The TacOps mailing is http://nxport.com/mailman/listinfo/. It is the best place to get your answers that this faq doesn't contain.

The other site is for up to date infomration is the Battlefront webpage where you can buy TacOps.

Could be any of the above :). I think the key is how well are you doing against the AI and what kind of gaming experience do you want on a given night. If you have reached the point where you are consistently pummeling OPFOR or you feel like a tough game then add as many optional units as you dare. You should have a pretty good feel by now on what the significance will be of adding a tank platoon here, a mech company there. Add whatever you think will be fun - as you define fun.

Something that you can do to make most scenarios instantly harder is to not use instant resupply.

An Internet search on "Error -5009" suggested the following three step fix.

Please note that "InstallShield" is a standard Windows installation assistance program that has been produced by the InstallShield Company for many years. This program is just an installation support program, it has nothing to do with copy protection or eLicensing. The InstallShield Company has apparently inadvertently introduced incompatibilities between some older versions of its installer engine and some newer versions of its installer engine. It is likely that some software that the customer installed recently introduced a flawed version of the InstallShield program.

Best regards, Major H

MajorH at satx.rr.com

A strong desire to not have an ordinary job *g*.

Mac version was done in C using Symantek Think C development System. Windows version was done for the Windows 3.1x environment in C using Microsoft Visual C/C++ v1.x development system. I am transitioning to Codewarrior C++ for Mac coding and Windows 95 and Microsoft Visual C++ v4.x for my future games.

Check the instructions for RED STAR/WHITE STAR - you will find a Lt Holdridge listed as a play tester *g* - my only game credit *g*.

I don't consider TacOps to be an "old product" *g*. I don't subscribe to the practice of dumping a game on the market, selling it for six months, and then forgetting about it. I think games in the wargaming market have the potential for selling for a very long time if they are maintained. The real problem with keeping game titles available may be the current chain store practice of refusing to stock games the instant that they stop flying off the shelf. Perhaps game companies just need to adjust their distribution scheme so that an affordable way can be established to keep the games available longer for those with the interest to look for them - like with direct mail *g*.

Will be in the TacOps Battle Book ^[1] when it is published this summer. Production costs and falling street price for wargames kept us from including detailed material like this in the printed user guide that comes with the game. Lots of people ask for such detailed info but most are unwilling to pay for it *g*.

TacOps v0.0 for Macintosh was released by Arsenal Publishing in early 1994 (January, I think).

TacOps v1.x for Windows was released by Arsenal Publishing in early 1996 (March, I think). So we are now past the tenth anniversary of TacOps.

Not unless I abandon the sale of military versions. So long as I am doing military work there needs to be some significant difference between the retail version and the military versions. Without a significant difference I could easily find myself forbidden to sell the retail version. The 20 player limit was the least obtrusive thing that I could come up with that I thought would stand up as a significant difference.

Officially "TacOpsCav" is just a product name and has no expanded meaning. However, most English speakers would interpret it as being an abbreviation for "Tactical Operations - Cavalry". The Armor School at Fort Knox (actually the 16th Cavalry Regiment) purchased an internal TacOps duplication and distribution license on behalf of the U.S. Army for a military version of "TacOps". The tankers wanted to add "Cav" to the product name for their edition of TacOps and I did not object, although I did point out to them that doing so would likely irritate the other branches of the U.S. Army. :)

The following is a rough approximation that is useful for most modern armies, but it is not absolute.

Team. As a crew served weapon team, can be 2 to 5 men working together to employ a crew served weapon. As part of a squad, can be 3 to 5 men armed with rifles and machine guns and light anti tank weapons.

Squad. Two or three teams make a squad. 9 to 15 men armed with rifles, machine guns, and light anti tank weapons. Commanded by a corporal or a sergeant.

Platoon. 3 or 4 infantry squads make a platoon. 3 to 5 vehicles make a platoon. Commanded by a sergeant or a lieutenant.

Company. 3 or 4 platoons make a company. 10 to 15 vehicles make a company. Companies often have additional heavy weapons like mortars, machine guns, and larger anti tank weapons. Commanded by a lieutenant, captain, or major.

Battalion. 3 to 5 companies make a battalion. Some companies may be infantry, some may be tanks. Battalions often have additional vehicles, more heavy weapons, headquarters troops, more communications, artillery maybe, etc. Commanded by a major or a lieutenant colonel. Can function for days or weeks as a largely independent unit.

Regiment (often called a Brigade). 2 to 5 battalions make a regiment. Some battalions may be infantry, some may be tanks, some may be artillery. Can function for weeks or months as a largely independent unit.

