Fires Planning - TacOps

I dusted off my copy of TacOps for this blog entry just to remind myself of how much I neglect the planning of fires on my tactical gaming sessions.

It's not that the tools to do the planning are already in my games. Some games bring these tools up to the player better than others. The most beautiful thing I ever seen is the integration of maneuver and fires in VBS4: you plan an attack by fire mission, plot the target registration point (TRP), plot a phase line for coordination and the friendly AI tactical units automatically figure out how and when to move to their attack by fire positions, all in coordination by the phase line (!). In other games the implementation of TRPs is more overt but it is there. Hell, even the Close Combat series has something for that effect.

But coming back to TacOps, the old and good wargame created by Major Holdridge, the fires planning tools are spartan but very professional.

TacOps has not just the indirect fire planning, but also the direct fire planning tools to have units to fire on targets at a specific location. It is called the Direct Fire Target Reference Point (DFTRP), which is shown below.

Unfortunately, it is left to the player to implement manually the control measures for shifting, lifting and ceasing the fires. The effect on gameplay is minimal because TacOps (WEGO) turns are short. 

Cheers,