Ancien Régime

Tags

Command Ops, Conquest of the Aegean, Dien Bien Phu, French Indochina, Highway to the Reich, John Tiller, Squad Battles, Steel Panthers, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, wargames

It’s been said before that any wargame being newly released has to improve upon the available scenarios for the existing “sandbox” games. The holy trilogy for the Cold War era is likely The Operation Art of War (TOAW) for (you guessed it) Operation Scale land ops, Steel Panthers MBT (for tactical), and Harpoon for Sea/Air.

I would further argue that Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations has surpassed Harpoon, so we’re left with the two old war horses TOAW and SP. Of course, there are far better systems out there, both for World War II (which were the original targets for those games) and for other eras, but little that is moddable and has the actual range of user-made scenarios to cover the scope of battles of battles included in those two classics.

The time when these types of sandbox games were being made, selling well, and being well supported by a user base (via scenario creation) seems to be in the past. Expand the scope of your vision beyond the Cold War and you’ll find that most of the games of this type are not only many years behind us, but not really up to current standards (I’m thinking of something like Age of Rifles).

Part of the issue is that current games dwell on details, particularly in terms of graphics and map features, that tie them to particular battles. This might be a design/marketing issue (such as with the HPS/Tiller games where user-created maps are simply not allowed), a technical issue (in Graviteam tactics, the detailed maps may simply be beyond modding) or a simple technical hurdle (Command Ops provides the ability to create new maps, but there is a huge amount of work involved).

One added advantage of these sandbox games is that they will cover wars/battles for which no dedicated game might ever be made. This next set of battles are taken from the struggle of the French to maintain their hold over Vietnam, post Second World War. For most of us in America, the story of the French in Indochina is merely a prologue to our own war in Vietnam. This neglects nearly a decade of fighting, incidentally using the same technology as the Korean War.

Battle of Vĩnh Yên

For tactical sandbox games, the trap is that high fidelity information is rarely known about a particular battle. The maps and troop dispositions can be put together, but a tactical scenario involves approximately 1 hour. So is what you’re playing a simulation of an actual hour of combat? Or is it an abstraction of a larger battle, but played out on a reduced scale?

The battle of Vĩnh Yên took place over several days. A brigade of Foreign Legion troops (the 9th), consisting of two Groupement Mobile (mobile groups, or GM), defended the town of Vĩnh Yên. North Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp commanded on the order of 50,000 soldiers, equipped by the Chinese. At the outset of 1951, Giáp planed to deliver a decisive blow to the French army and chose the village, some 30 miles north of Hanoi, as a target. He would seek to overwhelm the French force of about 6,000 defenders with 2 divisions totaling approximately 20,000.

The first phase of the battle commenced on January 13th with a diversionary assault on an outpost north of the town. As one of the GMs (GM3) was dispatched to deal with the attack, they were ambushed by the remaining Việt Minh. While the French successfully withdrew under the cover of air and artillery support, they suffered significant losses and the Việt Minh took possession of key hills in front of Vĩnh Yên.

The next day, the French counter-attacked. Thy linked their second Groupement Mobile (GM1) with GM3, opened access to the town, and ultimately retook the hills occupied by the Việt Minh. A third Groupement Mobile (GM2) was ordered from Hanoi to aid in the defense, bringing the defenders total to around 9000.

The third phase, taking place on the 16th into the 17th, saw the Việt Minh’s fresh division assaulting the French position on the hills with massed human wave assaults. These were initially repelled by the dug-in French defenders with overwhelming artillery and air support, including the use of napalm. However, the attackers reformed and continued their attacks through the day of the 16th, into the night, and again on the morning of the 17th. As the French ran low on ammunition, they were forced to give up ground. By the next morning, the French committed the last of their reserves to hold their position on the left end of their line (Hill 210) while continued air support drove off the communists and inflicting over 8000 casualties (killed, captured and wounded).

The battle, as modeled in Steel Panthers, is a compressed and downsized approximation of that third phase of the battle. As the French, we have two platoons of infantry holding the key hills north of the town. Two additional platoons have entered the map on trucks, with the support of one platoon of light tanks. There is also air and the support of one artillery battery. The battle lasts for approximately 48 minutes and we are exposed to an attack by enemy infantry with superior numbers backed by artillery.

Each Groupement Mobile typically consisted of two or three infantry regiments, a light tank squadron, artillery, and perhaps other support (engineers, for example) totaling around 3000 men. For any significant portion of the battle, therefore, it would seem that representing the engagement as a platoon-sized confrontation would be greatly under-estimating the available forces.

The Communists are assaulting my positions using human wave tactics. Things are looking bad and are about to get far worse.

The scenario seems to be combining several of the key elements of the battle; the human wave attacks, the artillery and air strikes, and the reinforcements by GM2, all in one 45 minute summary of a 24+ hour battle.

I’ve read long ago, perhaps in the Designer Notes for one of the old Avalon Hill games such as Panzer Blitz or Squad Leader, why a tactical level battle typically runs under an hour. Beyond that, the fuel, ammunition and other supplies of an active unit will run low, and the simulation needs to add to it considerations of resupply and reinforcement. So the key to modelling with these scenarios is to pick the right section of ground and timeframe to capture the action.