Division (sometimes small divisions are also called Brigades). 2 or more Regiments/Brigades make a division. Usually includes some of everything available to a given nationality. Can function indefinitely as a largely independent unit.

Corps. Several divisions. Only the largest of modern countries have more than a couple of Corps.

Army. Several Corps.

Depends on the situation. There are plenty of examples in WWII in the Pacific amphibious landings in which some US company sized units were down to 20% within 24 to 48 hours of getting off the boat. Japanese units in the Pacific often fought to a 100% casualty level without surrendering or backing off. The former Soviet Union did not sustain 25 million casualties in WWII by quitting every time they were attrited by 20 or 30 %.

As a game, TacOps needs to offer a "gaming experience" in order to be commercially successful. In order for a scenario to be a "game" both sides need to have a reasonable chance of winning. Still, in a situation (game wise or in the real world) in which either force can win, and the mission is paramount for both sides then casualties are likely to be heavy.

I doubt that I will ever add 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'' as I still see no gaming point in them being present in a tactical game of engagements lasting only a few hours.

I don't remember getting a memo from the game gestapo indicating that traditional square unit markers could not be used in computer games anymore after a certain date *g*. I think that traditional square or oval unit markers are more useful for communicating game relevant information in a crowded environment than photo realistic markers. I intend to continue using the traditional marker format in my stuff.

I was enlisted for four years. After commissioning I was an infantry officer for five years then I switched to intelligence where I stayed for eleven years.

Sure I can - besides there isn't anyone else to do it *g*.

99% of the hits that you will get by searching on "TacOps" are for Infogrames' "Tactical Operations - Assault on Terror". That game was originally going to be released as "TacOps Assault on Terror" but in the end Infogrames reasonably agreed to change to "Tactical Operations" and to refrain from using "TacOps" in any materials that they had control over. Unfortunately the TO-AOT fans/users went ahead and shortened the title to "TacOps" anyway. Realistically there isn't much that I can do about the wrongful usage by the AOT fans. I do check the net periodically in hopes of finding someone out there who is identifiable and who has enough money to make it worthwhile to sue them. Same with the warez/piracy sites.

The most useful links for "the real" TacOps are below.

The TacOps forum at Battlefront.com ...

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi

Yes - or third or fourth or however many you have. You may install TacOp4 on all computers in your home and even put a copy on your laptop and take it to work- without guilt. :) It doesn't seem right to me to try to force ordinary users into buying more than one copy for their own personal use in a multi computer household. I trust that most folks will not abuse the lack of copy protection in TacOps. I only ask that if your friends want a copy then they should buy their own.

Too much work. I just barely get the Gazette out once in a while with the current shotgun approach *grin*. Think of as more of a weekly digest of my better email than as a magazine/newsletter.

Damn the "what ifs", full speed ahead! :)

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS:

You will find that there are parallel situations for all three forces. The Major tried to get similar sorts of names, but not always.

SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS.

My suggestion for a good starting scenario is

Team Sposito. It's a rear-guard action and short.

Team Meyers. A straight-forward defensive action.

Team O'Hara. A more challenging defensive action.

Team Hall. Armored attack. Can be a bit tricky to win, but helps train in overwatch techniques.

Team Hill. Combined arms, small. Be careful.

Team Cahoon. Combined arms. Larger, but with time pressure.

Avoid:

Team Krempp and its MC equivalent (Can't This pair is nearly impossible to win, because it was designed and balanced before improved positions were made stronger.

On the defensive, you want to arrange your weapons to cover approaches, but without making them visible from too many places. That way you don't get overwhelmed by return fire. Use missiles to strike at long range and tank guns in closer. Infantry needs to be in dense covering terrain (such as woods or towns).

On the attack, don't move too quickly. Make sure that you have long- ranged weapons in covering positions before crossing open areas. Also, make sure that when you appear, you do it in some force, instead of piecemeal (except perhaps for recon), since you want to have enough guys around to shoot back when your lead vehicle gets blown up.

Artillery is another item that needs to be used. Here it helps to have the accuracy built up.

First do the tutorial. A twenty minute investment in following every step in the tutorial will make everything that follows easier and more fun. Next play U.S. scenarios that have 'Team' in the title or Canadian scenarios that have 'Combat Team' in the title. They have smaller forces in play and smaller maps. U.S. Army scenarios are usually significantly easier than similar USMC scenarios because the Marines have fewer long range anti armor weapons. U.S. Army and USMC scenarios are usually easier than similar Canadian scenarios because of the limited range of the Canadian ERYX ATGM. USMC scenarios where the Marines are using LAVs tend to be very difficult and tend to require very different and very daring tactics. The hardest scenario set of all is the Team Kelley series. A single U.S. Company vs an OPFOR Regiment .

