When I told you about my playing of Atlantic Fleet I explained how I never tried the Battle of the Atlantic dynamic campaign. Now I have and, as it turns out, it’s this feature that gives the game some (sea) legs. It seemed my duty to wrap up from where I left you hanging at the beginning of November.
The strategic level adds substantial play value
The full campaign involves building up a fleet for either England or Germany and then deploying it to the Atlantic. Each turn, representing half of a week, allows the opportunity to move any ships from one area (the light-blue squares, above) to an adjacent area. If that area contains a port, those ships may be sent for resupply or repair.
After movement, combat may take place in any of the squares which contain both friendly and enemy ships. The combat is essentially the same as the individual scenarios but you determine makeup of your side through your strategic-map movement. Each new battle also starts with the carrying over of any previous results (minor damage or expended armaments) from previous turns. Any ship sunk or severely damaged is lost while the remainder live to fight another day. Damaged ships that make their way back for repairs can be refurbished and resupplied, coming back in as good as new a few turns on.
Sinking of unescorted merchant ships happens automatically
Your own fleet is maxed-out at 30 ships. Victories give you “renown” and renown can purchase you more ships. Once you’re topped off, you can use those points to trade up to a better fleet. The enemy fleet is entirely unknown to you. The total makeup is a mystery and the locations of individual ships are only revealed if there is some kind of combat (see the blue ship in the first screenshot). The time between turns means that it rarely works to chase down a thus-spotted enemy. The “fog of war” means that just because enemy squadrons share the same space doesn’t mean they’ll meet each other. If your ships don’t engage the enemy then you won’t even know he’s there. That is to say, most potential meetings with the enemy never take place; squadrons pass each other, unaware, in the night.
Another nice feature is that “uninteresting” encounters – attacks on escorted convoys or interdiction by land-based aircraft – are automatically executed an summarized in a very pretty splash screen (see second pic). In this way, there seems to be a bit more to the war than the battles that you fight.
In the end it isn’t all that different from the random campaign I played earlier, although both the fleets and the squadrons are bigger here. Managing your fleet by moving about the Atlantic is far more engrossing than just managing a list. The persistence of victories, losses, and logistics provides a sense of purpose. Historically speaking, Atlantic Fleet is still an ultra-light wargame no matter how you slice it. Beer and pretzels, as we used to say. The scenarios are good for a 10-20 minutes distraction before moving on to something more important. Building this “story” of the Battle of the Atlantic, however, makes me actually want to return for another episode the next night.
I picked up the newest version of the NWS game Rule the Waves (2). This is even more remarkable because I tend limit my shopping to the bargain bin or the holiday sales. For this game it was neither. I paid full freight for a (fairly*) new game. In this case, it is worth to me to be supporting a unique development effort. And putting effort into development they are – the forums are now discussing the expansion of the game into the early part of the Cold War (“through 1970”).
So new yet so familiar
As I explained, the itch that I was trying to scratch was to get a “serious” treatment of the Battle of the Denmark Strait and/or the subsequent hunt for the Bismarck. A game I already owned, Steam and Iron, had the mechanics right but it is a World War I game. I wanted the same but for the Second World War.
I wrote briefly, then, about Rule the Waves 2. It was developed as a grand-strategy-level game about naval development and warfare. It expands the previous title, just Rule the Waves, by adding an extra 30 years. This allows play through both World Wars (or just one or the other, as desired). As the player, you are placed in the role of a Grand Admiral, guiding the naval research, production, and deployment during the 20th century’s era of global conflict. The results of your strategy are proven in tactical-level battles on a world map that zooms in to show details down to the individual ship.
The search has picked up some radar contacts!
Never having touched or even looked into Rule the Waves before, the strategy level is kind of a big leap for me. As I said, all I was really looking for was Steam and Iron for WWII and a particular battle at that. Like the ill-fated Admiral John Leach, I found that for which I was searching.
It is the Bismarck!
Beyond the several campaign start dates (the basics are two for each war, one date right before hostilities and another allowing the shaping of the navy to be ready for those hostilities) it is possible to provide “mods” as “save games.” Users have created scenarios which allow the tactical play of a historical engagement. To be clear, when I say “scenarios” I mean two created by a single user – the other battle is The Battle of the River Plate (Royal Navy versus Graf Spee in 1939). Still, when you want that one thing you’ve got to be happy when you get it.
