FULL REVIEW: Combined Arms Operations Series (CAOS)

[Two Clicks]

IN A WORD: LACKING

IN A NUTSHELL:

WHAT TO EXPECT: World War II wargame. Historical and ahistorical battle simulations. Board-game aesthetic. Complete scenario customisation. Turn-based strategy. WEGO turn-based tactical combat. Scenario and force composition customisation. NATO counter representation used for units. Hexagonal-grid maps. Many military themed mechanics. Basic graphics. Good varied atmospheric soundtrack. Unpolished GUI. Made for modding. Single-player. Online co-op and versus modes.
ACHIEVEMENTS: MOSTLY ORGANIC. A FEW REQUIRED REPEATED PLAYS. A FEW MANSTEIN LEVEL TASKS.
STATUS: COMPLETE. ROADMAP OF ADDITIONAL CONTENT IN FORUM.
WHEN TO BUY: PURELY FOR GROGNARDS WHO CAN SEE PAST ITS STATE

More info below....

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2633684565

THE LOWDOWN:

Combined Arms Operations Series (CAOS) is a military sandbox wargame, with a digital board-game adaptation design and gameplay style. It delivers an operational level experience of historical (& hypothetical) battles from the World War II era. Instead of a mission-linked campaign, individual one-off encounters are configured and fought against the AI or another human.

The game's most impactful feature is the ability to completely customise the session to the player's desire. From the choice of map; to the factions involved, and the year in the conflict that the Orders of Battle (OoB) with be determined from; to the objective type, number of turns and scale of battle. Among others minor refinements. Granting players the freedom to fight virtually any battle that took or could have taken place during the era.

In addition battlegroups of all shapes and sizes can be created and combined beyond any reasonable desire. There are six factions to choose from depending on the chosen year of the conflict. Force compositions are compiled using requisition points. With over 4000 unique units and 580 historically accurate army, corps and division formations to choose from. Air formations are also included to provide aerial missions in the fight for air superiority. Units are represented with NATO counters. Requisitioned units can be over-strengthened and their training levels raised or reduced to determine their starting ability. Individual formations can also be deconstructed to the brigade and regiment levels, and reformed as per individual preferences.

Combat mechanics are modelled on the doctrine of Combined Arms. Consisting of a plethora of military mechanics that are comprehensive and consistent with most wargames. Both sides are given orders and then turns executed using WEGO synchronous resolution. For coordinating actions turns are split into nine automated phases called Impulses. As with other wargames sessions are played on a selection of hexagonal-grid maps. Some of which are historical, others fictional. Hexes have stacking limits. Units must be in range of a supply source to fight at their best. Replacements for infantry, armour and artillery can also be purchased using requisition points and allocated to damaged formations. Three types of fire mission can be called in from artillery sources.

At this time there is only a basic level of content. A published Roadmap details planned, forthcoming additions in the coming months. It has very basic visuals and graphical components. Using a GUI that is barebones, unpolished with some minor glitches and inconsistencies. A starting tutorial provides some instructional benefits for new players. There is a twenty (odd) page game manual that provides more thorough information about the game. While a map editor is being worked upon. There are also a number of reported issues mainly to do with fuzzy visuals when playing on higher resolutions for some displays. The OoBs have a few known omissions in their dataset.

In terms of military strategy and tactics COAS promises the ability to conduct; armoured spearheads, overrun and/or outflank attacks. With the express goal of creating deep encirclements. To suppress enemies with artillery and aerial bombardments. Alternatively to weaken opponents by infiltrating enemy lines, to cut off supply. To destroy bridges or build forts and minefields when defending.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2633687488

THE GOOD:

+ Aims to provide a very open sandbox experience for World War II operational engagements.
+ Complete scenario customisation: 1x Scenario type; 14x historical/fictional maps; be the attacker or defender; 3x objective types or set to random; choose player and/or AI nations from 6x factions or set to random; turn length; 10, 15, 20; Taskforce size; Division, Taskforce, Corps, Corps+, Army or set to random; whether to reinforce.
+ Choose from an extensive OoB of just under 4500 historical units from 580 divisions across, various military branches including air formations; of German, Soviet, American, British, Italian, and French armed forces from 1939-1945.
+ Complete army customisation. Spend recruitment points to build up the forces to command from those available in the year selected.
Breakdown and reconstitute individual units to preferred parent formations for even great control.Purchase and allocates 3x types of replacement (armour, infantry, artillery).

