OMG & You
From OMGWiki
- For a walk through of registering, installing, and using the War Control Panel see Getting Started.
- For general information on the modification see Operation Market Garden.
The OMG & You guide centers on features that are a unique part of the Operation Market Garden modification. It is divided into three sections. The first, Concepts, describes the idea and meta game behind the modification. In-Game Features covers the changes to the modification from vanilla Company of Heroes. Other Features encompasses some of the extras the modification and its community has to offer.
Contents |
Concepts
Operation Market Garden is based around a persistent war between the regular Company of Heroes factions. These include the Allies, US and British, and the Axis, Wehrmacht and Panzer Elite. Players pick from the four factions that are available in a role playing campaign that adds depth to the the titanic struggle. Alongside these War accounts OMG also offers skirmish accounts, or Fun accounts, in which you can play as any army. These do not impact the campaign, but allow players to try out different company builds, strategies, or just play a game with no strings attached.
Persistence
The persistent war is the never ending conflict between Axis and Allies. OMG war games impact this campaign and its ebb and flow. The troops players use in battle and the experience these units gain stay in their company when they survive the engagement. Additionally, players gain victory points from winning battles, which are used to further customize their accounts.
Veterancy
In OMG there are five levels of veterancy. The first three improve your unit's fighting capability. At the fourth level you can custom name your unit, and at the fifth you can add a custom skin to it. Veterancy promotes smart game play as it encourages unit conservation and careful thought about using units to their full effect.
Experience Points
Your units gain experience as they defeat enemy units on the field of battle. As a persistent modification these carry over from battle to battle and provide minor statistic increases with each level they unlock.
An experience point is a unit of measurement used in many games to quantify a unit's progression. Experience points are generally awarded for combat experience, defeating opponents, and for destroying enemy units. In OMG, units start as off as inexperienced and at a disadvantage when fighting experienced units. To counter this and aid new players OMG added rubber band systems. When a sufficient amount of experience is obtained the unit levels up unlocking new benefits. Such an event usually increases the unit's statistics, and may permit the unit to acquire new abilities or improve existing ones.
In OMG, and in most games, as the difficulty of the challenge increases, the experience rewarded for overcoming it also increases. As players gain more experience points, the amount of experience needed to gain new abilities typically increases.
Victory Points
Players get these for winning games. Victory points are the common currency and one of the main features of OMG. They are used to further customize your army in the many systems described below. A player may never gain more than 100 points.
War & Fun Companies
OMG only allows one war account per player. Having multiple War accounts negates the availability systems, damages the integrity of the persistent war, and promotes poor game play. As a result, OMG strongly enforces a one War account limit. Violator's punishments including removal of secondary accounts for the first offense, deletion of all accounts for the secondary offense, and temporary IP bans for following offenses. However, players can migrate their company to another faction and create a company from scratch. The downside to this is the loss of half the account's victory points.
If there are multiple players in your household you can hop on Teamspeak 3 and ask a developer for an IP exemption.
However, to experience all that OMG has to offer players can have up to five Fun accounts. These are not linked to the war campaign and allow players to experiment with different strategies and company builds in a no strings attached environment.
Army Customization
The primary ways players can customize their company in OMG is through doctrines and resource bonuses.
Doctrines
As in vanilla Company of Heroes you can chose doctrines to specialize your company. Each company can have its own doctrine. These are the same three doctrines per army in Company of Heroes, but each doctrine has three trees; each tree has 4 branches, and each branch has five tiers. The plan is to have players' companies constantly evolving, and getting to pick and choose from each of the five tiers available. OMG will have about 40 unlocks per doctrine with a total of about 480 to chose from across the doctrines.
The doctrine system allows a commander to specialize in a specific area of the battlefield. Unlocking doctrine abilities allows access to new units developed for the modification, abilities, and other bonuses. Each faction has three different doctrines available to them which are split into three different trees. Trees are split into a number of different columns, as well as split into five different rows or "tiers." Abilities must be unlocked in tiers, you must unlock the bottom tiers before the later tiers. These abilities are all intertwined, some with prerequisites, and allow for more varied builds and specialized companies. Each tier increases in power from the lower tiers, making it often wise to aim for a highest tier ability and base your doctrine around that.
Resource Bonuses
Resource bonuses allow you to invest in your company's resources to make it larger and more powerful. However, their only cost isn't Victory Points. Each investment in one resource currently subtracts a small amount of the others as well.
New Units
- For guides on new units see our New Unit Guide.
Operation Market Garden features new doctrinal units for use in your company. You buy these like any other unit in the War Control Panel. OMG's new units are designed to fit custom niches and roles in your company.
Expansion Pack Units
You get these when you've bought the expansions, and you can not play with content you do not own.
Game Mode
There are three game modes in Operation Market Garden. Map Control Points or MCP and Victory Point or VP determine how your population gain or loss is calculated, and Spectator mode is for live shoutcasting of games.
Systems
Operation Market Garden has a number of other systems in place to enrich game play, reward success, and improve your overall OMG experience.
Availability
This system's purpose is to prevent spamming of units in game. It doesn't effect base units like Riflemen. Each unit has a supply pool it is drawn from, and every game it is resupplied by a unit specific amount.
Rubber Band Systems
These systems help give a boost to new players who not being familiar with the intricacies of the modification are already at a disadvantage. These systems exist to help balance new and experienced players. They exist to help provide a somewhat level playing field and positive experience. Currently they apply bonuses based on the player's leader board position to victory point and experience gain.
Please note that at no time do the rubber bands interact with each other and form a rubber band ball.