What this gives me, the player, is the ability to run with a pre-configured, historically-accurate battle, absent all the extras of the campaign game. The experience is exactly what I expected given my previous play with Steam and Iron.
Having failed to sink the Hood, Bismarck began losing a war of attrition
Interestingly enough, I got the same result that I achieved when playing with Atlantic Fleet. After some serious exchange of gunfire, I managed to disable the Bismarck and then sink her. My HMS Hood was was pretty beat up but not in imminent danger of sinking. I’ll also throw in here an obvious difference between these two treatments – the RTW2 scenario brings to battle the other, nearby British squadrons. In game, these are AI controlled but they came to my aid eventually to take out the Prinz Eugen once Bismarck was out of the picture.
I said it before and I’ll now say it again. At the tactical level, this is a game that almost plays itself. As the player, I control squadron speed and course – and only the battleship squadron at that. Everything else is run, for both sides, by the computer. While this means that a scenario such as this is a fairly quick and, dare I say, easy affair (perhaps a downside, if you’re looking for lots and lots of depth). The plus is that I know that whatever the strengths and weaknesses are imposed upon the game’s AI, those apply equally to both sides. I may second guess myself, having reversed so decisively the historical results – but primary credit has to go to my little AI gunners.
We had to sink the Bismarck ’cause the world [depended] on us
While on the topic of strengths and weaknesses, I’ll mention just one more item.
As I lead off this post, this is an independent development effort from soup to nuts. The games are designed and programed by one or two individuals and then marketed and sold through their own on-line store front. More power to them! We need more of this.
It also means that the customer is exposed to more than a few quirks. Most of the associated material (marketing, support, etc.) is done through the NWS web forum. This makes for an awkward interface at times. Even having dealt with it for years, I frequently get myself into cycles where I know what I want and I know it’s there, but no amount of clicking seems to bring me any closer to it. The store is a little more straightforward, being built upon an e-commerce platform, but if you’re used to the likes of Amazon or Steam, it can seem a little fly-by-night. It’s not. In my years of dealing with this company, I’ve had nothing but positive interactions.
But speaking of interactions, I’ll bring up on other complaint that’s been around since the get-go. Having made the transition to all-online store and downloadable games, there is still the security issue to be handled. The way NWS handles the game licensing is individually and manually. Once you purchase your game, your download allows 4 days of play. In that time, you need to contact the company to get a license code and enter that into your game interface. This authorizes it indefinitely.
It is not the worst system and I’m glad the game isn’t tied to some sketchy copy-protection scheme but it does leave the buyer at the mercy of one guy and his day-to-day commitments to living his life. Fans have wondered why he can’t automate the process. As it is, you can be left wondering whether the emails are all getting through and whether you’ll get the code before the game goes dead. I’m pleased to see that the purchase part, at least, is automated. Paying with a credit card in the middle of the night immediately gets you the download link and 4 days of play. It can be a little frustrating to struggle through the final authorization.
Frustrating but, as I said, it is worth it to me. All of this supports an indy development effort for a neglected corner of wargaming. NWS also provides, by whatever means, some pretty attractive discounts as a reseller of other wargames. To be honest, I was a little surprised to still see NWS going strong after so many years of my not paying attention. I’m glad they’re there.
*As best as I can tell without working too hard at it, the game was released in late Spring of 2019. While that’s two-and-a-half years ago, for many of us 2020 and much of 2021 was such a blur that 2019 still seems like yesterday.
My foray into the war films of my youth has caused me to continue down that fateful path. Some web surfing focused my attention on the film Sink the Bismarck! and the book upon which it was based, C.S Forester’s The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck. I must admit that it was news to me that it was a Forester book from 1959 that was turned into this 1960s movie.
This is another flick that I watched on TV when I was a kid. Unlike Guns, it is an actual black-and-white production – so my memory of it as such is accurate rather than dependent on the TV upon which I saw it. Likely, as a kid, I found it a lot less interesting than I thought it would be. Again, I hoped to see massively-gunned battleships engaging in lengthy and dynamic battles (or so I would assume). Instead, much of the movie takes place in a deep basement in London, where the British Admiralty plans their operations.