Any scenario whose name starts with "Team". Team scenarios usually involve engagements where at least the US side is below battalion size. "Task Force" scenarios usually feature a US side of battalion size and above.

The following info might be helpful...

Freebie map for use with custom scenario templates. Not currently used by any regular scenario.

The following scenarios allow the user to choose any map.

There is no such feature in TacOps.^[1]

Yes. Say you have already given orders to a leading unit and you have its orders window open. Do Copy and then close that unit's orders window. Drag a selection rectangle around (lasso) the units that you want to paste to - they will be highligted. Do Paste. The orders in memory will be pasted into every "selected" unit. You can also select multiple units for pasting by holding down the shift key and clicking on the units you want to select.

Copy, paste, and group selection now work in TacOps pretty much the same way as they do in most "paint" programs and on the Mac destop.

Yes. An enemy unit that is spotted by one friendly unit is spotted by all friendly units of the same color. However, that does not mean that every friendly unit that is capable of shooting at that enemy unit will choose to do so. Spotting is very transient and is linked as much to target activity as it is to visibility and line of sight (assuming a clear line of sight). In other words spotting can often be lost if a target unit stops moving and shooting. That is why firefights sometimes seem to fade away even though all the participating units are in the same stationary positions and then ramp up again when somebody moves.

Yes and no. There is a gross spotting check that only happens once per friendly marker per 15 second pulse. This check has no random factors so there is no reason to repeat it for each strength point in the marker. If the gross spotting check reveals an enemy unit then there is a targeting or acquisition check that is done by each strength point in the marker.

Yes but not until the next 15 second pulse.

The rougher the terrain the less visible are all units (more relevant before they start moving or firing, less relevant after) - also harder to spot, and harder to hit by direct fire. Woods or town adds an additional reduction to that provided by any present roughness level.

The outermost 100 meters of high ground, woods, and town terrain (ten pixels plus or minus a pixel or two) provide a dual spotting zone. In the case of high ground it relates to the ability to see from the high ground down to low ground. In the case of woods and town terrain it relates to seeing out. From the first or outermost 100 meters above the contour line a unit can see both all otherwise unblocked high ground and all otherwise unblocked low ground. If the unit backs away from this 100 meter buffer, then it will only be able to see units that are on high ground. If it crosses the contour - headed downhill - then it will only be able to see units that are either on low ground or that are themselves right next to a high ground contour. In the outermost 100 meters of woods and town terrain you can see and shoot out of the woods and town but your visibility to the enemy is greatly reduced (until you fire). For visualizing LOS, you need to key on the center point of the unit marker. If you are "in the zone" and if you are using one of the larger marker sets, a lot of the unit marker will appear to actually be out of the woods. Again, it is where the center point of the marker is that is important for LOS.

Not a bug. (1) From point A to point B, LOS between a ground unit and a helicopter can be different from what it would be from a ground unit to a ground unit - depends on the altitude of the helicopter. The LOS tool only shows ground to ground LOS unless you pin it as originating from a helo unit. (2) Some weapons have thermal sights (ie. the SA-16 SAM) which see through smoke.

To "pin" the line of sight tool to a specific unit you must select the unit in a way that does not trigger the opening of its unit orders window. You can do this two ways.

Hold down the shift key as you click on a unit marker - this will "highlight" the unit marker without opening its orders window. Now select the LOS tool menu item.

Or ...

Click on empty map some distance away from the marker, hold down the left mouse button, and "drag out" a selection rectangle that includes the unit - this will "highlight" the unit marker rather than open its orders window. Now select the LOS tool menu item.

The outermost 100 meters of woods and town terrain (ten pixels plus or minus a pixel or two) provide the dual spotting zone - i.e. you can see and shoot out of the woods and town but your visibility to the enemy is greatly reduced (until you fire). For visualizing LOS, you need to key on the center point of the unit marker. If you are "in the zone" and if you are using one of the larger marker sets, a lot of the unit marker will appear to actually be out of the woods.

A similar effect occurs in the outermost 100 meters of high ground terrain. In the first 100 meters above the contour line a unit can see both all otherwise unblocked high ground and all otherwise unblocked low ground. If the unit backs away from this 100 meter buffer, then it will only be able to see units that are on high ground. If it crosses the contour - headed downhill then it will only be able to see units that are either on low ground or that are themselves right next to a high ground contour.

Again, it is where the center point of the marker is that is important for LOS. After a few games you will get used to the dual zones and you will find that you don't need to use the LOS tool so much to confirm things.

