1) Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Andy. I'll start with a pretty open ended question: what can players look forward to in Squad Leader that they haven't seen in other squad-based strategy games?

Hi Trent, it's a pleasure to talk to you about Squad Leader. Probably the biggest difference between Squad Leader and all of the other squad based strategy games is the addition of the emotional element to the game genre. In Squad Leader each soldier has his own unique personality with his own wants and needs. The player will need to balance the soldier's strengths and weaknesses before, during and after each mission. We have a feature in the game that we call Letters from home. The letters from home represent a life-altering event for the soldier. It could be a letter informing him of his parents' death or a letter telling the soldier that he is about to be a father. The letter will trigger emotions in the soldier. Once the soldier gets into the combat environment, he may react differently then before. The soldier may blame the enemy for his parents' death and go berserk or he may just sit there and do nothing. In any event, the player will need to watch the soldier more carefully.

In addition, we allow our soldiers to gain experience and get better as they fight. The more fights the soldier experiences the better he becomes. He becomes a better shot. He can do more in a given turn. This is not a new idea or concept but it is a very important one to Squad Leader.

2) One of the features in Squad Leader is the Letter from Home, which informs a soldier of some significant event that has happened back home. I've seen you mention that the letters won't simply have a "good" or "bad" effect on a soldier, but more of a mixture of the two. Could you elaborate on that?

Sure, it is possible that a letter, perhaps telling the soldier that he will be a father has just arrived.

The soldier may 'think' "hey, I want to get home in one piece so I can see my son/daughter." So the soldier plays it careful for the next few missions. He doesn't want to do any of the really dangerous things anymore. Then again the soldier may 'think' "So what, I'm going to be a father. Well half the men in my platoon are fathers. Am I going to let one of them go home in a box because I shirked my responsibilities? Hell no!" The soldier will behave normally or maybe even a bit heroic at times. He wants to make sure that his son/daughter can grow up in a better world because of his actions and deeds.

3) 3 nations will be represented in Squad Leader: America, Britain, and Germany. What are the main differences between the nationalities? Will the letters from home be different for each side (for example, will a British soldier receive word his family was killed in a blitzkrieg)?

The main differences are the soldiers and equipment. In the game, the German soldiers speak German. The British soldiers will speak in the Queens English. We do have a subtitle feature that will display what the soldiers are saying. Equipment wise, the nationalities have weapons/explosives/vehicles that were unique to them. But once the player is in battle, they can have their soldiers loot weapons from the dead and dying soldiers.

Yes, Random Games writer Keith Ferrell did a fantastic job with the letters as well as the individual character backgrounds. Letters are personalized for that nationality. I.e. American soldiers will not receive letters informing them that his parents were killed in a bombing raid over Germany.

4) What are some of the special classes, and how do they effect gameplay? Is Joe Smith a sniper just because he has a sniper rifle, or does he need to meet some set of requirements?

We have platoon leaders, assistant platoon leaders, radio operators, medics, snipers and engineers.

Platoon Leaders usually have your best leadership skills. They are able to rally troops and generally inspire them during battle. They have a large command radius that will give morale and movement bonuses to any soldier within that radius.

Assistant Platoon leaders are usually your second best leader. They share the same skill set as platoon leaders.

Radio Operators are specialists that can call in artillery support. Artillery in the game is very important; it can change the flow of a mission in seconds. Lose your radio operator in a mission and you lose the ability to call in artillery support.

Medics are, in my opinion, the most valuable soldiers on the field. They can stop soldiers from bleeding to death once they are shot. In Squad Leader, when a soldier is shot, several different things can happen.

A. the soldier is killed outright. The medic really can't help a dead soldier.
B. the soldier is lightly wounded. The soldier merely received a flesh wound from the shot.
C. the soldier is incapacitated. At this point, the soldier will begin to bleed to death. If medical assistance is not given to the soldier, they will eventually die. The player will not know when (how many turns) the soldier has to live so time is of the essence. Incapacitated soldiers will eventually come back to your platoon. The key is that the soldier along with his skills will come back to the platoon.

Snipers are the platoons best shot. They have the highest chance to hit with their weapon.

Engineers are unique in that they can set explosive demo charges. They are the only soldiers that can set these types of charges. Demo charges are used to breech walls, spike artillery pieces...

The way the game determines who will be the medic and who will be the snipers are as follows.

The 2 soldiers with the lowest marksmanship skill are assigned to be medics.