This can be particularly difficult in these lesser-covered conflicts, where a blow-by-blow description of a tactical battle is not available. It is also difficult to capture the right kind of scenario in an asymmetrical warfare or counter-insurgency campaign. This particular encounter was notable in that the Việt Minh came out in the open and fought a traditional battle, allowing the French to use their technological superiority. A similar scenario probably would not exist which consisted more of a “meeting engagement” of platoon-sized forces, but with a similar mix of armor, artillery, air.

A sketch from a Vietnamese site provides a better perspective on the battlefield.

In the end, this scenario does what it can to represent the battles of that time and place. For my own performance, I ended up fighting it to a draw. I made a big mistake in overestimating the number of turns I had. My plan consisted of bringing my tank platoon cross-country to immediately relieve Hill 101 while bringing the trucks carrying infantry around the dirt road (202) to reinforce Hill 210 from the rear. The trucks were about to arrive as the scenario ended.

Battle of Nghĩa Lộ

The Operational Art of War address a similar situation in its scenario for the Battle of Nghĩa Lộ. General Giáp again, in the fall of 1951, saw an opportunity to capitalize on the successes of his guerilla tactics by using larger forces and more conventional tactics. The valley surrounding Nghĩa Lộ was an strategic location to overwhelm the French defenses with numeric superiority.

The Việt Minh attacked with a full division against a handful of French outposts. The French quickly reinforced with 3 battalions of paratroopers. The battle continued for a week, but the combination of elite troops and superior support again won the day for the French.

The Nghĩa Lộ scenario that shipped with the original TOAW release comes at the other end of the simulation spectrum from the Steel Panthers scenario, above. The scale is that each counter represents a company (approximately 10X the scale of Steel Panthers) and turns last a full day (nearly 500X the time scale of Steel Panthers). Like the Czechoslovakian battle, this is a small scale for this engine. More so, in fact, with smaller units (company versus regiment), hex scale (2.5 km to 5 km), and map size (the battle was restricted to the immediate vicinity of the town).

Thus, my earlier criticisms still apply. The style of game play seems unsuited to this scale of modeling, especially as applied to the asymmetrical warfare we see here. This seems to be born out by the results – Wikipedia cites the actual casualties as a fairly low percentage of forces engaged. 300 KIA for the Việt Minh and 60 KIA for the French. The historical Việt Minh slipped away into the mountains when the battle turned against them. In game, they dug in and fought to the last, with massive casualties on both sides.

My paratroopers have arrived. After relieving the pressure on the town itself, I try isolating and defeating the numerically-superior enemy piecemeal.

The scenario stretches over two weeks (twice as long as the actual engagement). After an initial Việt Minh assault on the French outposts, the French begin to parachute in reinforcements. The screenshot, above, shows my strategy. Initial drops came in near Nghĩa Lộ and I used the reinforcements to force the attackers away from the town to the south. Further reinforcements I dropped north and west of the enemy positions, and used them to encircle and destroy the enemy formations. At all times, I was outnumbered and outclassed on the battlefield, so my approach was to achieve local superiority to defeat the enemy and then move on to the next area.

TOAW combat victories can be achieved by occupying the six hexes surrounding an enemy (more, obviously, if the enemy has multiple contiguous hexes) and then attacking when they have no opportunity to retreat. Depending on the scale of the battle, it is often effective to let the isolation from resupply reduce the enemy before the assault. This is what the Soviets in the Second World War called Cauldrons (or Kettles). This seems to be an unlikely depiction of a company-sized engagement in French Indochina.

In the end, I isolated the enemy into two such cauldrons along the SW to NE line in the upper left quadrant of my screenshot. Throughout, the game told me I was on track to achieve an overwhelming victory. Near the end of the game, the Việt Minh began receiving extensive reinforcements to the southeast and were overwhelming my defenders there. It became a race to see if I could eliminate the pockets so as to free up my forces in time to rescue my own isolated forces. The combination cost me heavily in casualties, and the prediction was that I was now going to “draw.” Nevertheless, the final screen declared victory for the French.

I also find it notable that the two scales, TOAW versus Steel Panthers, don’t ever meet. For any combat resolution on the TOAW map, it simulates probably several hours of combat (multiple games in SP) and, even with only two counters involved, a company-on-company attack, at the upper end of SP scenarios. In fact, given TOAW‘s mechanics, one would rarely initiate an attack with only a single company against a similarly-sized defender.

Take 2

Perhaps recognizing issues with the original Nghĩa Lộ scenario, TOAW III includes a newer version of the same battle. The most obvious difference is the turn length, which has been reduced to six hour turns, introducing a day/night cycle. The game length has also been shortened to a week, corresponding to the recorded dates of the battle.

The map was also redone. On the screen capture below, we can see something that occurs with user-made scenarios. Knowing the mechanics of the games, maps are made to get the desired results in gameplay and not necessarily to visually portray the area being mapped. The combination of multiple rivers coming together in the vicinity of Nghĩa Lộ combined with irrigation structures creates a number of islands near the town. The effect of this is modeled with an impossibly-angular series of interconnected minor rivers.