As an adult, the I find the device brilliant. Until the arrival of modern CGI*, depicting large-scale battles was expensive and difficult. To compensate, the movie puts most of the action around a plotting table where officers frequently summarize the geographical and operational situation for characters that happen to wander in.
That is not to say this is a stage play put on film. The audience is transported between the command center, long shots of ships and aircraft on the ocean, and action aboard the various vessels. Technically, this is done with a combination of live action, sets, models, and special effects. The combination works out well, considering especially that it was done in 1960. Notable are the live carrier launches of Swordfish torpedo planes and a detailed sequence of the loading of the main guns on the British battleships. Yes, the models are pretty obviously such and the hand-drawn torpedoes running alongside live ocean shots was weak – but the effects aren’t weak enough to spoil one’s enjoyment.
There were a few criticisms that I noticed amid present-day discussions of this film. First, the movie was made 15 years before Britain declassified the work on breaking the German codes. The leading man, fictional Captain Jonathan Shepard played by WWII navy veteran Kenneth More, had access to “inside information” about the trajectory of the Bismarck towards the coast of France – or would have, were he a real person. The British had analyzed the exchange of coded information between Bismarck and Paris and had broken a Luftwaffe Enigma message about Bismarck‘s putting into port in France for repairs.
Kenneth More is one of many who, at least in part, “play themselves” in this film. In the opening scene, war correspondent Edward R. Morrow plays Edward R. Morrow, summarizing the world-wide situation and its context for this battle. Others are like More – not quite playing themselves. For example, the actor portraying Captain John Leach of Prince of Wales, Esmond Knight, fought the Bismarck from the very same ship as a gunnery officer (and was wounded in battle). Knight, when filming Sink the Bismarck!, was already 10 years older than Leach would ever be**. This gap seems consistent. I looked up several of the actors and found them to be older than one one should expect by 5-10 years.
To me, the age mismatch was obvious – that is why I looked them up – so many of the characters looked too old to my eye. However, to the audience of the time, that may not have been the case. By 1960, World War II was already something that the “older generation” did. Thus, it might have seemed more natural to see war veterans be just a little more mature rather than the obviously-too-young-to-have-been-there actors of the time. One character that I was sure was way too old was Czech actor Karel Štěpánek who played Admiral Günther Lütjens – he looked rather geriatric to me. It surprised me to compute that he was right in that same average. Lütjens died in the battle at the age of 52. Štěpánek was himself 61. Older, yes, but not outrageously so.
It says something about aging.
If I would have been forced to guess, I probably would have pegged Štěpánek in his 70s. Someone from 1960, however, probably would not have done so. Just for comparison – some actors that are 61 this year; David Duchovny, Hugo Weaving, BD Wong, and Antonio Banderas. To me, these guys look a lot younger than Sink the Bismarck!‘s Lütjens. Crazy. But do you know what else plays way off? Lütjens is portrayed as a comic-book style Nazi. He is motivated above all by Hitler’s attention and approval and glibly orders sailors to their deaths to advance the glory of the Third Reich. It’s all too over-the-top to seem true and, even worse, is counter-factual to who Lütjens really was.
The purpose*** of this character is to allow sympathy towards those who served under him. Unfortunately, that character is not Lütjens. He was not a Nazi and was known to have objections about Hitler’s regime. He famously refused to give the Nazi party salute when Hitler inspected the Bismarck, instead using the traditional German naval salute. It goes without saying that there are also records of Lütjens supporting Hitler, not so surprising given the simple fact that he survived in a position of senior command. Point being, the screenwriters may well have picked exactly the wrong character to put in the role of evil Nazi.
The movie, as I type this, is posted onto YouTube where I watched it without even being served up any advertisements. It is posted there, in its entirety, by multiple users. About halfway through I switched to a version that promised “the best quality” and, indeed, it was much better quality than the low resolution version that I started with. I’m even tempted to go back and watch the Hood get sunk again – the battle that I watched was a little blurry. Fortunately, as I explained, much of the film is command room character exposition and the having the sharpest image isn’t critical to enjoyment.
One image that stuck with me are the detailed depictions of the maps used in said command center. See, for instances, the images displayed on this professor’s web page, at or around the label “British Convoy Controllers.” A version of these maps are depicted in the movie and they reminded me of nothing so much as a new board game (released this year). I’m thinking this is no accident.
