British units

[LTCMTS]

Actually, I have been studying my profession for so long, and then add in my interest in military history as a passionate hobby and I remember a lot of stuff, or at least where to find it. I think my first "WW3" game was "White Star/Red Star" by SSI some 30 years ago, for which I still have the rules. I always like to check behind the rules for the data that supports the combat factors.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
Actually, I have been studying my profession for so long, and then add in my interest in military history as a passionate hobby and I remember a lot of stuff, or at least where to find it. I think my first "WW3" game was "White Star/Red Star" by SSI some 30 years ago, for which I still have the rules. I always like to check behind the rules for the data that supports the combat factors.

I have what seems like a bazillion old SPI games. They were ony $5 to $7 at the time so why not? The boxes are beginning to fall apart now. I remember that game but as "Red Star / White Star" and thought I had it, but a quick check didn't turn it up. I saw MechWar 77 again and all the later ones like BAOR and V Corps though.

I took out War in the East a week ago and pinning the maps up again to a big sheet of styrofoam to play a solitaire game. I used to do that in university when it was time for a break from the books but there was no time to go anywhere. I also seem to recall stealing computer time from the university to run statistical analysis on the loss rates but the prof caught me. Sadly WITE is just too big and I put it away again today unplayed. I need to work on FPG with every idle moment.

I used to sit down with wargames in front of me and a collection of histories in my hand and compare the two. One fed the other. Very interesting. That was back when I had time and disposable income of course!

Cheers, Rob.

[LTCMTS]

Yep, you're right, it was "Red Star/White Star". I also still have the rules and maps to "Mech War 77", "Combined Arms", the "Modern Battles" series. Somewhere around I have a couple of minatures rules. That the commercial side of the house. I've also had some experience in mil sims, with several "Warfighters" at division and corps levels and a couple of other interesting exercises. I gave up on board games for the same reason as you, they just got too big and time consuming, like "Wellington's Victory" and you just could not seem to find anywhere to put them, especially in those one room BOQs. Then a friend of mine, back around 1985, showed me "Kampfpanzer" on his ?Amiga?. After that I've been buying DOS and then Win wargames or combat sims.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
Yep, you're right, it was "Red Star/White Star". I also still have the rules and maps to "Mech War 77", "Combined Arms", the "Modern Battles" series. Somewhere around I have a couple of minatures rules. That the commercial side of the house. I've also had some experience in mil sims, with several "Warfighters" at division and corps levels and a couple of other interesting exercises. I gave up on board games for the same reason as you, they just got too big and time consuming, like "Wellington's Victory" and you just could not seem to find anywhere to put them, especially in those one room BOQs. Then a friend of mine, back around 1985, showed me "Kampfpanzer" on his ?Amiga?. After that I've been buying DOS and then Win wargames or combat sims.

Hey, another golden memory! The really early SSI games were a total revelation to me and definitely encouraged me to blow a lot of money on computers. I played Kampfpanzer on the Apple 2 series of computers and ended up writing a fair bit of my own game code because I was so inspired. That was in a version of Basic called Applesoft that took up all of 8k memory in a 48k machine! The screen graphics took up 8k too but it was rather awkwardly positioned in the upper middle of the range so you had to peek and poke memory addresses above it to get much use out of the upper 8k as I recall - brutal!

I also played Gary Grigsby's Guadalcanal Campaign for more hours than I can believe now, and was inspired to write a lot of game code on that and other naval stuff too. It was all just a hobby and a wonderful creative outlet for me.

One of the big attractions of Matrix to me was that they rescued War in Russia and War in the Pacific and did something with them again. I always wished that more had been done with the other original games, although I suppose that Steel Panthers is really what Kampfpanzer would have become anyway. Battles of Napoleon was another highly regarded one too - apparently SSI simply lost the source one day and that was that, no more game! It should have been in development and production right up until now...

It was with great regret that I threw away all my Apple games (15-20) and early IBM games on 5.25" disks (maybe 10) a couple of years ago. I kept some just for the rules and research, and all of the SimCan ones too out of sentimental value. Never thought I would be redeveloping some of the latter though! When David offered it to me, all I had to reach around to the bookshelf behind me to pull them down and see what he was talking about!