After the arrival of my paratrooper reinforcements, I attempt to isolate the attackers in the southeastern corner of the operation.

The revised scenario played very differently than the original. With six hour turns, the wait for reinforcements seems terribly long. During this time, the enemy captured most of the road (where the objective points are, see below screenshot), eliminated the defenders from the town proper, and cleared out the center of the valley. Even when my initial para-drops began, I was unable to do anything except try to stay clear of the enemy.

Once all three of the paratrooper battalions arrived, I was able to concentrate my forces, obtain local superiority, and began taking back ground. In the end, I achieved a major victory, having forced all of the enemy out of the valley and into the mountains.

Final victory. I think the commies may have been repairing bridges during their brief occupation.

The balance of the forces is also obviously redone, although I didn’t look at the details. The French forces seem much weaker in the open, but tougher in prepared defenses. Several of my outposts remained intact through until the end of the scenario, despite enemy assault. While the casualties are not directly observable in the screens, the rate seems to be closer (though still higher) than the historic casualty rates for this battle.

Once again, despite the narrowing of the focus, I am struck that the operational scale of this game doesn’t touch the tactical scale of Steel Panthers. Even if the troop concentrations worked out, going from a six hour battle to a one-or-more 1 hour battles would require a simulation of supply, rest, and reinforcement that isn’t accounted for in most tactical engines and is abstracted in the TOAW mechanics. Also, this being an all-infantry battle, it probably wouldn’t be the most fun scenario for a game that has a tank reference right there in the name.

One game that does try to model the details between these two levels the the Command Ops engine from Panther Games. While units are, as with this scenario, represented down to the company level, the lower level of detail is modeled. Time is a pausable continuous time, meaning a much more detailed calculations of what happens when. Also, the details of the deployments of the companies are represented – as opposed to simply placing them in a hex.

In Command Ops, supply is modeled much more explicitly. In TOAW, supply is important, but it mostly involves controlling hexes between the supply source and the units to prevent unit combat factors from degrading. In Command Ops, the flow of materiel is accounted for so as to show up in the ammunition numbers of the resupplied units. I have read no information on the supply operations of this particular battle, but with a geographically-isolated fight taking place over the course of a week, I imagine it was critical.

The Command Ops engine was original designed for paratrooper operations (Highway to the Reich, Conquest of the Aegean), and would probably make an excellent engine for this particular scenario.

Despite my satisfaction with earning a victory in this scenario, I wonder if it was partially an artifact of the programmed opponent not being tuned quite right. There were several occasions during the battle that I was very sure that I was about to be wiped out in the next turn, but I was allowed to withdraw my forces and concentrate them. At the end of the game, there is an enemy company in good order, dug in on the eastern edge of my screenshot. Unopposed by my forces, that unit could have grabbed several victory locations and there would be nothing I could have done about it. It makes me wonder if a French victory would have been feasible against a human opponent.

The Battle of Hòa Bình

Following the victories earlier in the year, the French commander Jean de Lattre de Tassigny wished to repeat his earlier successes. By forcing the Việt Minh to fight on their terms, the French were able to use their superior technology, logistics, and fire support to defeat the Việt Minh in open battle.

To force the situation, the city of Hòa Bình was targeted. It sat on key road and river transportation routes through Indochina and had been taken and used as a major logistics and communication hub by the Việt Minh. By disrupting their supply lines, the French would force the Việt Minh into open battle at the place of their choosing.

Of course, the French would also create logistical problems for themselves. To keep Hòa Bình in supply, the French were forced to upgrade and garrison the road leading to the city. Supply via the Da (Black) River was also used. Although a considerably longer route, it was easier to secure. Outposts were created along the river to protect those convoys.

In December of 1951, General Giáp began attacking these outposts in an attempt to overwhelm the French. One such battle, at Tu Vu, is included in the Steel Panthers scenario list. In that battle, the garrison of a river outpost came under the assault of a numerically-superior Việt Minh force.

The Việt Minh attack came at night, to nullify the French control of the air. Starting around 9:30 PM, the French positions came under enemy mortar fire and shortly after 10PM the waves of infantry assaults began through the French wire and minefields.

On my southern wing, the Viet Minh have just breached my minefields and are headed for my entrenched positions.

The outpost straddled a tributary to the Black River, meaning the two positions needed to be defended separately. The defenders consisted to two companies of Moroccan infantry. The northern wing also had a platoon of tanks.

On my northern wing, I have tanks. But can they come into play before it is too late?

In contrast my other scenarios, this one seems sized about correctly in terms of units. The French seem to be lacking historical artillery support, which in the real battle was directed onto the minefields.

The Steel Panthers scenario lasts around an hour, and seems represent only the initial assault on the French positions. I ended up with a draw. In getting there, I used little in the way of strategy. My units were initially in entrenched positions and dug in, and so I figured moving would only hurt me. Some enemy scouts had slipped in behind my lines (probably initial placement?) and I lost a victory location to that. I do wish I had tried to get those points back before the scenario ended. It may also have helped to give ground a little earlier, so as to bring my second line of defenses into play. Although deliberately letting the enemy advance seems like a bad idea. I do note that this scenario is included in the HPS/John Tiller product Dien Bien Phu. That scenario, according to the notes, lasts for 2 hours and also appears to be intended to last until the French withdrawal from the their southern outpost. It would be interesting to play the two scenarios side-by-side, although not interesting enough to drop $40-$50 on the product. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to return to the Squad Battles series in another war.

