Hearts of Iron Semper Fi - Strategic Warfare in a Few Clicks? - Part 1

Past June 6th was D-Day for the new "Semper Fi" add-on to Hearts of Iron 3 (HoI3). And boy, at every release/add-on/patch this series never fails to set discussion forums ablaze.

Due to their complexity and incredible amount of features, reviewing a Hearts of Iron game is like reviewing the internet. I have zero experience with strategy games so I'm ill-positioned to review this one. I'm looking forward to see what the pros have to say about the Semper Fi add-on.

I must be getting old, because I no longer judge games for what they can't do but rather for what they do best. I'm also focusing more and more in the big picture rather than on data worshiping. For games like HoI, I will not be complaining if the AI Allies don't launch an airborne operation even when the conditions scream for doing so. Neither I will pull my hair in horror if the Bf108 is listed as a fighter aircraft rather than as a staff taxi. Old doesn't mean wiser, though. :)

When I launched HoI3-Semper Fi, my question was: to which extent one can wage a war without too much micromanagement?

I chose an scenario called "Attack on the West", playing as the Germans and gave the AI control of (yikes!) everything (diplomacy, production, research, trade, etc). I don't mean to play the game in such way in the future, this is just a test drive.

The ability to create and modify Theaters of war is a new feature in Semper-Fi. Theatres of war are assigned to HQ units of enough hierarchy to manage such a big affair.

Please click the image for a better view. The East (blue area) and West (pink area) Theatres. Note how the command structure of the units in the East Theatre is depicted as blue and green lines. More on command structure later.

These Theatres of war have a great influence on what the friendly AI does if you choose to automate them. These AI actions cover the frontiers and the interior lines of the Theatres. After a quick glance on the deployment of forces in the West Theatre, I decided to "push the units west" by shrinking the West Theatre quite a tad. Even when I will not interfere by manually moving a single unit, I want all the war machine near the front.

A slimer West Theatre. Much better now. It's time to invade France.

Cheers,

Real and Simulated Wars to Become a Weekend Gig

At least during the summer.

You will never know how much I enjoy writing this blog. Alas, since last week real life has kept my enthusiasm at bay. Nothing catastrophic, just a new job I started in June 1st. I was lucky to nail a very good one this time, but it will involve a lot of travel during the summer. I can't use the corporate laptop I'm travelling with for gaming and at this time I can't afford one for my personal use.

In summary, I'm not gone and I don't foresee dropping this blog. There will be delays posting.

To the people who kindly sent me books for review, my apologies for the delay.

Cheers,

Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge - Tutorial Scenario - Planning - Enemy

Continuing with the planning process, now I'll consider the enemy.

From the briefing, we know that across the bridge we face a single regiment of the 12th Volksgrenadier Division. And also we know that St. Vith is not occupied by the enemy but that is likely to change soon. Also, there is an armored column coming from the west.

The following map is combination image created with an in-game screenshot of the map plus graphics from MilSketch.

All things considered, the threat from the west is the one that worries me the most. Grid lines are 1 km divisions. Click the image for a better view.

Now a closer look of the enemy forces immediately in front of us.

The enemy (grey counters) looks like an all-infantry regiment. The size of the formation is indicated in the lower part of the counters. Almost every enemy unit is a company ("I" symbol), but there is also a platoon ("..." symbol). Remember this information shown at the beginning of an scenario can be not accurate (we have full fog of war in effect) due to faulty reconnaissance.

By clicking every enemy counter we get details about the equipment and personnel that the formation could have.

Don't believe everything you see!
Note the "Reliability" field, it says "vague". This information should be taken with a grain of salt. Please click the image for a better view.

More details on equipment.
Please click the image for a better view.

New! Now we can see pictures of most of the vehicles and equipment by clicking on the text.
Please click in the image for a better view.












Coming up, the next step in planning: terrain considerations.

Cheers,

One Trip to the Attic ... And There Goes the Afternoon!

The list of overdue blog entries is not getting any smaller. This noon I went into the attic to recover some game manual and found my CDs of Sonalyst's Naval Combat Pack. I forgot about it almost by the time I bought it, quite a while ago.

Two British Harriers (0027 and 0024) fend off a couple of Argentine Mirage IIIs under the attentive watch of HMS Beaver. It's a long sail to the Malvinas/Falklands ...

Spent the afternoon playing this thing. Gah! Gotta focus ...

Cheers,

Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge - Tutorial Scenario - Planning - Mission

Well, yours truly had quite a week at work and couldn't keep up with the many news that are relevant for this blog. Let's start with the news I was very anxiously awaiting ... Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge was released!