THE BAD:

- Lacks some focus. For newcomers could have done with pre-made scenarios to go and play. Or ability to save configurations for ease of play. To be shared by players.
- The OoB database look-ups function can take several seconds to populate in menus.
- Definitely requires reading of the manual.
- The darnedest thing. While the game is playing I cannot access its library page in the Steam Client. A real and reproducible issue. One that does not apply to every other game in my library. Its infuriating.
- There are issues with with some displays being fuzzy on the highest resolutions (over 1920x1080).
- Default mouse sensitivity isn't perfect. But can be smoothed through the settings options.
- Some errors in the OoB database, with units having 0 stats.

AND THE REST:

* Basic accessibility with a tutorial and [for a wargame] average sized game manual.
* The ability to over-strength units. Given them additional training or send in replacements after combat.
* Made for single-player, synchronous versus or 2 player co-op.
* Simultaneous (WEGO) turn resolution that lacks accessibility in the combat results. Hidden away in sub-screens.
* Replayability mostly comes from the customisation of the scenario. Specifically: Map, Objective type, AI nation, OoB year and scale of battle. Added to by the alternating nature of map objectives with each new game. Protect a town in the current game. Protect another on the same map the next.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2633712083

ANALYSIS:

CAOS turned out to be a peculiar experience. A promising concept providing an incredible amount of choice. Essentially a sandbox designed to allow one-off scenarios to be played with whatever troops players desire. Very much like traditional table-top wargames with miniatures. Amplified with the ability to choose; the map of where to fight and the extraordinary range of battlegroups that could be compiled. With a combat model that possessed enough depth to allow for the fair development of military strategies. Something that should be applauded. However many of its aspects were lacking and would likely be unappealing to the average gamer. With such a functional delivery, its more likely destined to be a draw only for seasoned wargamers. A game that requires alot more polish and the need for some refinement if novice or average wargamers are to be encouraged.

Scenario customisation was a highlight. With enough factors to allow for the considerable configuration of scenarios. There were more than enough units to choose from and enough factions to vary the experience. Yet some options were not so well populated. Scenario types, objectives and maps need to be increased. With only one level of AI difficulty the game's difficulty is sure to stunt the enthusiasm of less experienced players wanting to try this game out. So perhaps a multi-level AI should also be added for that purpose alone. Maybe even to give factions their own realistic behaviour, instead of a single 'expert' one. It would certainly add some much needed flavour to battles.

The range of maps was fair but given the game's scope there really needs to be alot more of them. As desired by the playerbase, more should be historical in nature. Now while some are already earmarked as dlc by the dev team, the likely release of a map editor may trigger modders to become more active. Whatever the case the amount of potential maps possible given the scale of the conflict is immense. If even a portion of these can be added, then this is sure to add to CAOS's value. Though it remains to be seen if maps made by modders will be of a good enough quality to be useful.

One issue with maps was with their scale. Since they are a one size fits all deal. Choosing to play with anything smaller than a Corps+ level battlegroup, caused battle-lines to become ineffectual. Using division (and even some corps sized forces) proved impossible to create the front-lines necessary to protect rear-echelon formations. HQs, artillery and the like almost always were exposed to flanking or infiltration. As enemy forces just poured through my battlelines and ignored my combat troops. Something the AI was programmed to do and do well. When the discrepancy between map-scale and battlegroup size combined with the nature of objectives, gameplay ceased to work in an enjoyable manner in a lot of these sessions. Perhaps the game needs appropriately sized maps for specific taskforce sizes!?

Another possible issue with the scale of the maps (or rather their deployment zones) was the close proximity of units at the start of battles. This gave little or no possibility of taking advantage of the fog of war. Or for the necessity to conduct reconnaissance. Especially as a defender.

The customisation of historical forces by reorganising units and merging them into tailored battlegroups, was a big plus. Choosing from extensive OoBs of six major nations from the war, numbering in the 1000s was mind-boggling. But will be much valued by experienced wargamers. Selecting from such a list was fairly easy to achieve. The only noticeable issue being the management of those units once placed in the player's OoB. The visual organisation of counters should be changed into a vertical list [on the right side of screen] with tick-boxes, instead of being clumped together. To allow for sets of counters to be chosen and placed onto the map in a more efficient manner. The current implementation seems basic, messy and difficult to achieve given that the positioning of mouse pointer and button depress do not always register properly.

The ability to deconstruct existing formations and reconstruct them was another positive. Its execution however needed more work. Performing this for a division sized unit was already effort-heavy but for an army sized force, it would prove laborious. With better automation to make unit management less repetitive, it would also likely help with the problem of map scaling. By allowing players to basically triple their counters and create the depth of frontlines required to thwart enemy attacks.