In the real battle, the southern defenders were forced to withdraw across a narrow footbridge to the the northern strong point after some three hours of attack. The wire and minefields had been neutralized by a carpet of dead enemy attackers, and the defenders had run out of ammunition to shoot them with. Two hours later, the overwhelmed defenders of the northern outpost withdrew through the river onto an island, where they prepared themselves for a final stand that never came.

The battlefield as it appears today (via Google Map).

The greater battle for Hòa Bình continued until the following February, with the results from Tu Vu writ large. The French suffered high losses while inflicting far greater losses onto the communists. While the French were ultimately able to maintain control of the ground, the cost of that victories proved too dear. The French withdrew from the area before a final attack from the Việt Minh came.

Hallelujah

Tags

Christmas music, Handel, Messiah, Revelations

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

King of kings and Lord of lords.

Cultural Hegemony

Tags

communism, gender pay gap, GOP, gun control, media, zombie

The blog Zombietime made an entry the other day that contains some profound truths that have me rethinking how I see the political world.

I actually do not agree with his primary premise; that the left has suffered a permanent reversal of fortune. Despite the sizeable electoral victory that president-elect Trump achieved, the election was still close. I still believe the election was the Democrat’s to lose. Lose they did, but their mistakes were many. From the choice of Hillary Clinton as their standard bearer to tactical mistakes in their campaign execution, they may have been closer than the numbers suggest.

Also, this election was nothing if not a set of unique circumstances. To extrapolate from this Trump victory to the future of our Republic might be stretching a bit too far.

However, I do think he has captured the trend correctly. This election was supposed to be another step on the path to permanent political majority for the Democrats. Whatever faults their candidate had were going to be washed over by the unpopularity of Donald Trump, and the permanent majority more and more would be cast in stone. A Senate majority and a majority of Supreme Court appointments would add to Obama’s 8-year reshaping of the bureaucracy. None of that happened – and that is, in fact, a big deal.

However, what I found even more illuminating was his analysis of the strategy of the Left. The strategy, adopted from the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy on cultural control of a society by its ruling class. From the article,

A conservative-minded populace will always vote for conservative-minded leaders, so the way to achieve communism in advanced nations, he argued, would be to first change the culture so that progressive ideals become dominant, and then people will simply vote themselves into communism without the need for a revolution.

This goes far to explain the inexplicable in the politics of the modern Left. The “War on Women,” the “Gender Gap,” “Global Warming.” are all policies without a discernible endgame, until you realize that just inculcating the population with ideas is the endgame.

Let’s take the “Gender Gap.” If you get your news from conservative sources, you probably that assume this issue is exaggerated for political effect. In fact, some studies put the gap at considerably less than the 31 cents out of a dollar that the left has been citing since the 1970s. One recent study, after removing all non-gender-bias effects and particularly considering hours worked, calculated the pay gap at 2 cents on the dollar, with a margin of error of +/-3.  Effectively non-existent.

Even accepting that the Gender Gap is a real and important issue, once you look at the “solutions” coming out of the left things get more confusing. The bulk of recent State-based drives to “solve” the issue consisted mostly of restating gender equality restrictions that are also enforced at the Federal level via the courts. Tweaks around the edges merely try to eliminate any difference in pay, except that which is derived from certifications and credentials. It seems extremely unlikely that such laws would make any difference in a “Gender Gap” that, according to the arguments coming from the sponsors of these bills, has refused to change after almost 50 years of activism, not to mention countless legislative and judicial mandates.

But what if the issue isn’t to solve the “Gender Gap” at all? What if the issue is simply to create, in the minds of the population, the idea that the issue exists? What the left does goes further; they define a partisan difference. The population sees how progressives are committed to solving the Pay Gap issues whereas Conservatives oppose such efforts at every turn. So what is a voter to think? Do any of us want women to earn less money simply because they are women? Of course not. So we must vote Democrat.

A similar analysis can probably be made for most of the current wedge issues. Through it all, the conservative movement plays into the game. The right identifies the “right” side of the issue, and attacks the Progressive left with logic, facts, and figures. Many times the right even defeats the wedge issue legislation and claims victory.

But what if it is the goal of the Left to create permanent wedge issues that, then, will redefine how voters see themselves; as left or right, Democrat or Republican? If so, the Left doesn’t necessarily want to win. It may even be counter-productive, if a wedge issue turns into a non-issue. (Fortunately, conservatives help out here too as they are apt to continue pounding their fists against the walls of long lost battles).

I’m going to start thinking about every political or activist activity in light of this strategy, and see how different the world looks.

Before I do, I will return to the main point of the article.

I do believe his narrative is generally correct. He is correct that the Left has engaged in a long game for six decades that should now be coming to fruition. The signs are there that it is not bearing fruit as it should, and this is part of the Left’s frustration. I agree that this will cause the Left to double-down on their strategy, oblivious to its (hopefully) failure.