The 2 soldiers with the highest marksmanship skill are assigned to be snipers.

5) Can you describe how crews work? From what I gather, each member of a crew has to perform some function for the weapon (mortar, machine gun, etc...) to fire. Is this correct?

Some weapons in the game work better when several soldiers work as a team. An individual soldier can operate a machine gun or fire a mortar but when the player assigns another soldier to help with the operation of the weapon, the weapon can be fired more efficiently.

This is represented in the game by having the first soldier crewed to a weapon act as the gunner. By himself, he can fire the weapon 1 maybe 2 times. The second soldier assigned to the weapon acts as the loader (machine gun) or spotter (mortar). They lend their action points to the gunner. In this way the gunner can fire 2 maybe 3 times.

6) How will the soldiers grow as they experience more combat? What kind of skills will improve, and what will remain static?

As soldiers survive encounters with the enemy, they will gain experience for what they did in combat. A soldier will gain some experience from just entering combat. They will also receive points for killing and wounding enemies, destroying tanks and vehicles as well as healing incapacitated soldiers.

Once the soldier gains enough experience points their overall experience classification will increase. I.e. they may go from a 2nd line soldier to a 1st line soldier.

Al of the stats will improve as a soldier gains experience. The soldier stats are Action Points, Marksmanship, Morale, Leadership, Strength and Initiative.

7) What steps have been taken to make the interface as user-friendly as possible? Is there a mini-map (I didn't see one in the screenshots)?

The interface was a real challenge. I wanted the player to have any and all of the game information accessible by no more then a mouse click of two. It has been my experience that if you bury important information behind screen after screen, the player will quickly get annoyed. Random Games has done an incredible job with the interface. They have divided the screen up into thirds. They made the interface fairly simple to follow once learned.

Starting from the left side of the screen, the player sees a graphic of the selected soldier and his stats. The middle of the interface contains the game utility icons like zoom and unzoom the map, show mini map, the various game options as well as enemy selection and weapon selection. The right side of the screen displays the icons for character movement, character stance, weapon fire type...

We made sure that the player can easily cycle through the seen enemies and can quickly select the next soldier via the next ally button. We also have quick select graphic bars so the player can quickly select the sniper of the medic without having to cycle through all of the soldiers to find him.

All of our icons also have hypertext linked to them. If you are not sure what an icon does, you can roll the mouse onto the icon and a text message appears telling you what the icon does.

Yes, we do have a mini map. The mini map will show the player an overview of the map with dots representing the player's soldiers/vehicles and different colored dots representing any seen enemy soldiers/vehicles.

We also have the two levels of 'map zoom out' so the player can see more of the map and the surrounding areas. There is a zoomed in view (players will play most of the time from here), a zoomed out map where the player can still see his troops and much of the surrounding (the players can play from here but the soldiers are small) and a max zoomed out view (the player can see all of the map but the soldiers are very small).

8) According to the draft of the manual I read, the player will have the option of enabling random missions during the campaign. What effect will these missions have on the campaign itself? Will random missions help the player temper his/her soldiers?

We do have an option that will allow the player to turn random mission on. If the player wants to play the campaigns with the random mission they can or if they just want to play the campaigns as they were scripted they can.

Random missions help the player gain experience for his soldiers as well as make the campaigns different and exciting.

9) Besides the campaign, Squad Leader will have stand-alone scenarios. I have some questions about how the stand-alone scenarios relate to the fact that soldiers can be improved upon with combat. For example, will I be able to keep a group of favorite soldiers that keep getting better as I win more scenarios? What happens to a soldier when he dies? Does he get thrown back into the soldier pool or is there some penalty for me?

Stand-alone missions will be a part of Squad Leader and the soldiers do gain experience from them but the experience is not applied to the soldiers. Only in campaign games will experience be applied to the soldiers.

We have 100 biographies for each nationality but the player can only have 50 platoon members at any one time. This gives the player 50 replacement soldiers. In a campaign game, when a soldier dies he is removed from the game. If replacements do not arrive between missions, the player will see an empty or black area where the soldier's portrait once was. When replacements arrive new soldiers will fill in the empty areas. A new soldier will have a small green dot on the soldier's portrait indicating to the player that he is a new addition to the platoon.

It is possible to run out of replacements. When this happens the player will need to consolidate his troops.

10) I understand a mission editor will be packaged with Squad Leader. Is this the same editor that the developers used when constructing the campaigns? How much freedom will it give fans that want to design their own missions?