Combat the fulcrum of gameplay, played pretty much as expected. Reminiscent of early wargames. Functional but with depth. Incorporating a fair number of military concepts to provide the platform for a good range of strategies. Though at times this looked visually messy. Supply lines, range, over-strengthening, the assignment of replacements, elite training, air superiority and co-ordinated attacks; all the basic elements required to simulated combined arms warfare were abstracted. The store page mentioned the possibility of implementing infiltrational combat but I have still to experience this. There was no mention of attritional warfare.

A missed opportunity involving combat was that it was not shown in real-time, impulse by impulse. Instead a loading screen was displayed and a replay feature would be used to view the action after it had been conducted. The replay function proved adequate to demonstrate the workings of the previous turn but, this substantially broke immersion. It would be a far better and more elegant solution to simply show the game engine doing its thing one impulse at a time. Allowing players to inspect the battlefield after the turn had been completed. Since the replay facility is exactly what should be shown once the turn is initiated, I cannot fathom any reason why this was not implemented to begin with.

Due to a number of idiosyncrasies with the GUI and the game mechanics, the game's accessibility proved to be about the same as other early wargames have tended to be. Its lack of polish did not help. So players will come to rely on playing through the decent tutorial and reading a fairly short game manual. 'Short' - given the usual length and depth of wargame manuals. These may not be vital to get acquainted with the GUI but are requisites to actually play the game with some gusto. Even for this ol' warthog.

Perhaps its biggest shortfall is in the way it presents information to the player. A common issue with games from this genre, such as CAOS. With alot of this hidden away in sub-screens, activated by different buttons. A more organic approach would have been preferable. With an automated representation after the battle. Perhaps in a single pop-up window with a series of bordered datasets or with the ability to call up sub-screen with specific information through a collection of ordered buttons. As it remains, this part of the game will take some effort to understand and comprehend.

Visually CAOS had the look of the hexagonal-tiled maps from wargames of old. Ones I fondly remember playing many years ago. Visually these were and are, very plain and functional but to an old war-dog like myself make me feel right at home. The GUI possesses a very basic look and feels clunky to use. Unsurprising in this genre and for implementations by small teams. There are a lack of legends to explain visual objects. For maps and more importantly for the NATO counters. It would a nice touch to incorporate such mechanisms so that old wardogs with bad memory and greenhorns need not search out what a unit symbol signifies. Judging by some posts anyone not a fan of NATO counters should be able find a mod to replace these. Maybe in the future.

The soundtrack is of good quality. Housing a combination of tunes that regular wargamers should be familiar with. From the rousing tones of marching bands to classically inspired tracks, overall they provide a very militaristic feel. Totally war-like in its forms. Though at times I'd swear there's more than a hint of Starwars in at least one track.

Taking a step back from what has been implemented there were a few features that could be added to increase CAOS's promise. Night and day turn cycles could help slow the pace of the combat down. Adding another dimension for attacking sides to ponder when at a disadvantage. Requisition points could be another element of customisation. Allowing players to play around with the customary 3:1 attack:defence ratio. Additional special hexes on the map would add more objectives to attack or defend; Fuel dumps, runways ports. Perhaps a point scoring system could be another way to define victories. Instead of grabbing a hex by force. Or protecting it. Reducing the enemy size while limited the player's own casualties. My pet would-like-to-haves would be to see Leaders and a Table of Equipment (ToE) somehow implemented. With the former likely to be easier than the latter.

Scanning the forum shows the dev. team involving in taking and processing feedback from players. Already posted is the option to increase/reduce AI starting points at the beginning of the game. Perhaps this will allow for reconnaissance to become more important. There are issues with mixed battlegroups not being able to conduct fire missions. Requiring artillery to split out and reformed. All in all CAOS feels like a game that should very much be in Early Access.

VERDICT:

CAOS looked to provide players with a completely flexible WWII battle simulator. Possessing an impressive array of scenario customisation. Allowing players the freedom to define their own battle formations, choose from 1000s of units and eventually play on dozens of historical maps. Delivering an impressive sandbox where players could play each other or with (or without) another human, against a competent AI.

As it stands right now its undoubtable promise isn't quite to a level the average [war]gamer would be happy to pay full price for or even play. It needs a number of refinements, especially in terms of accessibility and alot of polish with regard to the GUI and immersing the player by displaying the combat as the turn is calculated. Rather than as a replay of events. More content and map editor would make this a game I would be happy to recommend for a wider audience.

Currently CAOS remains LACKING in its delivery. Therefore I would suggest unless you are a hardcore gamer or a grognard, this game should be watched to see how its development proceeds.

Thank you for reading. | Follow my curator here. | Key provided by Turn-Based Tactics