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 loses legal unit spottings and as more valuable targets become noticed, it often modifies its air and arty targeting with legal target shifts. Enemy helos are the highest possible priority target for AI air support. Anytime a US or OPFOR airstrike comes on the map it looks for helos within 1000 meters or so of its target point. If it finds a nearby helo, the airstrike will usually switch to a gun attack on that helo. Usually the air unit will prevail over the helo target. Usually an air strike that has diverted to helo attack will also remain available for reuse. By the way, human players also get these very same helo attack benefits with their air.

The AI also has a target list of places on the map that would make good US defense, attack, or hidden observation positions based on the current overall situation. If a terrain feature looks good to you as a fighting or a hide position, it may also look good to the AI. If the AI does not have anything better to shoot at with its air or arty, it will often choose to target these places same as a good human player would. So it is possible for a player to do everything right in carefully occupying a position without being spotted and still find his units later under air or arty attack. In such a case the computer is not cheating - it just made a good or lucky guess.

The AI air support only prospects for helos in locations where they were previously spotted (give or take a kilometer).

The AI knows where its minefields are but it does not know where a US minefield is until it encounters it. Sometimes AI units go around US minefields, sometimes they go through them. Sometimes the AI will drive through its own minefields.

I found during development that I had to be careful with having the AI react in certain ways to certain events in order to reduce the chances that the human player would find "game tricks" that could consistently be used to manipulate the AI into doing predictable things. My experience so far has been that the AI does best when it sticks as much as possible to its primary battle plan. Also having the AI sometimes behave a bit sluggishly is probably more realistic than the "change everything every 60 seconds" capability that the human player has.

The AI gets no special benefits for its direct fire.

The AI uses exactly the same combat results tables as would a human playing OPFOR.

The AI intentionally does not consider enemy smoke or arty fire that is not close to any of its units in developing its turn orders. I assumed folks would try to use arty and smoke in a deceptive fashion in order to trick the AI.

In scenarios that feature OPFOR in a generally defensive posture, the AI usually gets a lot of startup TRPs - i.e. already zeroed target points-that it can switch to with good speed and reasonable accuracy.

If the AI threw up its hands in despair every time the going got tough, TacOps would be boring. Beyond that, the TacOps AI somewhat reflects the same approaches that I find usually have the best results in my personal play against human opponents - (1) simple plan, stubbornly implemented and supported, (2) tight focus on the mission and (3) don't chase rabbits.

The AI is likely to play differently each time you repeat a given scenario or each time you play a given scenario variant. Each scenario and each scenario variant has anywhere from a dozen to multiple dozen different opening moves/strategies for the AI. In general, scenarios that have the AI attacking will have more different opening moves than will scenarios that have the AI defending.

The AI remembers where it recently saw US units. If a helo is observed as it moved to its pop up firing position or if it tries to use the same pop up position twice in a short period then the AI is going to be primed to fire on it.

The computer opponent generally follows OPFOR doctrine but it will often add a twist or two once contact is made. Each scenario has multiple possible opening moves and battle plans and multiple levels of competence. Which combination you draw for each game against the computer opponent is a random event. You may get a good OPFOR commander with an excellent plan, or you might get a poor commander with a bad plan, or something in between. In any case you won't know. Some of the larger scenarios have dozens of different opening moves or battle plans/plan variants - some or better than others. You should be able to play a given scenario many, many times before it starts to become a bit predictable.

The AI is both scripted and reactive. Barring interference from its human opponent, it follows a script or a battle plan that will accomplish its scenario mission. If the human interferes with the plan (i.e. gets in the way with units and or fire) the AI usually switches to reacting to legally acquired spottings of the human's units - sometimes it just ignores minor spottings and or treats them just with arty. If enough time passes with no human interference, the AI will usually switch back to it script. A script or battle plan may include a general movement path, precautionary assaults on intermediate terrain objectives (even if there has been no contact), precautionary pauses followed by recon, rolling arty prep fires, etc. Reaction to contact varies depending on if the AI is attacking or defending but can include ignoring minor human resistance, frontal assault from the column, deployment to a frontal online assault, deploy and maneuver to a flank assault, deploy and maneuver to a rear assault, pause in place and shell, split a force to do combinations of the preceding, temporary withdrawal (not seen very often when AI is attacking), counterattack, online sweep, recon by fire, recon in force, fire and move to alternate position, hasty defense, etc.

I designed the AI so that much of its strength would lie in its unpredictability. In a sense my approach to AI programming hinges on exploiting, even amplifying, the human player's tendency to act fearfully and cautiously in the face of many unknown possibilities. With my approach, the more a user plays TacOps the better the AI appears to do. For example, once a human has experienced an OPFOR battalion unexpectedly bearing down on him from his flank or rear instead of politely driving down the obvious path in column, that human will forever thereafter weaken his optimum defense by putting out OPs and scouts, by dividing his main force to cover more avenues of approach, and by maintaining a reserve.

The AI never resupplies its units.

The AI always operates as if fog of war was set to "on" for OPFOR. In other words, the AI only considers legally spotted units regardless of the game's actual fog of war setting.

The AI is more situation based than map based although each scenario has map specific extra AI embedded in the scenario file. Most of the AI is in the game engine, some is embedded in each scenario, there is none embedded in a map. The AI is not really hardwired for exact units. The AI looks more at the class and weapon systems of its units rather than at the fact that this unit is a T80 and that unit is a T72.

The TacOps AI code comprises 12% of the game engine (based on lines of compiled code), plus additional code that is embedded in each scenario. The code percentage doesn't really reflect the effort that went into the AI. I didn't work on much else for most of a year and I trashed numerous approaches and started over several times. I think it is pretty good compared to the competition, especially since it does not cheat. I don't publicly make a big deal about the AI because I don't think AI can ever be as good as an experienced human - at least not for the price that people are willing to pay for games.

the AI battle plans are not always organized as discrete structures. Many times the final battle plan is created by advancing through a pyramidal chain of route choices, task force organization choices, timing choices, and other tactical concepts with an often random branch taken at each link in the chain. Even I can't always predict what the AI is going to end up with from a given start point *g*. And once contact is made with the US forces, the AI's original plan often goes out the window.

It is true that there are usually only a few "reasonable" strategies for OPFOR in a given scenario, but I don't necessarily limit the battle plans to "reasonable" setups. Sometimes unreasonable AI setups work very nicely against an overconfident US player.

Movement along the top or bottom edge of the map are just two of many possible strategies that the computer opponent may choose to take. Each scenario has multiple possible opening moves and battle plans. Generally out of a dozen or more possible battle plans only 5% maybe 10% will involve movement along a general route that is less than a kilometer from the top or bottom edge - assuming the map is fairly large. The computer opponent may also sometimes gravitate to the map edges in reaction to spottings in an attempt to flank or work around behind the enemy but the effect is being caused by its running into the map edge while trying to do something else. In my opinion, there has to be the occasional chance of OPFOR working the edge of the map or else the human player would not bother to protect his far flanks. Unpredictable routes are a major part of what makes TacOps replayable. If OPFOR always came "up the middle" a user could only play a given scenario a couple of times before becoming bored.

The AI often tries to disperse its units upon contact so that fewer clusters of vehicles exist within the effective radius of air and arty strikes.

The AI does a fair number of interesting and useful things that I don't remember coding *g*.

CAUTION: Some players like to shortcut the game setup turn by reusing old saved game files that contain a "favorite" US setup - this is a bad thing to do. If you restart a game using the saved game file from the first turn of that, you will usually draw the same basic AI battle plan reusing startup turn saved game files spoils replayability. The AI chooses its basic battle plan from its bank of multiple opening moves right after the OPFOR order of battle is loaded and before you have the chance to do a save game. If you do your first turn setup and save the game, then every time you start from that saved game file you will fight the same basic AI battle plan. Doing this will make the AI more predictable and will soon result in boring game play . I can not change this without a huge and very risky program rewrite.

When I coded most of the AI, it was important to me for the AI to model conventional wisdom on real world OPFOR tactics (for the most part). I probably spent more hours on the AI than anything else. At that time, I did not want to provide a Blue force AI unless it pretty much modeled Western tactics. I could not afford to spend another four to six months coding it "right" so I just did not do it at all. Were I to do it all over again, I would probably provide dual play by the computer opponent and just have both sides use the same AI.

It does both. 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.

It happens but it is rare. Usually the AI will try to aggressively clear obstacles to its battle plan.

Only infantry units "forget" their orders and then only if they have been newly suppressed during the combat phase. This is an intentional penalty and is needed to simulate the halting, irregular pace of the sudden rushes that take place in infantry foot assaults in the face of enemy fire. In general in such situations nobody moves far who is receiving effective fire.

Conceptually yes, but I do not aggressively address every detail that would result from being button up - starts getting into squad leader stuff that the engine can not support without seriously effecting playability in battalion and higher sized engagements.

Yes, but their spotting and accuracy and effectiveness is greatly degraded.

Yes and no. The player can not tell a unit to move at say 10 kilometers per hour but units do move at different speeds. The abstraction for movement in TacOps is based on a general combat situation of 'contact imminent'. Thus units do not typically move at their real world technically max possible speed but rather at a lower speed that is based partially on tactical caution and partially on limits imposed by the varying roughness/trafficability of terrain. All units of a given class have the same maximum game speed potential, however their speed at the instant is determined mostly by the class of terrain that they are in and if they are suppressed.

My quoting to you the basic and terrain modified movement rates used in the code for the various types of units would probably not be very helpful. A better approach would be for you to setup a test game and to experiment with giving orders to the three basic classes of ground units (tracked, wheeled, foot) to move along roads, go cross country, thru woods, etc. Observe how much ground a given class of unit can cover on your screen in one or two minutes. Use an index card for each class and mark the distance along one side that that type of unit can travel in woods terrain. Mark another side for clear terrain, roads, etc. The markings that you develop will be good guides for planning but remember that things like firing and being suppressed will usually cause units to cover less ground per minute. You can also see approximately how long it will take for a unit to get to a given waypoint in its future movement path by clicking on the little black button in the box labeled "Orders" in the orders window. Doing so will display a time next to each waypoint on the map - see Users Guide page 26.

Use the "Reverse after firing" and or "Reverse if fired on" settings in the unit SOP orders window. See the Users Guide pp 29-30 and the Read Me/Errata text files. The unit will automatically back up so as to keep its frontal armor toward the enemy.

For direct movement orders, hold down the option key as you give a movement order and the unit will move in reverse so as to keep its frontal armor toward the enemy. See the Read Me/Errata text files.

Hold down the option key as you click the "go to" order on the map. When that order is reached during the combat turn the vehicle will move toward that point "in reverse".

Yes. When giving movement orders to a unit - if you hold down the option key as you click on the map, the unit will later move to that point "in reverse".

Yes.

In general, in TacOps, when I mention a "unit" I mean a "marker". A marker can represent one infantry squad/team up to a company. A marker can represent one vehicle up to a company. A marker can also include all the infantry embarked on the vehicles in the marker. However, when a unit/marker is exited, the program counts its strength pts and multiplies that count by the Unit Lethality Value shown for that unit on pages 110 to 112 of the manual. A strength point is the smallest possible unit that a given marker type can be broken down into. For infantry units one strength point is one squad or one team. For vehicle units one strength point is one vehicle. For example. One M1 tank has a value of 100 points. If you exit a marker that represents 10 M1 tanks then the exit score for that unit/marker would be 10 times 100. Its exit score would be 1000. If you exist an APC marker then the exit score would include the computed values for all the APCs in the marker plus the computed values for all the infantry units being carried inside the APCs.

The special spotting buffer zones at the edge of woods, towns, and high ground are 100 meters or ten pixels wide (give or take a couple of pixels from what the map shows). That is a little more than an eighth of an inch on most monitors. Visualize the center point of a unit marker and as long as that center point is anywhere in that buffer zone then you are OK. It becomes very intuitive after a couple of games. Unit position, line of sight, and spotting are all calculated from the center point of the unit markers.

One to two minutes per suppression event. Note that suppression is not additive - if a unit gets a new suppression result before the previous suppression has worn off then the remainder of the old suppression value is replaced with a new suppression value.

When any infantry unit takes a personnel casualty, the entire unit is suppressed for a couple of minutes. During that time, the unit moves slower, shoots less, spots less, and shoots less accurately. Once personnel casualties reach a certain point then the infantry marker will drop an organizational level and it will then fire fewer weapons - i.e. platoon goes to two squads, then two squads go to one, and finally a one squad market is completely eliminated.

