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BoredStiff -> Blast from the past: A review of Carrier Force (SSI, 1984) (9/23/2008 2:53:20 AM)
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CARRIER FORCE: THE FOG OF WAR AT ITS FOGGIEST
by Tom Cheche
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The emergence of the computer wargame has provided the serious wargamer with three distinct advantages over board games. The computer can attend to the minute bookkeeping details that slow down the play of a board wargame. The computer can provide an opponent of varying levels of competence. And the computer can create and maintain that most difficult element to simulate.. the "fog of war."
Military Commanders have always been forced to make decisions based on information that was, to one degree or another, incomplete or inaccurate. The problem in board wargaming has always been finding a realistic method of parcelling out that information in such a way that the opponents experienced a "fog of war" as close as possible to the actual situation. The computer wargame dispenses that information in the most realistic and playable method available.
Prior to the emergence of the computer wargame, it was this lack of a true "fog of war" that detracted from the playing of board simulations that dealt with aircraft carrier warfare during WWII. One of the most fascinating chapters in military history, the carrier battles of 1942 lost much of their tension when bogged down by the often tedious procedure of airborne search. Search procedures had to be conducted one air group at a time, one hex at a time with the success or failure of the search in each hex being determined by the weather conditions and other factors. It was, at best, a chore.
But, in the quest for a detailed board simulation, the methodical search procedure had to occur. Hard-core garners accepted the monotonous searches as part of the price they paid for realism, all the while revealing to their opponent where they were conducting searches by calling out the hex coordinates; a most unrealistic situation.
In all of the board game treatments of aircraft carrier operations, from MIDWAY, to FAST CARRIERS, INDIAN OCEAN ADVENTURE, AND FLATTOP the impression left was that while the feel was close, it missed the mark. There was always a sense, after playing, of not quite experiencing the true tensions, the true sensations, the taste of what it was really like in carriers during the uncertain days of 1942.
With the release of CARRIER FORCE (CF) by Gary Grigsby, Strategic Simulations, Inc., takes a giant step towards closing the gap between reality and simulation. Author Gary Grigsby has described CF as being "about as foggy as a game can get," and that is a fair assessment. With only a few exceptions, players know only what their search has revealed, and even then the search information is not always to be believed.
CF is an operational level treatment of the four great carrier battles of 1942 in the Pacific. Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz are contested on a scrolling, high resolution map of the South Pacific area including the Solomon Islands, and portions of New Guinea and northeastern Australia. The map for the Midway scenario is separate and relatively featureless, representing only the Midway atoll.
Like all SSI products, CF can be played between human opponents or the computer can provide a very competent opponent as commander of the Japanese forces. There are multiple levels of difficulty, and there are provisions for historic and random starting locations. During each turn (one hour game time) players must maneuver task forces, launch land based and carrier based searches, form attack and patrol missions, ready aircraft, launch and recover aircraft, move air groups and conduct air searches, and resolve combat.
In all of the scenarios the initial turns will find the players creating air groups in order to get search planes up as soon as possible. Land bases can fly off longlegged search craft that can remain aloft all day long. All other aircraft would do well to be back on the ground by nightfall, since operational accidents increase at night.
Depending on aircraft type, planes can travel a certain number of hexes each hour (hexes are 50 miles wide). As each plane or group of planes passes through a hex, search occurs. The quality of that search can be improved by "spending" more of that hour's movement points searching the same hex more intensively. For example, an aircraft capable of traveling 150 miles in one hour could:
-- travel the full 150 miles, expending one movement point in each of the three hexes in the course of a cursory search.
-- spend two of the three available movement points in hex, then after locating nothing, move on to another hex and spend the last point searching in the new hex.
-- spend all three points searching in the same hex.
Once air groups are created, all the player must do is decide the direction in which the group will fly. As each movement point is expended the computer conducts searches, and if something is spotted the player receives a report of the sighting and a symbol is displayed on the map noting the location of an enemy task force.
This simple act of computer-mediated search is the glue that holds CF together. It is swift and exciting, and it can be frustrating. Search planes are unarmed, and if they are jumped by CAP they always get shot down. And it is here that one flaw surfaces.
Whenever air combat of any kind takes place, the location of that combat is shown on the map. Whenever a search plane is jumped by CAP the searching player is notified that the plane has been shot down, and the hex in which it happened is indicated on the map. Common sense tells you that if a search plane is jumped by CAP over a certain hex, then there must be something of consequence steaming along on the surface in that hex. Essentially, what this means is that a search plane that is jumped by CAP will always manage to get off a radio message of the sighting and location before he goes down.
