This is the eighty-fifth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.
Having found (in that previous post) the experience of a historically one-sided battle to play out rather one-sided, I thought I’d try another early battle with which I already had a rich experience. Back in 2018, I noted that Victory Games Vietnam 1965-1975 features Operation Starlite, the first significant offensive action by the U.S. military, as a intro/training scenario. It was the second post since I had started counting up my Vietnam-specific posts and one I used as a springboard for my looking-at-the-Vietnam-War-through-games exploration. Before I was done, I think I had five different posts looking at how Starlite has been approached in different games.
This is a battle that I’ve looked at from every scale* from the grand-operational down to a single-man, first-person perspective. At every level, I had my share of complaints. For an operational game like TOAW, the detail is so scant as to have little real connection with the tactics over the several days of battle. As I pointed out then, I played while also reading from The First Fight: US Marines in Operation Starlite, August 1965, meaning I was also developing an appreciation of how it really happened.
For the tactical battles, I was bothered that they were either too small, and thus failed to capture the important facets of the battle; or that they tried to play out the battle in miniature – stuffing all the components of a larger battle onto a small map and a 45 minute window. Like Ap Bac, Operation Starlite might just be an excellent test of whether this scale of Campaign Series: Vietnam‘s simulation fills a much needed hole when gaming the war in Vietnam.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/starlite1.jpg?w=1024)
I mention the scale, and there is some interesting discussion to be had on that subject when it comes to Campaign Series: Vietnam. As I looked at this battle previously, I spent some brain cycles comparing the scale of the different treatments. As I explored when trying out Campaign Series: Middle East, this reworked engine continues at the same hex scale as Divided Ground which, itself, duplicated the scale of The Arab-Israeli Wars; in turn taking its lead from PanzerBlitz. Or, to state it clearly, each hex in Campaign Series: Vietnam represents 250 meters.
So is it also true that the 6-minutes-per-turn of PanzerBlitz is also carried forward? Actually, it is not.
Reading designer’s notes and discussions, it is clear that this game implicitly acknowledges that a strict turn-by-turn clock doesn’t actually work. The creators explain in detail that there is not a specific “turn length” designated for this game. Rather, it is up to the scenario designer to create a scenario with the right number of turns so as to match the on-screen version to the duration (and sweep) of the battle itself.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/starlite2.jpg?w=1024)
Following that extraordinarily-lengthy introduction, I’ll opine this game does seem to hit the sweet spot. Better than all the other treatments of this battle that I’ve gone through, Campaign Series: Vietnam‘s Starlite gives me a sense of “experiencing” the battle that I’ve read about. The platoon-scale is a good match for this multi-day engagement; providing tactical options at key points without requiring micromanagement of individual fire teams. The map size (and this is a big map) fits very well too. Included on-map are the air bases providing helicopter support and the offshore naval guns accompanying the amphibious forces. Add to that (and assuming I can remember to watch my fuel levels), I can again remark that this is the best treatment of helicopter and close-air support that I’ve played with to date.
Nonetheless, there are still ways that the game feels hobbled by its pedigree. There are places in the game when I think – wouldn’t it have been so much easier on the player to have done this another way? In many cases, probably it would be. It occurs to me that, while acknowledging all the upgrades that have been made, this is all built on the foundation of the decades-old Tiller substructure.
I am writing this whole post before I’ve actually completed the scenario and I do so somewhat deliberately. I’d rather my commentary not be about my ability or (more likely) inability to perform well, either relative to the historical situation or the game’s victory point scoring. Instead, I wish to form an impression relative to (what I remember of) the description of the battle in The First Fight. It is by that measure that I feel this game is doing me right with how it simulates the results of my decisions.
Before I go, I’ll repeat one other of my speculations. Part of the reason a scenario like this one can work so well is its asymmetry. It is clear that Operation Starlite could be played as the communists against a U.S. AI player; I won’t even bother to try. The commie AI works because the VC units have little to do except try to hold the victory locations to which they’ve been assigned. The “smarts” is in the scenario design, which sets up those defensive positions at game’s start. The only “intelligence” that might occasionally be required is to counter-strike if the human player mistakenly exposes units or to execute a “strategic withdrawal,” as was the typical VC endgame in Vietnam. In other words, the computer opponent does not have to be good with tactics. Further, there is plenty of opportunity to fix whatever problems remain with some well-applied scripting.
*If you are willing to acknowledge the Operation Starlight card in Fire in the Lake as a strategic-level and extremely abstract model of the battle, I can take credit for that down to the FPS level, all for the same fight. The card, played for the event, either eliminates a base-adjacent coastal province’s VC build up or “hides” them underground, depending on which “side” executes and assuming an imaginative interpretation of the resulting actions. All of this takes place without any operation or any combat, at least in the way that Fire in the Lake would normally simulate such.
Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles take another backwards look at the Silver Bayonet Operation and the battles at Ia Drang in the next post.