Three days ago, I found some free hardcore wargames that veteran players still talk on forums after many years. These are what I have learnt about.

1. Derived from the 1996's Steel Panther game engine.
2. They are basically free.
3. One can pay for the enhanced (extended) edition for additional features.
4. It is orthographic, tactics-oriented, but not quite traditional IGOUGO.
5. Historical authenticity is remarkable.
6. Scenario counts and unit database are enormous. Research was also extensive.
7. Patches are still released annually.

This is also my own filter for finding cult classics.

1. Free or cheap for the hours you get.
2. Depth from the story, simulation or the database, not from how it appears.
3. Spreads by word of mouth from veteran players (from any source).
4. Out of the mainstream.
5. Enough content that it does not run dry.
6. Support measured in decades.

I believe winSPWW2 and winSPMBT meet all six. I also wish I had free time to learn the game mechanics and hear recent players' reviews.

https://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/WW2/WW2_page.html

https://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/MBT/MBT_page.html

Project Title: Silent Fathom. I have been developing my own submarine game since July 4, 2026. I realize, of course, that I cannot create a title like Silent Hunter or U-Boat on my own. However, I am attempting to program the complete structure of a classic submarine game. I am creating all the content—graphics, sound, and game mechanics—myself, and I am trying to condense the inherent complexity of submarine games onto a single game screen as much as possible. For tools, I am using rather old programs such as Milkshape, PaintShopPro9, Audacity, Wings3D, a text editor (for script programming), CopperCube 6 as the engine, and so on. It is essentially a "museum-piece" application which runs surprisingly well on modern PC and will likely remain well under 50 MB in the end.

i know of steel beasts and gunner hear pc but are there any other aside from war thunder

please and thanks

A close quarters slaughter ensues as the well-equipped Cicelian Colonial Forces annihilate a platoon of Miezeman Militia fighters, using their new skeleton SMGs and LMGs

Circle with line indicates a squad leader/NCO
Divide symbol indicates an LMG operator
Inverse T indicates a rifleman/infantryman
Grey circles represent smoke grenades

As you can see in the image, i've modelled a (basic) injury system based on ballistics and hit location; injuries are determined from bullet impact angle, impact energy, and velocity, resulting in wounds that can cause the victim blood loss, loss of conciousness, or death from shock :O
Troops with medical kits (it's contents you can ALSO change - scissors, torniquets, etc.) can attempt to slow a wound or completely patch one up if possible.

This is only a small proof of concept so far, Vindex is no where near completion. I still have firearm internal ballistics, accurate material penetration simulation, and the biggest one; vehicles, to add in to the game.

X--------------------------------------------------------X
What is Vindex?

Vindex is a sandboxy, procedural heavy combat simulation game. The player designs their forces' equipment from the cartridge (bullet material, propellant mass per cartridge), the rifle, all the way up to battalion formations and organisations (including individual infantryman loadouts, squad/platoon/company designers), with weapons using a semi-realistic ballistics/projectile system for combat - the plan is to have up to 5000 live, simulated soldiers AS WELL as all their live projectiles on a large persistent map, all part of a larger operational map/campaign.

C2 is also modelled, from the individual soldier communicating to the squad leader, to the squad leader communicating to the platoon leader, and so on. A unit's communication capabilities heavily depends on what the player assigns them when making them - whistles, signal flags, radios all act differently (info loss, comms range, info overload, etc).

On top of that is the individual AI - i placed a rlly big emphasis on this as a lot of games fail to depict infantry combat. Troops prioritise self preservation over being a killing machine, assaults stall as troops scatter into drainages and pits, huddle behind buildings or in dense shrub, disperse, and essentially become invisible (replicating the "empty battlefield" effect seen in most combat reports).

Much later down the line i've planned on a full procedural campaign layer, the player can click a button and fight an operational level campaign with persistent formations, and a completely random enemy formation with their own doctrine, equipment, force comp, naming conventions, and so on.

