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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Command: Modern Operations series >> Mods and Scenarios >> China Invasion of Taiwan 2023

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China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 10/28/2021 12:31:58 PM

Zemke

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I keep looking at this game and have not bought it because of what I perceive as a relatively weak and unrealistic ground forces model, and ultimately it is boots on the ground that decide wars. All weapon systems from planes to missiles are meant to either prevent or aid in getting boots on the ground and once on the ground, winning. With that said, can the game support a hypothetical war in 2022 of a CCP China invasion of Taiwan? And if so, how could it model the land battle, or can it?

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 10/28/2021 3:01:08 PM

stww2

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quote:

ultimately it is boots on the ground that decide wars

This is a somewhat simplistic view I think, and in many cases is going to be somewhat of a "chicken or egg" type question. There are certainly many conflicts where ground warfare was essential, but often the outcome of that ground conflict was only possible because of what happened on the air/naval side of things, whether because of those domains direct impact on battlefield outcomes (i.e close air support) or because of air/naval domains' impact on economic performance which in turn decides whether the battle on the ground. World War Two, for instance, looks very different if the Germans have complete control over the Atlantic and the Japanese complete control over the Pacific, and for all the focus on the western front in WW1, none of that matters if the Germans win a Trafalgar-like victory at Jutland (there's a reason why Churchill is supposed to have said that Jellicoe was "the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon"). A potential Taiwan conflict only underlines this point; there is no ground battle in Taiwan at all of China loses the air/naval war, and no ground victory for China is supply lines are not maintained (which again, requires air/naval dominance). So is the most important the ground battle or the air/naval battle which make ground victory possible? It's just an arbitrary matter of perspective at that point.

To actually answer your question, the game can handle a hypothetical China/Taiwan conflict (indeed, I'm pretty sure there are a number of scenarios attempting to portray it). But given the sheer number of units involved, efficient scenario design becomes vital here. While it is theoretically possible, attempting to simulate every aspect of the conflict would probably make for an extremely unwieldy scenario (and require a super-computer), and it would probably make more sense to break such a conflict into more manageable chunks with only directly involved units featured over a short time frame (for approaches to solving a related issue, see Coiler's post on "The CentFront Challenge" and the mentioned CentFront scenario "The Fighter Bomber Aviation Regiment") Ground combat would probably be best left abstracted, perhaps with points for awarded for tasks that contribute to the ground battle (CAS, troop and supply transport, etc) rather than trying to spawn every relevant ground units and throw them at each other; as you correctly observe, the ground model in CMO as-is is probably not good enough for that.

Bottom line, there a lot of options. And it's not impossible to disregard all of the above and try to simulate a massive week-long campaign (there are some pretty crazy people out there and I'm sure someone has attempted it), although whether it would be a good idea or not is of course another matter.

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 10/28/2021 3:24:21 PM

CV60

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The game does not really model ground combat well. However, if the PLAN can't get troops to Taiwan and supply them, then there won't be a ground campaign to speak of. So if you are interested in a PRC/Taiwan scenario, then CMO is the game you want to evaluate the preconditions for a ground campaign, ie, the air and missile strikes to take out Taiwanese defenses, the establishment of sea control or blockade around the island, and the defending it against a US/Japan counter attack. Frankly, there is no better game in the public domain for examining these issues. If instead you want to simply model the ground fighting on Taiwan itself, then there are some board games that do that. If you want to do both, then you will likley have to do an amalgamation of multiple games. For instance, use CMO to fight out the air/sea battle and determining what the PLAN was able to actually lift to the shoreline, then do a ground game based around what the CMO game results. See "Consulate Crisis!" here for an example of this method:
http://grogheads.com/aars/20294
http://grogheads.com/aars/20302
http://grogheads.com/aars/20315
http://grogheads.com/aars/20344
http://grogheads.com/aars/20358
http://grogheads.com/aars/20547

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 10/28/2021 6:08:01 PM

TitaniumTrout

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Zemke
and ultimately it is boots on the ground that decide wars. All weapon systems from planes to missiles are meant to either prevent or aid in getting boots on the ground and once on the ground, winning. With that said, can the game support a hypothetical war in 2022 of a CCP China invasion of Taiwan? And if so, how could it model the land battle, or can it?

The game works best when it is a scenario, even campaigns are scenarios strung together. So each discrete piece is an interesting engagement. The game can totally support a string of battles that make up the entirety of a war, but it is not a day to day slog as in War in the Pacific. Nor do I think is it designed to be. Yes, I'm sure there is some turbonerd out there that is totally modelling the OOB from platoon level on up to model it all, but for most people that would not be enjoyable.

As far as the ground side of things, I've used ground units as the driver for air events. For example an enemy spearhead would follow a path and halt when it encountered a friendly defending unit. Rather than rely on the in game system to model the defense, I instead had it set a random timer and after so much time it would destroy the defender and move to the next choke point. You, the player, had to try to preserve your defenders and prevent the advance using your air units. It kept it engaging enough without leveraging the ground combat system.

Sure, I'd love it if we had greater ground fidelity, but the scenario designer can be creative and still have interesting ground combat situations.