I think most people would say "Task Force DeGoey" and I would not argue that call. However, a scenario that is often overlooked is "Team Savage" - the airfield defense by USMC stragglers vs an OPFOR battalion mounted in BTRs. Most players seem to think that it is a walk over for OPFOR but I think it is a very balanced scenario when played by experienced players. When played by experienced players, a US victory requires more adroit use of infantry tactics and short ranged weapons than any other scenario (i.e. in particular the US player must realize and exploit the fact that machine guns can kill BTRs from the sides and rear *g*) while an OPFOR victory requires more finesse (sneakiness ?) in the attack than most other scenarios.

Below is one way that it has been done ...

While a CPX is underway, only the umpire is running TacOps on a computer. The players do not run or even need to have the TacOps program. The umpire uses the TacOps program to control and generate the maneuver and combat results aspects of the CPX. The players participate by exchanging Internet email and Internet IRC chat messages with the umpire and with each other. Each player tracks his part of the war using only paper notes and a paper situation map.

One to two weeks before the CPX the umpire publicly announces what TacOps map will be used and a general starting situation. The players then print that map and organize themselves into US and OPFOR teams complete with a command structure. Once the teams have been organized, the umpire then privately provides additional info and a mission to the US commander and does the same for the OPFOR commander. The force commanders then develop battle plans with their volunteer subordinates.

On a Saturday or a Sunday the umpire and the players gather on specified Internet IRC chat channels and the CPX begins. Normally there is an admin channel that everyone monitors, a private channel just for the umpire and the US team, and a private channel just for the umpire and the OPFOR team. Each team privately gives its starting orders and intentions to the umpire (usually in military terms rather than game terms). The umpire then enters his interpretation of the players instructions into the TacOps game and he executes one or more TacOps turns. As significant events occur on the umpire's computer, he sends a summary of the action to the players and he gives them an opportunity to ask questions, to state new orders, to call for arty and air support, to reorganize their forces, etc. The umpire then again enters his interpretation of the players instructions into the TacOps game and he executes one or more TacOps turns. This cycle repeats until the game is over or until everyone is exhausted.

By hex I mean a traditional six sided wargaming hex. There is not necessarily anything wrong with hexes. Six sided hexes remain a useful tool for simplifying terrain in most games. They worked well for that purpose in board games and they continue to be useful in computer games as a way to conserve memory while portraying very large maps. A pixel is not just a very small hex in that a pixel is conceptually square - there is a significant difference in the difficulty of coding a regular matrix built on consistent squares and in coding for a matrix based on six sided hexes in an alternating pattern. However, the primary reason why I do not wish to use six sided hexes in TacOps is that I have a long range goal of linking the TacOps engine to a real world, global digital mapping data base on CD ROM.

Technically a wadi is a gully, valley, or riverbed in northern Africa and southwestern Asia that remains dry except during the rainy season - often the feature will be dry unless rain is actually falling in the feature or within some miles of it. Given rain, the feature typically fills briefly with rushing water that erodes it deeper and wider - i.e. just like the flash flood of the US western desert. Wadi has been used to describe features varying from only a few dozen meters wide up to large geographic regions. In US usage the term has degenerated to apply to just about any gully or ditch like feature that is large enough to drive a tank through. Such features are often very militarily significant in desert areas of Africa and southwestern Asia because (1) they provide terrain landmarks for navigation in an otherwise often featureless area, (2) they are usually deep enough to provide cover from distant observation across an otherwise flat and featureless desert, (3) they often extend in the direction you want to travel, (4) their firmer bottoms (except when closely strewn with boulders) sometimes provide better trafficability than the loose sand of higher terrain. In the assault, items (2) and (3) would make traveling in a wadi very useful to armor for limiting exposure to long range ATGMs while approaching an enemy defensive position. An obliging wadi would also prove useful to an assaulting infantry force as it would allow some movement out of sight of the enemy, thus reducing their vulnerability to accurately adjusted arty fire.

The Iraqis used sand berms and sand piles in an attempt to provide ground level line of sight blocks and concealment in areas of flat desert during their war with Iran and later in the Gulf War against the coalition. A sand berm is simply sand, earth, and or rocks that have been bulldozed into a pile or long wall that is typically taller than a tank. In flat, featureless desert anything that obstructs long range ground level visibility is of military value - you can't shoot accurately at what you can not see. Properly constructed sand berms may also provide brief obstacles to movement. Were you defending in flat featureless terrain, a sand berm a few hundred to a thousand meters in front of your position could allow you to engage an enemy force piece meal (a stupid enemy that is) - as leading enemy units crossed the berm you would be able to engage them with your whole force without being exposed to return fire from the whole enemy force.

The AI does not work very hard to do item "a" although it can seem to happen if an independent OPFOR recon unit is prowling around some distance from the location of the main body. Usually such recon units do not survive long enough to be very effective at instigating this kind of deception.

The AI observes your firing patterns to the extent that it may choose to deploy some of it units near legally observed arty impacts into a more dispersed attack formation but it does not try to use the information to predict US attack routes. I generally avoid doing such AI code because it would most likely just create a way for the human to consistently trick the AI.

The TacOps AI intentionally does not consider enemy smoke in developing its tactical reaction orders. I assumed folks would try to use smoke in the fashion you suggested in order to trick the AI *g*. The AI does react to legal sightings of enemy units however.

The AI currently does not really consider the overall remaining strength of the US player when planning its move. In my opinion doing so would cause the AI to periodically to do unrealistic things just to win the game - things like noting that most of the US units were "gone" and then switching to just driving off the map edge - I would consider that to be a game trick. I did not design the AI specifically to beat up on you or to care particularly if it wins or loses. My goal for the AI is for it to move its forces and to respond to contact in a tactically realistic way so that the game looks and feels right militarily. A fortunate side effect is that using real world tactics and principles often seems to also be a good approach for the AI to take from a game play standpoint *g*. Other than some overaggressive selfpropelled howitzers that sometimes insist on leading charges instead of providing supporting fire like they are supposed to do, I think it does ok.

As for "busting through the town", the AI is a lot more afraid of your arty than it is of your ground units. One US unit with a good field of view can wreak havoc just by adjusting arty ICM missions. The AI may have just been being careful to get its attack formation organized before venturing out into the open.

No.

I found during development that I had to be careful with having the AI react in certain ways to certain events in order to reduce the chances that the human player would find "game tricks" that could consistently be used to manipulate the AI into doing predictable things. My experience so far has been that the AI does best when it sticks as much as possible to its primary battle plan. Also having the AI sometimes behave a bit sluggishly is probably more realistic than the "change everything every 60 seconds" capability that the human player has *g*.

It is not. I assume by "stage-managed" that you mean some sort of artificial game management that periodically favors one side or the other. My term for that is "AI cheating" and it does not happen in TacOps. TacOps does not artificially adjust the level of difficulty for one side or the other in any way.

There is nothing in the game code that was intentionally designed to produce an effect like that. The combat results tables never change.

The AI would not know that the US forces are decimated. I do not allow the AI to track the total force condition of the US player. The AI plans its orders for each turn based on its overall battle plan, on recent legal sightings of enemy units, and on the effects of current and recent direct and indirect fire that it has received. The AI currently does not really consider the overall remaining strength of the US player when planning its move. In my opinion doing so would cause the AI to periodically to do unrealistic things just to win the game - things like noting that most of the US units were "gone" and then switching to just driving off the map edge - I would consider that to be a game trick. I did not design the AI specifically to beat up on you or to care particularly if it wins or loses. My goal for the AI is for it to move its forces and to respond to contact in a tactically realistic way so that the game looks and feels right militarily. A fortunate side effect is that using real world tactics and principles often seems to also be a good approach for the AI to take from a game play standpoint *g*. Other than some overaggressive self propelled howitzers that sometimes insist on leading charges instead of providing supporting fire like they are supposed to do, I think it does ok.

No bug. The mission objective area is a lot bigger than the "spot" under the "A". The letter A just marks the center of the objective area. The full mission objective is about 1200 meters wide and 2000 meters tall.

Select the "Plot Mission Objectives" menu item in the Map menu. This will draw a dark line around the objective area. You will then be able to see exactly what it looks like, where it is, and how big it is. Scoping the size and shape of the objective is a critical first step for playing all scenarios having terrain objectives.

In Team Minamora, the objective area can be a bit difficult to distinguish from the OPFOR, black setup frame during the startup turn. The objective area has a somewhat irregular border while the OPFOR setup frame is a sharp rectangle. Once the setup turn is over and only the objective area is plotted on the map, it is easy to see what is where.

Patience and combined arms. First check the east end of the town for OPFOR stragglers and clear it if necessary. Then move most of your force eastward using terrain cover along the top or bottom of the map. Send small scouting groups into the open east of the town with good covering fire available from the majority of your force which is kept back in the edge of town or in nearby woods. As you draw fire, patiently mass your direct fire and arty support to eliminate the forward enemy positions with minimum casualties. Towards the end of the game move all your units to the top or bottom of the objective area and then turn them north or south as the case may be, put them on line, and then just sweep the length of the objective area. Helps to lead the sweep by a couple of hundred meters with a moving barrage of arty fire - keeps some of the ATGM and RPG gunners in their holes *grin*.

First get rid of all enemy armor. Then attack the enemy infantry with a combined arms assault in the following manner. Get good observation of the enemy position then shell the enemy infantry with HE or ICM until you have good accuracy and are able to suppress the infantry. Switch your arty to smoke for one mission to blind the infantry. Move toward the smoked position with tanks and APCs - APCs leading. About 200 meters from the enemy position stop your vehicles and dismount your infantry. Have your infantry assault on foot. When the arty smoke clears, the enemy infantry will begin to fire at your infantry. This will reveal their position to your tanks and APCs and your vehicles should begin to fire into the enemy infantry with good effect. Keep your infantry moving toward the enemy infantry until the enemy is eliminated. A few turns of this should do the trick for each enemy infantry position.

Use the LAV25s to ambush OPFOR APCs - preferably from the flanks and or rear. You can win the CRAIG scenarios just by killing most of the OPFOR APCs. The autocannon on the LAV25 can chew up BTRs and BMPs from all aspects at close and medium range. If you can find a way for the LAV25 to get a rear shot it can also kill tanks.

Yes. Use the truck company in the large city in the northwest corner of the map to move a line of infantry and SAMs forward to gather intelligence, to observe for arty, to shoot down troop helos, and to generally harass the US player while he is seizing the facility and is setting up his defense.

First a question. Did you use the first hour of the game and the truck company in the big city in the northeast corner of the map to place a line of OPFOR observation posts and SA16s as far west as possible? If you did not - then forget planning and just charge *grin*.

My suggestions for the OPFOR in TF DeGoey are:

(1) Split the truck company in the city into individual truck markers, load them with infantry teams and SA16 teams (you can fit two inf squads and a SA16 in each truck), and then fan the trucks out and drive them west until each either reaches a good observation position ( OP) or it gets destroyed by a Cobra (usually some of the cargo will survive and that spot may well be as good as any for an OP). If any trucks make safe deliveries, then send them back to the city to pick up and deploy another load. The primary purpose of these guys is to observe and hinder the development of the US defense against the OPFOR reinforcements. The infantry teams can spot the US units as they debark from their helos. The SA16 teams can harass and attrit the US transport helos. If the US player is the least bit careless, a SA16 hit on a CH54 helo can leave a big hole in the US defense. The forward deployed SA16s will discourage the US player from using his Cobras to gather intelligence to the east.

(2) OPFOR can not really plan his offensive strategy until just before the leading elements of his reinforcements enter the map. At that time effective planning depends on OPs having spotted the trace and makeup of the US forward defense. OPFOR then plans: (a) if there is a weak flank - to maneuver around a flank so as to attack the US defense from the side/ rear, or (b) if there is no weak flank but there is a weak area in the line - to use terrain masking to approach as close as possible to the weak spot and then to charge in close waves toward and through the weak spot, or (c) if there is no weak flank and no weak spot in the line or if OPFOR does not know where the heck the US defense line is - to move as close as possible to the nuclear facility while using terrain masking and then charge in close waves.

(1) Make the reinforcing OPFOR infantry walk to the objective. Use every unit that carries a machine gun as an armor hunter/killer team and move them as far East of the objective as you dare. In TF DeGoey, the OPFOR APCs are BTRs. BTRs have very weak armor and can be killed easily by machine gun fire into their side or rear.

(2) Use your fixed wing air power aggressively in TF DeGoey. The Marine force in TF DeGoey has a very high (for TacOps) fixed wing sortie rate. If you use your airstrikes, you will find that you will get more of them relatively quickly. In TF DeGoey the US player should always keep at least one empty mission slot in his air support window as this is what lets the game engine know that you can use more air. If you have all six slots filled, you will not get more air support until one of them is used.

