Vietnam

[Wodin]

I feel the engine would be great for a Vietnam game.

Imagine Huey's coming down and the troops jumping out. Gunships peppering the perimeter.

The game is perfect for small unit tactics.

Anyone else think it would work and more to the point buy it?

[Falconander]

I'd buy Vietnam before I'd buy Brits or UN modules.....

[flamingknives]

I'd buy Brits and UN and possibly French before buying Vietnam.

It strikes me as something that the CM engine would not do very well.

[Sequoia]

There should be a sticky "Don Quixote" thread on the forum of games people keep asking for but Battlefront has said they have no plans of ever doing.

These games are:

Viet Nam

IDF module for CMSF

Any other Arab-Israeli War game.

NATO vs Warsaw PAct in the 1980's.

WWI (a recent addition to the club)

WWII in the Pacific

Now it is not impossible that a game on any of these subjects would happen but it would take something like a third party to come along and do it such as the Soviets in Afghanistan game.

[kulik]

Maybe some battles like first battle of Saigon or siege of Khe Sanh could be interesting, but for vietnam theatre i would like to see more infantry squad tactics (adjusting volume of fire, draging wounded soldiers, placing booby traps, underground tunels etc.) Maybe after CMSF2.

Edit: Oh i didn't read sequoias reply.

[Apocal]

I'm pretty sure you can use IEDs as "booby traps" considering that for gameplay purposes they are the same thing.

[Patrocles]

I'd buy Vietnam before I'd buy Brits or UN modules.....

+1

I like this idea for a Vietnam CM module.

[Runaway!!!]

I'd rather see a WWII Pacific theatre before a Vietnam one.

But that's just me.

[hcrof]

NATO/Warpac. Obviously.

[Runaway!!!]

No, Israeli/Palestinian. Duh

[Destraex1]

I actually don't like the idea. Not too much conventional warfare in that war. Mostly patrols and firebase actions.There are offcourse a few large battles/offensives that would be playable, but they would not reflect the winning of the overall war the way CMSF could show it.

Apart from that choppers are not in. It would require a lot of other changes.

[Sergei]

More over, simulating jungles would take a bit more than filling the map with tropical trees. This would be in all major respects: simulation (cover, concealment, tactics, effects on morale when you're lost in thick jungle and surrounded by enemies), graphics (the engine needs to draw LOTS of trees at good rate) and playability (presently it would be difficult to follow the action unless trees were turned off). Some of these need to be addressed when moving on to Europe, but a true rainforest environment would still be a different animal.

[JP76er]

There should be a sticky "Don Quixote" thread on the forum of games people keep asking for but Battlefront has said they have no plans of ever doing.

These games are:

Viet Nam

IDF module for CMSF

Any other Arab-Israeli War game.

NATO vs Warsaw PAct in the 1980's.

WWI (a recent addition to the club)

WWII in the Pacific

Now it is not impossible that a game on any of these subjects would happen but it would take something like a third party to come along and do it such as the Soviets in Afghanistan game.

This is a good idea because I have wondered about many of these modules/games myself.

[Other Means]

NATO/Warpac. Obviously.

Obviously.

[Secondbrooks]

Forested maps right now are rather cubersome to play. Somehow LOS and LOF are hard to understand and it's hard to plan by those. Game still doesn't handle combat in forest very well (infantry is inferior to tanks in forest, for example). I would think that it would be a lot easier to play jungle/forest-combat with CMx1 engine... 1:1 doesn't seem to work that much with trees, at least from player's perspective.

Then again Vietnam wasn't just about jungles... But what is Vietnam-game without proper jungles? Next to nothing.

[Sgt Joch]

I have been pushing for a CM:Vietnam game for years and would buy one immediately. It is actually well suited to CM since you have everything from platoon level skirmishes to full blown regimental/divisional assaults.

Most actions did not take place in the jungle, but in or around populated areas, although some notable actions did take place in fairly wild terrain. For example, here is the terrain around Hill 881, close to Khe Sanh where fighting took place in 67:

The Vietcong and NVA were well trained/disciplined infantry, better quality than the Syrians anyway. The NVA were well supplied with artillery/mortars and very good at building fieldworks. For example, in the same fighting around Hill 881, the NVA on one hill had dug about 250 mg bunkers almost bomb proof and invisible from the ground.

The only thing that would be missing would be tanks, since they were rarely used by the NVA in the South before 72.

BFC has said repeatedly that they would never do a Vietnam game (something about marketing suicide ), but now that there is the "other" track, there is the possibility that one may yet see the light of day.

[Sequoia]

AFAIK however, Battlefront has never completely ruled out a Korean War game. Probably because it would be easiler for them to do because so much stuff would already be available from a late war WWII game. It would only happened if every thing else fell into place just right, but they've never said never. (Maybe that'll happen now shortly)

[Noltyboy]

There should be a sticky "Don Quixote" thread on the forum of games people keep asking for but Battlefront has said they have no plans of ever doing.

These games are:

Viet Nam

IDF module for CMSF

Any other Arab-Israeli War game.

NATO vs Warsaw PAct in the 1980's.