The price of the game has spurred some fierce discussions elsewhere. I will comment about that in the future.

Now, onto the game!

The tutorial scenario features an easy-to-win scenario for the human player playing as the Allies. Even when the scenario is not challenging, please bear with me while I plan for this battle because alas I'm not tactically gifted.

Let's start the planning with a full understanding of the mission.

Please make sure to click the pictures so you can actually read the text.

The text paragraph on the left, just below the tabs displays the never-to-ignore briefing. It is important to read it to understand the mission. Yellow circles and writing are mine.

One of the other tabs shows the scenario-specific objectives. Let's take a look at those.

First objective (highlighted black) is straightforward. As shown at the bottom of the screenie, if you kill 79% of the enemy force you get 33 points in your overall score.

A comment about the destruction of enemy units. I was once discussing with  one of my best friends (a surgeon) about the optimal post-surgery feeding of cancer patients who had almost all their digestive tract removed to prevent metastasis. It was a wacky talk; the surgeon couldn't grasp amino acid dissociation constants, the biochemist couldn't grasp the electrolytic balance of a person with half their guts removed. When I asked him about how it is possible for a human being to survive such a harsh surgery, he shared a bit of his emergency room experience back in poor slums in Argentina and capped everything with "it takes a lot to get a man killed". Well, paraphrasing my non-wargamer surgeon friend, it takes a lot to get an enemy formation eliminated. Single units in this game don't want to get killed; they will take a lot of punishment, maybe rout, but they will be back into the fight when they rally. I always found this aspect of the engine quite spot on. It may be a bit shocking for the newcomer because we kind of became accustomed to turn based games where you throw the dice and if your odds are good the enemy unit just goes away. In this war game, you will push the enemy aside, but they will be back sometime. After years of playing games from Panther, "destroy the enemy" is the objective I am always sure I will miss. :)

Second objective (highlighted black) is the Steinebruck bridge (for its location see full map above). Note the timing of the objective: this objective is relevant (or active) from day 1 at 0600 to day 5 at 0600. Also, there is a distinction between occupation and completion. For occupying the objective (from day 1 at 0600 to day 5 at 0600) you can get a maximum of 8.3 score points. For having this objective under your control at day 5 at 0600 you will get 4.2 score points (no matter which side controlled the objective up to that time).


The tabs corresponding to the other objectives are reproduced below. Make sure to take a look at the full screen and map above to get an idea of the objective's location. Also note how objectives Breitfeld Crossroads and St. Vith become active not at day 1 but at day 2.

Next entry: second step of planning, the enemy.

Cheers,

"Battles from the Bulge" War Game to be Released with Extensive Data Editing Tools

Last Sunday, Wargamer.com published a short interview with Dave Arjuna (Panther Games) about the soon-to-be-released "Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge". Among other things, the issue of user-created content was mentioned. 

We have listened to our customers and hope they will take up the challenge and opportunity of creating their own scenarios. With the Estab Editor they will now have carte blanch in terms of what forces they can create and what battles they can simulate with the Command Ops engine.

These news are big! It means that in addition to creating maps and scenarios (a thing you could do with previous Panther games), now you can create new units, new equipment, new ammo types.

I am sure that exciting times are ahead for both scenario authors and us simple users.

Cheers,

Keeping my fleet afloat

The naval branch of the blog sails through the seas of conflict ... at creep speed! :)

Still haven't completed the tutorials of Harpoon 3 Advanced Naval Warfare. So many great games to play, so little time!

Tutorial #4. I'm in command of a US frigate (blue circle). A Russian bomber passes by (red symbol). Are we going to shoot it down or what?

The main screen of H3ANW. The expanded map on the left shows some bogies coming down to us (yellow icons that look like half-squares).

On a serious note, I'm coping with some serious paradigm shifts because of my land-based warfare baggage.

Sure, some principles of warfare are almost universal. But changing the virtual smell of mud to the one of salt water is quite a thing for me. Oops! Slash that part of the smell of salt water, most of the warships I will be taking into battle are not commanded from the top of a bridge but rather in a command room buried inside the guts of these colossal beasts of steel. So, it will be the smell of sweat and stale coffee!

As opposed to land-based operations, in naval warfare there is no river to cross, no hill to be taken, no forest to conceal your troops. Yet, the seas are so big that finding the enemy is not a trivial task.

Looking forward to my first engagement!