Rushing the map edge, are we? Naughty ... naughty *g*. Doing that in two player human games can cause a fair amount of ill will. One of the oldest problems in wargaming is that there has to be a map edge somewhere and that artificial edge keeps the entering player from shooting the way he would in real life from "farther back". I have thought about putting a mystery super weapon in the game engine that would automatically fire from "off map" at any unit that got too close to the opposing map edge in "entry" type scenarios *g*.

The key to that scenario is proper use of the seemingly least powerful units in the Blue force the snipers.

Yes. The key is maximum violence during the first few minutes of the scenario. Use your snipers to kill as many of the SAM gunners as you can in the first few minutes of the game. After the SAMs are gone, use the snipers against crew served weapons. Use priority targeting to force the snipers to go after the best targets first. While the snipers are working over the SAM gunners, use your arty support against the various crew served weapons positions to attrit and suppress them. In the first minutes of the scenario, bring all of your air support in at one time against the various crew served weapons positions to kill and suppress them. Once you have the SAM gunners out of the way, and the crew served weapons somewhat suppressed then lay smoke into the compound and bring in the troop helos. But don't just crash them into the middle of the compound *g* - put them down on a flank. As soon as the SAMs are gone, use a couple of helos to move your ATGM teams toward the East end of the map to be ready to ambush the OPFOR reinforcements.

Snipers, smoke, and air strikes are the keys. Use the snipers during the first three or four turns to clear one flank of the compound of all SAMs and machine guns. Then bring in all your air strikes to kill as many additional crew served weapons as possible. If you use them up rapidly at the beginning of the mission, you will probably get more before the enemy reinforcements arrive. Then lay smoke everywhere and bring most of your helos into the compound across the cleared flank at nap of the earth altitude. While you are mopping up the compound, use some of your helos to lay your ambush positions against the eventual enemy reinforcements.

Try not to get into a direct fire battle with OPFOR until after you have attrited him heavily with your artillery. Set the engagement range of your units to zero so that they will quietly observe the approaching enemy instead of shooting at him and hit him just with arty for as long as you can. When you can't wait any longer then hit his leading units with ambushes that only last a volley or two. Then immediately fall your people back to a new position and do it all over again. Weaken him with arty ... then ambush him with short, violent spurts of direct fire ... then fall back. Repeat and repeat.

Try doing the reverse - use your arty first/early in the game and preserve your ground units for use later, i.e. after the enemy formations have been weakened and broken up some.

I think someone recently asked a similar question and I think I answered it wrong the first time *grin*. My original intention was that scenarios would be primarily balanced for play between two humans having about the same skill levels. I just remembered that I suggested in the original manual or maybe it was in the FAQ file that an experienced player should add optional units to OPFOR when playing against the AI. Having said that, I am not willing to state that every scenario is in fact perfectly balanced for human vs human play. It seems reasonable that I would have been less than perfect in at least some of the 100+ scenarios that now exist *grin* also some of the enhancements that have been made to the game since its release have altered balance for some scenarios. The Team Kelley variants come to mind as being hopelessly unbalanced for human vs human play.

Flanking is hard to do in a tactical level game unless one side has only a very small force or a player gets careless.

Tactics need to be enemy oriented. What you want your troops to do and your timetable for them to do it is just a plan - what will actually happen is decided by what your enemy does or what he fails to do while you are executing your plan. Part of your problem with flanking may be that your opponent is careful - i.e. he puts out recon and flank security so that he knows what is happening on his flanks.

In TF Gallagher, OPFOR has to cross the map from East to West. OPFOR must come to the US

- OPFOR must go through the US defense. There is no need for the US player to move any unit except recon Eastward. I think most of your casualties have been the result of your maneuvering units toward OPFOR rather than laterally or rearward. The US player should not charge Eastward to duke it out with OPFOR. Rather the US player should establish observation posts to identify and track OPFOR's eastward progress. Once OPFOR's routes have been discerned then the US player should maneuver forces (out of sight of OPFOR) laterally and Westward to good ambush positions.

No.

The SAM being fired from the OPFOR APCs is the SA16 - a man portable, shoulder fired SAM. OPFOR fields enough of them to put a launcher in almost every rifle platoon. The SA16 gunner is conceptually firing from an open hatch or the roof of the APC.

The original idea was as for most TacOps scenarios. A fair chance of winning for either player assuming skill parity. However, when the scenario was first designed, entrenchments were not as strong as they are now. After entrenchments were strengthened the scenario probably became more unbalanced in favor of OPFOR.

Nothing other than it seemed at the time to be nicely representative of a common small unit tactical problem. I think the uncommon thing about it is that since it is a game you have been provided with unrealistically accurate information before the engagement that reveals how difficult the problem is. It might not seem so unrealistic if the situation were one where you didn't realize how much 'was really up there' before you crossed the line of departure.

That is one possible explanation. Another is that the local tactical situation is so desperate that you must try to take this area at once and what you have is all that is available.

When Team Krempp was designed, entrenchments were a lot weaker. The scenario may now be unbalanced. You have my encouragement to add some more units or arty to the US side during the setup turn - guilt free *g*.

The AI OPFOR gets no special benefits for its direct fire. The combat tables may be a bit unrealistic for ground small arms fire vs troop helos - I'll take a look at it. Sometimes though I have to give up realism in one area in order to preserve realism in a more important area. The larger lesson to be learned here is that one does not fly troop carrying helos in sight of enemy ground units - one does not take troop carrying helos into hot LZs. Were I to reduce the effectiveness of ground small arms against unarmored helos, I am afraid the game result would be that players would start landing troop carrying helos right on top of enemy units. That does not happen in real life even by accident - i.e. if the helos take fire from the LZ they abort the landing.

I have not had any reported problems with Team O'Hara. Sounds like the program checked the distance to the map edge for all units and just deduced that the game wining percentage could not make it there in time given the current situation.

[Note: TF Peterjohn is a quasi historical Desert Storm scenario in which OPFOR has no thermal sights and only steel/tungsten penetrators so the US M1 tanks are pretty much invulnerable to frontal hits. It is not uncommon for skilled US players to eliminate three or four Iraqi battalions with the loss of only a few Bradleys.]

Probably not by the AI. There might be a chance if a human OPFOR player were to rush the town along the southern edge of the map in three or four close waves. Each wave should be about a battalion and should be about1000 meters wide and one marker in depth. The second and following waves should trail just far enough behind the wave in front of them so as to prevent an ICM salvo from straddling two waves. Tanks and APCs in the second and subsequent waves should pick up orphan infantry from vehicles lost in earlier waves as they advance through the wreckage. The more infantry that you can get into the town the better. The waves should not stop or maneuver to do the pickups however - just pick up what you are about to drive through anyway.

The US player's advantage in thermal sights and frontal armor would largely disappear in the point blank ranges of a city fight.

No reason to be in doubt. TF Peterjohn is absolutely unbalanced. Hard for a Desert Storm scenario to be otherwise with thermal equipped US units vs smoke blind Iraqi units. The main reason I finally did TF Peterjohn was to show a number of critics why I was not initially overly interested in doing Desert Storm scenarios *g*.

Now you see why I was not initially motivated to do Desert Storm scenarios *g*.

The customer is always right - even when the customer is wrong *big grin*.

TF Peterjohn is a Desert Storm "what if" scenario in which OPFOR has an older model of T72 with only a steel or tungsten penetrator. Thus, the US M1 tanks are invulnerable to fire against their frontal armor and even flanking fire must be at close range in order to penetrate. OPFOR must disperse into a wide line and close rapidly with the US defenders. The wide line will increase the chance that some OPFOR tanks will get oblique or flanking shots at the M1s. It will still be a blood bath for OPFOR, but OPFOR has sufficient numbers to prevail (sometimes).

Not a bug. If the helo was at medium altitude then it may have been firing "over" the smoke. Smoke doesn't go as high now as it did before.

The outermost ten screen pixels of any map edge comprise an exit zone. On most maps, that exit zone is a gray, frame like, border. Order a unit to move onto the 10 pixel wide, gray border that surrounds most TacOps maps. Any unit sitting on that border at the end of a combat phase will exit the map and will be removed from play.

The off map squares that you mentioned are not exit areas. They are artificially contrived administrative safe areas - i.e. places on the map to park your helos until they are needed for actually exiting troops.

No, it is the computed lethality value of the exited units.

In general, in TacOps, when I mention a "unit" I mean a "marker". A marker can represent one infantry squad/team up to a company. A marker can represent one vehicle up to a company. A marker can also include all the infantry embarked on the vehicles in the marker.

However, when a unit/marker is exited, the program counts its strength pts and multiplies that count by the Unit Lethality Value shown for that unit on pages 110 to 112 of the manual. A strength point is the smallest possible unit that a given marker type can be broken down into. For infantry units one strength point is one squad or one team. For vehicle units one strength point is one vehicle. For example. One M1 tank has a value of 100 points. If you exit a marker that represents 10 M1 tanks then the exit score for that unit/marker would be 10 times 100. Its exit score would be 1000. If you exist an APC marker then the exit score would include the computed values for all the APCs in the marker plus the computed values for all the infantry units being carried inside the APCs.

DFTRPs can be placed anywhere. The setting unit does not have to be within the circle. The answer to the M1 example is yes.

DF TRP means direct fire target reference point. It describes a circle around a point on the battle map. You specify the size of that circle when you set the DF TRP. When you set a DF TRP for a unit, you are ordering that unit to place its first priority on shooting at targets that are within that circle. The unit will look in that circle for targets before looking anywhere else. If you hold down the option key while setting a DF TRP then that unit will only shoot at units that are in that circle. Using DF TRPs is a TacOps implementation of a real world method of distributing weapons onto multiple likely target areas so that all the weapons in a defensive position don't by chance end up shooting at the same one or two targets at the same time.

Correct - unless the unit has been give a 'hard' target priority.

Not unless the unit is fired on first. Whenever a unit is fired on, any existing" fire control box" range limit is reset to maximum range - however even then the DFTRP priority is not changed.

Remember though that the priority target buttons are absolute orders only when you make them "hard" priority orders. If a priority target button is used as a "soft" order then if the unit can not find a suitable target that matches any of the soft priorities it will then search for any target, anywhere.

Direct area fire is a concept that is not in currently in TacOps.

Currently in TacOps most units can not just shoot at an area of ground (arty and mortars can). Currently most units have to see a target unit and have a reasonable chance of hitting and hurting it or else they won't fire at all.

A number of users would like to be able to order every type of unit to fire at points or small areas of ground even if no enemy unit is visible there yet - suppressive fires, recon by fire, that sort of thing. If implemented, this kind of fire would be no where near as effective as shooting at a visible unit but it might be useful once in a while and it would be (or at least would seem to be) somewhat more realistic in some situations.

Currently only visible/spotted units can be engaged with direct fire. I am planning on adding something to allow all units to fire on hidden/unspotted targets. Will be called "direct area fire" or something similar - will be controlled by a button in the unit orders window similar in operation to the "Set DFTRP" button. The fire will be unlikely to kill hard targets but it will be reasonably likely to suppress and occasionally kill soft targets. This will be a big change with a lot of code ripples and thus it is quite risky for inducing bugs. It will be a while before it is released.

It is not a bug. It may be a poor design decision on my part *g*.

Here is the scoop. The game engine heavily penalizes the 20mm guns on the Cobra and the 30mm guns on the Apache vs targets that are in cover or in defilade (especially infantry targets in defilade or cover). The starting accuracy value for helo 20mm and 30mm guns is also currently a bit low in the game engine. The result of these factors is that the game engine will seldom fire these weapons at targets that are not fully exposed.

Use the "15 second pop up technique". Try giving "move and pop up" orders that cause the helo to do the following: move at NOE altitude to a firing position that has a line of sight block between the helo and the suspected target area, order the helo to go to medium altitude (use the helo up orders button), stay there for 15 seconds (use the delay orders button), go back to NOE altitude (use the helo down orders button), and move away immediately to another pop up firing position. If you do this you should usually be able to get a "free" 15 second pulse for spotting and firing at the pop up point. If the helo spots a target when it pops up it has a very good chance of nailing it and getting away. If a helo stays visible to OPFOR SAM gunners or a ZSU for more than 15 seconds, it is in trouble - more than 30 seconds and you can kiss it goodbye. You should try to use your helos at the maximum range of their weapons. The closer your helos get to OPFOR the more things he has that can shoot them down, especially if the helos are hovering. Note that the AI remembers where it recently saw US units. If a helo is observed as it moved to its pop up firing position or if it tries to use the same pop up position twice in a short period then you may not get the surprise fire award.