The game Atlantic Chase was released in March and has at its main playing board a map that looks very much like one from Sink the Bismarck!. The paths of convoys and squadrons are meant to represent the uncertainty of the actual location of the ships. For those back in the operations room, that uncertainty applies not only to the location of the enemy but also to the location of one’s own ships. Indeed, HQ might find themselves in the uncomfortable position that they’ve located the enemy but aren’t quite sure where their own fleet is, relatively speaking.
The solution is Atlantic Chase‘s trajectory system where the player plots the desired movements of their units rather than move the cardboard counters to represent actual position. Across the internet, this has been described as a revolutionary approach. It is, though, and approach to a long-time problem. One review described Atlantic Chase as a reimplementation**** of the Avalon Hill classicBismarck but for a couple of novel mechanics. This solution eliminates the need for paper record keeping, for hidden boards, and secret movement.
I first stumbled across Atlantic Chase when it was still in late development. I was tempted into putting in a P500 order but realized there was pretty much no chance of my actually getting to play the game – so what’s the hurry? I had pretty much committed myself, instead, to try to pick up the game in some kind of holiday-sale purchase. Have I told you that the board game business is another one that baffles me? Barely half-a-year after the game came out, it is sold out. Amazon has copies of the game but going for a blistering $140. The GMT site itself simply lists the game as sold out with no indication of future availability. It makes me wonder if artificial scarcity is the plan – a way to disincentivize purchasers from waiting for that holiday sale. Meanwhile, the game has a formidable 8.6 rating on Board Game Geek and ranks #110 for wargames.
Woe is me. Instead of having a new game to play this winter (and maybe even some gameplay photos to attach to this article), I’m stuck with only a theoretical musing about the game and its mechanisms. Let us call it a Schrödinger’s cat gaming mechanism. In addition to be a colorful descriptor, such a designation has the advantage of being connected to reality. That is to say, in some ways a probability distribution is a better way to describe reality than the classical idea of x-and-y coordinates.
Which gets me thinking.
As you know from my blog, I’m most interested in computer gaming as opposed to board games. My first thought on how this system might apply to computer gaming is that it would not. It is a elegant solution to implement fog of war, yes, but computers have other methods of doing so. Would it not be easier, in a computer game, to have definitive locations stored internally for each ship or squadron but then only share partial (that is, appropriate) information with the player or players? Maybe but maybe not.
The other problem the Schrödinger’s cat ship plotting solves is that of AI. In the context of a two-player game, it is own-side AI. The reason that even your own ships get lost occasionally is the distributed decision making that occurs during a sea campaign. While HQ has given instructions to the captain or admiral, that officer will choose to deviate or improvise as circumstances require. So a computer program which internally (secretly) tracks the locations of all your forces must have a competent AI that moves those forces according to the best information available locally. That’s no small problem.
The other thing a computer can do, however, is crunch numbers. Imagine a battlespace represented as probability distributions. The potential location for any given ship is limited by physics and the distribution is determined by intended outcomes. Those distributions would necessarily interact with each other but would only resolve to an actual event – a spotting identification or a battle – if that event was communicated back to headquarters. Yes, the math would be complex but would the logic be more complex than a good AI? That I don’t know. However, it could be a way to handle uncertainty, time delay, and the variability of decision making all at once.
*Which reminds me, I also had no idea that Greyhound was is an adaptation of the Forester book The Good Shepherd.
**Captain John Leach died later in the same year when the Prince of Wales was sunk by the Japanese off of Malaysia. He was 47.
***Controversy arose over the sinking of the Bismarck and whether it was necessary. There is evidence that Bismarck might have been surrendered to the British, sparing many German lives and delivering a prize to the English intelligence. It was also alleged (probably without merit) that the British fleet made insufficient efforts to rescue survivors. Thus, making Lütjens an evil character allowed everyone else aboard the Bismarck to be portrayed sympathetically.
****The comment, and the practicality of the comparison, should refer to Bismarck (Second Edition). The latter was a peak-Avalon Hill implementation of the original, 1962 game. The similarities are obvious once you look for them. Even the trajectories are there in the 1978 version – it is just that they are printed on the board. Surely it goes without saying that a 1962 Bismarck-themed board game was heavily influenced by a movie out in 1960.