ScotMc3

Hello, The Seattle LAN game of TacOps on June 21st was a moderate successs and a good learning experience for hosting this event in the future. Including myself as the umpire we had six participants; we had two last minute no shows. Half of the participants had never played TacOps before while the other half had played with me a few years ago using an earlier version of TacOps. About half of the participants, excluding myself, had military experience. The scenario assumed a battle taking place a few years from now involving a PLA breakout attempt from the port of Kaohsiung on the southwest coast of Taiwan. PLA forces were assumed to be the lead regiment of the PLA 124th Amphibious Mechanized Division supported by most of the division's support assets versus a ROC motorized infantry battalion and elements of an American medium infantry brigade. We used a new map tentatively numbered 782 (I have to check to see if that number is claimed yet) that is a modification of the map 780 that, if I recall correctly, was posted on the Decision Point website (and, yes, this is one more person hoping that that excellent site can be brought back up). The map very crudely resembles the area between Kang Shah and Tainan. The map is 30x15 km and features two rivers and miscellaneous small urban centers, expressways, rice paddies and small industrial sites. There is not a lot of specifically Chinese equipment modeled in TacOps so we had to use carefully selected substitutes in many cases. The division currently uses Type 63 and variants tracked amphibious APCs and tanks; these are Chinese descendants of the PT76, but some have been seriously upgunned and uparmored. However, we know that the division is slated to use a new, not yet identified, wheeled amphibious IFV. To model the new IFV we used BTR90s and BRDM2 ATGMVs. The closest analog to the Type 63A light amphibious tank was, oddly, the American XM8 AGS (both mount 105 mm guns). We used Russian ATGMs since the only Chinese ATGM in TacOps exists only on a tracked Chinese ATGMV that we don't believe will be with the division in three years. The Taiwanese force was easier to model as they largely are a mix of newer and older American equipment, such as SMAWS (new), M72 LAAWs (old) and Dragons (old). The American units were from a Stryker brigade and we assumed that the current problems with the Stryker 120mm mortar carrier and the Stryker AGS had been resolved by the time of the scenario. The scenario assumed that both sides' air power was heavily committed to the air and sea superiority missions at the cost of not being present on the battlefield. As to the outcome of the battle, well, we did not get past the first engagements on the Taiwanese main line. We had problems configuring two computers to the network and this delayed our start by several hours; I used this time to let the players (re-) familiarize themselves with playing TacOps. Then I made the mistake of allowing three minutes for order entry instead of sticking to my original plan of being hard nosed at one minute. Call me a softy: we got fours hours of real play into the scenario but only played about 30 minutes of game time. The conclusions are obvious; the scenario was too large and the time limit per turn was too high. Giving each player a reinforced battalion was too much for new players to handle in a prompt manner. While we did get the 124th pretty heavily engaged with the Taiwanese, the Americans were still moving up when we had to call it a day. Nevertheless, we did learn some things. The Chinese have a lot of motorcycles in their recon units; their individual nature makes it possible to have them in large numbers. Their presence on the battlefield created a fire discipline problem for the Taiwanese and the Americans as they tended to concentrate ATGM fire on the motorcycles. The American player expressed some frustration that he could not remove motorcyles as a target priority, however I pointed out that there are workarounds. The Chinese players liked the motorcycles because some would always be around to report. Second, a BTR90 is still a BTR and artillery likes to eat BTRs. The 124th is a light mechanized division and its vulnerability to artillery fire even in the first thirty minutes was starting to make its success problematical. While I think they would have reduced the first line of resistance (the Taiwanese), I think that the regiment would have been pretty much used up before tackling the rear positions and the Americans. Had we played to a conclusion, the PLA would not have achieved their objectives. Third, the Chinese did not deploy their air defense assets wisely. One player controlled the reserve including all regimental air defense assets. The result was needless losses to aircraft on the forward edge of the battle. In spite of these issues, the players enjoyed the game very much. Two of my players were only casual wargamers but they really enjoyed trying to play the game as a part of a team. I am pretty certain that they will join me when I host another game at Metro Seattle Gamers. I also enjoyed hosting the game. Technically, the game went very smoothly; the only in game drop out may have been due to a loose connection (our network problems had nothing to do with TacOps). I did find it a little awkward having to ask all the players to hold off on putting in orders so that I could add something to the game. In that circumstance, there was a risk of players putting in orders that would be wiped out by a situation update. My recommendation on this matter is to give the umpire an option of sending out a combat phase that immediately institutes a game pause after the situation update and before the players can input orders. This will save the umpire the anxiety of having to determine that each player heard him when he said "do not enter any orders until I say so." The game pause that already exists is not quite solid enough for that purpose. I am currently working on tweaking the scenario to improve the Chinese chances and I will test it a few more times before releasing it and the map. All in all it was an enjoyable experience. -Scot McConnachie