Think about one of the repeated laments of the Left in recent years. “Don’t those rednecks understand they’re voting against their own interests?” Or Hillary’s angry question, “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead, you might ask? Well… the choice for working families has never been clearer!”

It’s a recognition that their strategy isn’t working out the way it “should,” and a bit of cognitive dissonance at the lack of results.

In light of this, I think part of the rapid disintegration of the Left in this election was not only due to a winding down of their long term strategy, but also a result of two medium term mistakes.

Mistake One: Demonizing George Bush. Their attacks on George Bush as the end of all things good and right came too soon. Bush won the close election against Gore because they were still a few years out from Obama’s “permanent majority,” not because their permanent majority was thwarted by the court. His re-election pretty much demonstrated that. But from the moment that it was clear that Florida was contested, they were full court press on trying to destroy him.

I think “normal people,” including both the non-political and the right-leaning folks who weren’t quite Bush fans, quickly became polarized by the viciousness of the invective coming out of the anti-Bush people. It was clearly overblown; disconnected from reality.

So now, when they wanted to bring it out again to defeat Trump? I think we’ve all become used to it. Yes, Trump is Hitler. So was Romney. So was McCain. And Bush, he was more Hitler than Hitler. We get it. Who cares.

Mistake Two: Demonizing Gun Owners. I think this one demographic turned the election and they did it exactly because of the attacks from the left. Put another way, I suspect a Hillary Clinton who was no threat to gun owners and the Second Amendment would have handily defeated a Donald Trump (who has his own spotty background on the subject).

This was another wedge issue, and one that looked to be, throughout the Obama years, the wedge issue of all wedge issues. For decades, the pop culture and media has told us all how scary guns are. Now that we’re all a’scared, we are shown the Democrats are the ones who are protecting us from these scary things and Republicans fight it at every turn. It worked in Europe, but…

It turns out that in the U.S., too many of us still have a direct experience with firearms, so we’re not getting all our info from anti-gun movies and media. Many of those people are the blue collar workers, the union members, a core constituency that the Left takes for granted. Not only didn’t this create more votes, but it also created a backlash. People who took no interest in politics suddenly joined the NRA, became informed, and became politically active. As fast as new assault weapon bans could be proposed, Constitution Carry laws were proposed and passed even faster.

As the original article indicates, the writing should have been on the wall.  Bill Clinton took a drubbing after passing the original Assault Weapons Ban. But the playbook said it would work, and they played it. As Zombietime says,

…they will continue to play the old game. So they will lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. Over and over and over again until they too see the futility of the entire leftist worldview.

Before the election was settled, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote an editorial in the Wall St. Journal. The article itself is behind a paywall and the bulk of it is about a Danish political drama that ran from 2010-13 that is popular in the UK. The article explored some details of the show, but it was the last two paragraphs of the article that I found particularly insightful.

[The show] demonstrates, knowingly or not, that to be of the left in the Western political context is to operate in a broad, deep, richly populated liberal-world that rarely if ever is pierced by contrary thought. They are in a bubble they can’t see, even as they accuse others of living in bubbles. [Main character, Prime Minister] Birgitte sees herself as practical and pragmatic, and she is – within a broader context of absolute and unquestioned ideology.

It reminded me that as a general rule political parties and political actors do not change their minds based on evidence or argument. They have to be beaten. Only then can they rationalize change to themselves and their colleagues: “We keep losing!” Defeat is the only condition in which they can see the need for change. They have to be concussed into it.

“Concussed.” The Left will not changed until they are “concussed into it.” And a single Republican victory at the polls is a long way from providing that concussion.

As Winston Churchill said,

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

’O Seoule mio

Tags

Cold War, IL-2, Korean War, Panzer Elite, Pink Floyd, Steel Panthers, wargames, WinSPMBT

Once again hoping to find some tactical goodness in the Korean war, I return to the period of the Inch’on landings.

Tank Country

The game Panzer Elite was released in 1999. It was a Tank command simulator covering battles between the Germans and the Americans from 1943 through the end of the war. At the time it came out, it pushed the limits of technology both graphically and in terms of the realism of the simulation. The player commands a platoon of tanks on a battlefield that includes armor, infantry, and artillery (both enemy and friendly).

In the 17 years it has been out, fans of the game have continued to play and modify the original release. Mods have enhanced the graphics and the realism, as well as expanded the scope of the original game to include the whole time period of the second world war as well as more of the major belligerents on the Western Front.

I picked up the game for the first time very recently. It sells on GOG for under $3 when on sale. The download includes the original “Special Edition” version that came out in 2001, as well as a number of user-made mods. In trying to quickly search for the “right” mod package to start with, I stumbled across a Korean War mod package.

As I’ve pointed out in earlier posts, the Korean War equipment was often the same as, or at least only minor upgrades from, World War II equipment. Thus, Korean War scenarios should be easily buildable using the Russian Front expansion mods, simply pitting the Americans against the Soviets.

A fine idea, but still not quite fully implemented as far as I can tell. The mod’s scenarios are the original Panzer Elite scenarios, except with the North Koreans swapped in for the Germans. I played the first Inch’on landing scenario, which was actually the same as the Anzio landing scenario with units correct for the period substituted in.

