Idea Scope Brief — Omega War

1. Idea Assumptions Manifest (as approved)

2. Interview Log & Decisions

3. Confirmed Deliverable — research/idea-brief.md (full text)

Summary

Omega War is a browser-first 3D real-time strategy game built on Three.js, using Kenney CC0 assets as stand-in art. Setting: alternate history, Operation Unthinkable (~July 1945) — UK/Commonwealth, US, France, and re-armed German formations versus the Soviet Union and its satellite forces, Europe only.

The game is built on two equally load-bearing layers:

• Tactical layer (Company of Heroes × Broken Arrow): company-scale real-time battles with cover, suppression, and capture points. Full base building is in scope and is integrated with the deck system: the deck defines the roster a player brings to battle, while in-battle buildings, resource gathering, and unlocks gate which deck units/upgrades can actually be deployed — deliberately recreating Steel Division-style phase escalation (recon/infantry first, armor and heavy support later) through the build order.
• Strategic layer (Tom Clancy's EndWar × Wargame: Red Dragon): a persistent overall European theater war map on which the player maneuvers formation tokens — companies/battalions, air squadrons, and naval groups — EndWar/Wargame:RD-campaign style. Front lines emerge from where formations actually stand, not from abstract region flips. When opposing formations collide, the engagement is fought as a tactical battle (or auto-resolved); outcomes feed back into the map. Narrative-driven deployments (Wargame: Red Dragon style) constrain which forces are available in which sectors; divisions persist and evolve across the campaign. Aircraft and ships exist as strategic-map assets (strike, interdiction, transport, shore support) even though tactical battles stay land-focused. This layer is core to the concept — it is sequenced after the tactical vertical slice, not cut.

Meta-systems spanning both layers: deck-building founded on historically-flavored divisions (Warno), persistent unit upgrades/veterancy between battles (EndWar barracks), and per-unit weapon/variant loadouts (Broken Arrow).

Audio is in scope from the first slice at a basic level — combat SFX, UI feedback, ambient loops — with menu/campaign music and unit voice lines later.

Problem Hypothesis

• No browser-accessible game combines deck-building wargame depth (Wargame, Warno, Broken Arrow) with CoH-style tactical combat and a persistent operational campaign. The genre lives exclusively in heavyweight desktop clients.
• The Operation Unthinkable scenario is nearly untouched by major RTS titles — the genre clusters on WW2 proper and the 1980s Cold War.
• For the creator: a passion project — the problem is "the game I want to play doesn't exist."

Beneficiary Hypothesis

• Primary: the developer — passion project, no commercial pressure assumed.
• Secondary: RTS/wargame fans (Wargame/Warno/Broken Arrow/CoH communities) who want this blend in a zero-install browser game; alternate-history enthusiasts.

Product Category Guess

Single-player real-time strategy/tactics hybrid (RTS + deck-builder + operational campaign layer), browser-delivered (Three.js/WebGL), with a desktop wrapper as an accepted fallback if browser performance falls short.

Value Wedge

1. Setting: Operation Unthinkable 1945–46 is an unmined premise with strong faction flavor (including exile formations fighting their occupied homelands).
2. Mechanical hybrid: deck-as-roster fused with base building — buildings and resources unlock deck phases in-battle. Neither CoH (bases, no deck) nor Wargame/Broken Arrow (deck, no bases) does this; it reproduces Steel Division's phase pacing through player-driven build order instead of a timer.
3. Distribution: zero-install browser delivery in a genre that has none.
4. Persistence: divisions/decks evolve across the campaign war map via EndWar-style upgrades and Broken Arrow-style loadout variants.

Constraints

• Solo developer; greenfield repo (no code yet).
• Platform: browser-first (Three.js/WebGL) — instancing/LOD required; unit ceiling per battle to be proven. If web performance proves insufficient, desktop distribution is an acceptable fallback — an Electron/Tauri wrapper, up to a game-optimized Chromium build if needed. The Three.js codebase carries over either way, so this is a packaging decision, not a rewrite.
• Art: Kenney CC0 packs are stand-ins sourced from the user's GitHub asset mirrors (GeorgeQLe/assets-3d-city, assets-3d-nature, etc. — manifest.json per repo, CC0-1.0). No WW2-specific Kenney packs exist; vehicles/infantry are proxied from generic kits until a later art pass.
• Audio: in scope from the first slice at a basic level — combat SFX, UI feedback, ambient loops — via Web Audio (Three.js audio). Menu/campaign music and unit voice lines come later. Stand-in audio sourced from assets-music, assets-sfx-combat, assets-sfx-ambient, assets-sfx-ui, assets-sfx-voice.
• Single-player architecture first; design the simulation cleanly (ideally deterministic) so multiplayer could be added later, but build no netcode now.
• Theater: Europe only.