Hello, This is an update on the status of the TacOps LAN game scheduled for Noon this upcoming Saturday, June 21st at Metro Seattle Gamers at 1139 NW Market Street, Seattle, WA 98107. At the current time, I have 7 players listed as committed to this game and another potential 6-7 who have expressed some interest in attending. Those players are already on a separate email list for this game and are being contacted off of this list. This message is for anyone else out there who may be interested in participating in this game. A scenario has been decided upon. It is postulated to happen 2-3 years from now on the island of Taiwan and it will involve land forces of the Peoples's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the United States. This game will be played on a local area network as a game between competing teams and it will last from Noon to 6 pm. Players will have the roles of company, battalion, or regiment/brigade commanders. If you are interested in attending this game, it will be helpful to contact me beforehand at the email address below (do not reply on this list). scotmc3@aol.com At the present time we have a limited number of extra computers available for those who may wish to play, so if you are interested and wish to use one of those computers, please contact me at the email address above as soon as possible and no later than Thursday night. If you can bring your own computer that will be even better but it is still a good idea (but not a requirement) for me to know that you are coming. The program is not demanding on computers. An Ethernet networkable Pentium II or a Macintosh PowerPC 604 or better is adequate. Laptops are even better and laptops with wireless Wi-Fi cards are ideal. This Saturday, I plan to be at MSG by 11 am in order to be ready as soon as possible. If you are bringing your own machine it will help all of us to be there a little early as well to handle installation issues. I will provide an introduction to the game to those who have not played it before. If you want me to teach you how to play the game it will help if you can come a little early or if you can catch me on Friday night at the club before 9 pm. As a reminder you can download a free copy of the demonstration version of the game at the download section of the following location: http://www.battlefront.com/index.htm The demo version has lots of detail but skip the main manual and go straight to the demonstration scenario instructions. The game is far easier to play than is suggested by its thorough documentation. Thank you for your attention. Scot McConnachie scotmc3@aol.com For further information, consult www.dragonflight.org or check out the Metro Seattle Gamers discussion list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Dragonflight-MSG P.S. I will be hosting another TacOps session at the Dragonflight convention in Seattle on Saturday, August 16th.

Let me just add to the comment at the bottom: The import and export OOB feature in TacOps 4 allows one to create any TO&E that uses the existing units in the game and to save it for future use. The OOBs can be saved and even edited in Excel. To duplicate a formation template for a game you may import the same OOB more than once. (Major, a quick question on that: does one have to replace the duplicate ids when doing this or will the program assign new unit ids for imported units?) It's also very handy for shifting forces between maps in a campaign. Incidentally you might want to check the Team Trackless site for the TO&E of the new medium infantry brigades and battalions. It's a couple of years old now but I have been told on the TacOps email list this TO&E is very close to the new Stryker brigades except that the vehicles are, of course, Strykers and Stryker variants. The page is at http://www.strategypage.com/tt/msiepage.htm Scot McConnachie Using proposed Med Inf Bde TOE's from about two years ago, I've played a number of scenarios with this alternative force structure. Using the import/export OOB functions to replace the original scenario OOB and look at various "what if" situations is very easy and is one of my favorite pass-times.Gary Chilcote

FWIW I agree with Hans. Germany's chances of defeating the Soviet Union were slim in 1941 but nil in 1942. The Germans grossly underestimated the size of the Soviet armies in 1941. In spite of that underestimate, 1941 was the only year in which the chaos and gains generated by the German invasion might have caused a Soviet collapse or forced them to come to terms. If I recall correctly it is also the only time when the Soviets felt desperate enough to send peace feelers to the Germans; there were later peace feelers but they were initiated by the Germans. However in terms of territory conquered the high water mark is probably 1942 during the German move into the Caucasus, even when factoring in the territory the Germans lost in their retreat in front Moscow. As a side note, I have always considered it to be one of the underwritten subjects of World War II about how concerned the Anglo-American leadership was worried about the possibility of the Germans and Soviets coming to a separate peace. That is of course what happened in World War I. I think that fear colors many of the strategic decisions made by the Western Allies.

Well, I just looked again at the specs for TacOps 4 for Macintosh and I may still be able to run this thing on my 9 year old PowerBook 520C upgraded with a PowerPC 603e at 100 mhz. The only problem that I see is the 800x600 resolution which exceeds my laptop's 640x480 screen, but I can go to 800x600 with a monitor. From the email list, I thought that the memory requirements for version 4.0 had exceeded the maximum 40 MB that I can have on that machine but I can find 10 MB of free memory on my PowerBook. I can't go higher than OS 8.5 on it however (and that was a kludge). I will try it out and see what happens. It runs very sweetly on my sister's Titanium PowerBook with 512 MB of RAM using an AirPort card. Now that is a lovely machine. [ May 30, 2003, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: ScotMc3 ]

Well Major, you made my old PowerBook obsolete wiht the new requirements for version 4 and I have not replaced it, so currently I am on the dark side (courtesy of my previous business project). But I am stubborn as hell and I will probably get a new Powerbook in the next year.

Hello folks, This is for any TacOps players in the Seattle area. At Noon PST on Saturday June 21st, I will be hosting a LAN game of TacOps 4 at Metro Seattle Gamers, a gaming club located in the Ballard area of Seattle. This is a call for players and computers to join us to add to the experience. While I may open up later games to internet play (MSG does have a cable internet connection), I am currently planning for this session to be LAN only. If it works well, I will also host a LAN game at the upcoming Dragonflight regional games convention on August 15-17th at Seattle University. I am looking for players who would be willing to play this game as a part of two teams of players who will be competing to accomplish their objectives. While I can provide 4 to 5 computers, the game can handle up to 20 computers, so I am hoping that some players will be able to bring their own networkable Windows PCs or Macintoshes (the game is cross platform networkable). Also note that we have a wireless LAN access point in the club so that laptops with Wi-Fi cards will work quite nicely. I performed a successful small scale cross platform test of the game on the wireless network two weeks ago. Depending on how I design the scenario, there may also be room for one or two players who will function as the high command, to make decisions "off board" so to speak. I expect that the game would conclude by 6 pm. I am also interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to provide me some feedback on scenario design and selection, as well as to do some scenario preparation before the actual session on June 21st. If you are interested in any one or more of these roles, please contact me at the following email address: scotmc3@aol.com Metro Seattle Gamers is located in the Ballard district of Seattle at 1139 NW Market St., Seattle, WA 98107, Tel. (206) 781-0047. To obtain more information about the club or the Dragonflight convention please consult http://www.Dragonflight.org http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Dragonflight-MSG Thank you for your attention, Scot McConnachie

Well we had a good time, although a few people dropped out at the last minute and one of my computers decided to fry its motherboard. For PBEM play on a LAN it would be nice to be able to direct the PBEM files to a customized location (TacOps allows this for example) rather than saving the file and then having to move it from the current set default. Matt Hyra and I are discussing setting up a campaign at Metro Seattle Gamers. The idea would be to support both LAN and PBEM games. Since he has spent some time on campaign mechanics, I will be reviewing his materials over the next few weeks. We will also wait for the TCP/IP implementation to come out. I figure it will be early next year when we are ready. Sage, we will be setting up an email group list for notices from Metro Seattle Gamers. If you or anyone else wants to be on that list, you can email me at scotmc3@aol.com. -Scot McConnachie

Actually, the computers will be mostly PCs. I need to upgrade my Mac before I can use it with CM. Of course the Ethernet hub can accept both platforms; it is 10/100 BT capable; most of our computers have 10/100 BT cards. We will be setting up in the Noon to 1 pm time frame. Mac users may want to use a program such as DAVE from Thursby Software, www.thursby.com to enable cross platform file swapping on a LAN. I have played PBEM TacOps a number of times on cross platform LANs using this software. Scot McConnachie