“…and the Inch’on bridgehead was held for the price of a few hundred ordinary lives.”

Playing the original and the Korean version side-by-side, it seems that not everything works in the Korean mod. In the original Anzio, my supporting infantry immediately take up positions whereas in Korea they seem to be frozen in place.

In contrast, when I create an “instant action” scenario, there does seem to be functioning infantry. Instant action is, in my mind, second best to well-designed hand-crafted scenarios – obviously for historical reasons- but also, it seems that the instant action game truly throws you instantly into the action. My first try started with the opposing forces in contact and firing on each other from the open.

The tools to create scenarios exist, although at first glance it looks daunting. Not the kind of thing where I could throw together a quick Korean village and have a shootout in a few clicks.

Unlike other options, the Panzer Elite mod does seem to include the major tank types. In playing the U.S. forces at Inch’on, I am equipped with the M26. The program is praised for its accurate simulation of armor, and I assume that extends to the Korean war era tanks as they are minor variations of those modeled already. The infantry seems largely useful as target practice. I’ve yet to see the use of bazookas or anti-tank rifles (although that doesn’t mean they are not there). I have seen infantry occupying buildings, so it is possible that with the right setup, AI infantry could be used to model an ambush on the player’s armor.

There seem to be some additional UI factors giving me problems that I don’t see on youtube videos of gameplay. The use of the mouse to select things doesn’t seem to work as it should. Pressing the right mouse button seems to work only occasionally, often taking back to the center of the screen. Even more occasionally, it gives unknown commands to my “wingmen” (the other tanks under my command in my platoon.) The map function has horrible graphics, perhaps even by 1999 standards, and also seems to suffer by a partially working mouse.

All in all, I think Panzer Elite shows some potential for this purpose, but potential that I’ll likely never exploit. Without an existing base of period scenarios, I’ve got quite a learning curve ahead of me. First fixing UI bugs, then learning the scenario editor – not to mention learning the UI itself. Like so many simulation programs, all the commands need to be learned afresh. While I do plan to explore a little more, I don’t expect to find what I’m searching for.

Seoul Searching

Needing a quick fix, I returned some more scenarios from WinSPMBT.

This one models the days before the assault on Seoul post Inch’on landing. The U.S Marines are closing in on the city, and the North Korean’s have launched an early morning counter attack just west of Seoul.

The Marines have set up an ambush for the North Korean counter attack. It is working.

I left the minmap in the screenshot to try to give some perspective on the location of the encounter. One thing I find particularly fascinating is to look at the Google Map of this area today. What used to be small villages is now a heavily industrialized urban area.

There is also a scenario modeling combat in the heart of Seoul’s urban area (circa 1950). It provides what I expect from U.S. Cold War operations. Massive superiority and virtually unlimited fire support versus an entrenched enemy with prepared positions and booby traps. Nothing else I’ve looked at came close to giving me what I was expecting.

I’m advancing on the North Korean’s positions, trying to keep my combined forces combined. Easier said than done.

WinSPMBT remains the most fun of any of my options at this point. It almost manages to strike a balance between historical fidelity, realistic modeling and ease-of-use. Almost, but better than the alternatives.

I… WANT… TO… FLY… JETS!

Finally, I returned to IL-2 and support of these same late-September operations from the air. Unfortunately, I’m just not much of a virtual pilot – more likely to put my jet into a spin as actually take down an enemy. That aside, the Jet Age mod provides a handful of pre-configured scenarios with exactly what I was looking for. The scenarios involve flying F9F Panthers off of a carrier for both air superiority and ground support missions.

I’ll keep at it.

Спаси, Господи, люди Твоя

Tags

Russian, Troparion

O Lord, save Thy people,
And bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victory over the barbarians to those who fight
to save our righteous faith and our dear, sacred land.
And by the power of Thy Cross
Preserve Thy commonwealth.
Grant us peace.

Between the Wars

Tags

action/adventure, console port, Earl Swagger, film noir, FPS, game design, gun porn, Hot Springs, L.A. Noire, left-handed mouse, Logitech Wingman, murder, night vision, Stephen Hunter, World War II

My History of Games series is intended to be an exploration of wargaming. Here I take a little diversion into some different genres.

L.A. Noire was billed as a major innovation in gaming at the time it was released. It had been developed using live actors and proprietary motion capture technology to use not only realistic looking 3D graphics, but to use the lifelike qualities of those graphics in-game. The player interacts with characters and can, indeed must, interpret their tone, body language and facial expressions to read between the lines of what is being said. A critical gameplay element is to observe suspects body language during interrogations in order to determine whether or not they are lying, and it is the motion capture that makes that body language realistic enough to read.

But in many other respects, L.A. Noire has the classic game elements that have been around for generations of PC games. Inside the overall L.A. Noire narrative, there’s the driving game, the the chase and shoot game, the button-mashing fisticuffs, and the pixel hunt. Even the “interview” innovation is probably very similar to many previous efforts – at its core, you are given a statement that you have to choose whether it true, false, or something in between.

