Questions

What does it cost to play, and what is the monthly budget?

The game carries no key to a language model. Your live commanders come through a small service of ours that holds the key, checks that Steam vouches for your copy, and keeps a monthly budget for your account; the radio pad shows the month’s standing beside the battle’s. The budget is a soft cap: the commanders you address in one transmission are called together, so a battle can overshoot it by at most one reply per commander addressed. When the month’s budget is spent, the pad says so once and the commanders answer in the scripted voice until the month resets. Nothing is refused. Nothing on the net is retried: a reply that fails costs that one reply, and the next is tried. The one exception is in camp, where a man whose answer comes back malformed is asked once more if the budget allows, and both calls are billed.

Can I play offline?

Yes. With --model scripted the commanders and your own crew give canned replies, and no call leaves the machine. The campaign, the camp, the field order, the map and the after-action report never needed a key: all of them are written by code. A recorded battle can also be replayed offline from its session log with --model recorded.

Where are my saves, and can I move them?

In the app, Start a campaign on the home screen opens the bundled Tunisia campaign in the one campaign slot, which lives in the app’s own user-data directory under campaigns/; Continue a campaign reopens it, and starting again asks first before the slot is abandoned. A campaign day writes its record beside the campaign’s save, and the camp opens the day’s report from there. A skirmish is never saved. A battle opened directly with --scenario writes its record to the app’s user-data directory. From the terminal, or when the app is launched with --campaign naming a file, a campaign lives in the file you name with --save, beside the campaign file without it, and a leading ~ is your home directory on Windows too; to move such a campaign, move its save file and name the new path with --save. When Tunisia continues into Italy, Italy’s save goes where Tunisia’s went.

What does --seed do, and why does resuming a campaign with a different seed fight the same battles?

A campaign started from the home screen draws its own seed, and a skirmish takes the one on its form; --seed is for a campaign or a battle launched from the terminal or by file. Either way the seed is written into the save and fixes every roll the campaign will ever make. Resuming it, with a different --seed or none at all, fights the same battles on the same days with the same men, because everything the campaign rolls comes from the seed it was started with; a new seed needs a new campaign. For a single battle, the same scenario and the same seed give the same dice, and only your orders differ.

What leaves my machine?

A commander call carries your Steam ticket, the game’s version, and the call itself: which kind of call, which tank, the two prompt blocks, the messages, and the shape and limits of the answer wanted. Our service checks the ticket with Steam, forwards the call to Anthropic with nothing that identifies you, keeps a per-account spend ledger and one log line per call under a pseudonym, and keeps no prompt. With your own key the call goes to Anthropic directly. With the scripted commanders nothing leaves the machine. The privacy page has the whole of it.

Is anything on the map generated by a model?

No. The field order, the map sheet, the plot, the replay and the after-action report are written by code from the scenario and the record. The only words a language model writes are the ones your commanders and your crew say to you on the net, on the intercom and in camp. The simulation does not read those words either: a commander turns your transmission into one of a fixed list of intents, and the dice do the rest.

Why does the map show the enemy somewhere he is not?

Because the map shows what your men believe, not what is there. A contact is plotted where the crew that saw it think it is, and a first look at long range by a green crew is wrong about both what it is and where. A report over the net copies the sender’s belief, errors and all, and plots it where he said it was, without correcting what your own crew already hold. A contact nobody has confirmed goes grey and stays where it was last seen. The truth is recorded and shown to you after the battle, over the same plot, so you can see exactly how wrong you were.

In the Reference: §1.4, §4.3, §4.5, §11.4

Why won't a commander do what I said?

Three reasons, and he tells you which. It may be impossible: a move on a thrown track, an attack on a contact his tank has never seen, a grid off the sheet, a shell he has none of. It may be unclear: a cautious man asks back rather than guess, and an aggressive one guesses and tells you afterwards. Or he may not trust you enough to take the risk: a commander whose trust in you has gone and whose nerve is nearly spent will decline a risky order as a matter of temperament, and that is written down as what it is. The Handbook’s chapter on orders lists everything a tank can be asked to do.

In the Reference: §2.1, §2.2, §9.8

Can I talk to my own crew?

Yes, on the intercom rather than the net. Address them as One or by seat, Gunner, that tank, AP, and they answer in a few words. An order to tank one is taken exactly as given, with no interpretation, because there is nobody between you and the gun. Your crew keep a list of the things they have seen and the handles they gave them, so that tank means something to your gunner before it means anything to the platoon.

In the Reference: §2.3

What happens when a commander is killed?

In the battle, it is the worst thing that can happen to his crew short of the tank brewing up, and every man in it takes it hard; a tank with two seats empty is knocked out. In a campaign, the seat is empty the next morning and the tank fights uncommanded until you fill it. You have three answers: promote one of his own crew, who keeps his skill, his steadiness and his trust in you; bring a man over from another crew, at a cost to the crew that receives him; or leave the seat to wait for the depot, which sends a stranger who knows nobody. The man you promote will come to see you that evening.

In the Reference: §7.4, §9.1, §14.8, §14.6, §9.9

Does Tunisia continue into Italy, and what carries over?

Yes. When the Tunisia campaign runs its course with you alive, the camp’s one button reads Move on, and the platoon that fought it, whoever is left and whoever arrived, sails for Anzio. The men carry: their names, their traits, their skill, their steadiness, their trust in you, their wounds healed and their fatigue gone after a year at Naples. The tanks do not: the division issues five new Shermans, each keeping its old name where the old tank was still fit. Italy can also be started from nothing, with green men in new tanks and nobody carried from Tunisia.

In the Reference: §1.7, §14.9, §10.1

What are the system requirements?

The game runs on the desktop and needs no key and no network to play: with --model scripted nothing leaves the machine, and the live commanders are the one thing a connection adds. The support page lists the platforms as they are confirmed.

Is the game on Steam?

Not yet.

Coming to Steam

Is any of this real?

The ground is real: each sheet is baked from elevation data and mapped features of the place, with the wartime names put back. The formations, the dates and the vehicles are real, and the guns and armour are from the printed references. The men are not. Every crewman is generated for your campaign, name, hometown and all, and any resemblance to a man who served is chance. The disclaimer says the rest.

In the Reference: §3.5, §8.1

How do I report a bug or get help?

The support page says how to reach us. Say what you were doing and what happened: which campaign day, or which skirmish (its sheet, mission and the seed the form showed), and the version. What to send depends on the kind of battle. A campaign day writes its record beside the campaign’s save: in the slot under the app’s user-data directory for a campaign started from the home screen, or wherever --save put it; send that record, since it carries everything the simulation knew. A battle opened directly with --scenario writes its record to the app’s user-data directory. A skirmish is never saved, so its sheet, mission and seed are what we need to fight it again. For something a commander said in a campaign, the session log beside the campaign’s save has the call.