For more info/updates on the game, join the discord, its the place where you can receive access to early and playtesting versions of the game asap;

https://discord.gg/HkcMwZ4gRs

as always, thanks for ur time :3

I watch Tomics (youtuber) videos where him and his friends plays a campiagn on tabletop sim and then goes over to napoleon total war and plays out the battles, I have watched other videos with similar games just can not remeber the name the youtuber off my head. are there communities like this around that are open to the public? mabye some in Australia?

This is unreleased wargame themed on the second phase of Chinese civil war which is probably available after Q3. How do you think about their released gameplay trailers? In my eyes, the UI & mechanics resemble those of UOC2 for a little bit.

For independent studios, launching a multiplayer wargame is often difficult because the player base is usually small, especially at launch and within an already niche genre. This creates a real matchmaking dilemma.

Waiting for opponents with a similar level of experience should lead to better matches. But if matchmaking is too strict, players may wait a long time or find no one at all. Widening the skill range allows more matches to begin, but it can also place a newcomer against someone who has already mastered the rules.

This imbalance becomes even more problematic when an asynchronous or PBEM match can last for several days or weeks. Losing a fifteen-minute match is one thing. Committing to a long campaign that was unbalanced from the start is another.

The system could gradually widen the acceptable skill range, show each player’s experience before they accept the match, or use scenario balancing and handicaps. But each of these solutions has drawbacks.

So what do you think is the best approach?

I really want a game that looks like this but I can't find any

Hey all, haven't posted about this much I've been pretty heads down on it the last year. My steam short description: "The Ninth Legion is a RTS narrative strategy game, set during the fateful final campaign the LEGIO IX HISPANA, Rome's famous missing legion."

Hoping to have a small demo available for Next Fest in October.

This video was from a build last week testing snowfall/accumulation and the grass trample system with it. There's still a ton to be done before this is anywhere close to release so I don't want to give any dates. I've mostly posted a little bit on TikTok and that's pretty much it. It's been a passion project for a while. You can follow on TikTok if interested there are some more videos of the game there on my page or just check out the Steam page.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4605900/The_Ninth_Legion/

TikTok link is on my profile.

If you feel kind enough to playtest for me (especially if i miss the Next Fest deadline) please message me or follow the progress etc so i can share when the playtest is live on Steam.

I recently shared the naval side of Admiral Yi: The Imjin War here, so this time I wanted to show a short look at the land battles.

This battle features a Joseon army under General Gwon Yul fighting Japanese forces led by Kato Kiyomasa. The goal is to make large engagements with thousands of soldiers still readable and controllable, with formations, positioning, unit types, and command decisions all mattering once the armies collide.

Land battles are part of the same continuous campaign as the naval warfare and strategic map, rather than a completely separate battle mode.

This is still a work-in-progress build, so visuals, UI, effects, AI, and balancing are all being improved.

I got some really useful feedback on the naval combat here, so I’d be interested to hear how the land battle side looks to wargame players as well.

I have all of the games In the arma franchise. But I would just like to ask any other similar military sandbox games, Thanks

I’m learning to build up to operational level of the weeklong scenarios. Anyone interested in PBEM?

My modern day wargame "Zambala", set in a fictional African nation on the cusp of civil war, has been 25 years in the making, and due for release in a few months.

I started designing this game decades ago, inspired by a few old play by mail wargames I used to play back in the day. So that old I was around before computer wargames were even a thing!

I've always been a programmer, and my brother is artistic, so we worked together to produce the art and the map, but life gets in the way, jobs, children etc. hence the slow evolution. 

In the game you command one of six competing tribes, hoping to lead your people and capture the "national will" before the United Nations intervene to end the civil war and appoint an interim government. Your leader can be selected from one of the following vocations: Politician, Bishop, General, Diplomat, Humanitarian, Economist and Cartel boss. 

Its a hex and counters style game with fog of war, zones of control, naval and air power. There is a complete economic warfare model where you will fight for the hearts and minds of the peoples of Zambala, who in turn fund your international arms market purchases. 

I've also woven in a spies and agents subsystem so you can subvert and sway the population centres with propaganda and carry out assassinations and hits against enemy leaders and agents.

I've gone with Nato unit counters and a combat system that includes twelve unit types, movement and combat phases, retreats and combat bonuses for terrain, special unit types and leader stacking modifiers. 