Cheers, Rob.

[LTCMTS]

You're kidding me!! I consider BoN a better simulation of musket and saber combat then anything I've seen, though John Hiller comes close. If you could take modern graphics and break the 254 character DOS limitations, BoN would be my game. The way it handled skirmishers was simple elegance. The ability to mount and dismount cavalry, the ability to change almost any feature of the database or the game parameters was fantastic. I did Mex-Am War scenarios, War of 1812 sceanrios, even AWI scenarios. Couldn't someone re-engineering the code from the game itself? Isn't it considered abandonware at this point?
I also remember GG's Warship, which was the first fairly accurate naval surface combat system in DOS. You could also build your own ships, though only with the set database. "Fighting Steel" is pretty good, especially with what NWS has done with it, but I disagree with a good section of the database and there's no way to change it for a non-coder like me.
But my absolute favorite surface warfare sim is Alan Zimm's "Action Stations". It had fairly accurate database for ships and weapons, good rules, even starshell and scout floatplanes dropping flares, like at Savo Island. The only problem was the lack of a database editor, which Zimm had promised for his future updates and the normal graphics and memory limits inherent in DOS. If there was any reason for me to learn code and software design it would be to pull apart "Action Stations" and translate it into an open architecture Win32 app. It's now considered "abandonware" so hopefully someone might do something with it one day.

[Paul Wykes]

BoN would be my game.......Isn't it considered abandonware at this point?

Hope you don`t mind me butting in with this piece of info...


www.the-underdogs.org has this game listed. Published by SSI and designed by David Landrey & Chuck Kroegel. A download of 323KB, it also has the manual.

Action stations is also on the site, with the campaign disks.

Paul

[IronManBeta]

1. BON. Matrix already has a Napoleonic battle simulator of course but have never really played it. The incredible graphics consumed 95% of the resource budget by the look of it and a don't really see how it can be any other way. Even with the best of intentions, it all ends up being very complex and difficult to do. For every player like you that loves the simplicity and purity of the old designs and is willing to stop there, there are maybe 100 that want 'Combat Mission' in their theater and era. These are the times we live in... It would be great if there was a open source community that could keep these older games alive but that sort of thing is much easier to propose than actually do. I'm not sure there are really any open source wargames that have any following right now. (Correct me if I am wrong!)

2. Flashpoint is something of an effort to keep the orginal simple game and bring it into the present state of production values without going overboard. Funny how simplicity goes out the window though when we keep adding features and new design elements on a weekly basis! Of course, I'm the biggest offender when it comes to that. Steve Newberg, the original designer, kept telling me to keep it simple - but would I listen? Noooooo.

3. Action Stations. Had it (Steve's copy actually) and wanted to play it but I never did. Forget now why not. The database seemed disappointing to me for some reason but I can't remember why either. I wanted super hard core naval architecture info for my own Pacific naval games and what I needed was hidden too deep I suppose.

I have felt for a while that this game would lend itself beautifully to multi-player internet gaming - everybody gets a ship and you recreate the Battle of Savo Island every night. You have mastery of just your own vessel and must accept the verbal / typed orders of your commander (or not) as he tries to see through the fog of war in some of these wild night battles. Thought I saw something along these lines somewhere but never followed up on it. Time is at such a premium! I had a book at one time that was basically a written transcript of the US TBS (talk between ships) chatter during that battle. What an eyeopener! The professional histories make it sound only moderately chaotic with the benefit of calm hindsight. Reading the actual transcripts of the time was absolutely hair raising! My respect for the participants went up a lot after that.