I don't think it is unrealistic for today's weapons vs low level attacks. Although the game often shows aircraft as being "shot down" by hand held SAMs it would probably be more realistic to consider them as having been damaged or discouraged to the point where they had to/chose to leave the battle area.

You probably are not doing anything wrong. TacOps was designed to be a very hostile air environment. TacOps assumes that both sides have good medium and high altitude SAM coverage so the game currently models only low level air to ground attack. Most TacOps scenarios feature OPFOR formations that have a portable SAM in every platoon. The combination of these factors makes for a very hostile air environment. In most TacOps scenarios it will be difficult to get effective air strikes unless (1) you launch several missions in the same minute so as to provide more targets than the air defense can cope with or (2) you wait to use your air support late in a game after OPFOR (especially the SAMs) has been heavily attrited.

Also, if you are sending air strikes against large concentrations of tanks and APCs and you are not suppressing those formations with arty and you are not smoking units near but not in the target area during the turns leading up to the airstrike then you are also dealing with dozens of turret mounted heavy machine guns (suppression silences them as well as local SAMs). The heavy machine guns have less than a 1% chance of discouraging an airstrike, but if you are facing several dozen, that % starts to add up to a significant number.

Some game design philosophy...

TacOps does not model unconstrained air power because unconstrained air power in a tactical level game would guarantee victory to the side that had it - there would be no "game" to the game play.

Tactical air support is far more effective in real life than what seems to be shown by TacOps. The real world effectiveness of tactical air support is so great that it creates a serious problem in designing a tactical level, ground oriented game. If one side or the other has plenty of tactical air support and if the tactical environment is such that those assets are free to roam the battle area at the altitude of their choice then (1) that side is going to win any tactical ground engagement and

(2) there will be no incentive to employ ground assets in any role other than merely locating the enemy. In other words - a dead boring ground ops game *g*.

The focus of TacOps is ground ops. Since aircraft do not usually play a critical role in TacOps scenarios, the air support routines are very generalized. Aircraft are assumed to have executed an approach to target that gave them a reasonable chance both of hitting the target and of escaping effective ground observation and fire prior to the target. The scenarios do not generally contain aircraft in great quantities because in a tactical game if only one side has great air power the other side is guaranteed to lose and if both sides have significant air power then the game deteriorates into just hiding from aircraft. Such a game would be boring. I do have an item on the wish list to add the clicking of a map entry point and an attack path for aircraft to and from a ground target, but I don't know when I will get to it. The motivation for that change is not so much to increase the fidelity of the air play but rather to increase the fidelity of the ground SAM anti air play. Increasing the fidelity of the air play gets real complex real quick and would add greatly to the users workload when you consider all the variables involved in having the user specify the attack profile, bomb load, speed, height and angle of release, etc. and then all the game engine ripple effects of the variables of the different attack profiles on the response from ground to air weapons. The most likely result of having a skilled user do all that would be that he would end up with the same result over the target that the game now provides *g*.

Yes - from medium altitude it can see over woods but not necessarily into woods. You can confirm this for yourself by doing the following experiment. Load up the Basic Training scenario in two players on one computer mode. Select Options/Ignore Setup Limits. Use Options/Add One Unit to add a Cobra to the game. Place the Cobra west of some woods. Open the Cobra's Unit Orders Window and set it to be a medium altitude. Close the window.

Now select Orders/Do US Unit Orders and then Orders/Do OPFOR Unit Orders to change to OPFOR orders mode. Use Options/Add One Unit to add a T72 tank to the game. Place the tank well east of some woods but within 4000 meters of the Cobra. Give the T72 some movement orders to make sure that its visibility will be at max.

Now select Orders/Do OPFOR Unit Orders to exit the OPFOR orders phase and select Combat/Begin Combat Phase. You should see the Cobra engage the tank - over the intervening woods.

By the way, there is often a air to ground shadow area in the first 100 meters before woods terrain starts. If a ground unit is in this area it will sometimes not be visible to an enemy helo at medium altitude that is on the other side of the woods.

Yes. The technique follows.

A helo flying at NOE (nap of the earth) altitude has the same line of sight as a unit on the ground. A helo flying at medium altitude (the highest altitude in TacOps) can spot (and be spotted by) just about everything within 4000 meters. Try giving "move and pop up" orders that cause the helo to do the following: move at NOE altitude to a firing position that has a line of sight block between the helo and the suspected target area, order the helo to go to medium altitude (use the helo up orders button), stay there for 15 seconds (use the delay orders button), go back to NOE altitude (use the helo down orders button), and move away immediately to another pop up firing position. If you do this you should usually be able to get a "free" 15 second pulse for spotting and firing at the pop up point. If the helo spots a target when it pops up it has a very good chance of nailing it and getting away. If a helo stays visible to OPFOR SAM gunners or a ZSU for more than 15 seconds, it is in trouble - more than 30 seconds and you can kiss it goodbye. You should try to use your helos at the maximum range of their weapons. The closer your helos get to OPFOR the more things he has that can shoot them down, especially if the helos are hovering. For example, the 30mm automatic cannon on a BMP starts to be quite useful against hovering helos at around 2000 meters.

Note that the AI remembers where it recently saw US units. If a helo is observed as it moved to its pop up firing position or if it tries to use the same pop up position twice in a short period then the AI is going to be primed to fire on it - i.e. you may not get the surprise fire award.

Generally - everything and everywhere within 4000 meters.

Use the LOS method described above to pin the LOS tool as coming from a selected helo unitthat is at medium altitude.

Again, that is not a "game trick". I specifically coded TacOps so that it would recognize that procedure so that game helos could replicate a standard real world attack tactic.

Yes, no, and maybe *g*. It depends on what is being shot at. TacOps rates the Cobra's 20mm to be more effective vs infantry targets while the Apache's 30mm is rated to be more effective against armored targets. The 20mm gets a higher accuracy table and kills slightly more infantry per volley because it puts more lead in the air per volley/burst of fire. However the 20mm has much less penetrating power than the 30mm against armored targets.

No happy medium. Transport helicopters are very fragile beasts. The only reasonable tactic is to bring them in at nap-of-the-earth altitude and land them as close as possible but still out of the line of sight/fire of the enemy. The grunts then have to walk on in.

In the real world, helo pilots (not to mention their combat cargo) take a very dim view of crashing into the objective *g*.

"Forever" is a relative term. Remember - a TacOps turn only represents 60 seconds.

Not a bug. (a) 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. (b) Some anti air weapons have thermal or radar sights that can see through smoke.

You can use the delayed order button labeled "L" but you can't have instantaneous loading during a combat turn - that would be too unrealistic.

Probably because there is at least a 30 second delay for loading troops during the combat turn.

Yes - it stops checking for new air support - six missions is the most you can have "on hold" once you use one up, the game will start checking again.

Most likely, the airstrike will return to your Air Support Window, however there is a low chance that it will not. The following rules usually apply to air strikes. Airstrikes that drop bombs are always removed from play. Airstrikes that attack helos are usually, but not always returned to play. Airstrikes that abort due to effective fire are usually, but not always returned to play.

Good point. It reminds me that TacOps was held up several weeks just before release because I was struggling with the ground to air and air to ground routines. Throughout most of the testing there were only two results - fixed wing destroyed or mission aborted - most of the time the result was aircraft destroyed. I don't remember this bothering the play testers but it bothered me greatly because there just was no historical justification for the high aircraft mortality that was in the game at that time.

I revisited all the technical references that I could find and even broke a personal rule and went out and bought every game I could find that had air rules. The games proved to be a washout because for the most part they had the same flaws that I felt the prerelease TacOps had, i.e. fixed wing aircraft were dropping like flies.

What I finally theorized was that modern aircraft in even high threat areas seldom get shot down

- in relation to the total number of sorties flown - but they frequently get discouraged and or handicapped. By discouraged I mean they miss the target. By handicapped, I mean that they are directed by higher authority or good pilot judgment to attack at altitudes/attitudes different from what would provide the best accuracy.

I decided to implement the following for fixed wing attacks. If a fixed wing sortie attacks a ground target and if there is ground to air defensive fire then the most likely thing to happen will be that the aircraft will unload and probably miss the target, the next most likely thing to happen is that the aircraft will abort the bomb run, actually hitting and or destroying the aircraft is the least likely thing to happen. To this I added a predictive quantification (a weight) of all the weapons that will be fired at the attacking aircraft. The more weapons that are fired and the more lethal the weapons, the more likely the various results will occur, but still in the relative order given. This is what I finally implemented in TacOps. I am not totally satisfied with it.

It can't unless it is doing a "15 second popup". In TacOps, helos at medium altitude can usually be seen by every unit within 4000 meters. However, target acquisition and firing is intentionally not guaranteed in TacOps. Units don't always shoot at targets even if they seem to be in plain sight. Also, the fidelity of air to ground and ground to air line of sight and combat is currently somewhat limited in TacOps due to the simplified nature of elevation and altitude in the game engine. When TacOps was under development a more realistic elevation/altitude model would not run on the older Macs at a satisfying speed - that will change.

Currently correct. I can't polish this out until I add more elevations and altitudes and a different LOS routine.

They have to be given. Try giving helo orders that cause the helo to do the following: using a path that is entirely out of sight of any enemy unit, move at NOE altitude to a firing position that has a line of sight block between the helo and the suspected target area, order the helo to go to medium altitude (helo up orders button), stay there for 15 seconds (delay orders button), go back to NOE altitude (helo down orders button), and move away immediately to another pop up firing position, the farther the better. If you do this you should usually be able to get a "free" 15 second pulse for spotting and firing. By the way, if you try to do two popups in a row from the same general vicinity you will probably lose the helo.

I have seen that analysis, I have also seen air show video of modern HINDs doing fast vertical popups.

TacOps does not currently support laser target designators. In real life the Hellfire ATGM can travel 8000 meters but the Apache driver can't personally see and control the missile at anything much beyond 4000 meters. In order to get more than 4000 meters out of the weapon in the game, I need to add ground or air spotters equipped with laser designators. The way it would/should work is that an air or ground unit located closer to an armored target would light the target up with a laser beam. The lasing unit would then tell a distant Apache to lock and launch. The Apache might sense the laser spot and lock the Hellfire before launch or the pilot might just launch the missile in the right direction expecting it to find, lock, and home in on the laser spot on its own during flight. This is on the update wish list.

I have to do a certain amount of "averaging" in the game engine, especially with units like helos that operate in such radically different speed and attitude dimensions. Although TacOps shows 15 second combat pulses and 60 second combat turns I can't really model things exactly to the second. The best I can do and still keep the game playable is to expect that the combat outcomes of actions spread over several turns feels realistic.

TacOps does not currently support laser target designators. In real life the Hellfire ATGM can travel 8000 meters but the Apache driver can't personally see and control the missile at anything much beyond 4000 meters. In order to get more than 4000 meters out of the weapon in the game, I need to add ground or air spotters equipped with laser designators. The way it would/should work is that an air or ground unit located closer to an armored target would light the target up with a laser beam. The lasing unit would then tell a distant Apache to lock and launch. The Apache might sense the laser spot and lock the Hellfire before launch or the pilot might just launch the missile in the right direction expecting it to find, lock, and home in on the laser spot on its own during flight. This is on the update wish list.

They have to be given. Try giving helo orders that cause the helo to do the following: using a path that is entirely out of sight of any enemy unit, move at NOE altitude to a firing position that has a line of sight block between the helo and the suspected target area, order the helo to go to medium altitude (helo up orders button), stay there for 15 seconds (delay orders button), go back to NOE altitude (helo down orders button), and move away immediately to another pop up firing position, the farther the better. If you do this you should usually be able to get a "free" 15 second pulse for spotting and firing. By the way, if you try to do two popups in a row from the same general vicinity you will probably lose the helo.

Helo assaults are not simple in real life. I would be very disappointed if they failed to be troublesome to you in the game *g*. Rules of thumb for helo assaults ...

When doing your assault planning, think of transport helos as if they were bright yellow school buses *g*. If a plan doesn't feel like it would work for school buses then it probably won't work for transport helicopters either.

The air combat tables are virtually the same - US tables are slightly better. Could be because the AI often tries to disperse its units upon contact so that fewer clusters of vehicles exist within the effect radius of an air strike. Also lots of ground to air fire reduces the accuracy of an incoming air strike even if it does not down or abort the strike.

It is reasonably realistic with cluster bomb munitions and when you stack a lot of units in a very small area.