So how do does one talk about this game? Is the focus on the facial reading? Is it on the “classic game?” Is it meant to be a “Grand Theft Auto” goes to Hollywood in the 40s?

Say Goodbye to Hollywoodland

One of my first reactions after starting up the game was wondering how much was made up. After all, they had replaced the iconic Hollywood sign with Hollywoodland! What I didn’t know then, but I know now, was realistic. Indeed the reproduction of Los Angeles paid meticulous attention to detail. The original sign was put up to advertise a new housing development called “Hollywoodland” and it did in fact still read that way in 1947, when this game is set. It wasn’t until 1949 when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce assumed responsibility for maintenance of the sign and, as part of that effort, removed the “LAND.”

The things you learn.

L.A. Noire has a minigame that involves spotting various landmarks in Los Angeles. When driving by a landmark for the first time, a key or button is pressed to glance at it, after which you receive some sort of bonus points for having found it. The rest of Los Angeles is also very detailed and varied, and the experience of driving from crime scene, to bar, to apartment, and then back to the police station does give the impression of being there. I don’t look for, and haven’t noticed, the repetitive scenery which often fills out games. It is obvious how much work has gone into the details. It does make me wonder about its accuracy. How close is this to a Google Earth from 1947?

Beyond the scenery, the style of the game is a mix between ripped-from-the-40s-headlines and the film noir of the period. Probably more the latter than the former. Any semblance of historical immersion, though, is pretty much limited to the visuals. Driving, shooting, as well as any other activities are meant to be gamey, not realistic. Dialog is meant to mimic movies, and modern ones at that. The story arcs are an exaggerated form of what we know to expect from this type of thing.

The Uncanny San Fernando Valley

So how about those graphics?

The game was some $50 million dollars and 7 years in the making. The concept of using live actors to provide realistic body-language in-game was heavily marketed in the development phase and meant to be a big new thing in the world of gaming. I don’t know much about video game marketing, and what constitutes a commercial success, but I’ve read it sold some 5 million copies. It sounds like it did OK.

On the other hand, I’ve yet to see any further use of this technology in any other games. There was initially some talk of a sequel, which I think people assumed meant more L.A. detective stories. Later, the developer announced a game taking place in China in 1936. That project was eventually shut down before release. One assumes that, whatever success of the original game, the costs of this style of graphical interface exceeded its value.

Back to the Basics

Putting all the rest of it aside, it isn’t a bad gaming experience, although for me not in that “best game ever” category by any means.

My impressions are marred by a few problems, mostly part and parcel of porting a console game to the PC.

One is the save and load system, necessary for console games but out-of-line with most made-for-PC games. Besides hardware and software limits on consoles, fixed save points can be used to up the challenge of a game – you can’t save right before a difficult task and then replay it until you get it right. Of course, it is frustrating have to go through a cut scene and some action to get back to the point that you actually want to play, because you couldn’t save where you wanted. It is also annoying to want to stop playing for the night, only to have to wait until the game decides it is time to save.

Another point of irritation is the lack of support for left handed mice. This game is hardly the worst offender, because some of the clicks can be remapped. But it forces me to think backwards with other menus. I plan to call out other culprits in future articles.

Speaking of key remapping, I’ve never been able to drive properly with WASD keys. I don’t have a console controller, so I dug out my wife’s old steering wheel. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work either. Besides the fact that I keep reaching for a non-existent turn signal, the steering is designed around a controller, and doesn’t respond to the wheel in a natural way. I frequently find myself swerving down Ventura, as I try to get my steering back under control.

Then, to add insult to injury, with the steering wheel mapped in, some of the other controls don’t work as configured. In order to interrogate a suspect, I need to use one of the buttons on the steering wheel to interact with my notebook. I don’t know if it is a buggy port or just an unexpected controller fighting with other inputs.

Some of my issues with the game are not related to UI, but are baked into the design. As I said, despite all the 3D, the interrogation game comes down to a dialog tree with three choices. You can believe, disbelieve, or accuse them of lying (given proof found elsewhere). Choosing launches you into a further dialog. If you guessed right, you get additional choices or information. If wrong, the characters (you and the suspect) generally get mad at each other. The problem is, the apparent intricacies of the story don’t always fit this simple model.

I’ll give an example, hopefully without spoiling the plot. I am at the home of the husband of the victim, where I find a clue that would seem to indicate he had bad intentions toward his wife. However, other clues point towards someone else, yet to be discovered. In the dialog tree, I accuse the husband of killing his wife, which he vehemently denies. I believe him, but I do want to ask him about the clue. The problem is, the only way to bring up the clue is to accuse him of lying, bring up the clue, and then allow him to explain that it isn’t what it looks like, and he wasn’t lying after all. Not at all intuitive.

However, having learned my lesson, I’m faced with another suspect later in the game. Again, I’m pretty sure he’s innocent, but when I ask about his contact with the victim, he seems to be hiding information. So, this time, I accuse him of lying, referencing witness accounts of him being seen with the victim to back the accusation up. Turns out this isn’t the answer the game is looking for and the suspect gets all sullen and refuses to give information. Never did quite figure that one out. This guy, like a number of characters, seem to lie to the police for no reason whatsoever. I know they’re lying, but also know they have no involvement in the crime.