Must run, Rob

[LTCMTS]

Many USN commanders in 1942 and 1943 considered TBS a detractor in their AARs. Open net radio comms lend themselves to undisciplined traffic which only further confuse the issue, especially when your TG commander picks the wrong ship to be on (ie. San Fransisco instead of Helena (?) with SG and SC).
Actually the "Action Stations" database is quite accurate. The handling of underwater damage, however, was Zimm's secret, so it's easier to work with FS in that area, along with the way FS handles the impact of light/automatic weapons on close range surface combat (raking the other guys superstructure with 20mm, 1.1" and 40mm). Task Force 1942 was a good try at putting the player on the bridge and having him make decisions based on what he could see and what he was getting as far as contact reports and graphic depictions (ie. staff annotations on charts).
Austerlitz is a good game in that it does try to simulate the pace and span on C2 in pre-computer/radio warfare. In John Hiller's "Battleground" and Sid Meyers' games, the player can hop around giving orders to individual units all over the battlefield. This works for turn-based games but not realtime, nor is it historically realistic. I prefer the C2 option for the "Battleground" games, giving orders to my subordinate brigade commanders, though as an Army commander, even that's unrealistic. Even Wellington couldn't be everywhere at once. Basically in a realtime tactical sim for this period, brigade is as high as you can go and retain personal control over the operational units. Anything above that requires C2 decision trees. The best way to do it would be to provide historically accurate AI commanders and the player provide a mission order at the beginning of the battle, as Napoleon would do through Berthier and then monitor the battle, intervene where possible and feed in the OMG or the reserves as necessary. With multiple players, add in time delay for orders transmission and the FOW, as the computer randomly decides in certain tactical/operational situations to not deliver orders or reports between players and you might produce a historically accurate, yet involving game/sim. I believe one of the fault points for Lee at Gettysburg was the minimal size of his staff, leading to lack of information on unit readiness and availability and the failure to both transmit information and orders and provide liaison to his corps commanders.
As far as complexity, the aim of any sim is to replicate the experience of command in war at the time and period chosen, so that the player can experience the trials, tribulations and exhiliration of command that Wellington or Napoleon, Grant or Lee experienced. If your designing a game then "entertainment" becomes the objective. Some people just want to shoot things. For me, a sim should provide a means of gaining insight into why things happened as they did and the alternatives that existed. The other objective is to build the complexity into the system, not the interface, so that the player is not overwehlmed with choices and decisions more appropriately handled by a staff or the system. If a player designates a division as a main effort, his "staff" should plan the action and present him with a series of COAs for execution as a staff would do in real life. A player shouldn't have to cycle through units for readiness indicators. That's what his staff is for. Harpoon does a pretty good job at this.
Any, as Clausewitz said "In war, all things are simple, but the simplest things are the most difficult"

[Black Cat]

Actually SSI released the code to Dave Landry ( the designer/programer ) and he was, at least 5 or so years ago, selling the Game along with new Scenario Disks.

That has stopped and as far as I know he has dropped out of the Scene.

I would concur that BON and Action Stations have yet to be surpassed as serious wargames that were also accessable and fun.

[LTCMTS]

I've never played the Can Sim games. Is there a restriction on the Soviet player's freedom of action? The Soviets "believed" that because of their inately superior Russian mentality, allied with "Leninist-Marxist" political doctrine and the inspiration of the Party, that they had created a unique "Soviet" method of war, in which tactics, operational art and strategy had been reduced to scientific "norms" which provided the correct answer/response to any military problem. The result, along with the centralized, top down driven management viewpoint of the Communist system was a "templated", "stereotyped tactical training environment which left the platoon, company and battalion leaders with little (more likely no) initiative in generating inovative response to situations. They were expected to execute their orders in the required "norm" as determined by the scientific result of military equations. Not that their training provided them any basis for developing initiative and innovation. The commander of Soviet Ground Forces complained in 1990 that hardly any company commanders could bring their units on line from column of march at a recent exercise in Western Russia. Only at regimental level did some flexibility in orders execution began to appear. Is this replicated in the game/sim, as far as restrictions on response time and tactical formations?
Not that I remember us company grade officers back in the early eighties getting much lee-way in a "Zero defects" environment in the US Army from older officers who were supposed to be our mentors, not careerists climbing over our sacrificed careers. I can still remember 50 page battalion 5 part mission orders, nothing like the "Auftragstaktik" our German allies used and which we admired, though things got better as the reforms GEN Starry and Depuy kicked in. I'd put the level of tactical and operational competence as the Bundesheer first, followed by the Brits and Canadians, the US and French tied in third, but with the Dutch a close fourth, followed by the Belgians and then the Danes. The best of the Soviets would equal the Belgians, grading down from there, with the best Polish, Czech and Volksarmee leaders at Dutch level and then grading down. The Hungarians would equal the best Soviets.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by Black Cat
Actually SSI released the code to Dave Landry ( the designer/programer ) and he was, at least 5 or so years ago, selling the Game along with new Scenario Disks.