Rule: A clear LOS from any anti air weapon is assumed to exist to a fixed wing airstrike or to a helicopter at medium altitude unless there is woods or town terrain or a smoke cloud within 125 meters of the SAM and that terrain or smoke cloud is directly between the SAM and the fixed wing or helo target.

Not a bug. The helo that was doing the shooting was positioned over a cell of town terrain with the town terrain being at elevation 0. The helo was at NOE but NOE when over woods and town is one elevation level higher than that terrain. For LOS purposes the helo was actually at elevation 1. When you use the LOS tool in the normal fashion it doesn't know that you are clicking on a helo. It assumes that you are checking ground level to ground level. Therefore you got a result of blocked line of sight. Try selecting the helo unit before triggering the LOS check. This will pin the LOS check to the helo and you will get a true reading.

Hold down the shift key with your left hand, click on a unit with your right hand - the unit will be selected/highlighted - release the shift key, release the mouse button and do a Command L you will get a LOS cross hair that is pinned as originating from the exact center point of the selected unit.

The last time I tried to code this, the number crunching involved slowed the function so much on most Macs that I didn't feel anyone would use the feature more than once *grin*.^[2]

You can not set thermals to be lower than whatever the current 'eyesight' setting is. Try first reducing the eyesight setting and then change the thermal setting.

Automatic facing would be a little beyond the scale of TacOps - a TacOps turn only represents 60 seconds of real time. Allowing the computer to decide facing would also probably bother a lot of players who might not appreciate an armored unit repositioning its front against fire from a dismounted rifle team that occurred early in a combat phase and thereby exposing its flank to the fire of a larger antiarmor weapon that occurred later in a combat phase.

They should begin to move back right after they are fired on but they may not cover very much ground before the 60 second turn is over. Also, whenever a unit executes an SOP order, that SOP setting is cleared so it would be proper for the buttons to be unchecked the next time you look at them if the unit did start to execute an SOP order.

This is correct program behavior. The program does not really know what is loaded in each APC. It only knows the totals of the cargo units being carried by the marker. I won't bore you with all the difficulties involved with doing automatic splitting, but I'll give you a couple of typical examples of major problems.

Say you have an AAV marker that represents 11 vehicles. Embarked in the AAV marker are 9hrifle squads, 6 machine gun teams, 8 Javelin teams, 4 60mm mortars, and 2 stingers. You split off one unit. How can the computer automatically figure out what part of the total load you want to be in the split off AAV?

Now, assume that the computer did do some sort of automatic distribution of troops when you split a marker. In the above situation you would likely be very interested in which of the new markers had the javelins or some other weapon. You would probably feel compelled to open every marker to reassure yourself about what was in what.

Now assume that you don't like the computer's division. Now you are in a situation of having to unload all the markers, do dozens and dozens of splits, joins and reloads to get exactly the mix and loading that you want.

The current approach provides the least number of mouse clicks to get back to where you want to be.

And the arrows just keep falling .... The pancake terrain with a100 meter dual visibility zone at the contour was a gaming generalization that was critically required in order for TacOps to work at a reasonable speed on older Macs. With the demise of the MacPlus and the Mac Classic, I can now move to a more sophisticated terrain model for Panzers East and TacOps II. However and harumph, I will not be "fixing" it, because I don't consider the pancake terrain representation to be broken :). It was an elegant solution to a problem that fortunately does not exist anymore and it works the way I intended it to work.

Not entirely - the basic tactical concepts are supported. The current TacOps approach demonstrates the primary concepts of high ground - i.e. if you are on the edge or forward slope of high ground then you can see and shoot at targets that are on both low ground and high ground. If you back up too far "upslope" then you can't see the low ground anymore. Etc.

The line of sight tool is multipurpose. Select the Map/Line of Sight Check menu item and then drag the cursor around the map. If you look at the text line at the bottom of the screen you will see displayed the range from the point of origination to the cursor, the elevation of the terrain under the cursor, the type of terrain under the cursor, and the UTM coordinates of the point under the cursor.

Because when I coded TacOps, I felt that doing so would produce a bad simulation and a bad game full of opportunities for players to use unrealistic tricks. I did not feel at the time that I could come up with automatic target selection routines that would generally make the best decision about what targets a unit should choose to engage. Consider the programming challenges involved in arbitrating what is the best target for a unit at any given moment. If units just fired at whatever was in front of them, regardless of their ability to hurt the target then you would see problems and tricks like the ones that follow. All one would have to do to protect a valuable unit would be to always put a less valuable unit in front of it. In a similar fashion one could protect a weakly armored unit by always putting a super heavy unit in front of it.

