Front Command : 1944

# FRONT COMMAND 1944

Front Command 1944 is a turn-based strategy game. I wanted it to feel as close to a

real battlefield as I could get.

## The ground decides the fight

Weather changes what you can see and how far you can move. Rain, fog, mud and snow

each do it differently, and night cuts sight down hard.

Destroyed armor stays where it died. A burnt-out tank blocks the road completely —

no other vehicle gets past it — until combat engineers clear the wreck. Infantry can

pick their way through, slowly.

High ground is worth taking. It sees further, it hits harder, and it is harder to take

back. Roads are the fastest way to move, but a road runs through open ground, and open

ground gives you nothing to hide behind.

## Supply is the real opponent

Ammunition and fuel are not numbers on a build menu. They are a line running back from

your spearhead to a supply base, and your headquarters carries that line forward.

Put your HQ and your supply bases in the wrong place and it shows within a turn. A

vehicle cut off from fuel does not move at all that day. Run the ammunition down and

your close-range attacks land at half strength.

Morale follows supply, and morale is a direct multiplier on damage. A cut formation

hits for a fraction of what it should. One left isolated bleeds men every turn without

a shot being fired at it. The fastest way to lose here is to advance faster than your

trucks.

## What is in it

**Twelve historical operations, 1940–1945.** Sichelschnitt, Merkur, Gazala,

El Alamein, Uranus, Kharkov, Zitadelle, Bagration, Cobra, Market Garden,

Imphal–Kohima, Singapore. Both sides are playable in every one of them. Six open

scenarios as well, for learning the system without a date attached.

**Nineteen historical commanders**, each with a doctrine that changes how the operation

runs, and each one speaking a line in his own language when you pick him.

Four difficulty steps. Eleven terrain types. Fog of war and contact reports. Save and

resume mid-operation. An after-action report at the end of every operation.

**Realism mode** takes away what a real commander would not have had: no enemy health

bars, no combat forecast, no range markers. Enemy units you have lost sight of stay on

the map where you last saw them, and fade as the report ages.

## Where it is now

This is my first release, so I would rather tell you what is missing than let you find

out. The largest operations are still on paper. There are six unit types, and I am

still working out how to add more without turning the screen into noise.

After this I want the bigger battles of the Second World War, and then Korea and

Vietnam.