Cheers,

Steel Fury Kharkov 42: Mob Tactics

Having a blast with Steel Fury. Pun intended. :)

Only thing a bit disappointing is that I'm not able to figure out how to command my troops efficiently. Specially when I'm a tank-infantry combined arms team. Apparently there is no way to detach those panzergrenadiers to keep them back or send them forward from my tank platoon.

Rejoin formation immediately before they blow you up!

These PzGren have no air-watch discipline (note the empty rear mount for the MG42)

Cheers,

TacNuggets #3: If insurgents cross the street and there is no Marine aiming at them, is the town already lost?

I was a believer that defeat in tactical combat is always due to the cumulative effect of several small, apparently irrelevant failures ...

The game: Combat Mission Shock Force-US Marines Module
The Scenario: Circle the Wagons, by George McEwan
SITREP: A two tank section is bogged down in the middle of an insurgent-controlled town. One platoon of US Marines is on site and will protect the tanks until reinforcements arrive.

The star symbol is the position where the tank section is stranded. I moved one Plt. of Marines forward and I am trying to position them inside buildings, in a wide arch (blue line) located forward from the tank. A long time ago I played this scenario and deployed the Marines in an arch behind the tank section (dotted blue line). This was a mistake; infantry-tank cooperation in these situations needs the infantry ahead of the tank. For the most part, the Marines near the tanks are doing a great job. Now another Plt. has arrived (blue icons in the far background). Just in time, the insurgents are getting really nasty.

The plan is to have the reinforcement Plt to move into the town and move downtown in an axis perpendicular to the position of the Marines near the tanks.

The reinforcement Plt. moves its AAVs through the open using standard bounding overwatch technique. Lots of suppressive fire, these AAVs are surely thin skinned and I don't want to loose any of them to a lucky RPG shot. As planned the AAVs stop short of the town and the Marines disembark under the cover of smoke. The Marines occupy a narrow ditch and orient towards the town. After a few minutes, they move forward to take a foothold on the town. More suppressive fire. Things are going well, but an insurgent team appears on the left flank and draws the attention of everybody. 

In the foreground, an AAV and a two Marine fire teams take aim at an insurgent team that suddenly appeared on the left flank. Another Marine fire team moves forward into the town. In the far background, a mob of insurgents crosses the street towards the immobile tank section. A full Marine squad is in a building at mid-distance between the AAV and the insurgents, but they don't have an angle to shoot at them.

I counted the insurgents that crossed the street to feed the carnage downtown. 25 of them. If this AAV would have been aiming in the right direction, this battle would have ended in an early victory.

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Close Air Support (Part 4)

This is a continuation from this entry.

We have been cleared hot. This time the JTAC gave us free reign on what ordnance to use, but it is common practice in Type 1 CAS for the JTAC to choose which type of weapon the attack aircraft should use.

I haven't mentioned yet, but there is an SA-11 some 20 km from our target. By the way, I don't know what happened since the latest patch, but the SA-11 is not giving us such a hard time. We keep it real, though, and try to fly low as much as we can.

For our attack run, I used (more or less) the tactics explained by SimHQ's Andy Bush (former A-10 pilot) in this excellent article. We approach low and at the pull up point climb for the final bomb run.

Attention: during the pull up don't let your airspeed to go below 240 knots! In this case, we could only climb to 1,200 ft. My wingman is reporting enemy armor. Just super. Note the RWR; an SA-11 is tracking us.

There is not much diving when you come in from 1,200 ft, so our bomb run goes on from a shallow -20 degrees dive. The target mentioned by the JTAC is the house below the left -20 degree mark in the HUD, but his laser appears to be pointing at a bunch of trees nearby.

The JTAC reports bombs on target, but the house is still standing.

As specified by the JTAC, we exit east towards the CP.

As in real life, from the air we couldn't really figure out if our bombing run was effective or not. We have been tasked with bombing infantry; they are almost invisible from the air. We have to rely in our JTAC for that ... and he bugged out from his position. What's going on down there?

A recording of the mission allows to see all those things we missed because we were busy flying, bombing and staying alive. Below is a sneak peak of what was going on below our wings.

There was enemy infantry around that house. The JTAC may have moved his laser a bit from it ... whatever ... the bombs fell close enough to the enemy position.

During the debriefing, I was informed that our bomb run killed 8 enemy infantry.

Our infantry was relatively close to our target. They started pulling out to the south as soon as we were cleared hot. A smoke column and two aircraft in the far background can be barely seen. That's us.

These infantrymen better hurry up across the river. Enemy armor is approaching the town!

Cheers,