Picture yourself sitting in the Combat Information Center aboard the Lexington at Coral Sea, watching air groups inching across a map towards the marker that denotes the last known position of a Japanese task force.
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Whether or not the enemy TF has been spotted by a search plane during the hour, attacking air groups, logically enough, must also spot the target TF on their own. And the farther from home an attacker flies, the greater the chance that he will fail to spot the enemy. Weather conditions can also prevent spotting a target.
So there you sit, having shot your bolt, waiting for the Lexington's SBD Dauntless dive bombers, now approaching the end of their tether, to arrive over the target. On the map the air group marker moves onto the target hex, eclipsing the symbol denoting a Japanese task force. The SBDs have less than an hour before they must turn around, otherwise they will fail to make it back to their carriers.
The SBDs are directly over the IJN task force, but in the deteriorating weather they cannot spot their target. One movement point is used. Only one more remains.
You order the bombers to continue the search and they do, with still no ships spotted. The SBDs have failed to find the target. Faced with the prospect of losing the entire squadron to ditching, you reluctantly steer the bombers back towards the Lexington, and steer a course for "point option" where you will retrieve your aircraft.
There is another side to that coin, though. On more than one occasion my radar has detected an incoming raid, my CAP has intercepted incoming attackers, that, and the weather meant that the Japanese were unable to spot and attack my ships. The weather is impartial.
Task force movement is accomplished in an effective manner. Each hour, task forces accumulate movement points, which are then expended through such things as changes in headings, and air operations. When a task force has accumulated 50 movement points, it moves into the next hex on its current heading.
Aircraft carrier operations are hampered by insufficient wind across the flight deck, so it is necessary to turn a carrier into the wind for most major air operations. In addition, the deck capacity of carriers is extremely important, and the management of flight deck space is clearly the most important skill to master.
Maintaining a smooth flow of air operations is a complex task. CAP and search planes must be launched and landed. Air strikes, combining fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes must be launched, formed up overhead, and sent on their way. Meanwhile, there are aircraft returning and circling overhead, waiting for the chance to land. And you, in overall command, must keep track of wind direction, heading and traffic on the flight deck. Not surprisingly, a task force that is busy with air operations, frequently moving into the wind to conduct those operations, will make little headway in any direction but directly into the wind during a period of extended air operations.
Gary Grigsby aptly describes the computer opponent as "not terribly creative tactically, but his staff is superb." And indeed it is. While you are grappling with the problem of having been too aggressive, having launched so many bombers that you must watch an entire squadron of fighters in the landing circle ditch for lack of available deck space, you will be chagrined to realize that the Japanese computer opponent does not make that same kind of mistakes.
There are some limitations to the structure of the program that make it rather unforgiving, and thus, give the computer opponent an edge. For example, once an air group has been placed in the Landing Circle the group cannot be "waved off" ... it must land in the next hour, and it must land in the task force in which it was designated to land during the previous hour. If you have a one carrier task force, even if it occupies the same hex as another carrier task force, and if there are no air operations left for the designated carrier, there is no way for you to safely land those planes on an alternate carrier. The lesson then, is to always be aware of your aircraft situation.
CF lends itself to having two human players share duties in a game against the computer opponent. It is a handful to plot and log effective search patterns without either missing an area or duplicating searches. It is also a chore to keep track of aircraft operations such that returning aircraft have a place to land. And, it is a chore to make sure that attack aircraft can reach their targets and still get back to their carriers, especially if those carriers must zig-zag into the wind to launch or retrieve planes while the strike is enroute to its target.
Dividing those duties among two or more players, so that one player is the overall TF commander, and the other is either an individual carrier commander or the overall group commander, will allow for more people to participate without slowing down the game. It will also reduce the likelihood of a bookkeeping foul-up that could strip a carrier of many of its planes. In initial playings of CF, I have found more of my plane losses coming from such foul-ups than from Japanese actions.
CF has been exhaustively researched, and beautifully produced. In many ways it is the kind of game that we had in mind several years ago when we were daydreaming about where the wargaming hobby was headed now that the computer had arrived. The tedium of bookkeeping is gone, replaced with the real feel of the "fog of war."
Tom Cheche provided historical research
in the development of CARRIER FORCE.
[from Computer Gaming World magazine, Vol. 4 No. 2, April 1984]
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