It should work as I described for hidden, unspotted units. I just did several experiments with hidden M1 tanks in the edge of a wood (visible at 400m prior to firing) set to fire at 500 meters vs approaching T80s and I got first shots and "pulse of fire" surprise awards every time. I got a second pulse of surprise fire a couple of times. I think the problem is that you are setting your engagement limit too low. You especially might try not setting your vehicle engagement ranges so low. Vehicles are going to usually be spotted at 400 meters no matter what. An unsuppressed enemy vehicle can cover about 127 meters in 15 seconds (one movement pulse) in clear terrain and about 165 meters if on a road. If unsuppressed enemy vehicles are approaching your position in clear or road terrain, it is very possible that they might cover your 100 meter buffer between 500 and 400 meters in less than one 15 second pulse. In other words they might pass completely through such a small buffer and be close enough to where they can spot you before some or all of your guys get a chance to fire. Once one of your units is spotted, it is a toss up who gets to fire first and a unit that is spotted before it fires will seldom be awarded surprise fire.

Maybe a unit has no weapons capable of killing the targets it can see at the instant. Maybe the targets are out of range. Maybe a unit is suppressed. Spotting and firing are not guaranteed to always happen even when units seem to be in plain sight of one another. Maybe those of your guys with a technical line of sight to targets momentarily stopped looking for some reason - like being hosed by enemy weapons or from the effects of a recent arty impact. Conceptually, the targets may have momentarily rolled through some irregularity in the terrain that caused them to disappear. Real terrain is not as regular as what a computer game map must be limited to - TacOps simulates the transient effects of minor, localized, irregular terrain by introducing random "holes" into the spotting probabilities. In TacOps there is always some chance that units will fail to spot or will fail to be spotted. It is entirely possible that a unit that was spotted and even fired on fifteen seconds ago, might not be spotted for firing purposes in the very next fifteen seconds, and even if it were respotted for firing purposes it is possible that no one would choose to shoot at it. Spotting that leads to a direct fire resolution by your units is not guaranteed in TacOps, regardless of what you as the player can see on the screen. What you see on thex screen at any given instant is generally the sum of all the views of all your units - a kind of slow frame rate movie. It does not indicate that all your units can see what you see. As a general rule, the more of your units that are present in a given isolated area, the less likely you are to see units blinking in and out of what seems to be plain sight. If you only have one or two squads in an area, you are likely to see a lot of enemy unit markers winking in and out of sight.

The LAVs in questions are LAV25s. Their strongest weapon is a 25mm chain gun. The chain gun is a kinetic energy weapon and has a maximum armor penetration capability of 70mm. The T80U tank has the following armor protection against kinetic energy weapons: front 500mm, side 185mm, rear 100mm. The chain gun can not penetrate/hurt the T80U so the LAVs do not fire.

In the current TacOps game engine, anti tank weapons do not fire at armored targets unless they have some chance of killing the target's vs it front, side, or rear armor - they do not attempt "track shots". I am dubious that very many tankers would expose themselves to almost certain death just to try to immobilize an enemy tank that is otherwise immune to their weapons.

In TacOps, SAMs will not engage UAVs. That is my current info - source was a reservist Stinger gunner.

You might find that you could accomplish a lot of your specific targeting desires if study the subtleties of the hard and soft targeting priorities already allowed in the game. Setting a hard order, direct fire target reference point with a very tight radius is often extremely useful. See the User's Guide, pages 37 to 41

You can use the option key and the "Set DF TRP" button to set a hard priority target reference point that is centered on a unit. Hold down the option key as you click on the "Set DF TRP" button, when you get the crosshair cursor click on the center of a unit, then when the range limit window comes up enter 2500. Obviously this tends to work only for stationary units as a moving unit will rapidly move away from the DF TRP.

Sounds like you gave them a "soft priority" order (yellow light). Hold down the option key as you give a priority order to give a "hard priority" order (red light).

In TacOps, a unit will generally choose to shoot at the target that presents the biggest threat to it at the instant. Natural self defense/survival priorities do not always agree with what the player (who is out of harm's way *g*) would prefer. In order to override this, you must give "hard priority orders".

I think I know what you mean but I suspect that what you are really asking for is not more realistic sounds but rather sounds that are more like those heard on TV and in movies. I suspect you would not like the sounds that are heard in a real battle. Weapons and explosions in real life do not sound anything like they sound in movies and on TV. In general, real life weapon sounds are very short "pops", "thumps", and "cracks" and volume wise they are very uninspiring unless you are personally firing a weapon or you are within a few meters of an explosion - in the later two cases you fairly quickly go temporarily deaf and you don't really hear anything again for hours except a high pitched whistle or a sort of a tinny echo of what is going on around you *g*. Early in development, all the sounds in TacOps were perfectly realistic. The first playtesters all reported them to be "extremely boring" so I went in with some sound tools and I jazzed them up a bit - altered, amplified, echoed, etc. - until most of the playtesters were satisfied but not so far that I would be embarrassed with military professionals.