That has stopped and as far as I know he has dropped out of the Scene.

I would concur that BON and Action Stations have yet to be surpassed as serious wargames that were also accessable and fun.

I'm glad to hear that someone at least had a chance to get another kick at the classic BON. I quickly Googled it though and came up with practically nothing. How sad!

The material rewards being what they are, very few people stick around making computer wargames for more than 5 or 10 years. What would be nice is to have some oldies but goodies contributed to Source Forge or even brought to Matrix for redevelopment. The latter is what happened with the dozens of SimCan games, but it is so darn hard to find competent programmers with the background, free time and maniacal commitment necessary to make a go of it... Only two of the titles are moving forward and this is one of them. It turned out to be far more of a deathmarch than I expected and I was an experienced developer!

Another SimCan alumnus, Steve St. John self-published a napoleonic wargame under the Reality Engine name. Despite kind reviews I don't think it sold well and he never followed up on his plans to produce any further battles. The nice thing about Matrix is that they supply killer art, sound and distribution and make the whole publishing end of things much easier - a much more feasible threshhold to entry for aspiring programmers. Despite that, the bottleneck remains getting good game coders and I expect it will always be thus.

I googled the author of Action Stations (Alan Zimm) and he is clearly still involved in military matters, just not writing wargames anymore. He might not have the rights to his creation - it is/was standard form to turn over all rights to the publisher on publication. I wonder who owns the rights now? It might be cheaper just to start from scratch again than to license it, and you would have to be pretty optimistic about the market even to contemplate it all. I'm not a publisher (don't have strong enough nerves) but after Fighting Steel came up short you really have to wonder why anyone would try to produce an A list tactical naval (ship to ship, not combined arms like UV) wargame that was both serious and fun.

I think there is lots of potential in the hobby still but you really have to pick your shots and not blow your brains out backing any one thing to survive.

I should download BON again and review it. All I remember are horrible graphics. It would be nice to look at the core design again and reinforce in my mind what the desirable characteristics were.

Cheers, Rob.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
As far as complexity, the aim of any sim is to replicate the experience of command in war at the time and period chosen, so that the player can experience the trials, tribulations and exhiliration of command that Wellington or Napoleon, Grant or Lee experienced. If your designing a game then "entertainment" becomes the objective. Some people just want to shoot things. For me, a sim should provide a means of gaining insight into why things happened as they did and the alternatives that existed. The other objective is to build the complexity into the system, not the interface, so that the player is not overwehlmed with choices and decisions more appropriately handled by a staff or the system. If a player designates a division as a main effort, his "staff" should plan the action and present him with a series of COAs for execution as a staff would do in real life. A player shouldn't have to cycle through units for readiness indicators. That's what his staff is for.

Wow, this could have come directly from the Flashpoint design doc had it been so articulate. You have captured almost exactly the original SimCan credo on 'command viewpoint' that I am trying to follow. People either loved it or hated it though and I feel a constant tug to water it down. Where possible I try to stick to the basic proposition and then throw in enough chrome to keep everyone else happy.

Right now the game is getting too complex again and I am eyeing various poorly conceived parts of it to see if I can get rid of them. There was some famous author that said that a great book starts as a good book and then has all the unnecessary parts edited out. Games are like that too and this discussion of BON and Action Stations amongst others is bringing this all back to me. You want to cut to the essence of what you are trying to portray, make it involving for the player to explore it, and then wrap it up with a satisfying conclusion. So simple to say and so hard to do!

Cheers, Rob.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
I've never played the Can Sim games. Is there a restriction on the Soviet player's freedom of action?

You make a number of excellent points here and I really appreciate your relative rankings of the participants. The answer to your immediate question at the top of the post is 'yes and no'. The way the AI works there are some pretty stereotyped responses to certain situations but they are not model WP or NATO responses yet. The player is not forced to do anything against his will along the lines that you inquire about.