No. Their air to ground tables are actually a bit weaker than the US tables.

If you stack markers, if you congregate lots of people and vehicles within a few hundred meters, if you bunch up your units - you will be punished severely *g*. Happens that way in real life, so it happens that way in TacOps.

The penetration of the 7.62 machine guns is something that continues to bother me but I have not yet resolved to change it. The 7.62 machine gun is quite effective against BTRs when using special armor piercing ammo but the universal availability of such ammo is debatable. Frankly, I am surprised that your Blackhawks could survive after getting close enough to use their machine guns. Everyone else complains that getting them anywhere near an OPFOR unit is virtual suicide.

Yes. Upon arrival on the map, if fixed wing aircraft find a helicopter (landed or in the air)within 1000 meters of their assigned ground target they will switch to the helo and they will execute a gun attack.

No. In TacOps, ATGMs can only fire at landed helos. Note that BMPs can fire their 30mm auto cannon at helos landed or in the air.

In TacOps, if a helo flying at NOE altitude enters woods or town terrain, the helo rises one elevation level while over the woods or town - the helo flies over the woods or town terrain.

It usually means a clear line of sight to the helo.

Yes, unless they are over woods or town terrain.

No, because the helo is over the forest.

Not at present.

No.

LINE OF SIGHT RULES.

Line of sight is determined for SAMs vs helicopters flying at nap of the earth altitude (NOE) in the same way as for ground units firing at ground units.

A clear line of sight is assumed to exist from a SAM launcher to a fixed wing airstrike or to a helicopter at medium altitude if there is no intervening woods or town terrain within 125 meters of the SAM launcher - or if a man portable SAM is dismounted in town terrain (assumed to be on a rooftop). Otherwise, if there is intervening woods or town terrain within 125 meters of the SAM launcher then the line of sight is usually blocked.

ACQUISITION AND TARGET EFFECT LOGIC.

SAM firing is a two step process. The first step is a target acquisition attempt. If acquisition is successful then the SAM is launched and a second step occurs in which the effect on target (if any) is determined.

STEP 1 - ACQUISITION LOGIC.

If there is a clear line of sight from the SAM launcher to the aircraft then the basic acquisition probability is 85%. The following cumulative percentage modifiers are then applied to the basic probability to determine the final acquisition probability. If the cumulative modifiers cause the acquisition probability to fall to less than 5% and if the SAM is not otherwise prohibited from acquisition then the final acquisition probability will be 5%.

If the SAM is a man portable weapon and is embarked aboard a vehicle: -20 for being mounted, -50 if the vehicle is moving, -70 if the vehicle is suppressed,-5 if in edge of woods, -5 if in edge of town, -50 if the SAM is in smoke, even if the SAM has a thermal sight. Man portable SAMs that are being carried in or on vehicles are limited to one target acquisition attempt per vehicle per fifteen second fire pulse. In other words, if you have more SAM's in a vehicle unit marker than there are vehicles, then the excess will not even attempt to acquire a target.

If the SAM is a man portable weapon and is dismounted: -30 if the SAM gunner is moving, 70 if the SAM gunner is suppressed, -5 if in edge of woods, -5 if anywhere in town, -50 if the SAM is in smoke, even if the SAM has a thermal sight.

If the SAM is not a man portable weapon (i.e. is permanently mounted on a vehicle): -30 if vehicle is moving, -50 if vehicle is suppressed, -50 if vehicle is smoked, even if the SAM has a thermal or radar sight, -5 if in edge of woods, -5 if in edge of town.

STEP 2 - TARGET EFFECT LOGIC.

Target effect percentages vary according to the model of SAM but in general ... Versus fixed wing targets. In the real world, fixed wing aircraft are seldom shot down by man portable SAMs or by small vehicle mounted SAMs, even in high threat environments - in relation to the total number of sorties flown - but they frequently get discouraged and or handicapped. By discouraged I mean they miss the target. By handicapped, I mean that they are directed by higher authority or good pilot judgment to attack at altitudes/attitudes different from what would provide the best accuracy. In TacOps, if there is SAM launch against a fixed wing aircraft then the most likely thing to happen will be that the aircraft will unload and probably miss the target, the next most likely thing to happen is that the aircraft will abort the bomb run actually hitting and or destroying the aircraft is the least likely thing to happen. If multiple SAMs are launched against a single airstrike, as each succeeding SAM is launched a bonus/cumulative modifier is applied to the chances that the aircraft will miss the target or abort.

Versus airborne helicopter targets. Small SAMs are very effective against helos. Accordingly in TacOps there is no discouragement result in SAMs versus helo engagements. The SAM either hits or it misses. If it hits, the helo will usually be destroyed.

I added the capability to engage through smoke primarily due to convincing testimony from an active duty US Army STINGER section leader. Another reason it was added was to eliminate a game trick - laying smoke and then parking Apaches in the middle of it for long periods of time.

I have differing notes on this, but the majority say a small recon UAV would be a tough target for a STINGER or SA16.

In my opinion, jets move too fast to be able to consistently spot let alone down a small recon UAV. Picture an F16 chasing a model airplane *grin*.

I agree.

There are two considerations on my putting A10s into TacOps ...

A10s are on the wish list but will have to wait until I revamp/increase the fidelity of all the air support routines. The A10 ground attack profile with stand off munitions does not fit either the existing "generic" fixed wing code or the attack helo code. Requires a new targeting approach and huge blocks of new code. Don't know when I'll be able to get to it.

My thinking so far is for the A10 to be off map until it makes an attack run. To make an A10 attack, a player would designate a map edge entry point, a map edge exit point, and click a path on the map that reflected reasonable turn radius limits. The A10 would then either engage random units all along its path or such specific priority targets as specified by the user with the normal "Priority Target", "Target Type", and or "Target Reference Point" buttons in the Unit Orders Window. The A10 would likely be subject to anti air fire as it advanced along its flight path. If the A10 entered or exited the map across an "enemy" map edge, the mission would be subjected to a stiff off map anti air die roll before entry or after exit as appropriate.

There is also a gaming or play balance consideration to the A10. A couple of A10s firing Mavericks at an 8km standoff would tend to yield a turkey shoot in a tactical level game, as would strafing runs in a permissive environment. Unless one is playing a flight sim or an operational level game, where is the challenge in that?

Course, you realize that if I add A10s to the game, I will be duty bound to then give OPFOR the Frogfoot *g* - when the wheel turns, it tends to go all the way around.

In TacOps, a SAM gunner embarked in an APC can still fire his weapon at fixed wing aircraft and helos - you don't have to do anything to make this happen - even if the APC is moving. The game engine assumes that the SAM gunner is riding on top, standing in a hatch, or dismounting and firing from the short halt - whatever is appropriate.

In TacOps, a dismounted, stationary SAM gunner is significantly more likely to acquire a target, fire on a target, and or hit a target. Dismounting SAMs is particularly important in towns.

That would be the best employment.

Yes, but not as much as would be the case if they were traveling in an APC.

Driving directly over infantry units in TacOps can be hazardous to tankers *grin* however I am confident that the T80s were not killed by Stinger missiles. Check the unit info for Stinger teams and you will find that they usually also have a couple of AT4 disposable anti armor weapons (most US units do, same as most OPFOR units have some sort of disposable RPG launcher). I am sure that is what killed the T80s.

Maybe against a soft skinned vehicle in real life but not at all in TacOps.

Probably in real life but not in TacOps

No way - not in real life and not in TacOps.

I think that flanking rules should not be based on thinking that infantry are fatally less alert to their sides and rear. Rather the rules should be tied to conceptual assumptions about the terrain that the unit is in and how infantrymen will utilize that terrain for cover. When possible, infantry pick hasty positions that offer the best field of fire to the expected approach direction of the enemy and that offer the best protection from fire and observation across the expected approach direction of the enemy. It often, but not always, happens that such hasty positions don't offer as much advantage when approached from the side or rear.

With regards to receiving direct fire... For infantry units receiving direct fire, the defilade defensive modifier applies for 360 degrees. For vehicles receiving direct fire, who are not entrenched, the defilade defensive modifier only applies for fire coming through the unit's frontal facing and through one facing 'click' (45 degrees more or less) left and right of frontal. For example - if a vehicle is in defilade and it is facing due North, it will receive a defilade defensive modifier if it receives direct fire from the North, from the Northwest, or from the Northeast. The unit would not receive a defilade defensive modifier if it received fire from any other direction. For vehicles receiving direct fire, who are entrenched, the defilade defensive modifier applies for 360 degrees.

You are correct in your assumption - if the unit fails to withdraw to a covered position after every launcher in the unit marker has fired its two missiles then it is a sitting duck for a couple of minutes. I have received a fair number of saved games from folks as 'bug reports' where they had a platoon of Bradleys or LAVs that was wiped out by OPFOR 'without firing a shot'. Upon inspection, in every case, the Bradleys or LAVs had fired all their missiles in a previous turn and were in effect reloading in plain sight of the enemy because the player had failed to have them 'shoot and scoot'.

Each weapon that can be used against infantry has its own "vs infantry" combat results table that expresses casualties per volley as a percentage of personnel in the target infantry unit and or in the area around the target infantry unit. The values in that table are modified before application by a number of situational modifiers - the most important of which is the target unit's tactical disposition.

I assume you mean the 100mm gun on the BMP3 - it is actually quite long. There is not much publicly available info on the BMP3. What I have read suggests to me that the main purpose of the 100 mm gun is to serve as a launcher for a 100mm ATGM to be used at long range against armored targets weaker than tanks - i.e. IFVs and APCS. Given the small size of the BMP3 turret and the absence of a significant counterweight on the back of the turret, I don't think the tube on the 100mm gun can be very heavy. A 100mm barrel would have to be very heavy in order to be able to handle the tube pressures of firing any sort of traditional shell. Therefore if the 100mm gun has an anti-infantry round, it seems to me that it would need to be some sort of RPG [rocket propelled grenade] like round. That is what TacOps assumes.

Not really, but the coding compromise that allows this to appear to happen greatly enhances playability. I think it has little if any effect on the game's combat results. Most units in TacOps move a bit slower than they would in real life - part of this is to build in a time fudge factor to take care of things like an ATGM team pausing briefly to take a look around through the thermal sight. If TacOps was a man or squad level game I would be more concerned with things like this.

Yes & yes.

Passive image intensifiers for night use only and powered by small batteries are pretty standard (i.e. starlight scopes) but thermal sights are not standard at all yet for infantry except as sighting devices for ATGMs. Portable thermal sights are still extremely expensive and not really very portable.

Not a bug. That is how I intended smoke grenades to work.

There are a couple of things at work here. (1) Armored units that try to drive directly over/through unsuppressed infantry will be punished *g* - modern infantry are not just speed bumps. (2) Once TacOps units get within 125 meters of each other, they can often see each other through smoke whether they have thermals or not. 125 meters or less in TacOps is generally considered to be "point blank range".

Correct. At present in TacOps, any thermal sight in a marker allows that marker to fire all its weapons into/through smoke, however the weapons will still get a degraded "to hit" chance for the smoke. This was done to satisfy comments from users and testers that "hey, the guy with a thermal sight in that marker could be telling the other guys to fire in a general direction".

No. Currently only portable SAMs can fire from hatches. All other portable infantry weapons have to dismount from APCs in order to fire. I made the special exception for SAMs because firing SA16s from an open hatch is OPFOR doctrine and because US Stinger gunners are also able, trained, and expected to do so.

No.

SA16s and Stingers are the only man portable weapons that can be fired from a vehicle without being first unloaded.

'Scout teams' have no advantages in TacOps.

The 'Scout team' marker was originally provided just as a dismount team for the M3 version of the Bradley. Just as an aside - recon and sniper markers should be added to scenarios very sparingly. They represent elete level training and experience.

They are able to spot enemy units at greater ranges than other units. They are much harder to spot than are other units. They usually hit and kill one person per shot for any personnel target that they engage. They usually won't be spotted if they fire for only one minute or less and then move to another location.

Regardless of the time between firings, you have to move the sniper at least 100 meters in order to get future awards of max "invisibility". I have to be very restrictive with snipers in TacOps to prevent game tricks and abuse. Otherwise, they could very easily turn into super unrealistic Rambo units. In modern sniperdom, there is no such thing as a good position once one round has been fired. If snipers shoot, they move. Sniper teams are small and alone, they can not cover enough ground with troops to have meaningful flank security, they do not really know what is going on around them. To survive, they have to always assume that an enemy unit/patrol has just wandered into a nearby position.