Select a group of unit markers by dragging out a selection rectangle and or by "shift + click" on each desired marker. Then select the "Orders/Set Engagement Range" menu item. Enter the desired range and close the window. The range setting will be applied to only the selected markers.

This results from an abstraction currently used in TacOps to prevent units from firing on and wasting ammo on targets that can not be harmed. M60 machine guns probably can't hurt an entrenched BTR from the front due to the combat results tables, so in TacOps they don't fire at all. A game mechanism for allowing units to be able to optionally lay down suppressive fire or demonstration fire or searching fire is something that I continue to work on. Everyone should consider though that once I am able to implement this, you are just as likely to be on the receiving end of such fire as you are to be inflicting it *g* - after the change is made it may well turn out that in many if not most small arms firefights the end result will effectively be much like what the game engine portrays now. There will likely be at least one area of increased realism after the change - more firefights will be decided by one side simply running out of ammo. Obviously the side that is most likely to run out of ammo first will the side that chooses to frequently fire at area targets and or poorly spotted units.

A one minute turn is divided into four direct fire pulses. Each pulse represents fifteen seconds of combat action. Although the game displays the fire pulse as if the markers are shooting consecutively (mainly so that the player can get a better idea of what is happening), the concept of the game logic is that the fire is actually taking place more or less simultaneously. Thus 'dead' units sometimes appear to continue firing briefly and it sometimes happens that two units kill each other in the same fire pulse. All 'dead' units are cleared at the end of each fifteen second pulse - a 'dead' unit will never be carried forward into the next fifteen second pulse.

A unit can receive multiple 'killing hits' in a given fifteen second fire pulse.

TacOps has gotten good marks for realism except from some folks who are big fans of morale and restrictive command and control gaming concepts. As for the military users ... TacOps has had quite a few military buyers and continues to be of some interest in the military market due to its ability to work well on older computers. The New Zealand Army contracted in December 97 for an internal distribution license that will permit them to copy and issue TacOps Classic Edition v2.0.0 to every regular and reserve member of their Army. The US Marine Corps is supposedly in the process of contracting for a similar license (I'll believe it when I see the check *g*). Other militaries are currently evaluating the utility of such a license. Some schools and units in the Canadian Army, Australian Army, US Army, and US Marine Corps have used various earlier versions of TacOps in training courses for NCOs and junior officers to illustrate tactical principles and situations and to stimulate classroom discussion in tactical seminars. A US Army intelligence training course for junior officers used an earlier version to illustrate the build up of forces that would occur in a typical Soviet style, Motorized Rifle Regiment march to contact versus a mobile defense. A US Marine Corps infantry regiment has used TacOps to administer map exercises. The commander of a US Army armored battalion in Korea used an earlier version of TacOps in monthly training sessions for his NCOs and junior officers to illustrate tactical situations and to promote discussions on tactical principles and tactical problem solving. One or two Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) units have used TacOps to introduce high school students to tactical principles. A Canadian training mission to Jamaica recently used a version of TacOps to umpire a two or three day map exercise for junior officers/cadets. A US Army National Guard training unit has used a version to administer staff exercises for Reserve mech infantry battalions.

That needs a bit of qualification *g*. When I hear 'turn based', I think of the traditional 'I go you go' system of board games. TacOps does not work that way. TacOps used (and TacOps98 will use) a modified turn based system. The game advances in one minute turns but movement and combat occur simultaneously for both players as does the giving of orders to the unit markers. The game pauses each minute to allow both players to enter unit movement orders and to fiddle with things like engagement ranges, priority of fires, call for air or arty support, etc. Once both players have finished their orders, the game runs one combat turn representing one minute. The units of both sides then move and fight simultaneously under computer control for one minute.

No.

I think the weapons that you have mentioned are quite accurately portrayed. You may be missing the real lesson *g* which is that under combat conditions, shooting doesn't always mean hitting and hitting doesn't always mean killing. A lot of good troops have died over the years because they wrongly assumed that an impressive explosion on a target meant that the target was dead.

The kill ratio in TacOps may be unrealistic for the calm conditions of a garrison training range. I think it is reasonably realistic for combat conditions where gunners are tired and scared, where ammo and equipment has been bounced around for hours or days with little opportunity for care, cleaning, or boresighting, and where targets are not cooperative.

You can not unload just one unit.

During an orders phase, use the instant load button (rather than the delayed load button) in the Unit Orders Window.

