The title Officers is special as the developers want to emphasize the role of commanders in the game. Specifically, there will be one officer whom you control. He will start off as a platoon leader. Gradually, with experience, he will be given more troops to command and matching objectives to undertake. The units under your command will not be your typical fodder. For starters, you won’t have direct control over each individual soldier. Instead, you will have to rely on setting an objective and letting the chain of command pass the appropriate orders down to get the result you desired. All armies in the game will have their respective hierarchical structures and chain of command systems. These representations, the developers promise, will be authentic.

Another difference with Officers is the way missions are constructed. What Officers is aiming to create is a fluid battleground set in World War II. Depending on the outcome of specific battles, your objectives will be generated from there. For example, the developers raised a situation where you’re told to take a point. Upon failure, you will be ordered by headquarters to pull back. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the game is over, as it is with the linear campaigns of other strategy titles. Instead, you may be assigned with more reinforcements to partake in the same mission or you will be doing some ancillary mission that supports the ongoing effort. Think of the real time battles in Medieval: Total War.

Many real time strategy titles are beginning to become more complex. Officers is no different. In lieu of a construction and resource model, Officers will be relying on traditional supply lines and reinforcements. These are doled out by the game’s artificial intelligence. Loss of supply lines will result in less effective soldiers on the field to the brink where lack of ammunition or food will result in total capitulation of the soldiers. This can be used as a tactical trick to eliminate the enemy. But Officers will allow for alternate ways of restocking: hunting indigenous animals for food or capturing an enemy warehouse will help. Indeed, this was one of the plans for the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge.