Comments and Questions

[Marlow]

I’ve played the v4 demo over the last couple of nights (while waiting for the CMBB release), and have had quite a bit of fun with it, and will probably order it. That said, a couple of observations and questions.

What I liked:

Overall feel of the game.

Wego turn system.

SOPs. Great idea.

Number of unit types available, and the detailed information about each unit.

What I didn’t (please don’t take these the wrong way. I did like the demo):

Command and control. This is probably my biggest problem with the game. There are two aspects to this, no command structure (company and battalion HQ’s are just another unit), and no out of command units or command delays.

Limited map elevations. The limitations of having only two levels, combined with the tabletop flat of each level, provides less covered (unobserved) ground than would likely be present in many real world environments.

Movement rates. I read in a past post that all vehicles have the same movement rate because all would use a similar movement under battlefield conditions. While this may be true in some circumstances, it is not always. Movement behind the front line, moving through/out of a danger area or beaten zones, etc… One of the reasons given for replacement of the M113 was that it couldn’t keep up with the M1 on the modern battlefield. That is not the case in Tacops.

Limited moral effects. Suppression alone is not enough, there needs to be more levels. Also, even suppressed units appear to take movement orders without delay.

Quality and training levels of various forces should be incorporated.

Questions:

How did you determine the armor protection levels for first line tanks and APCs? I was under the impression that the protection levels for many vehicles (Abrams and Bradley in particular) were still classified.

Would it be possible to put in a button bar for some of the more used items (e.g. air support and artillery)?

[Redwolf]

My takes:

The soft factors like moral and quality need to be modeled all or none. If all, then you run into very serious interface problems, you need to show the user what's up with his units, but you can't easily. Compare to Combat Mission, which has the soft factors and the most perfect interfacte to communicate them (3D representation of squads) and which still leaves to be desired in my opinion, at least in the delays department.

I too would like to see vehicle speeds modeld. As I understand, the major point about the T-64 and other higher quality Soviet tank designs was better cross-country mobility. If the players would be faced with forces of varying speed that would face some "nice" decisions to make about moving fast leaving the slower vehicles behind, or to split up the force into a quick strike detachment and a slower body.

As for implementation, a major poblem occurs to be that the player should still be able to move a mixed column of vehicles as a homogenous body, so the player needs several move commands now.

Suggestion: two vehicle speed classes: normal and fast. All vehicles will be default move at normal speed. Some vehicles (like Western tanks, T-64 and T-80) will have a flag marking then as "potentionally fast" and they will have a delayed command "fast move". For fast move the penality of rough terrain will be decreased by a certain amount. The penality in woods should stay the same.

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

> What I didn’t [like] (please don’t take these the wrong way.

No problem.

> Command and control. This is probably my biggest problem

> with the game. There are two aspects to this, no command

> structure (company and battalion HQ’s are just another

> unit), and no out of command units or command delays.

In my opinion, most modern tactical level wargames overemphasize command and control and the importance of HQ's units. Units do not stop performing their assigned tasks just because they transiently lose contact with the next level of command. They are expected to use alternate means and paths of communication and if those fail to do what they can, where they are, with what they have until some sort of contact is regained. It is very rare for a contemporary military unit at any level to not be able to contact someone else in their area.

> Limited moral effects. Suppression alone is not enough,

> there needs to be more levels. Also, even suppressed units

> appear to take movement orders without delay.

Morale details are also often exaggerated in tactical wargames. However, you are at liberty to withdraw your units at any time.

> How did you determine the armor protection levels for first

> line tanks and APCs? I was under the impression that the

> protection levels for many vehicles (Abrams and Bradley in

> particular) were still classified.

The armor protection and armor penetration levels in TacOps, are solely my opinion. They are based solely on my analysis of unclassified materials. Participation by the U.S. Army in the development of Tacops v4 neither confirms nor denies the accuracy of my opinions.

> Would it be possible to put in a button bar for some of the

> more used items (e.g. air support and artillery)?

Yes but that would conflict with one of my design principles which is to avoid any decoration or permanent supporting display that obstructs the player's view of as much of the battle map as possible.

[ September 20, 2002, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: MajorH ]

[Old&Slow]

I`ve been really good about making windy posts on the Game but I can`t resist on this one

IMO, the Major is spot on here, given the overall unit size and scale of Battles modeled in TacOps I don`t think C&C would be all that relevant. Nice maybe, but not necessary.

The speed and intensity which things happen on a modern battlefield reduces down to doing the other guy before he does you, and if there are just too many "other guys" in the second/third echelons time to leave/stop. ( if you can )

The real reason for posting is to share my favorite quote regarding C&C from the Autobiography of a Sq. CO in a ACR in VietNam circa 1970`s. Paraphrasing somewhat.

In a Battalion to Regt. size operation he described the Battalion CO in his Command Chopper loaded with Commo. Gear at 2000 feet over the troops, with the Regt. CO above him at 3000 feet, and the Division CO above both at 5000 feet ( with even more Commo.gear )

All this filtering down from 5000 feet to the Company CO in the Forest below....his verdict was, exact quote:

" they had too little to do and too much communcations equipment to do it with "

[Redwolf]

Out of curiosity, if you played Combat Mission, did you actually like the feature set of delays and waypoints and that you could edit the waypoints so that you could move elsewhere without plotting new waypoints (which would cause delay)?

I don't like it at all. In very competive games I started spending a lot of plan and plot time which was invested in no other purpose than to get the most flexibility out of the stuff I just ordered. I do not like spending game time in things that are not tings that correlate to something in the real world, and editing waypoints and endlessly trying to drag them somehwere I want and then deleting parts of the path is certainly something you don't read in Hackworth.

But as I said, I really like the decisions to be made about the speed of different vehicles. Great Combat Mission moments came out of it, both in sudden flankings or else in successful long-term planning to get that slow beast where you needed it when you needed it. Only sad that infantry (under fire!) would move faster than the tanks

[ARRPEEGEE]

I don't see it in the Demo, or in 3x, but..Can Artillery fire FASCAM in 4x?

Thanks.

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

You can't "fire" FASCAM (arty delivered minefields) in real time during the game.

Some scenarios include arty delivered minefield markers in the unit setup window that you are allowed to place anywhere on the map. These represent arty minefields that were completed prior to the start of the scenario.

If you select the "Options/Enable Umpire Tools" menu item, you can use the Options/Engineering menu to create and place minefield markers in any turn.

You can lay minefields in real time by using the wheeled or tracked Volcano mine delivery system and the helicopter Volcano mine delivery system.

[Marlow]

Originally posted by redwolf:

Out of curiosity, if you played Combat Mission, did you actually like the feature set of delays and waypoints and that you could edit the waypoints so that you could move elsewhere without plotting new waypoints (which would cause delay)?

Yes, I do like the feature, as it lets you make minor adjustments of the sort that the unit leader (squad leader or TC) would make when new information becomes available. An enemy target shows up at the spot your squad is moving towards, and you can change the waypoint a little to one side. This strikes me as the type of decision that the unit leader would make without consulting his PL or CC. I never did abuse this feature in order to maintain flexibility, and in any event, CMBB will penalize you for using additional waypoints (to maintain flexibility) by increasing command delay.

[Marlow]

Thanks for the response and explanations Major.

Originally posted by MajorH:

In my opinion, most modern tactical level wargames overemphasize command and control and the importance of HQ's units. Units do not stop performing their assigned tasks just because they transiently lose contact with the next level of command. They are expected to use alternate means and paths of communication and if those fail to do what they can, where they are, with what they have until some sort of contact is regained. It is very rare for a contemporary military unit at any level to not be able to contact someone else in their area.

I agree to the extent that units are performing the tasks assigned, or tasks foreseen as contingencies in the original orders, but the game gives the player the power to change plans at a moment’s notice, and give entirely new orders (perhaps unforeseen even a moment ago) to a large number of units scattered over many kilometers. This seems a bit much without some sort of command delay to simulate the time it takes the HQs to inform the subordinate units of the new plan, regardless of how good the commo net is. Also, direct communications by radio is not instantiations, and going through a relay is even more time consuming (been there, done that). Further, what if your force is using less than state of the art commo? Manual encode and decode of orders takes a while (also been there, done that). What about what we used to refer to as “operator headspace” malfunctions (i.e. the radio works fine, but the operator makes a mistake). This would not be uncommon for a green unit under fire for the first time. Finally, the enemy is not going to ignore your commo, and if they have the capacity, they are going to jam it. This is part of modern warfare that it largely ignored (in all games, not just Tacops).

Originally posted by MajorH:

Morale details are also often exaggerated in tactical wargames. However, you are at liberty to withdraw your units at any time.

For armored units, this largely makes sense, although I’m not sure you are going to get that APC platoon to advance across that field where the company of T72s now sit as flaming wrecks. For soft targets, it is a little more complicated. At a minimum, pinning should be included to represent units that are under fire and cannot safely move. Not so much a morale, as a firepower factor.

Originally posted by MajorH:

Yes but that would conflict with one of my design principles which is to avoid any decoration or permanent supporting display that obstructs the player's view of as much of the battle map as possible.

I was perhaps unclear. I was talking about buttons that would call up the appropriate menu, as an alternative to the pull down. Not to leave the arty or air support menus up full time.