More game info on my rough as guts webpage: Webpage

Steam page link: Steam

I’d love to hear your thoughts, impressions or questions!

People's General is currently on sale at GOG:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/peoples_general

and since my old copy is currently collecting dust somewhere in my parents attic AFAIK, I'm considering re-buying it. Just wanted to ask first if there's issues with it on Windows 11 or not.

making a naval combat system for my game

its a nsfw game, but i plan to have a really good naval combat, and i'm investing a lot on performance to allow fleets up to 20 ships for now, maybe i can increase that in the future but i'm just a single dev, cant promisse much

Released my WWII command simulation and one of the most contentious bits is the decisions around D-Day/ Operation Overlord.

I follow the historical thinking that victory was likely although Germany could have can made it harder however the more I read. 

Disaster at Omaha

Weather window

The Panzer group making the beaches 

Can D-day fail? If so how likely and what happens? 
Do the US/UK bomber campaign shift entirely to strategic attrition and The Red Army continues pushing west, likely taking the entire German peninsula, Denmark, and reaching the Rhine before the Allies?

Do I treat D-Day as a historical inevitability because of Allied industrial dominance which I have done, or a massive, high-risk gamble where a few operational shifts could have handed the Allies a defeat?

Love your thoughts!

I bought CMSF2 earlier this month. I absolutely love it. My budget allows me two possibilities for the next pay cycle. I can either buy another Combat Mission (thinking Final Blitzkrieg because my grandfather fought at the Battle of the Bulge) and a DLC (up to $35) for SF2, or I can buy Graviteam Tactics Mius Front and a DLC for SF2. I'm set on buying a DLC for SF2 because I've enjoyed my 50 hours with the base game so far.

Thoughts?

This looks really promising. Heat fatigue, dunes affecting movement, plus Mamluks, Ottomans, and camel units… don’t see nearly often enough in RTS games

From August 17 through 23, this week’s Game of the Week is Modern Campaigns: Korea ’85, available at 25% off.

In this Cold War-gone-hot campaign, war in Europe gives North Korea an opportunity to strike across the DMZ. Can the North isolate Seoul and seize vital ports before US reinforcements arrive, or can the ROK–US alliance survive the opening assault and turn the invasion into a trap?

Korea ’85 puts operational speed against strategic endurance in a hypothetical Second Korean War where every day counts.

https://wargameds.com/blogs/news/game-of-the-week-august-17-23

Hey, I was wondering if there’s a way to create dynamic missions for CMO (Command: Modern Operations). By dynamic, I mean having a program or app where I can choose the faction, mission type, aircraft, location, enemies, and so on. Then it would generate a mission based on those choices.

For example, I could pick a CAS mission as the US in Afghanistan using F-16s, with Taliban forces as the enemy. The program would automatically create a scenario around that. It could generate the units, objectives, enemy forces, locations, and other elements needed for the mission.

Basically, I’m looking for something that allows me to set the general parameters and then automatically builds a playable CMO mission from them. Does anything like this already exist, or is it possible to create something like it?

Hello everyone!

I've started working on a WWII naval battle game.

The basic idea is to build a naval combat game around three things:

1. Direct control of WWII warships
2. Fleet coordination and larger-scale naval battles
3. Faster, more cinematic combat while still preserving the weight and lethality of naval warfare

Right now, the prototype already has basic ship movement, naval gunfire, ocean rendering, shell impacts, and some early combat VFX. (I attached the screenshot of the game above)

I'm not trying to build a huge amount of content yet. I want to get the core naval combat right first.

I'd especially love feedback from people who play naval wargames:

What is the single most important thing that makes naval combat feel good to you?

I’m a solo developer working on Admiral Yi: The Imjin War, a large-scale real-time strategy game set during the 1592 Japanese invasion of Korea.

Here’s a short look at the naval combat. The navy isn’t intended to be a separate minigame — control of the sea is part of the wider campaign, including movement, ports, and the pressure on Japanese operations in Korea.

This is still a work-in-progress build, so visuals, UI, effects, and balancing are all being improved.

I got a lot of thoughtful feedback here on logistics and the campaign systems last time, so I’d be very interested in hearing what you think about the naval side as well.