Carrier Battles 4 Guadalcanal is as strong an offering in the genre as it gets, and I am not ashamed to claim that it is perhaps the most advanced carrier wargame in existence in 2020.

Yeah, it's that good.

And if you don't believe me, just go check the videos on Youtube and see for yourself (Waz has a few great videos on-going, be a chomp & pay the good man a visit!).



What does it have to do with us, you might ask? Well, we're not being published by the same guys that's true, but in baguette country that doesn't matter much anyway - the perks of living in one small place, I'd say. More seriously though, it's not like carrier wargames were exactly aplenty and pouring out there these days. These are rare enough a commodity to warrant all of us to find ways to work together rather than face off in a silly and self-destructive manner.



That's the reason why we humbly lent a hand in the making of Carrier Battles - an offer which Cyril kindly welcomed to our greatest pleasure and honour. Rizki, our 3D artist, provided Cyril with our very own 3D models, which are now part of the background images of the in-game air ops screen. It's that simple - and now, it's profit time for you all, lucky bunch.



To mark this important day in carrier history, and knowing we're 24 hours away from the release of Carrier Battles, here's your chance to get a piece of the action by joining this special draw for the community of Task Force Admiral.

[h3]All you need to do to enter this contest is to post under this announcement some cheering, some joke or any other sort of sentence containing the words "carrier battles". [/h3]

Five winners will be drawn from all the participants and will receive a key of Carrier Battles 4 Guadalcanal which will allow them to redeem the game the moment it will go online tomorrow.

No other rule - although, of course, you are only allowed to enter this once, and any double post will automatically disqualify you, so be nice!

At any rate, you are allowed to enter this contest until tomorrow 8 AM EDT (New York Time). Ladies & Gentlemen, thanks for joining us and good luck!