Non-Goals

• Multiplayer/netcode (v1).
• Pacific/Asia theaters.
• Naval combat as a core tactical layer — warships and aircraft exist as maneuverable assets on the strategic war map (transport, interdiction, strike, shore support, abstracted or auto-resolved), but ship-to-ship tactical battles are not in v1.
• Photorealism or milsim fidelity — stylized low-poly is the aesthetic.
• 1:1 historical simulation — "historically inspired," not accurate.
• Mobile/touch support; monetization.

Assumptions And Unknowns

Decided in interview/approval:

• Central Europe: historical split — satellites on the USSR side, exile formations on the Allied side; contested swing-state events as a later campaign feature.
• Single-player first.
• First vertical slice: one tactical battle (deck deployment, capture points, cover/suppression, base building, basic AI). The European war map / campaign layer is the second major milestone after the slice proves the tactical loop.
• Base building: full CoH-style, integrated with deck unlocks (Steel Division-like phases).
• Art and audio: Kenney/CC0 stand-ins from the user's asset repos.
• Platform: browser-first with desktop fallback accepted.

Open / riskiest:

• Fun hypothesis untested — the tactical slice exists to test it.
• The base-building × deck integration is novel and needs a real design spec (resource model, building tree, phase-gating rules).
• Browser performance ceiling unknown (units on screen, pathfinding cost); the perf spike decides browser-only vs desktop-wrapper distribution.
• Faction pair for the first slice (suggest UK/Commonwealth vs USSR).
• Campaign-layer (European war map) scope is large and needs its own design pass: map representation (regions vs provinces vs node graph vs free movement), formation-token granularity (company vs battalion), real-time vs turn-based map pacing, collision→battle handoff and auto-resolve rules, air/naval mission mechanics, narrative deployment events, persistence/upgrade economy.

ICP Readiness

Concept-level ambiguity is resolved; the idea is ready for /icp if a commercial path is ever pursued. Inputs for /icp: the secondary beneficiary hypotheses (desktop wargame communities, browser-game players, alt-history fans) and the browser-distribution wedge. As a stated passion project with the developer as primary beneficiary, formal ICP work may reasonably be skipped in favor of design/prototyping. Assumption to test first: the fun of the hybrid base/deck tactical loop — by building it. No marketplace/multi-sided structure — single-sided product.

Next Steps

Primary: /pack recommend — personal game project; per the user, a game-development-specific skills pack exists and is the expected routing target.

Other options: design spec for the tactical vertical slice (combat model, deck/phase rules, base-building × deck integration); Three.js performance spike (instanced units + pathfinding — decides browser vs desktop wrapper); unit/division data schema draft (factions, divisions, units, loadouts — shared by the tactical layer, deck builder, and campaign war map).

4. Evidence & Confidence Register

Source coverage gaps (still live): no web research; no performance measurements; no competitive scan of browser RTS titles. Options considered and not chosen are listed in §2 and in research/idea-brief-interview.md.

5. Gate Decisions (read-only approval record)

6. What Changed During Confirmation

• Platform: browser-only → browser-first with desktop fallback (Electron/Tauri wrapper up to game-optimized Chromium). From manifest-gate notes.
• Next-step note: game-development skills pack recorded as the expected /pack recommend target. From route-gate notes.
• Audio scope added: SFX/ambient from slice 1, music/voice later, sourced from assets-music + assets-sfx-*. Resolves the coverage-checkpoint gap.
• Strategic layer sharpened: formation-token maneuver (companies/battalions, air squadrons, naval groups) on the war map; emergent front lines; collision→battle handoff; air/naval as strategic assets; naval non-goal narrowed to tactical naval combat only. From user clarification during finalization.

7. Final Compiled YAML (as received, 2026-06-10)

alignment_page: alignment/idea-scope-brief-omega-war.html
approval_status: ready-for-agent-review
answers:
  - section: "Idea Assumptions Manifest"
    gate_type: "assumptions/confidence"
    status: answered
    answer: "Mostly accurate — apply my notes"
    notes: "I'm willing to explore desktop if web can't handle the perf. Heck, we can also build a video game optimized chromium if needed."
  - section: "Evidence and Confidence Register"
    gate_type: "evidence coverage"
    status: answered
    answer: "Sufficient for idea stage"
  - section: "Concept Identity and Slug"
    gate_type: "candidate/verdict decisions"
    status: answered
    answer: "Keep Omega War / omega-war"
  - section: "Scope and Non-Goals"
    gate_type: "scope/non-goals"
    status: answered
    answer: "Approve scope and non-goals"
  - section: "ICP Readiness and Post-Approval Route"
    gate_type: "post-approval route"
    status: answered
    answer: "/pack recommend"
    notes: "we have a game development specific skills pack"
  - section: "Artifact Destination and Proposed File Changes"
    gate_type: "artifact destination"
    status: answered
    answer: "Approve flat-mode destinations and change set"
    target_path: "research/idea-brief.md"
  - section: "Coverage Checkpoint"
    gate_type: "coverage checkpoint"
    status: answered
    answer: "Something missing — see notes"
# Post-approval resolutions (recorded by agent):
#   coverage gap = audio/music scope (user follow-up answer)
#   strategic-layer clarification = formation-token maneuver incl. aircraft/ships