WWI (a recent addition to the club)

WWII in the Pacific

Now it is not impossible that a game on any of these subjects would happen but it would take something like a third party to come along and do it such as the Soviets in Afghanistan game.

You just broke my heart

[bodkin]

I think from previous discussions a CM game based in jungle fighting and the lack of any armoured conflict was one of the reasons Vietnam would be very low on the agenda of eras to replicate. Considering the effort involved in producing such a game and the likelyhood it would only appeal to a limited number of players I doubt it would happen.

The one thing CMSF dosen't do all that well in my opinion is the way it represents troops in heavily wooded areas. Not from a game dynamics point of view but from a graphical display one. I don't know if BFC have considered using a transparent zone type depiction of forested areas around know troop locations but it would certainly be more user friendly. I'm thinking maybe a small radius around troops where the trees have a transparent appearance so you can see them more easily, a bit like what they do with buildings now.

Also one of the main attractions to the CM games is the way they simulate armoured conflict, to produce a game without the opportunity to indulge in that side of things - without severely bending the historical accuracy - would be like drinking lite beer or Budweiser.

[Thomm]

The one thing CMSF dosen't do all that well in my opinion is the way it represents troops in heavily wooded areas. Not from a game dynamics point of view but from a graphical display one. I don't know if BFC have considered using a transparent zone type depiction of forested areas around know troop locations but it would certainly be more user friendly. I'm thinking maybe a small radius around troops where the trees have a transparent appearance so you can see them more easily, a bit like what they do with buildings now.

The way EYSA did it was that the near-field trees were rendered as trunks only (optional, of cause), whereas the far-field trees were rendered with foliage. Best of both worlds. I suggested that years ago (literally), but it never got realized.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Falconander]

- would be like drinking lite beer or Budweiser.

.... Oh no you didn't just say that....

Being from St Louis those are almost fighting words....

[meimes]

I agree 100% with the Vietnam idea. I'm 61 and by that time that war was very present to us.

In fact, I don't like to see this game in Syria. I live in Israel, and it might be good to see IDF modeled in a game, but not in Syria. Besides that, the whole thing becomes too ...assimetrical...

I vote Vietnam, the Tet offensive, close support from F4s Phantoms, B-52, rainforest with tigers, things like this.

[Combatintman]

Err ... and Vietnam wasn't assymetrical? B-52s vs AK-47 armed bloke in black pyjamas is about as assymetrical as it gets.

The reasons for not doing Vietnam have pretty much been stated - the main one being BFC have said that they ain't going to do it. The other main one is that the game as it is has difficulty doing jungle and the inability to simulate a helo insert is a bit of a showstopper.

[Wengart]

Combatintman, Vietnam may have been asymmetrical in the larger strategic picture. But, I would imagine it would at least have the illusion of symmetrical forces in CM's scope.

[Sgt Joch]

I think it is important to clear some misconceptions that exist about the Vietnam War. Looking at the 65-69 period when U.S. forces were the most active:

1. assymetric warfare:

The Vietcong (south vietnamese guerillas) were trained/organised around military lines. Most of the interesting battles involved regular North Vietnamese Army units in the central highlands and the north. They fought conventional warfare backed up by artillery/mortars;

2. U.S Air Power:

B-52s were deadly, but suffered the same problem heavy bombers had when used in a tactical role in WW2. They were deadly when they hit enemy troops, but they often blasted nothing more than empty forests.

Fighter Bombers, like the F-4 were deadlier, but again as in WW2, pilots had to rely on their Mk I eyebal to spot targets. The NVA was very good at camouflaging itself, its supplies and equipment, although the U.S. FAC system was much improved over WW2.

AFAIR, the U.S. dropped something like 2-3 times the tonnage of bombs over Vietnam that it dropped in all of WW2 without appreciably slowing down the number of men and suppplies which infiltrated into the south.

3. U.S. won every tactical engagement:

Based on an often repeated, but inaccurate quote. U.S. forces were very good and with the amount of firepower they possessed could take and hold any piece of ground in Vietnam they set their mind to, but there were many platoon/company sized actions where the NVA got the upper hand.

For example, every knows about Hal Moore's victory in the Ia Drang valley in november 65 which was glorified in Mel Gibson's "We Were soldiers...", but one month later another U.S. battalion was chewed up in an ambush by NVA troops in the same valley.

4. Cavalry charging Helos:

Helos did not land in a hot fire zone right on top of enemy troops. As early as jan.63, when the U.S. lost 5 helos in one battle to ground fire, it was known that helos were too fragile and vulnerable to ground fire.

By 64-65, the Vietcong/NVA had equipped its forces with heavy MGs specifically to shoot down helos.

U.S. forces used helos like trucks: you land your forces in a safe area, far enough away from the action and your troops hump overland until they establish contact.

As it was, the U.S. still lost something like 7-8,000 helos over the course of the war AFAIR.

5. All battle were in the jungle:

Only a minority of battles were fought in jungles, you can't maneuver or control your troops in a jungle.

For example, here are photos of the battlefield of Dak To where a series of engagements were fought in November 67, which were characterized as "heavy jungle fighting":