< Message edited by TitaniumTrout -- 10/28/2021 6:09:22 PM >

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 10/28/2021 6:19:13 PM

Zemke

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To address both responses, I agree 100% that if the troops cannot land, then Taiwan wins. Maybe a better question is, can the game model a hybrid-asymmetrical CCP invasion of Taiwan? In other words, various studies and war games point to the use by PLAN to use 10,000 + civilian vessels to launch an attack on Taiwan in the attempt to overwhelm the anti-ship capabilities of the Taiwanese and allies (US/Japan), kind of a Dunkirk in reverse. Then at some point in the battle, push in their main heavy-lift landing ships, more than likely once a port is secure or nearly so. I know the game cannot model thousands of tiny vessels but maybe as smaller pieces? Lastly does the game support current technology and systems like J-20 and F-35/F22, S-400 SAM, and so on?

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 10/28/2021 6:44:34 PM

TitaniumTrout

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Zemke

To address both responses, I agree 100% that if the troops cannot land, then Taiwan wins. Maybe a better question is, can the game model a hybrid-asymmetrical CCP invasion of Taiwan? In other words, various studies and war games point to the use by PLAN to use 10,000 + civilian vessels to launch an attack on Taiwan in the attempt to overwhelm the anti-ship capabilities of the Taiwanese and allies (US/Japan), kind of a Dunkirk in reverse. Then at some point in the battle, push in their main heavy-lift landing ships, more than likely once a port is secure or nearly so. I know the game cannot model thousands of tiny vessels but maybe as smaller pieces? Lastly does the game support current technology and systems like J-20 and F-35/F22, S-400 SAM, and so on?

You should check out the CMODB online, you can browse and get an idea of what is out there. It's not 100% up to date, but it'll give you an idea. https://cmano-db.com/

But yes, the J-20, F-35/F-22, S-400, along with a whole slew of hypotheticals are available. As well as F/A-18's to the nth degree with every loadout imaginable. Here's a 2028 F-35, https://cmano-db.com/aircraft/4874/

The game could model a massive flotilla like you mention (I'm not sure about 10,000, but it could be a lot), but you'd have to get creative with some scenario design settings to minimize the CPU load. There are some massive scenarios with 10,000 units or more. I don't play them, but they exist.

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 11/2/2021 5:22:35 PM

Zemke

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From: Oklahoma
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I just realized the game is in real-time. I just cannot do that kind of micro-management.

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 11/2/2021 6:43:45 PM

BobTank63

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Zemke

I just realized the game is in real-time. I just cannot do that kind of micro-management.

You can pause and you have a variety of time-compression settings. You have plenty of time to figure out the micro-mangement, consider that the smallest scenarios take 6 hours on the lowest time setting (x1).

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 11/2/2021 11:51:03 PM

KnightHawk75

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quote:

I know the game cannot model thousands of tiny vessels but maybe as smaller pieces?

I can actually...depending on the gear/rig you're running it on and what you're loading on all said vessels with (how complicated are the vessels, and what are they all doing), now thousands all firing missiles at the same time (ie 2-3k inbound guided munitions at a time may be another matter), while a thousand aircraft are also active doing similar yeah it's going to push the game toward the breaking point. Generally speaking though when you get north of 15k AU in the editor depending on what's actually going on, you can start to run into issues (limited 32bit address space of the game), let alone anything above 5k needing a nice modern cpu to be running it on (or patience for each game 'second' to take several actual seconds). As TitaniumTrout point out, once you know the game\game engine a bit more you can be careful\artful about the way you design things such to reduce the perf stress around certain aspects of things by taking certain trade-offs in design decisions and under the hood tweeking on turning of some ai feature on unit that may not need it. But most "big" but still widely playable scenes tend to top out in the ~3k au range. My personal recommendation is once you get past 5k, you have to ask yourself if you can break what you're doing into a campaign or series of scenes.

"Lastly does the game support current technology and systems like J-20 and F-35/F22, S-400 SAM, and so on?"
---
Yes they are in the db3k database and have been for some time.

See BobTank63 comment about in-game time. Pause is your friend, and in really simple scenes 15x time is equally your friend helping you to pass the time quicker.

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 11/4/2021 12:33:52 AM

Hurricane144

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Any war with China over Taiwan would not be over in a single campaign. China would produce arms in growing numbers and win over time. Not even a long time if the Americans aren't 100% in. You could simulate a single operation and see how many losses NATO takes in the first clash.

< Message edited by Hurricane144 -- 11/4/2021 12:35:24 AM >

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RE: China Invasion of Taiwan 2023 - 11/5/2021 8:56:37 PM

Zemke

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From: Oklahoma
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In the long run, I don't think China could win, as they would not be able to import oil, food, and other natural resources, as those ships would be sunk or turned back. The US and other allies' Sub fleet would see to that. Also, their export economy would also collapse. So yeah if China or the PRC could make do without oil imports and food imports and whatever else they import, and not export anything by sea, they may be able to win, however, I just don't see how that is possible.

I have also realized the game is in real-time and thus much too short a time frame. Plus I really don't want to have to play air traffic controller, not my bag. I would love a more "strategic or operational" level game say at Carrier Group level and Brigade and Division level or something along those lines in the modern or current era.

< Message edited by Zemke -- 11/7/2021 9:46:21 PM >

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