Combat Mission Red Thunder: Interesting Screenshots

Just a couple of interesting screenshots from today's gaming:

Tank riders! I'm feeling the combined arms love more in this game than any other since CMSF. Better not take these guys into an exposed position like this, though...

Check out that radio set! This poor FO team observer is hauling the equivalent of a living room cabinet radio set around on his back. The red line in a new (?) feature showing active command links. 

I found the visible portrayal of command links very useful in Graviteam Tactics and am delighted to see it implemented in Combat Mission.

Assault on Bespalovka - Graviteam Tactics Operation Star

Looking back, I realize that I started this blog a year ago during last Thanksgiving weekend.  Something about this time of year must put me in mind of the Eastern Front of WWII.  One year ago I was playing Achtung Panzer (now renamed Graviteam Tactics), the same game I'm playing tonight.

Tonight I'm playing the Taranovka campaign from the German side, during the Soviet "Operation Star" in early February of 1943.  Operation Star was the Soviet offensive after the destruction of the German 6th Armee at Stalingrad to recapture the cities of Kursk and Karkov.  Initially successful, the Soviets over-extended their attack, setting the stage for Von Manstein's famous counter-attack in the Third Battle of Kharkov.

The Taranovka campaign deals with the encirclement of the German 320th Infantrie Division in and around the Ukrainian town of Taranovka.  I'm commanding the 2nd Battalion on one of the regiments of this division. The weather is nasty: very cold with a blizzard the night before.  In this particular action I'm advancing on the village of Bespalovka to the south of Taranovka with 4. Companie reinforced with some infantry guns and a recon section.  My intent is to begin to break the encirclement so I can link up with units of the SS Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler to the southwest.  Having fended off a probe around dawn, I know that there are troops from the Soviet 6th Guards Cavalry in the area of the village.

One of the things I love about this game are the maps.  I'm a sucker for games that use actual military maps.  

Within a few minutes of stepping off, 4. Companie encounters a Soviet platoon.  We quickly flank them and the weight of fire of three German platoons backed by a pair of infantry guns wipes out the Soviets in a few minutes.

Note the orange smoke in the picture above.  This game is really gorgeous, and full of nice weather effects, signal flares, explosions and fires.  The combat is by far the most immersive of any game of this scale I've ever played.

Bespalovka itself is occupied only by an AT gun.

With no infantry support, the AT gun is first neutralized by a mortar round and then overrun, albeit not without casualties.  Note that in this shot the red and yellow dots indicate the position of my troops.

In less than half an hour we've secured the village.  I elect to rest my most fatigued platoon and send another platoon to recce the crossroads to the west.  If they encounter no resistance, I'm intend to move them toward the objective marked "Rail Crossing" further to the west.

The Soviets have more infantry and guns to the south of the village!  My troops come under fire, so I move a platoon supported by the infantry guns to the south side of the village to defend that flank.  Concentrated fire from squad MG42s and indirect fire from the infantry guns routs the Russians in a few minutes.

Shortly thereafter my platoon takes the rail crossing.

What's that odd sound?  A trio of Soviet biplanes!  This was great - for some reason I've never had an air attack happen to me when playing this game before today.

The aircraft make a pass over the village and rail crossing, and bank around...

...for a bombing run! The bombs turn out to be neither accurate nor terribly effective.

Nor are my troops minded to take being bombed lying down, as tracers criss-cross the sky.

With the village and rail crossing occupied, I dispatch the recce section toward Hill 209 to scout the route for a next advance.

I'm always puzzled by the scoring in this game.  Most of the time when playing a campaign I ignore it, since what really counts in achieving your self-selected objectives to move toward a campaign victory.  In this case I grabbed a good bit of territory without completely gutting my force, while causing some significant Soviet losses. 

Now, if I can just survive the Soviet armored attacks about to happen to my relief force to the southwest...

Operation Hooper

After a few months playing anything but, I've returned to my fundamental interest: modern armored warfare simulations.  I've been alternating between Graviteam Tactics Operation Hooper and the old standby of Combat Mission Shock Force.

Operation Hooper is quite the departure from previous Graviteam games in the Operation Star series.  Set during the 1980's Angolan Civil War/South African Border War, actions are much more mechanized.  Terrain is very different than the frozen Russian steppe of Operation Star. Combat is decidedly deadlier, with longer weapon ranges and infantry with much more effective anti-tank capabilities.  Armor is no longer essentially invulnerable to an infantry squad, so you'd better not send your tank forward without their own infantry in support.

I've seen some gamers wondering why Graviteam would select this conflict (focused down to a single operation during the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale) rather than other, better known modern conflicts.  I suspect that given Soviet involvement in the conflict, this war is better known to a Russian development studio with contacts in the Russian military than it is to the typical Westerner.  Graviteam has also visited this conflict before in Steel Armor: Blaze of War and no doubt already had maps and models complete, probably significantly shortening development time and decreasing development expense.  Regardless, I find the conflict interesting and have enjoyed learning about it rather than rehashing something I'm already very familiar with.  I think it would be very interesting to see this same engine applied to some of the Arab-Israeli wars, however.