MKRobel1 at cs.com

Sun Dec 2 14:00:53 GMT 2007

Tanks should "never" be used by themselves. They should always be employed with infantry. While moving, there is a lot of debate, but I prefer to move in Wedge, like so:

Where T = Tank Platoon, H=Headquarters, and M = Mech Infantry

This is best when you dont know where the enemy is. The distance between the Tanks and the Mech should be about 1500 meters or a terrain feature, so that the tanks can shoot beyond the infantry and suppress.attack by fire anyone attempting to molest them.

If I knew a little more about what was going on, I would move in V

Where the Mech Platoon went depended on the ground. If the left was wooded, they were on the left, etc.

If you are Mech Heavy, then you adjust accordingly. Mech guys like to put the tanks out front and overwatch with the infantry. Problem with that is it restricts your bounds due to the smaller range of infantry weapons and the fact that TOWS are slow and limited in number and not suitable for suppressive fire.

When attacking, think first about how you want to end up on the objective after everything is finished.

When sweeping the objective if you are sweeping North, and you are recieving fire from the east, this is what you should do:

Where the (O) = an overwatch or support by fire position, and D = Dismounts

When assaulting the objective, you can dismount short of the objective and have the infantry walk (no more than 500 - 1000 M, if you can avoid it), dismount on the objective, or beyond the objective and walk back.

Also when attacking, I advocate going in under your own prep. So, the prep must be timed to end to coincide when you arrive onthe objective. HE and Smoke, as coming in under your own DPICM is a little dicey. This way hopefully, the enemy is still in his holes and buttoned up when you get there. TO have the prep end too early means he will recover and be ready to recieve you.

If you are playing with Strykers, move in short bounds and dismount all the time. They are not robust enough to move in long bounds and resist enemy fire. Plus, they haver more Javelines than Krosus has gold.

Always move in bounds, with at least 3 platoons supporting one platoon moving. Sometimes, I move one platoon and have the rest of the battalion in overwatch.

And, when you run into a sh*tstorm with your scouts, stop them and move the tanks and infantry into position... Use the scouts to watch another avenue of approach or look for a bypass.

Hope this helps

Mike Robel

There is no edge in favor of the T80s . I double checked the code - the accuracy of the T80 is not greater than that of the M1 and is less around the 1500 range point - still it amounts to the T80 in TacOps being about the same as the M1 in most situations. In looking at the accuracy info in the data base on the T80 and T72 I noticed that both weapons are given the same advanced fire controls. If you want a less capable OPFOR tank you can use the "Change Menu" to switch to the 1991 Iraqi T72. Reminder ... the TacOps accuracy tables reflect overall reductions in accuracy from what is possible on a training range.

Similar, but not superior.

I checked the code again and did not find anything that would cause this effect. My perception is that in neutral situations the exchange seems to be equal.

That is the intended effect. Surprise fire is rewarded. Firing first is rewarded. Firing from cover is rewarded. Gentlemanly, nose to nose exchanges are not rewarded *g*.

After checking the code, I found that for the T80 and T72 tanks, the improved penetrator (DU) and improved fire control is built into the basic tank unit. If you want less accuracy you need to change to the 1991 Iraqi T72. If you want less penetration from the Russian 125mm tank gun you need to change to a steel or tungsten penetrator.

By sheer force of numbers at the point and instant of decision. You use whatever benefit you can get from observation, deception (i.e. supporting attacks), and terrain masking to get as close as possible to the defender before exposing yourself. When you reach that point, you just charge. Try to attrit the defenders as much as possible with available supporting arms during the approach and then maintain the shelling where ever possible through the assault to reduce the accuracy of the fire coming from the defenders.

Modern weapons, in the hands of well trained crews, have a very great ability to rapidly and accurately engage targets. I see this as one of the biggest changes from the WWII/Korea era. Also, currently TacOps uses the same routines for multi unit markers as for single unit markers. This is why I periodically emphasize to folks that routinely breaking units down into individual squads/vehicles will introduce realism quirks. This may change in the future.

It is a speed and coding compromise. The game engine does not currently link a unit's thermal sights to the exact weapon subsystems in that unit. To do so, I would need to flag a thermal bit for every weapon in a unit and I don't have any spare bits left in the unit record structure. To do this perfectly realistically I would also need to add some code to arbitrate using the thermal sight of one weapon to adjust fire of another weapon on target by using impact observation, teamwork, and "Kentucky windage". At present, I don't think the problem is game significant but it is on the list of things to be someday polished out.

If the tank becomes suppressed, any external weapons will stop firing. You are right though that doing so in the first place is debatable. Good example of why I periodically remind folks that TacOps is not suitable for gaming "squad leader" type actions or for looking for "squad leader" type detail.

A valid historical point, however Desert Storm was four years ago. At that time the Iraqis were firing steel and tungsten penetrators, they had no thermal sights to work through darkness and the oilfield smoke, and their tank fire control systems were substandard - in effect they were not only blind but were outranged by close to two thousand meters. Any industrialized country that wants to and can afford to spend the money can field tanks today, including T72s and T80s, with staballoy/depleted uranium penetrators, thermal sights, and advanced fire control systems. Still, if you want the M1s to be invincible just substitue the T72 IQ91 for the T80s or T72s in the scenarios, don't give thermals to OPFOR, and don't give OPFOR advanced ATGM warheads.

Yes.

Basically it means warheads that are up to Western standards for their size - exotic charge liners, tandem warheads - in general more expensive and more modern ordnance technology. Improvements that OPFOR could reasonably make if OPFOR were willing and able to spend the time and money. The improved equipment for OPFOR is optional, but not using it makes for rather boring game play if the US player has any M1 tanks and it is hard to find a PBEM opponent willing to take the OPFOR side without the "good stuff" *g*.

OPFOR ATGMs are probably not yet as effective as the TacOps "i" models. The TacOps ATGM "i" model is what you get when you choose to set the preference "Improved OPFOR ATGM warheads".

My reading of Desert Storm materials indicates that whatever a US TOW ATGM hit, it killed. The Iraqis were apparently using old SAGGER ATGMs, and the few that managed to hit US M1 tanks only burned the paint.

Is intentional. The Bradley TOW ATGM launcher is mounted on the outside of the vehicle and only contains two missiles. Once both have been fired they must be manually reloaded through a hatch in the roof of the Bradley's hull. It takes a couple of minutes to do the reload so if your Bradley's in TacOps fire both ATGMs in rapid succession then it will be a minute or two before they will be able to fire missiles again. LAVATs and BMPs have similar reload constraints.

Yes.

No.

I consider this to be a waste of very expensive and scarce ammo. If I added it to the game, I would then need to add some sort of automatic dodge response for a helo subjected to incoming ATGM fire. Most likely I would give the helo a very great likelihood of successfully dodging the relatively slow moving ATGM. The most likely result would then be the sudden appearance of a "game trick" - i.e. preceding assaults with hovering helos to soak off/waste enemy ATGMs.

TacOps ATGMs will not fire at a hovering helo. They will fire at a landed helo. This was done as a game play compromise. There were two reasons for it. (1) If I allowed ATGMs to fire on helos I would need to allow helos to take evasive action upon the launch. 99% of the time the helo would escape - any other result would be unrealistic in my opinion. I didn't see any justification for putting in a lot of code to handle something that was not going to end up being game relevant and I also felt that players would be annoyed at the wastage of valuable ATGMs that would occur. (2) More importantly, an unsporting player could display a hovering helo for no other reason than to trigger and exhaust his opponent's ATGMs.

The three priority targeting buttons in the Unit Orders Window are considered by the program according to the following rules:

Can do easy. Click on the button in the Unit Orders Window named "Target Type". Then click on an empty place on the map. The program will notice that you did not click on a unit and it will automatically put up a window that lists every unit type currently in the game. Just select a type from the list. Bingo - you will have set a priority target type even though none are visible on the map.

The three priority targeting buttons in the Unit Orders Window are considered by the program according to the following rules:

Can do easy. Click on the button in the Unit Orders Window named "Target Type". Then click on an empty place on the map. The program will notice that you did not click on a unit and it will automatically put up a window that lists every unit type currently in the game. Just select a type from the list. Bingo - you will have set a priority target type even though none are visible on the map.

Units will generally default to engaging the closest, most threatening enemy unit, offering the best chance of a kill. Most of the time they will not pass up a good odds attack for a bad one. If you absolutely want a unit to only fire upon targets within a certain area or at a certain range, hold down the option key when you use the "Set DF TRP" button in the unit orders window to give a "hard priority targeting order". See the User's Guide pp 37 - 41. For example - hold down the option key, click on the Set DF TRP unit, click on the center of your own unit, and then set the TRP radius to 500 meters - you just gave a hard order to that unit to never engage an enemy target that is greater than 500 meters away ... no matter what.

That is the way that the game is meant to work. The artillery combat results tables take into consideration that the artillery placement procedures are unrealistic. If I made the artillery placement procedures more technically realistic then I would also have to change the logic tables that assess casualties so that they would calculate casualty effect based on artillery rounds instead of based simply on a standard, optimum salvo. If done properly the result in the game would be a lot more work and annoyance for the player but the artillery combat results when spread over an entire game session would be almost exactly the same.

Yes, eventually. Arty accuracy decreases one level per turn against target points that were initially under observation but later became obscured.

Correct. ICM is a 'bomblet/submunition' type of ammunition and to the best of my knowledge is not currently fielded for any US, Canadian, or OPFOR mortar.

Never in the case of off map arty and not usually in the case of air support. A player can never have more than six unused air support missions - if a player already has six air support missions waiting to be used, no more air support will be forthcoming until at least one of those missions is expended - there is no such limitation for receiving additional arty ammo. The likelihood of getting additional arty ammo or additional air support missions is based mainly on a probability that is set during the first/setup turn of a scenario. Some scenarios have a higher probability of receiving additional arty ammo or air support than others. Some have zero probabilities of one or the other or both. The player is free to change the probabilities in any scenario via the Options/Arty Support menu item and Options/Air Support menu item during the first/setup turn.

Yes - mortar units will not usually execute movement orders unless the player manually cancels indirect fire orders.

It is really difficult - even more so in real life than in TacOps *g*.

In TacOps artillery can not effect helicopters in flight. I have no note of a helicopter ever running into an artillery round while in flight in the real world. Landed helos suffer the same as other units on the ground.

Artillery attacks all unit markers within its salvo radius and the arty combat results tables yield casualties as a percentage of what is in each marker. You can not reduce or increase casualties from arty fire by amalgamating units into large units or by splitting them into a stack of small units. The final casualty percentage within the salvo beaten zone should be the same either way. If you want less casualties from arty, you need to spread out your stacks so that there is not so much in one place - same as in the real world.

In the real world, it depends on the nature of the entrenchment and of the surrounding terrain. The most critical factor is the amount and strength of overhead cover. Unless the entrenchment has a top on it that can resist the penetration of anitarmor type ICM or unless the entrenchment is in forested terrain then in my opinion ICM would be better to use than HE.

In TacOps, neither HE nor ICM will have great killing effect vs entrenched infantry when the entrenchment is in wooded or town terrain. Arty vs such targets is most useful for its suppression effect while you are closing to do a direct fire assault of the entrenched position. Since ICM is generally scarce in TacOps, it is thus generally more efficient to use HE vs entrenched infantry when the entrenchment is in wooded or town terrain.

I do not consider that to be a "game trick" - given the constraints of the current TacOps arty model. Use it with a clear conscience *g*. See what follows for the "why" of it.

Yes and no. The TacOps arty routines and arty combat results tables are "effect oriented" rather than "procedure oriented". The arty targeting and call for fire "procedures" in TacOps are not perfectly realistic - they were not meant to be. The TacOps design goal was for the responsiveness of indirect fire support to be realistic and for its effects on target to be realistic when averaged over the course of several turns.

In the real world, yes - in TacOps, no. In the real world, modern arty salvos do not wander around significantly until the gunners change the firing settings on the tubes or on the ammo (assuming that the guns are properly emplaced on dry/firm ground). Unobserved arty salvos wander around in TacOps because the game engine assumes that if you as the TacOps player are directing your arty to lay on an unobserved target then your "virtual arty gunners" are changing the firing settings with each salvo so as to cover more ground so as to have a better chance of hitting a target that "your virtual troops" can not in fact observe.

A quick question. Are you splitting up your on map howitzer and mortar batteries into single tube units - because it "looks" like you get more fire missions that way?