Not from my design perspective. In order for me to truthfully claim that the game was a squad level game, the combat results and game flow would need to be accurate down to each firing of one weapon and down to one scale second of time. In order for this to be true I would need to address (i.e. reduce averaging) many more combat and situational variables. For example, the facing and individual situation of every man in an infantry marker would need to be considered, the hull and turret facing of each individual vehicle in a multi vehicle marker would need to be addressed, artillery support in the game would need to be procedure oriented instead of effect oriented. These things would potentially force hundreds more mouse clicks on the user per orders phase. My design goal for TacOps was for the combat and movement results to be reasonably realistic at the Company/Platoon marker level when such results are averaged over a few turns (i.e. several scale minutes).

Yes. Select the Options/Delete Units menu item or do Cntrl + X ... you will get a cross hair cursor ... click the cursor over the unit or object to be deleted - poof its goone.

Team and Task Force refer to the size of the US force in the scenario, not whether it is USMC or Army. "Team" scenarios are those in which the US force is less than battalion in size. "Task Force" scenarios have a US force equal to or larger than a battalion.

I think the combat results at company and battalion level are reasonably realistic when averaged out over a period of several turns/several minutes. While in the Marine Corps I participated in a lot of CPXs that were not as realistic as a TacOps administered "recreational" CPX would be *g*.

I have something like this in the command post exercise version of TacOps (a private hobby and research activity). In that version a player can optionally assign a text name of up to 15 characters to each unit marker - for example "1st Plt B Co". This may eventually get into the public game engine but I can not say for sure at present because it makes the unit records so much larger and thus greatly increases the amount of memory needed to play the larger scenarios.

It is completely unrealistic - unfortunately there is no reasonable coding solution. Since the game is on a computer, obviously a way could be coded to keep track of individual units once they joined but the resultant cost in memory usage would in my opinion be prohibitive. The solution would be worse than the problem.

It should be but I can't implement this without creating a pressure on the player to break his units down to individual squads/vehicles. In order to maintain playability I have to try to keep the game engine from providing significant incentives to a player to break units down below platoon.

An unfortunate compromise that is required to keep the game playable.

Use the Map/Change Unit Symbol Info menu item or its keyboard shortcut. Each time you select that menu item, the face of the markers will change. During the orders phase, the first time it is selected the marker faces will change to show which units have orders and which do not and which units have been opened during this orders phase. The second time it is selected the marker faces will change to show the direction that each unit is facing. The third time it is selected the markers will return to showing the normal unit type icon.

Those are the small arms of the vehicle's crew. Usually you won't see crew firing small arms unless the vehicle is fighting at point blank range. If the vehicle was suppressed, the crewmen would not be so brave and efficient *g*. I usually add a rifle or two and a disposable rocket launcher to the data base entry for vehicles just to keep folks honest. Has surprised more than one player who lost an APC or a Tank to an RPG from what he thought was a harmless truck hiding in the woods *g*.

There is no penalty to changing facing while under fire.

The surviving team would have two missiles.

At the instant that one strength point of a given type of unit is completely eliminated (i.e. one squad, one team, or one vehicle) then all the ammo for that one strength point disappears. Example, say you have a marker representing three Javelin ATGM teams and that the three teams total 6men and 12 missiles. The team gets hits by arty and 2 men are killed - in this case since two men equal one Javelin team so a strength point is lost - in this case one strength point comprises one third of the unit marker. Therefore one third of the marker's ammo would be eliminated also. The marker would then show 2 teams with a total of 4 men and 8 missiles.

You can slow down the combat phase by using the File/Options/Change Combat Speed menu item. You can pause the combat phase at any time by touching the space bar. I continue to periodically work on a turn and or game replay option, but I have not yet been able to come up with a solution that does not create prohibitively huge "record" files for large scenarios.

I agree but I can think of no other way to handle two players on one computer. The main problem is that if units were only displayed when they were still spotted during the orders phase, then players would often miss the short sightings of units moving for a few seconds between cover. By the way, you don't see this effect (i.e. knowing when you have been spotted by hidden enemy units) in any other mode of TacOps play - it is only present in the two on one computer mode. In my opinion play in this mode is highly inferior to any other way of playing TacOps. The optimum game is two players on two networked computers.

Is not a bug ... is intentional. I am pretty sure that it has always been this way.

My reasoning on this item was that when a unit fires it is generally then usually spotted by all enemy units within 4000 meters that have good line of sight. Accordingly it is generally in the unit's best interest to go to its full range capability. To do otherwise would most often result in the unit getting return fire and not responding. I think the latter approach would cause much greater complaints *g*.

Generally, yes - assuming the unit survives the volley and the usual spotting and readiness conditions are met.