Momentum
Momentum is a system within OMG to determine who attacks and who defends in the War Campaign. Momentum exists to help the losing faction gain a footing and even the playing field by increasing the initial deployment time on the attacking faction. This buys the defenders valuable time to dig in and steel themselves for the oncoming onslaught.
Only the faction on the offensive can gain territory, which impacts the campaign progression. If the attackers win they gain as many territories as the players on their side. For example, if the game is a 4v4 you will gain 4 territories if they win, and nothing if they lose.
Changing momentum works similarly to territory gain, only factions gain or lose momentum based on the number of players in the game. Momentum is capped at 50. If the attackers momentum goes below 20 the games will turn to meeting engagements, and will stay that way until either the defender causes the attackers momentum to drop to 0 to turning the attackers into a defenders or until the attacker gets back above 20.
If the defenders bring the attackers momentum down to 0 they take the offensive and the momentum meter resets to 50.
Wear and Tear
In Operation Market Garden repairs work a little differently than Company of Heroes. In order to keep tanks and vehicles from staying on the field indefinitely, the modification utilizes a system called Wear and Tear to simulate decreases in the effectiveness of armor as repeated repairs are made to it. These diminishing returns mean that for every second a vehicle is repaired it loses a small amount from its total maximum health. See the repair rates article for units' per second repair statistics.
In-Game Features
Operation Market Garden centers on the combat that makes Company of Heroes such a great game. There is no base building and no economy to manage. It is just the player and their troops against the opponent. The concept is simple, but the game play is deep and complex. The modification aims to stay as close as possible to regular and familiar Company of Heroes game style.
Deployments
Instead of building your troops from a base there are multiple ways to deploy your units onto the map in Operation Market Garden.
Walk
Your units will walk onto the map. This is the most common way for units to enter the battlefield. They enter at your spawn point and then you can proceed to order them as you wish.
Paradrop
Only Airborne and Fallschirmjager can parachute onto the map. Units parachuting onto the map gets them into the heat of battle quickly, surprises your enemy, and can allow you to catch them off guard.
Half Track
By adding infantry, a half track, and selecting half track deployment your units will come onto the field in the vehicle. This is useful if you want to get your men into battle quickly or use Clown Cars.
Glider
British Commando players can buy this upgrade for infantry, support teams, Tetrarchs and Stuarts and they will arrive in a glider. All you have to do is select the unit and the deployment in the War Control Panel similar to half track deployment. This is useful if you want to get your men into battle quickly and catch your enemy off guard.
Spawn
Luftwaffe Panzer Elite players have a doctrine ability to allow their Fallschirmjager to deploy from buildings. This allows them to deny important building to the enemy, catch them off guard, and bring your units into combat quickly and right where you need them.
Heavy Crewed Weapons
We also have some new ideas on heavy crew served weapons like the Flak 88, 25-pounder, and Bofors. When you build it a truck arrives and constructs it. However, players have other options. They can quickly abandon the weapon, getting your crew get out of there, and leaving the weapon in place. This prevents your crew's experience from being lost. Alternatively, you can have the weapon pack up and move. However, this takes a while, and you'll have to plan ahead. By clicking the pack up button a new truck comes and the weapon packs up. Then you can move it to a new area, build the weapon, or take it off map.
Light Crewed Weapons
As on heavy crew served weapons lighter ones, mortars, machine guns, and anti tank guns can retreat in the same fashion with normal retreat, in which the crew packs up the weapon then run off the map, and fast retreat where the crew just abandons the weapon and runs off map.
Other Features
These extras reflect some of the other great things the modification has to offer.
Maps
- For map specific guides see our Map Guides.
As of December 2009, OMG supports 53 custom maps, with 38 of those being exclusive to OMG. We have an active and busy mapping community working to create fun platforms for our Company of Heroes modification.
Be sure to check out the Mapping Forums for the latest news.
Company Management
OMG features an easy to use website based launcher that will functions as your War Control Panel in which you can do everything relating to the management of your account. You can design your company's layout, create and join games, change password options, choose what map you want to play on, and has a real time chat function.
Community
OMG has an active and hard working community who are dedicated to improving OMG through communication, testing, humor, and friendliness. The modification's dedicated server in addition to handling the War Control Panel and website also supports the wiki, forums, and Teamspeak 3 server.
OMG:Wiki
The OMG:Wiki is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project centered around the Operation Market Garden modification for Company of Heroes. The OMG:Wiki is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world; anyone can edit it. Since its creation on December 29, 2008 it has grown to contain 5,652 pages, 496 articles, 3,300 files, 20,666 edits, and has 111 registered users.
The OMG:Wiki is here to help improve and expand upon players overall OMG experience by openly and clearly disseminating information related to World War Two, Company of Heroes, and Operation Market Garden.
Forums & Teamspeak 3
The website's news feed and active forum keep players up to date on the latest OMG projects and provide an outlet to talk about everything OMG. Payers can post replays of previous battles, look for feedback from other community members, critique the mod, and provide suggestions to help improve the OMG experience.
The Teamspeak 3 server is another important resource available to OMG players. It makes much easier to communicate with other community members, find and play OMG games, and talk about the latest news. If you ever have any questions you can just hop right on and ask away. We're sure that you will find someone who is able to help. Even if you don't have a microphone you can still listen and chat through text.
Operation Market Garden Shoutcasts
Tireless shoutcasters provide viewers with an OMG fix wherever they can plug into the world wide web. Several community members produce recurring series including Cadmus's The Meatshield, FatalSaint's Frontline Fatalities and In The Foxhole.