If so, you should be aware that single mortar and howitzer tubes firing indirect fire or direct lay fire will have far less effectiveness than they have when firing as a battery. The game engine heavily penalizes the splitting of howitzers and mortar units. The impact has to be dead on the center of the target unit or it probably won't have any effect. I never split my mortar and howitzer units except to occasionally lay an irregular shaped smoke cloud.

An arty unit moves then stops. That arty unit then marks a target - gonna be one to two minutes before the first round lands. After the first round lands it will be two to four more minutes before the salvos are dead on. Seems like a few minutes have transpired to me. If you want longer setup times use a gentleman's agreement.

I agree. Technically they are firing direct fire against targets in full view when this is done and the game engine has the unit stop when it fires. The TacOps implementaion of the leg mortar units is a bit unrealistic in policing this but 60mm and 81mm mortars can in fact be fired in real life "on the bounce" without going thru the process of preparing the firing point, putting out aiming stakes, etc. The technique is not practiced, to my knowledge, in peacetime because (a) it is dangerous and (b) most peacetime mortar gunners have not fired enough rounds in training to be any good at it.

Its a bit more complicated than what follows and the accuracy number is also used for some things other than accuracy but in general the impact center of an incoming arty or mortar salvo may be off some random distance in meters from the intended target point according to the following table.

The game allows on-board artillery and mortar units to be split down to individual vehicles, tubes, and or teams but this is not generally a good thing to do as the effective beaten zone of the weapon is greatly reduced in the process. By this I mean that a salvo from an onboard arty or mortar marker representing six tubes will attack a much larger area of ground than will a salvo for an arty or mortar marker representing only one or two tubes. The more tubes in the marker, the more ground will be effectively covered by a given salvo. The only time that breaking down an onboard arty or mortar units might be beneficial would be the case where you want to lay a long and irregularly shaped smoke cloud.

No. Off-board arty is not meant to necessarily reflect the fire of one discrete arty unit or even a certain size of arty unit. The slots in the off-board artillery support window provide greater levels of potential destruction per salvo than similarly named on-board units/markers. Each off- board arty slot typically represents a level of fire somewhere between one very hardworking battery and a lazy battalion.

When you split on board arty or mortar units you reduce their killing and suppression effectiveness greatly - perhaps more than the percentage of split would seem to indicate. I would suggest that it is OK to split such units for smoke missions, but you are not going to kill much if you split them out for HE/ ICM missions. You should conduct some experiments using a custom scenario template and the " two players on one computer" mode. Set up such a game with a lot of enemy infantry in a stack and with only on board mortars and howitzers on the other side. Turn off the fog of war for both sides so that you can see the combat results and experiment with shelling the infantry stack with split units and with joined units.

Yes for the most part. Fire support is not "always" as responsive as portrayed in TacOps but the game engine assumes that everyone is achieving the optimum through good comms and prior planning. Also, some of the fast response in TacOps is just a mechanism for achieving playability in the obtaining and placement of the fire support. I am more interested in adequately portraying the realism of the effect of the fire support once it impacts rather than portraying the procedures involved in getting it. In real life you can not magically alter the path of an incoming arty salvo 15 seconds before impact *g*. You apparently can do this in TacOps because I am portraying the results of fire support rather than the procedure and not because I fail to realize that it does not really work that way.

Some background info... The combat resolution for MRL, MLRS, in fact all arty attacks is the same for games against the computer opponent as for human vs human games. The computer opponent does not get extra explosive effect. The only arty related "good deal" for the computer opponent is that it gets a one level accuracy increase for the first arty salvo that falls on a given observed map point - instead of the accuracy of such a mission starting at zero, it starts at one. The effectiveness of any form of arty in TacOps, in general, varies according to the terrain in the beaten zone and according to the tactical disposition of the units in the beaten zone. The clearer the terrain, the more effective will be the arty. Units that are moving/exposed (in any kind of terrain) are more susceptible to damage than are units that are stationary/in TacOps defilade mode or that are in field fortifications. In general, in TacOps, the best deal for arty is a target that is moving/exposed in clear terrain. The worst deal for arty is a target in woods or town that is also in a field fortification. In between these extremes, you get "in between" results *g*.

Currently the max possible speed permitted to vehicles in TacOps is 40 kilometers per hour.

What you are seeing in TacOps is the impact of a volley (i.e. more than one round) of arty or mortar rounds. In the real world a direct hit on a vehicle by one arty or mortar HE round fired as indirect fire would be more of a happy accident than anything else however super near misses from HE rounds can damage or destroy even tanks. HE fire in TacOps seldom kills heavily armored vehicles. ICM anti armor ammo is a different story. Each round of ICM anti armor ammo breaks into many bomblets that spread out over the target area. These bomblets are small shaped charges and they are quite capable of penetrating the top armor of tanks. ICM ammo in TacOps frequently destroys vehicles.

Yes.

No.

If arty falls on an enemy infantry unit that is not in line of sight of and or visible to any of your units on the ground then you won't be shown the arty's effect. If arty falls on enemy vehicles and a vehicle is destroyed then you will be shown a secondary explosion but again if none of your units can legally see the vehicle then you won't see the actual vehicle or the nearby suppression results that undoubtedly accompanied the arty impact.

By the way, if arty falls on infantry or lightly armored vehicles, all such units roughly within the explosion animation (unless you are firing very small mortars in which case the effect radius is not as big as the animation) will almost always be suppressed even if you do not see an "S" for every one of the markers. When arty falls on armored vehicles they may or may not be suppressed.

A TRP stays at the accuracy at which it was saved. Think of it as a bit of data that is saved one time and later reread whenever you shift to it. If you later get a fire mission going in that same place that has a higher accuracy level, you should delete the old TRP and save a new one at the higher level.

In TacOps, TRPs are artillery target reference points. They represent artillery target points that have been registered with supporting artillery units. You can use the Artillery Support Window to start an arty mission with a TRP instead of starting one from scratch. When you start an artillery mission with a TRP you generally get your first salvo sooner and the initial salvos will be more accurate. In some scenarios you get a bunch of TRPs at the beginning of a scenario to set up on the map like unit markers. In all scenarios you can create TRPs by firing an observed artillery mission until its accuracy is high enough to suit you and then saving the mission as a TRP.

Not at present. Although I have no citation for an airborne helo ever actually being destroyed by arty fire, I have often thought that I probably should represent the possibility somehow particularly for helos at NOE altitude.

I don't know if applying the current TacOps concept of suppression would be appropriate for helos but I do agree that something probably needs to be done in the game to realistically discourage NOE helos from loitering in an area that is receiving arty fire and to punish those that do.

Your analysis is 100% correct.

In the real world there are a few situations in which HE is better, however in TacOps, ICM is always more effective against infantry than HE. If target infantry are in the open then ICM is very likely to do a lot more damage than HE. If target infantry are in woods then ICM is moderately likely to do more damage than HE. If target infantry are in a town then ICM is slightly likely to do more damage than HE.

Anti personnel ICM ammo does a better job than HE at dispersing more chunks of shrapnel evenly over a larger area at a height and angle more conducive to hitting people. Overhead cover reduces its effect however if overhead cover is a consideration then the firing battery can mix in some anti armor ICM and or dual purpose ICM ammo.

If you are US probably so. If you are OPFOR then you might be within doctrine. They used to expect the 122mm SPs to frequently engage defending infantry with direct fire and I would think they would expect there to be usually some armor around enemy infantry. 122mm SPs carry a few rounds of HEAT for such ad hoc anti armor work.

Maybe on an exceptional basis, but there is still time of flight to be considered. On a routine basis it would probably take at least a minute just to get them to answer and authenticate the radio call *g*. Very few things in real life happen in just 60 seconds.

Heavy machine guns can get through the armor on the M109 155mm SP - its aluminum like the M113 APC *g*.

An arty TRP stores the accuracy level that you had achieved at the instant when you first created that TRP. The maximum level is five. When you later shift back to that TRP, your first volley will get the stored accuracy level minus one. For example If you had achieved a level five accuracy when you created the TRP then your first volley after shifting back to it will have an accuracy level of four.

Not a bug - tis but another unpublicised realism detail *g*. TacOps considers the air speed of ATGMs. If they take longer than 15 seconds to reach their target their impact will be "held back" until the next pulse of the combat phase. If they are "held back" in the last 15 second pulse then they won't impact until the first combat pulse after an intervening orders phase. In general this is only noticeable for OPFOR ATGMs firing at ranges of 3000 or more meters. If the target disappears before impact then the inflight ATGM cancels out.

The numbers that you enter into the bomb timer are not "lengths" they are the hour and minute parts of a clock time. In other words, you enter numbers that indicate at what clock time the bomb is to go off. Example ... say the current time in the game is 0800 and you want the bomb to go off in 15 minutes, which will be a game clock time of 0815. Then you would enter 08 and 15 in the bomb timer window.

In TacOps ... Engineers are far more likely to recognize an unspotted minefield prior to walking into it. Engineers are far less likely to be attacked by a minefield as they move through it clearing a path as they go.

Yes.

Being entrenched does not reduce a unit's offensive capability. Being entrenched could be said to increase a unit's offensive capability - since being entrenched reduces the likelihood of a unit being killed or suppressed then the unit has an increased chance of being able to fire effectively for a longer period of time.

Is not a bug, because that is the way I coded it to work :). If you don't have enough troops armed with the right kind of weapons defending an entrenchment then the enemy will march up to it, enter it, and then clean it out. In TacOps an "entrenchment" is considered to be an area of relatively hasty positions consisting of foxholes, some shallow trenches, and perhaps a few reinforced firing positions. TacOps entrenchments do not represent WWII style concrete/log bunkers.

In the real world, entrenchments don't stop attackers - it is the men and weapons in the entrenchment that must stop attackers. An entrenchment only gives protection to the occupants while they engage an approaching enemy. Once an enemy actually enters an entrenched position, then the entrenchment effectively becomes neutral - i.e. it gives the same advantages to both sides.

In TacOps - very. All entrenched units are significantly harder to spot. All entrenched units are significantly harder to hit with direct fire. Entrenched infantry units suffer less personnel casualties when they are hit by direct or indirect fire. Entrenchments can hold an infinite number of units. [There is no need to have the game enforce stacking limits. Your opponent's artillery will generally drive the lesson home about not bunching up.] In TacOps entrenchments are omnidirectional as terrain features. However, during combat the facing of a unit that is in an entrenchment is still consulted so side and rear attacks are better than frontal assaults against entrenchments. Entrenched infantry will probably require a dismounted assault by your infantry with your armor just behind the infantry to provide fire support. Don't put the armor in front as they attract RPGs. Note the facing of the entrenched enemy unit and try to come at it from the side or even better rear. You get big benefits from attacking them from the side and rear.

Good units prepare alternate positions and move between them as the situation requires - TacOps assumes this. For playability reasons, I often have TacOps assume things like this rather than make the user do a lot of extra work with the mouse.

In TacOps they are omnidirectional as terrain features. During combat though the facing of a unit that is in an entrenchment is still consulted so side and rear attacks are better than frontal assaults against entrenchments.

Backing out of sight will always be better since there is no chance of hitting a target that can not be seen. However, sometimes the tactical situation requires one to stand and fight no matter what. In that circumstance, entrenchments come in very handy.

Minefields have no added effect if doubled - in fact, stacking two mine markers together is a complete waste of one marker. It would be better to "double belt" the minefields.

Not in TacOps. I have a note to think about this though. Seems like if this were a useful tactic in the real world, I would have read or heard about it - which I have not.

The OPFOR AI knows where its minefields are. In the case you observed its units just decided to bull their way through. Sometimes OPFOR units go around minefields, sometimes they go through them.

Minefields are not based on point values in TacOps - they are pixel based. A pixel equals 10 meters in TacOps. Each time there is a mine detonation in a minefield the pixel in the minefield at the center of the effected unit is zeroed i.e. becomes cleared. Units that enter that pixel in the future will not be attacked by mines. A similar effect happens for each pixel (and a couple more on each side) as a unit crosses a pixel without triggering an attack - in this case a lane is cleared. Whether a lane is created by explosion or safe passage, the safe lane can be viewed using the "Plot Minefield Lanes" menu item.

I don't think any of the scenarios have minefields in the normal startup situation - i.e. they are optional. You have to add them as optional units during the setup turn. Use the Optional Units menu items during the startup turn.

In TacOps, one pixel equals ten meters. All pixels within a minefield symbol are initially active vs both sides. As a unit crosses a minefield, one of two things happens each time it advances a distance of one pixel - there is a mine attack result or there is a mine clearing/marking result. If you see an explosion then there has been a mine attack result - the pixel under the center point of the unit is usually now clear and one pixel "left" and "right" (per the direction of movement) of it are usually also now clear. If there was no explosion then there was a mine clearing/marking result - the pixel under the center point of the unit is usually now clear and one pixel "left" and "right" (per the direction of movement) of it are usually also now clear. By the way, infantry units are much more likely to get a clearing/marking result than are vehicles.