The UI, for better or worse, is the same as the other APOS games (Operation Hooper is a DLC, not a standalone game and so uses the APOS engine).  All of the documentation and translation woes we've come to expect from Graviteam are still present, and maybe a bit worse this time around.  Still, this is an incredibly fun game to play if you've become familiar with how this system works.

To me, the strength of the APOS engine is that you can really function as the battalion or brigade commander.  The operational maps and elements of the game allow you to concentrate on developing a sound tactical plan and to provide direction to your subordinate units during combat, rather than worrying about the minutiae of making sure each squad is taking a covered route or other micro-management of your forces. Troops behave pretty intelligently, taking cover when appropriate and prioritizing targets.  Despite its warts, the APOS engine remains in my opinion possibly the best battalion/brigade-level simulation engine available today - and with Operation Hooper we now have a modern campaign to re-fight.

The SADF assault failed, by the way.  While I was able to overrun the outlying positions and the T-62s actually entered the area around Tumpo Tri, the dug-in AT guns were too much for the assault force.  My attack would have benefited from some indirect fire on the enemy positions.

On the Ostfront

I first started playing war games when I was in middle school.  I'm giving away my age when I tell you that we had no computer war games then; my gaming was all done shuffling chits on paper maps in games from companies like Avalon Hill and SPI.  Over the years I've played a lot of games on a lot of different subjects covering a lot of different battles - but I've never been terribly interested in WWII Eastern Front games.  Maybe it was growing up during the Cold War with family members who had seen active duty in WWII, so neither side in the conflict resonated with me.  Maybe it was the dreary image of the cold and darkness of Russian winters.  I just never played them much, beyond the occasional ASL scenario with a college roommate that was very into Eastern Front games, and more recently the occasional game of Unity of Command.
All of that's changed in the past week.  I've been on a major Ostfront tear with two spectacular tactical level games, Achtung Panzer Operation Star (APOS) and Panzer Commander Ostfront.
APOS is one of the most visually stunning games of this genre I've ever played.  Once you get past the somewhat confusing manual and complex interface, it's also a real joy to play if you're looking for a tactical challenge.  The game and its DLC focus on the operations around Kharkov during Operation Star in February 1943, with one DLC jumping out briefly to Fall Blau (Case Blue) during the Summer of 1942.  I'm currently playing the latter DLC (Volokonovka).  Some scenes:

APOS is unusual in that its played on both an operational map and in a 3D tactical view.  They player maneuvers units on the Operational map, battle is joined, and then played out in the 3D view.

My task as the German player is to take the village of Odnitsov, and then advance to the crossings of the River Oskop near Volokonovka.  The village is held by elements of a Soviet infantry brigade, but Soviet armor is on the way to reinforce the position.

Force preservation is critical in APOS.  Your pool of units carries through the game and unlike a more scenario based game, you aren't going to get a lot of new units and reinforcements between combats.  Further, replacements and supplies are only available at supply points, meaning you'll have to withdraw a unit to those supply points to reorganize, rearm, and refuel.  This means you may have to give up a recently captured key position if your remaining forces aren't strong enough to hold it.  Combined with the lethal nature of WWII weapons, this can make sustained advances a challenge as your units melt away.

This makes APOS a game of careful and realistic tactical maneuver.  You might capture the village with a head-on assault, but your casualties will be so high as to make exploiting your success impossible.

APOS, also unlike more traditional scenario-based games, doesn't outline a specific objective per combat that you're striving for.  There are key points on the Operational map; your task in each combat is to determine the best approach that will put you in a position to control these key points.  You might fight a battle simply to shape the enemy position that a future combat with a different set of units can take and hold a key point on another part of the battlefield.

Weather effects are visible and can have a profound effect on your troops.  Rain reduces visibility and hampers movement.  A blizzard causes your troops to get fatigued much faster.  Resting them inside a building allows the to recuperate much faster.  The entire landscape is deformable - tanks leave tracks, buildings are destroyed by artillery and tank shells, foxholes and trenches are below the earth surface line.  Armored vehicles not only burn when hit, they shed pieces of armor, tracks and wheels - and then they proceed to cook off with secondary explosions for the next several minutes!  Combine this with very good positional audio, and the sounds of an exploding ammunition in a knocked out track behind your front line will have you spinning your POV to see who has moved up and is shooting behind you!

APOS is simply an exciting, engrossing game to play.  Despite the fact that the manuals are bad translations of the Russian versions, the interface can be opaque (this is better with the most recent patch), and installing updates can be convoluted, I can't recommend this game highly enough.  I'm not sure there's ever been any game that as accurately reflects the complexities facing the WWII battalion or brigade commander as well as Actung Panzer Operation Star  does.
Panzer Commander Ostfront also covers the Eastern Front during WWII, and at a similar scale, but is a more traditional game in its approach.

I'll cover the details in a later post, but for now I'm off to defend a river crossing.

Achtung Panzer

It's been a busy week and I've also been in a bit of a gaming funk.  I have a craving for playing something battalion-level or above, but running my own business has left me mentally too exhausted to get my head around the games that would let me do that this week.
Instead, the past couple of nights I've gravitated to Achtung Panzer Operation Star.  I don't have time for a full AAR tonight, but here's a screen shot from tonight's battle to tide you over.

I'm playing the Volokonovka DLC, which takes place during the summer of 1942.