Strategy and Wargaming’s John Collins’ Review of Campaign Series: Vietnam
We are excited to share a new review of Campaign Series: Vietnam by John Collins on the Strategy and Wargaming site. Have a look at the complete review, as available here , or by clicking the image below (link opens the article in a new tab).
John Collins Column – CS: Vietnam
There’s not much to object to, apart from this sentence here:
This review represents my first foray into writing something other than dry, practically-rote investigation reports. It will be my first dry, practically written review.
Ha! If this is your dry review, John, we’d love to see your livelier pieces as well! John raises some interesting points in his review. As a developer, here are my comments on a few of them:
When I joined the Army National Guard I did so with an outlook on the military shaped by those soldiers and authors. Much later in life, when I had discovered the joys of computer wargaming I bought the first copy of SSI’s ‘Nam and at the time wanted more, with more detail, and felt that ‘Nam’s grand tactical-ish, just south of operational level was a great gaming experience. Calling in fire support of CAS with troops in contact was fun, even the rough “green splotch-heavy” way my ‘ol Commodore 64 presented it.
I’m of the same generation. My first board game was Panzer Leader by Avalon Hill in 1983, followed by their strategic WW2 game Advance and Fall of the Third Reich the next year. These games completely blew my mind. As a fanatic Commodore 64 player (bought with my first summer job money), I never owned ‘Nam. It was Nato Commander that got my board game heart beating on that platform.
Presentation-wise the 2-D maps have been improved greatly since release and are now quite eye-pleasing. The artwork on the board wargame-style unit chits is so good it caused me to play with the stylized chits instead of NATO symbology. The 3D map – meh – my note to the team would be to not spend any more time on it. One can only do so much with rice paddies and jungle, and my tired old eyes can’t make out most of the units from the backgrounds. Back to the 2D, elevation changes are discernable as are trails, streams, dense and light jungle, etc.
Thank you, John! As the 2D artist, among the other hats I wear, I tried to put my love of board games into those tiles. Our recent 1.31.02 update also adds slope hexsides to 2D, making them more visual than before. The chits are my design as well, while the 3D unit images and NATO symbols are by Mike ‘Warhorse’ Amos and Paul ‘papalazaru5’ Hill. They did a stellar job! Here’s a fresh screenshot from the Vietnam 1.31.02 update, featuring slope hex sides that make it easier to depict elevation. This was high on my wish list, so I’m glad to finally have it out!
Vietnam 1.31.02 with slope hex sides
As for 3D maps, we are actually not following your advice. Instead, we have Bill ‘MausMan2’ Blake joining in with his 250 m scale terrain graphics. These have been available as a game mod for some time, but the plan is to make them the default 3D terrain for the upcoming Vietnam 1.40 update, while making the current “legacy” terrain available as a mod. I hear what you’re saying about the current 3D terrain making it difficult to spot the units though. Here’s how his 3D art looks with the 1.31.02 release, available in the Mods folder (use JSGME.exe to enable them):
Vietnam 1.31.02 MausMan 3D Terrain Mod
Combat resolution is indicated first graphically and then an informational box, which through the fog of war options can be adjusted to provide a realistic amount of feedback as to the damage your attacks have done. The location and duration of the box are adjustable. Opportunity Fire can be set for unit types (I’d love to be able to drill down to setting these for individual units as clearly and easily as can be done in the Flashpoint Germany games, if at all possible!)
Regarding Opportunity Fire, available via the Ctrl+P hotkey, it is indeed a bit unclear whether you are putting a global setting in place or working with an individual platoon or a group of platoons in the same hex. (The difference is if Op Fire settings are activated with no unit selected, resulting in a global setting for all friendly units on the map, or with one or several units selected, which then sets Op Fire for those units only, overriding the global setting.) I plan to do a new iteration of many of the internal dialogs, and this is something to keep in mind. I’m a great fan of Flashpoint Campaigns (and who isn’t?), so I’ll take a peek at how they’ve handled it, too.
My PBEM opponent and I have merely scratched the surface of battle types, but I can say that this is where the game truly shines and is worth the purchase. As the allied player I have conducted combined air and sea-borne assaults of villages lousy with VC weapons stocks and bunkers – and a tunnel system that required an engineer platoon with tunnel rats to explore and deal with (Protect those engineers, while they can fight them are too valuable to risk losing as I have done). At about the halfway point, in an area behind my front that I thought secured, a Marine AMTRAC was ambushed by a VC team as it moved between two small villages near a graveyard. The combat resolution notification told me that the vehicle had been destroyed, and one crew member was missing in action, the others KIA. Fantastic moments of immersion are why CV has become my favourite computer wargame.
Again, thank you for your kind words, John! I agree there’s nothing like facing a human opponent over the Campaign Series battlefields. I have a to-do item for integrating the Slitherine PBEM++ service into the new game front end I am working on. Hopefully, this will make it even easier for players to find others to battle with. That said, it is still early days with the Lua-based Campaign Series Event Engine as well. Those Lua scripts—or rules, events, and battle plans, rather—make PBEM even better, and add a dimension to the computer opponent that simply wasn’t there before. Exciting times ahead! Thank you for taking the time to review Campaign Series: Vietnam, John. It is a platform our small team loves dearly, and we are happy and grateful to be able to keep it alive and updated.