"On call" usage of arty delivered mines was actually removed from TacOps during the final playtesting of the Mac version because several active duty arty officers said it could not be done in the real world in the limited amount of time represented by a typical TacOps scenario - i.e. one to two hours. The reasons given were (1) it takes a lot of prep time at the firing unit to get mine rounds ready for firing and once prepared they can't just be left laying around for "use when and if needed", (2) their firing generally has to be approved in detail well in advance by some local noble (military or civilian) who usually does not in fact want them used at all, (3) it takes a long period of concentrated firing by a lot of arty units to lay a minefield large enough and thick enough to be tactically significant and (4) arty delivered mines don't arm for a significant period after impact. The rule of thumb that I remember one of these gents giving me was "if you can see them coming [the enemy], it is too late to use arty delivered mines".

No one has since provided me with a convincing counter argument. Therefore the current TacOps approach of requiring you to make a pregame, "best guess" as to where arty delivered mines will be beneficial seems to best replicate the real world situation.

The following doesn't answer the question. It is provided only to help the discussion. In TacOps, a minefield marker represents a square area of ground measuring about 150 meters by 150 meters that contains a sufficient density of both anti personnel and anti-tank mines to be tactically significant to both infantry on foot and to vehicles of all classes - i.e. a real physical threat to movement across it. A TacOps minefield is more than a nuisance minefield but less than a barrier minefield.

Around 100 meters, measured from the center point of one unit map marker to the center point of the other marker. There is an accuracy deduction for such engagements. In TacOps, line of sight always exists at ranges less than or equal to approximately 100 meters. i consider 100 meters to be "point blank fire". Part of this abstraction is an expectation that units at such ranges would maneuver on their own initiative so as to be able to acquire a target and or that they would be able to sense a target sufficiently to engage it. Another consideration is that using the center point of a map marker as being a unit's position is not a high fidelity approach and thus some looseness in interpreting position vs range is appropriate.

Yes, eventually. Arty accuracy decreases one level per turn against target points that were initially under observation but later became obscured.

Arty and Rocket Launchers (all) - Initially set at impact to last 300 to 420 seconds. When original duration expires, there is a 50% chance each 15 seconds that the smoke will not clear.

Mortars (81mm to 120mm) - Initially set at impact to last 180 to 240 seconds. When original duration expires, there is a 50% chance each 15 seconds that the smoke will not clear. Mortars (less than 81mm) - Initially set at impact to last 120 to 180 seconds. When originalduration expires, there is a 50% chance each 15 seconds that the smoke will not clear.

Smoke grenades - Initially set at pop to last 30 to 70 seconds. When original duration expires, there is a 50% chance each 15 seconds that the smoke will not clear.

Correct.

None (I think).

Any number of tubes provide the same duration (I think), but the area of smoke effect of one tube is less than that of a battery. If the on map arty/mortar unit has strength points of 1 or 2 you get a small smoke cloud. If strength points of 3 or 4 you get a medium smoke cloud. If strength points greater than 4 you get a large smoke cloud.

Not every unit in TacOps is equipped with thermal sights. Most infantry units do not have thermal sights (generally only the portable infantry ATGMs have thermals) so smoke can reduce the number of infantry RPGs/LAAWs that are firing at your tanks and APCs. Also, there is a slight reduction in accuracy for even thermal equipped units when they are firing from or into smoke. Smoke will also slow down the movement of any unit inside it - sometimes it can be very useful to make an enemy unit take several extra minutes to get where it wants to go.

No - the game effects would be exactly the same.

In TacOps, all BMPs have a reload delay for the ATGM. The base reload time for each model of BMP follows: BMP1 = ATGM flight time plus 50 seconds, BMP2 = ATGM flight time plus 50 seconds, BMP3 = ATGM flight time plus 20 seconds. Random combat modifiers may decrease (rarely) the reload time by five to ten seconds or increase (more often) the reload time by 1 to 60 seconds. Also, in TacOps, all US and OPFOR ground vehicles that fire ATGMs do so from 'the short halt'. If an ATGM vehicle marker is moving at the time that it decides to fire an ATGM, the marker will automatically pause in place for the time of flight of the ATGM plus a few seconds.

ATGM flight time plus 50 seconds. Same modifiers as for BMP1 and BMP2. IMHO, folks should not get hung up on feeling that they should know the exact seconds for things like this. Instead, I think folks should develop rough rules of thumb and follow good tactical principles. TacOps has a lot of detail and exactness in its combat rules but the results from event to event are intentionally made fuzzy by many modifiers. If folks try to deduce and predict events to the nearest second - i.e. rules lawyering - they are going to get pounded at critical moments *g*.

It also has an AT5 Spandrel ATGM launcher on the roof.

The 100mm gun on the T-55 is a heavy, high velocity gun. I don't believe that the turret or suspension of the BMP3 could handle the weight, firing, or recoil of a 100mm high velocity gun. It is my understanding that the 100mm gun on the BMP3 is a low velocity gun that also serves as an ATGM launch tube. It is my understanding that the tube may also be used to fire an HE round but that the HE round is more like the rocket propelled grenade of the BMP1 rather than being like the HE round fired by OPFOR tanks.

M2, M3, and LAV-AT have two ATGM tubes. In TacOps, the second ATGM can be fired 15 to 30 seconds after the impact of the first ATGM. After the firing of the second ATGM the launchers get a reload delay. The base reload time for the ATGM launchers on the M2, M3, and LAVAT is ATGM flight time to last target plus 60 seconds. Random combat modifiers may decrease (rarely) the reload time by five to ten seconds or increase (more often) the reload time by 15 to 60 seconds. The best rule of thumb for M2, M3, and LAV-AT launchers is to plan for the reload delay to be two minutes/two turns.

The program just tracks the passage of time - it does not check to see if the vehicle is moving or not.

I suspect that it varies in real life from hard to impossible depending on the speed of the vehicle and the terrain that is being traveled through. Regardless, I don't view this to be a significant detail given the game's other time and movement abstractions and the overall scale and scope of the game.

It can see through smoke.

This is a specially equipped arty observation vehicle. If it has a clear line of sight to the impact of a friendly arty salvo, the accuracy of the next salvo on the same target will be increased by two levels rather than just one.

Yes, it fires a missile that is effective against both air targets and ground armor targets.

It is only out gunned and out armored if there are enemy tanks around. It is excellent for close, direct fire support of infantry vs infantry. It normally carries seven troops - four dismounts and three crew. In a pinch it can carry a couple more inside and a pot full on top. It provides good cross country transport. It is very fast on roads. It is easier and cheaper to maintain than a tank or tracked APC. It can be lifted by heavy helos. A lot of them can be squeezed into/onto amphibious shipping. All things considered, it fits overall Marine Corps doctrinal needs better than available tracked APCs.

The M1 shows its value when you are heavily outnumbered at ranges under 2000 meters *g*. In a situation where OPFOR has weapons that can penetrate the M1A2 tank, the M1's main advantages over the Bradley are (a) the M1 has a much higher rate of fire than the Bradley and (b) the M1 is more resistant to arty attack.

In TacOPs, the M1 can fire four rounds a minute, minute after minute. The Bradley can only fire one or two TOWs per minute (depends on the range to the target) and once two TOWs have been fired in rapid succession the Bradley will not be able to fire again until its external TOW launchers have been reloaded - it takes a minimum of two minutes of inactivity to reload the launchers.

Thus, at optimum range, the M1 has a good chance of killing four enemy tanks per minute or 12 tanks per 3 minutes. The best the Bradley can hope for is two tanks per 3 minutes.

Inserting observation posts into enemy held areas has been a standard tactic - especially in counter insurgency ops. However I think intentionally leaving a team behind to be bypassed by advancing enemy units would be an unusual tactic for a modern US commander. On the other hand, I remember knowing as a Marine infantry Lt that 'observe and report' was a standing order for cut off or bypassed units. Also, several times in field training I was told to leave a fireteam behind as a hidden observation post to adjust arty and air support while the rest of the company displaced to a new position - the team was expected to later escape and evade to a pickup point. Things like this don't seem particularly unreasonable to me for light infantry ops (i.e. everybody is on foot). I suspect the pucker factor would go way up if somebody told me to try it with a Bradley or a HMMWV. A brief search of my Military Reference Library CD produced one US doctrinal note on this. FM 7-93 Long-Range Surveillance Unit Operations, page 3-15 says ... 'Stay-Behind Technique. The [recon] team purposely allows itself to be passed by the enemy to perform a specific mission.' In the 80s I attended several NATO defense plan briefings which included predesignated 'stay behind' teams in the friendly order of battle. These teams were not comprised of US troops.

Holding ground is often not important. Killing OPFOR is what counts. When you first start receiving arty it is time to go somewhere else fast - you have to get out of there before his arty fire gets accurate.

It is different now, but for much of my time in the Marine Corps, published doctrine was to employ a defense that engaged the attacker as soon as possible with whatever weapon could reach him at the instant. Most direct fire weapons were located more or less on line. The idea was that this would cause the attacker to travel through an ever increasing volume of fire. First he would be engaged by air attack, then by arty, then by TOWs, then by tank gun, then by mortar, then by heavy machine gun, then by medium machine gun, then by Dragon, and finally by rifle fire and LAAW. Each weapon system would join in the firing as soon as the attacker advanced into that weapon's max effective range. Such a defense might be useful against repelling a WWII banzai attack or a Korean War human wave attack, but I think TacOps accurately shows such a defense to be terribly flawed in a situation where the attacker has good comms and responsive arty and where the attacker precedes his main force with a thin line of recon/skirmishers. In the latter situation, the piecemeal firing of long range direct fire weapons at their max effective range just gives the attacker an early opportunity to take them out with arty.

In my opinion the optimum defense would be one that engages the attacker only with arty, mortar, and air for as long as possible so as not to reveal the trace of the direct fire defense positions. Direct fire should be withheld until it can be delivered simultaneously by as many weapons as possible in a devastating opening volley. What happens next depends on the terrain and situation but I am convinced that in general - whether a defender wins or loses the direct fire fight that follows this initial concentrated volley - he should move the bulk of his forces to new defensive positions as soon as possible to avoid the arty barrage that is sure to follow.

If it is any comfort, you don't have to consider the overrun infantry units in TacOps as always being "dead or captured". It is plausible that they went into hiding or escaped but that the nature of their situation became such that they were not combat effective or able to contact higher headquarters again for the time remaining in the scenario.

Were I too add a campaign mode of play to TacOps, I would likely usually restore a very large percentage of the unit losses (especially foot infantry) in one scenario for the begining of the next scenario. These would not be new guys or replacements - they would be troops and equipment that had returned to a state of combat effectiveness or that had regained command and control.

Fortunes of war - however some general rules of thumb - units that shoot first from good, covered, unspotted positions will be rewarded - units that get surprised in weak positions will be punished - units that fire too long from the same position will tend to get punished. Also, if some of your units get royally nailed in a fire fight or experience several consecutive minutes of effective arty attack you need to try to pull them out of harms way for a few minutes. A lot of folks don't pay much attention to all those "S" (suppression) results produced by effective arty fire - that is a mistake *g*.

I almost always see a need for a reserve except usually not at platoon level and sometimes not at company level. Depends on the terrain and the situation. The same thing would happen in real life if the leading tanks could be seen and shot at and if the following tanks could not yet see who was shooting at (i.e. killing) the leading tanks. In rough terrain, a loose V formation can be the same thing as committing your tanks piecemeal. You are just parading into the kill zone.

You might want to pick up the next issue of Strategy Plus magazine. ^[4] The current issue (January) has an article on TacOps defensive strategy and the next issue (February) will have an article on offensive strategy.

In a nutshell ... in the offense you want to cross elevation changes and blocking terrain in mass so that you don't get in a situation where your guys in the rear can't support the guys in front. When you hit an ambush you want everyone up front to return fire. Walk artillery missions ahead of your advance - target likely ambush sites before you start getting fire. Artillery even when it does not kill, reduces the accuracy and rate of fire of enemy units in its impact zone.

If at all possible don't do frontal assaults. Back out of the kill zone and try flanking the enemy. You get big advantages from firing at the sides and rear of defending units, even those in entrenchments.

Bottom line though is when you are in the offense you are gonna take some lumps. That is why you usually have a 2 or 3 to 1 advantage in force in the offensive scenarios.