One part of the frustration is, unlike the traditional puzzle game conversation tree where you can generally get through all the branches eventually, in this game it is very easy to shut yourself off from the solution by picking the wrong choice. And when that choice starts to feel like a random stab at one out of three options, well, I don’t like those odds.

Overall, though, I can’t complain about the game. While it didn’t appear good enough to make it as a high-end development, top-tier game, as a bargain bin puzzle/action game with some very cool technology – it was worth what I paid for it.

Another Story about Night Vision

As it happened, the next book on my to-read shelf happened to be based in this same period. Once again, a fictional story based on real events.

Hot Springs by Stephen Hunter is a novel expanding out the story of his protagonist Earl Swagger. Much like L.A Noire, it starts with Earl’s return from the Pacific War, release from the (in this case) Marines, and beginnings as a officer of the law.

Rather than risk a review that might give away too much of the plot, I’ll offer a few impressions. However, if you want to know nothing from the book, skip ahead to the next section.

This book is what I would call a literary version of gun porn. Gun erotica, perhaps (although I’d advise against googling that)? The story describes firearms and their functionality in detail, including thorough and accurate descriptions of training and firefights. I suspect firearm aficionados love this stuff, and others probably don’t so much.

I was a little taken aback when I hit a point in the novel where an early version of night vision technology once again took on a major role in the plot development, as it did in several earlier novels by the same author. It became just one plot point of many that was built upon technical details of historic firearms models and tactics. And as I said above, this is good.

I do wonder how well the story holds on its own, without the “gun erotica.” I’m not sure it does, but I’m also not sure it matters. When we pick up an “Earl Swagger” novel, we expect a well told narrative peppered with guns, fights, and gun fights. It did strike me that this story would translate well to the big screen, and that may even be by design. If I were in the movie biz, I think I would enjoy paring this book down into a screenplay. It seems like it would fit just about right into a feature length film.

Día de Muertos

To wrap up this post, I give you Grim Fandango: Remastered.

Why? Why? Why? you may ask.

I started playing this at the same time I started L.A. Noire, in part to amuse my children around Halloween. And amused they are – they regularly ask to continue with the game. I also had never finished the game when I bought it in the CD jewel case, probably a year or so after it came out.

No, it’s not a wargame. It’s not even historical. It isn’t even an attempt to create a self-consistent reality. However, if I had to date it, I could see putting it sometime in the late 40s. The scenes back in the land of the living have a 40s look and feel, and the cars look shortly post war. Plus, the vibe of the game is, like L.A. Noire, that same film noir style.

At the time it came out, it was touted as one of the best of its genre – the puzzle game. The genre is one that I’ve generally avoided, although I have played enough to form the opinion that I don’t like it. At their worst, puzzle games involve hunting through the graphics for hidden hot spots, and then using the found items in non-intuitive combinations to “solve” the particular puzzle. I find it extremely frustrating. I suppose it would be one thing if the puzzles were truly brain teasers that could be worked out with some effort and knowledge. Too often, it seems to me, the only useful knowledge is a background in puzzle games, thus knowing what tricks tend to be thrown at you.

Grim Fandango was an improvement. It had a better story, better dialog and genuine humor. The puzzles themselves were supposed to be a bit easier than the norm for games at the time. At the peak of the puzzle games’ popularity, it was a game targeted a bit more towards the mass audience.

Back then, I was working on it at the same time as my wife. We would both try to do the same “level” at the same time, and help each other out if one of us figured it out first. Problem was, I’m not sure we very often figured it out. Eventually, she would crack and look up the solution on some cheat site. We only got so far. I decided that I was going to figure out the thing for myself, and I guess she lost interest to the point where she wasn’t looking up the answer. So we stopped.

At this point, I’m not yet back to where I’d left of before. Somewhere in Year 2, if you know the game.

It is worth making a gameplay comparison to L.A. Noire. The main difference between the two is that some of the L.A. Noire puzzle involve physical reactions – the driving, fighting, or shooting pieces. In Grim Fandango, all interaction (at least as far as I have seen) is simple moving and clicking. Unlike Grim Fandango, L.A. Noire has the ability to “fail.” However, if you fail on an action sequence or die in a gunfight, you’re simple given the opportunity to try it over. If you “fail” in an interrogation, you’re given a poor rating on the case, but you move on to the next case anyway. Effectively, not that much different than the keep-at-it-until-you-get-it mode of a Grim Fandango.

So in many ways Grim Fandango is an easier, “lighter” version of L.A. Noire. One drawback of Grim Fandango is that it can’t entirely get away from the puzzle game solution that is built of seemingly unrelated stuff you’ve found. L.A. Noire at least has you matching the clues in an intelligent way to the facts of the crime you are trying to solve.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the “Remastered” part of this game. It really does look and play great, post-facelift. In fact, a few UI anachronisms aside, I’d say the game could easily hold its own as a current title. Maybe not the A-list title that it was in its day, but its likely worth its full asking price of around $15 and definitely worth picking up on sale (as I did.)

And as I said, (quite unlike L.A. Noire), Grim Fandango is something that can be played with the kids.