In the early days I was hoping to make this game into something of a test bed for 'maneuver warfare' theories and doctrine. That was way too ambitious and now I'm just trying to get the basics right. Players can operate with voluntary handicaps if they like. We might get into more doctrinal stuff in a subsequent version though.

Competence of the junior elements: I had a big concern early on with the determination of the rank and file to persevere in the face of appalling casualties. Everyone pays lip service to the concept of do or die, but who can be induced to do it in large numbers? Had the WP doctrine demonstrated glaring inadequacies in the first day or two of a conflict, would the troops on the ground just continue to be automatons and rush on to their deaths? The original game said yes, but I have added in some morale checks and the like which result in missions aborting and individual units running for cover when things go bad. Now I am unsure again... It is a psychological problem.

It was a sunny afternoon so I went out back with a book on the pyschology of military incompetence and read a few chapters. The author isolated 14 factors that contributed significantly to command fiascos like Singapore in 1941. By my count the WP forces in this game shared 10 of them. This was more strategic and operational generalship than grand tactical so it might not appear as such in the game. Made for interesting reading though.

Cheers, Rob.

[LTCMTS]

The film and Gen Hackett weren't kidding. The alternative to advancing on the enemy was to have the NKVD/KGB bordser units shooting at you too.
On troop morale, the complexity of why men fight and die in combat is incredible. Historically, units have retained their coherence and combat effectiveness in direct proportion to their levels of training, the length of time the unit has been together, confidence in their leadership, trust that they have the right weapons for the war they're fighting, the sense of doing something valuable and a basic commitment to the values of the nation they are fighting for.
Historically, weak units often do not even need to suffer casualties. The appearance of the enemy from an unexpected direction, the failure of their tactics and weapons to suppress an enemy, the experience of combat being totally different from their training can break units with poor morale. On the other hand, very rarely, units will retain the coherence and continue to fight after 50% and more casualties. The rate of casualties also impacts performance. A sudden massive casualty event can panic a unit, when the same number of casualties suffered over a period of time will not, though eventually such attrition will eat the heart out of a unit. US Army studies indicate that individuals need 30 days of combat before they reach optimum performance. After 120 days, performance begins to diminish and the breaking point is usually reached at about 240 straight days. The success of the NTC and the JRTC has been to produce a simulated combat environment that provides that 30 day learning curve. The problem with the US is the personnel policy of feeding individual replacements, though the original concept in 1940 was to withdraw units to reconstitute, we just ran out of combat units to do this, and a short, intense war would prevent it. The Vietnam War tour length also recognized the above data, but failed in not rotating units as cohesive groups, rather than shuffling a continuous line of "FNG"s through units.
As far as morale in a NATO-WP clash, it would be difficult to really rate the various troop elements because of the complexities I alluded to, and the ratings would change from moment to moment dependent on those complexities. But here goes. The Brits, especially their infantry, first and foremost with the Canadians their equal. The Germans and US, with some variations on the Heimatshuetz, the ARNG and the USAR depending on how long they've been mobilized. The French and Dutch regulars and conscripts of the standing forces. The Belgians and Danes. The Soviet GSFG, the CAT A in western TVDs, the CAT B and then the CAT C. The Volksarmee, at least initially at the GSFG level, but the Poles at CAT B with the Czechs and the Hungarians at CAT C, all three declining if the Soviet-WP offensive meets delays and defeats.

[LTCMTS]

A good book is "Changing Orders: The Evolution of the World's Armies, 1945 to the Present" by Paul Tsouras

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
A good book is "Changing Orders: The Evolution of the World's Armies, 1945 to the Present" by Paul Tsouras

"Peter G Tsouras" from Arms and Armour Press. He is/was an intelligence officer and wrote lots of interesting stuff including some eastern front and alternative histories for WW2. I have a few of his things and they are great. Did not know about this one though and it is out of print. What is the central thesis?

He and David Isby and a few others just put together a book called "Cold War Hot" that describes how how 10 different flashpoints since 1945 could have boiled into a shooting war. One is Western Europe. I don't have it yet but it is another book to grab and add to the stack.