Yes, a mission and campaign editor as well as a map editor will be included with Squad Leader when it ships. These are the same editors that the developer is using to developer the game.

The player will have total control and the freedom to design and make their missions. I didn't want the consumer to be forced into playing only our missions. I realize that there are people who have there own ideas and concepts of what is fun for them and they may not be the same as my ideas and concepts. So we allow them to build maps and campaigns and allow them to swap them amongst their friends.

11) Are the mission goals limited to "kill all enemies", or will the player have to achieve other objectives?

We have several different mission goals. We have everything from having the player move the soldiers from one area of the map to another to having them destroy walls or gun emplacements to eliminating a percentage of the enemy forces to capturing and holding key road junctures/key buildings.

12) Will there be a random mission generator? If so, what kind of options can the user toggle when generating a random scenario?

We do have a random mission generator included with the game. The player can toggle between numerous options including :

Region: Where the combat takes place i.e. Normandy, Belgium or the Netherlands. Each area has it's own unique map objects and building types.

Mission type: Allows the player to determine the mission type. I.e. Ambush, Assault, Convoy, Fighting Withdraw or Pursuit. Each mission type has its own objectives and goals.

Building density: Allows the player to roughly determine how many buildings appear on the map. The player can move a slider bar between few buildings to many buildings or anywhere in-between.

Tree density: Allows the player to roughly determine how many trees appear on the map. The player can move a slider bar between sparse tree coverage to dense tree coverage or anywhere in-between.

Hill density: Allows the player to roughly determine how many hills appear on the map. The player can move a slider bar between plain terrain to hilly terrain or anywhere in-between.

Hill width: Allows the player to roughly determine how wide the hills that appear on the map will be. The player can move a slider bar between narrow hills to wide hills or anywhere in-between.

Hill height: Allows the player to roughly determine how high the hills that appear on the map will be. The player can move a slider bar between small short hills to large high hills or anywhere in-between.

Mission difficulty: Allows the player to determine the general difficulty of the game. The more difficult the game, the more enemies there will be in the game. In addition to this, the more difficult the game is the higher or better grade of soldier the enemy will be.

Number of enemy vehicles: Allows the player to determine the number of enemy vehicles that will appear in the game.

Number of player squads: Allows the player to determine the number of squads that they can command/take into the game.

Number of player specialists: Allows the player to determine the number of specialist that they can command/take into the game.

Number of player vehicles: Allows the player to determine the number of vehicles that they can command/take into the game.

Player unit grades: Allows the player to determine the grade or abilities of the soldiers that they will be taking into the game. The player can select between conscript, green, 2nd line, 1st line or elite.

Map size: Allows the player to determine the size of the map that they will be playing on.

Number of artillery strikes: Allows the player to determine the number of artillery strikes that the player can call into being.

Time to target for the artillery salvos: Allows the player to determine the delay in turns before the artillery actually arrives on target.

Nationality of player 1: Allows the player to determine the nationality the human or host player's squads.

Nationality of player 2: Allows the player to determine the nationality the computer or remote player's squads.

Use alternative soldier types: Allows the player to determine if the alternative squad set is used.

In Squad Leader there are two types of British units, British Paratroopers and British Army. We also have two types of German units the standard Wehrmacht and the Grenadier.

Mission length: This is a quick select series of icons that will allow the player to quickly select between short, medium and long missions. When the player selects one of these icons, the sliders will reset to predetermined fields. I.e. short missions will reset to a small flat map with only a few soldiers and no vehicles on a side.

13) Are there any special books, movies, or games that the development team used for inspiration when designing Squad Leader?

The list is quite large but here are the ones that I can remember.

• The Big Red One
• Saving Private Ryan
• The Longest Day
• Kelly's Heroes
• The Dirty Dozen
• Patton
• A Bridge to Far book and movie
• The Eagle has Landed
• The German handbook
• Overlord
• Various Stephen E Ambrose books
• The Battle of the Bulge book and movie

14) When can gamers expect Squad Leader to appear on store shelves? Will there be a demo?

The game is due to ship in mid to late October of this year.

We are trying to get a demo done but our main focus is on the game. I really want a demo for the product but I don't want to jeopardize a Christmas release date for the game. If things go well we should have the demo ready about the same time the product hits the shelves.

15) Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. Is there anything you want to add that we didn't cover?

A) Actually I wanted to thank you for allowing me to discuss the game in such detail. We really appreciate you giving us your time and the space to talk about the game.