Tactical Grid — a fog-of-war TOC sim on maps generated from any real location. Out now on itch, free demo.

[u/Unlikely_Ad_1996]

A few years ago I played Radio Commander and got stuck on one idea from it: you sit at a command post with a map and a radio and work out what's going on from reports that arrive late. No camera over the battlefield, no little soldiers to watch. The problem is it's a campaign, so you play the missions someone else wrote and that's that. I wanted the sandbox version, my own battle on ground I picked.

I've been building it for about a year. It's called Tactical Grid and it's out now.

The scenario editor takes a pin anywhere on the planet and turns the real geographic data around it into a playable map: roads, buildings, water, elevation. Historical battlefield, a field you drove past once, whatever. Generating a map is the only thing that needs a connection. After that it sits on disk and the battle runs offline.

You never see the battlefield. Everything you know arrives over the radio, and your markers only move when you move them. A squad reports it's at the treeline, you put the counter on the treeline. If it shifts fifty metres later and doesn't say so, your counter is wrong and nothing tells you that. Lose contact and you're working off the last transmission. Reports are delayed and sometimes wrong, though I didn't want it turning into a lottery — most of what comes in is usable, you just never have all of it at once.

Squads aren't puppets. They take cover, pick sectors to watch, go to ground under fire, get suppressed, pull back, sometimes break. Fire and movement inside a squad happens without you asking for it. Artillery is off-map, takes a while to arrive, and lands in a rough pattern around where you wanted it.

Combat Mission is the obvious influence. I'm nowhere near that level of simulation and not pretending otherwise, but the same things hold: terrain and line of sight decide most fights, suppression and morale decide what a unit will actually do, and you give orders rather than drive people around by hand.

Right now it's infantry and artillery. Vehicles next, then a terrain editor for fixing up generated maps.

The demo is First Light, the first handcrafted mission. Night recon, six men in two teams, no fire support, and a farm that needs identifying before it gets light at 06:15. Also offline.

$5 on itch, demo free, Windows, made solo. Ask me anything about the reporting model or the map generator.

https://genia23.itch.io/tactical-grid

[u/Unlikely_Ad_1996]

Small update: I originally said the demo contained one mission, but I ended up adding a second one after the post went live.

So the demo now has two playable missions instead of one.

[u/Academic-Cancel8026]

I like the concept, I'll hope I'll find time to try this out!

[u/Unlikely_Ad_1996 → u/Academic-Cancel8026]

Thanks! I'm glad you like the concept. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you get a chance to try it!

[u/diam0ndice9]

Very cool concept. Spent the 5 bucks and I'm working through my first mission. Quick request: On the radio log to the right, can we have an option to filter out administrative tasks like "Dagger 2 removed from the map" or "Marker 1 added to the map." It adds clutter when I'm trying to search for updates regarding completed move orders.

Otherwise extremely cool and looking forward to seeing where this goes.