Most common queries and some helpful answers - part II: Game mechanics-related questions

[MarcoT.]

Do I command the whole divisions, or smaller units, like a single tank?
Headquarters is a tactical-level strategy game, where you command small units: one unit does not represent an entire division, but a single tank, artillery piece, truck, or Infantry squad. You are tasked with local objectives such as capturing a crossroads, a bridge, etc. You can also use HQ skills to call for artillery or aviation support “off the map”. An example of an operation would be to capture a hill, take fortified positions, and repel the enemy's attempt to retake the hill.

Would it be a problem if I lost half of my units in one battle, but won? Would I be able to keep playing the campaign, or do I need to restart the campaign and keep all units alive?
Not at all. In Headquarters: World War II we aimed at minimizing the so-called “snowball effect” where losing a lot of units in one battle leads to all future battles being untenable and forcing the player to restart and replay the entire campaign. So, here it is different: at the end of every battle you get replacements for all lost Core units, and there are no severe penalties for losing units, apart from the fact that you cannot win a battle if you have no units left. So, your objective is to complete all primary objectives of the operation no matter what the cost. The game could be quite deadly for each individual unit - even the strongest tanks with the hero attached could die in one turn if the enemy manages to flank them or otherwise catches them out of position. So, we did not want to further penalize the player for losing units to such eventualities of war. A war is deadly, and losing units is the way things are at the forefront.

What game modes can we expect?
The game will feature 3 narrative-driven campaigns: US, UK, and German. You will go through 9 operations that have country and urban terrain, day and night operations, defensive and offensive tasks, areas untouched by the war and fully devastated ones.
There will be skirmishes and multiplayer with a shared system for flexible game setup that allows you to choose: victory conditions, starting prestige, and income per turn per flag your control (allowing you to acquire new units during the game, or use only the starting force), enabling HQ skills and heroes, starting level for all units, and so on.
You can play multiplayer in both LIVE and PBEM modes with various setups of up to 4 players (1x1, 1x1x1, 1x1x1x1, 2x2, etc.). Additionally, a Hotseat mode is also available.

What is the current development progress?
The game is now in the final phase of development - all content is ready, and what we are doing right now is: finalizing all the texts, sending materials for voice overs, preparing all final texts for localization to other languages, and making various bug fixes, quality of life improvements and additional balancing.
That is why the closed Betas are very important for us right now. We have gathered tons of useful feedback from Beta 1 and plan to start Beta 2 very soon to gather additional feedback. We got a lot of requests to add voice overs for the characters during Beta 1 and we want to put everyone at ease and tell you that there will be proper English voiceovers in the final version of the game, so you should not be worried about it. This is something we are working on right now.

What types of units are there? How many units for each faction? (Factions, units, unit types, …)
Right now there are 3 playable countries planned in the game: the US, the UK, and Germany. Each faction in the game has a full set of units of various types (internally we have 23 different unit classes) - various Infantry units (including Mortar teams, AT Rocket launcher crews, Machine gunners, Flamethrower teams, Snipers, Scouts, and so on), towed and self-propelled artillery pieces (AA, AT, and field Artillery), Tanks (Light, Medium, Heavy) and other armored vehicles (APCs, Assault Guns, Armored cars). You can load Infantry units and towed artillery into trucks and APCs for fast transportation.

[h3]Will there be a Map Editor? [/h3]
Yes, there will be a user-friendly Map Editor for skirmish and multiplayer maps. Additionally, there will be a random generation tool - where you can set up various parameters and generate new maps for Skirmish and Multiplayer games. On top of that, you could combine both tools and create a randomly generated map, then open it in the Editor and make some tweaks to it before playing it with your friends.

Take a look at Headquarters: World War II here:

[mbpopolano24]

I hope we can control the cinematic camera. I love when the action zoom in and I see what the soldiers can see