When non amphibious units move next to water and they find that they have a pending move order that will cause them to enter the water, they stop at the water's edge. They do not attempt to go around. Your situation was probably caused by a disconnect between what the map looks like and what is actually in the terrain data cell. Terrain is averaged into 100 meter cells (ten pixels) that underlay the map art. For artistic effect, the map drawing does not always show the exact trace of the terrain data cell - otherwise the map would be too blocky looking. Rivers are in fact always 100 meters wide to the game engine even if the map art makes them look narrower than that. So, while you could see ground in the map art along the water, it might be that a sliver of the ground is actually registering in the game as water. This is a limitation of the current game engine but it is not a bug. You can use the line of sight tool to find the exact trace of terrain art. Move the line of sight tool cursor around on the map and you will see text at the bottom of the screen that tells you how the game engine will interpret the terrain underneath the cursor.

Misc notes on the AI/Computer opponent follow. Some are related to the gent's comments, some are just provided as additional info on how the AI works so that he could make a better decision about whether he had been "conned" or not *g*.

The AI has only two advantages not allowed to a human player and I think both of these are documented in either the manual or in the FAQ file. The AI gets a one level advantage in first salvo accuracy of observed artillery fire (but not air) and its APCs can pick up dismounted troops at a slightly greater distance than the human is allowed to. Both of these items were compromises that eliminated huge blocks of AI code and they do not significantly affect game outcome.

There are no secret tricks, frictions, or penalties assessed against the human player's force when playing against the AI (some games use such techniques to make the computer opponent seem more capable). I dislike such "AI cheats" in a computer game. I feel very strongly that things like spotting, observation, movement rates, unit capabilities, combat result tables, weapons probabilities and the like should work exactly the same in a solitaire game vs the computer opponent as they do when two humans are playing each other. If the game had different "logic rules" for the solitaire mode then the serious gamer could not confidently use that mode as a means to learn tactical lessons and hone tactical technique for his future games against humans.

In scenarios where the AI is mainly in the attack and the US is mainly on the defense. Before contact with US forces, the AI chooses a target list, a battle plan and routes that will accomplish its mission (if there is no US interference) from a roster of multiple different target lists, plans, and routes. As the OPFOR units make contact with US units, the AI task organizes its battalions and or companies and switches to reacting tactically to those contacts. As it successfully deals with contacts, it switches back to the primary battle plan or it may jump to a different battle plan. Usually the AI will try to aggressively clear obstacles to its battle plan with a combination of direct fire, indirect fire, and or direct assault. Sometimes it will move toward a US position and then quickly pull back in what looks like a series of probes or faltering attacks - in this case the AI is usually trying to draw fire to expose targets for air or arty attack. Sometimes it will assume a temporary defensive posture. Sometimes it will halt or mill around a bit to see what happens if it does little or nothing. Sometimes the AI will put single unit markers or small groups of markers in a "stay behind", "watch", or "reserve" mode - such units may or may not ever move again.

Typically when the AI is in the attack, it may react to incoming arty, even adjusting fire, by dispersing its march and or attack formation. When in the defense the AI typically just "hunkers down" under arty fire.

A big reason why the AI often gets very good use out of its air and arty assets is that it maintains a running target list just as a good human player would. The target list contains recent US unit positions that were legally acquired by spotting and it contains points on the map that would be good places for the US player to use in a given scenario. If the AI is in the attack, the target list also includes terrain points that would make good US defensive positions . At the end of each combat phase, the AI plans its orders for the next turn just as the human player does. The AI looks at its target list and it usually selects arty and air targets based on the most recent spottings of valuable US units. If it doesn't have any solid unit spottings to work with, then it will randomly target nearby terrain that would make good US attack or defensive positions. The AI also notices when it gets secondary explosions and may decide to "stick" to an area for several turns.

Here is how the AI does its thing with calling in air strikes (arty is handled similarly). During each combat phase the AI makes mental notes about points on the map where it legally spotted your units - same as a good human player does. In the case of moving units, it also projects and records where the unit could be in a minute or so based on its speed and its last legally observed direction of movement. I call this maintaining a target list. During the next orders phase the AI plans its orders based on its target list, again based on what it legally saw during previous combat phases - same as the human player does. The first time it spots valuable units it will probably target some or all of them with air and arty up to the limits of its legally available assets. AI OPFOR air gets no time advantage over a human player. During the four to eight combat turns that must pass before the AI's air arrives on the map, the AI continues maintaining and considering its target list of legally spotted units. The AI is allowed to shift ongoing air and arty missions the same distance per turn as the human player is allowed to. Thus as time passes and the AI gains and