Rob.

[Dagfinn]

Originally posted by LTCMTS
I'd put the level of tactical and operational competence as the Bundesheer first, followed by the Brits and Canadians, the US and French tied in third, but with the Dutch a close fourth, followed by the Belgians and then the Danes. The best of the Soviets would equal the Belgians, grading down from there, with the best Polish, Czech and Volksarmee leaders at Dutch level and then grading down. The Hungarians would equal the best Soviets.

I cant help it, but I have to ask: Where do you rank us Norwegians then?

Perhaps you could throw in all the other NATO/WP nations also. I'm interested in your opinion, as it would help me in designing scenarios in TOAW.

[scarletto]

morale is a tricky bit to work out, BAOR forces work on the regimental system, where it is i suppose indoctrinated into you that your Regiment/Battalion is the best. Most regiments are and have been recruited from the same area for over 300 years.

familys can trace their lines back not only through the major wars certainly of the 20th century but back to at least napoleonic times.one reason they say the British Army could never do a coup is the fact they wouldnt work together and certainly, even on exercises ive seen units come to real blows because of certain remarks pertaining to something their Battalion did in the 1800s!!!

A regiment in the british army is not a regiment but a family, which breeds great morale, but can also lead to unnecessary losses

Regarding the norwegian army, as it was mentioned, ive worked with them on numerous occasions on the AMFL exercises, and found them to be utterly proffessional and would have given the russians a hell of a fight if they had come round that flank, the dutch regulars too, but well without offending the danish army, im afraid that any exercise we where with them on stopped on a friday as their union wouldnt allow weekend working!

saying that the danes laid on great beer tents:)

[LTCMTS]

As far as relatives, I've got a German wife and a brother in law who did his 15 months as a Leo 2A4 gunner. But my best experience with the Bundeswehr was on Roving Sands 96 and 97. First, during support planning for the exercise, we worked out that we had to add a meal to the ration cycle to equal the ration the Germans usually got (in other words, 4 meals a day in a west Texas spring). They also brought their own beer for a daily ration. The dangerous part was they didn't understand that laying on rocks sunning themselves while downing the beer was a short road to heatstroke.
My estimate on the Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, French, Germans and Danes revolves around these issues: the existence of a professional cadre, the percentage that professional cadre makes up in the normal combat unit, the length of a conscript's commitment, the available training time, the achievable level of individual and collective skills training and the training resources. A good part of my rating on skills (not morale) for the British and Canadians revolves around the deep professionalism of their officers and NCOs, the enlistment period, the training doctrine and system for individual recruits, the refresher training for individuals and the collective skills training based on availability of equipment, training aids and training areas. The reason the US doesn't quite reach the Brits and Canucks is the length of enlistment for the average soldier, despite the superiority of training areas and the existence of the NTC and JRTC, training aids no other Army had in 1989-91. The German problem was the 50% (average) of the units made up of 15 month conscripts. The French can very variable, with some "regiments" having higher levels of cadres and volunteers (mostly FAR units with conscripts that have volunteered to serve outside France).
I am not trying to insult anyone with my admittedly subjective evaluations. But if you check my web site I think you'll see just how far ahead even the worst NATO units were compared to the average Soviet Army unit.

[byron13]

Scarletto has a very good point about the regimental system; LTCMS alluded to it with his comments about how long a unit had been together. This is a prime factor for determining how long a unit will fight - or attempt to fight. Veterans always say that they weren't fighting for apple pie and the flag, but were fighting for the guy in the hole next to them; the longer the entire unit has trained, suffered, and experienced things together, the stronger these bonds. In part, that is why the Army reemphasized (failed, I think) the regimental system in the late 80s and tried to have officers post back and forth within the regiment as much as possible. The armor community also emphasized keeping crews together as much as possible, though this was more likely just because of the fact that crews that trained together over a long period were more efficient than any attempt to build comraderie.

But none of this tops the Brits, who move whole battalions and regiments en masse. Of course, while this breeds loyalty within the unit, it can also lead to destructive inbreeding.