Brigade Combat Team

DEVELOPER : ProSim
PUBLISHER : Shrapnelgames 

Since we’re all friends here, we can admit: computer war gamers are by and large armchair warriors.  We sit in front of our phosphor screens, happily clicking away at our keyboards or mice while imagining the roar of cannon or the thunder of tanks on the battlefield.  Only a very few of us have ever even been IN the military, and a vanishing small proportion of them have actually seen combat.

So we sate our martial urges by turning up the digital sound system and buying equipment to run the newest and greatest software to come out which purports to bring us ever closer to reality.  Ironically, the real warriors among us can testify, the effort amongst the technologically advanced armies of the world is to push reality ever further from the soldier: RPV’s, situational awareness systems in MBT’s, the ‘wired’ soldier.  All of these are efforts to take the reality of warfare - the dirt, the pain, the distractions – and reduce them to an electronic signature represented on some Tactical Operations board in an HQ somewhere.  Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t (entirely) meant to sanitize war.  Mostly, it has to do with the informational and task-demands on the modern commander.

An 18^th Century general would perhaps have an army of twenty to fifty thousand soldier in his charge, strung out along the axis of advance for several kilometers.  When battle was joined (rarely by “agreement” as the popular histories would have you believe, more frequently by necessity of ground and timing) these troops would be concentrated into an operational zone rarely more than one kilometer wide.  The enemy would do likewise, the circumstances of technology and conscription forcing the concentration of force. 

In fact, the term ‘strategy’ in its original sense, referred specifically to the operations conducted beyond the reach of the enemy’s cannon.  Many a battle was fought after a night’s bivouac within sight of the opposing forces’ campfires.  “Supply”, when it was considered, was usually an immediate matter of robbing some poor civilian unlucky enough to have a farm nearby.

The battle itself was a short affair, rarely beginning before first light nor continuing after dusk.  Very few battles actually lasted into a second day.  “Total War” not commonly being the practice, a catastrophic defeat by the main army of a state would typically force that monarch to capitulate or at least open negotiations to end the conflict.

Contrast that with the modern Air Land battle: the modern general may (again, with a similar 20,000-50,000 men) have the responsibility for an area covering hundreds of square kilometers.   Supply and support functions will consume as many as 50-80% of his forces, leaving him with little actual “force” to apply, but a lot to protect.  In-depth defense is a must – airborne and airmobile troops can leapfrog into a force’s rear area in hours.  The dangers of CBR warfare (in an all-out conflict anyway) will fatigue his troops quickly and further prevent him from forming concentrations at any but the most certain of enemy advances.  Infiltrators, 5^th columnists, and guerillas are all particularly hard to engage successfully.  Operations are all combined arms affairs, coordinating the operations and timing of everything from the A10 coming from 20 minutes off-target, the arty barrage coming from 30km behind you (and only able to fire for a few minutes before having to displace), the deployment of breaching assets and the employment of armor and infantry.  Engagement ranges can be upwards of 4000 meters, and troops can be vulnerable to fire from an enemy they never even knew existed.

Capt. Patrick Proctor, (U.S. Army Field Arty) was a typical computer wargamer, albeit with extraordinary resources.  He had access to JANUS (the US Army’s simulation system) which was obviously ultra realistic, but was based on mainframes and very hard to operate (not to mention that the hardware requirements put it out of reach of any but professional soldiers).  The public computer wargames were much more entertaining, easy to use, and feature-loaded but ultimately unbelievable; factual results were commonly sacrificed in favor of what “played better”.

Enter Brigade Combat Team.  Capt. Proctor has taken the core logic and engine of JANUS, and given it to the wargaming community in an easy-to-use Win9X package.

BCT is essentially a reality-freak’s dream of a wargame.  The interface is based not on a hex map, an abstracted zone map, or some exaggerated “realistic” (but ultimately not real) terrain; nope, in BCT you’re moving on CONTOUR lines.  The units aren’t abstracted “strength factors” – they’re the actual TO&E real-world facts.  Units are represented on the map iconically, and over all the map really does look like a situation board you might see in any operational HQ.  The unit data is utterly realistic, and I would imagine it’s based on MILES data (the simulators used in the field), since JANUS is also a MILES-based system.

LOS is neatly indicated – right click on a unit (BCT heavily relies on right-clicks) and put it in “LOS fan” mode – the unit is surrounded by yellow lines indicating their field of vision.  This is critical and it is well designed that it’s so easy to call up when needed.

Unit movement is equally realistic.  If you want to move that BMP squad to the top of the hill click on the BMP icon and drag to the hill  - displayed on the screen is the straight-line path the unit intends to follow.  If it goes over too steep of terrain, a little green ‘x’ across your path shows you they’ll stop there.  You can then enter intermediate waypoints to mitigate the slope or obstacle that’s causing problems.  Another zoom level would be handy here, as with some of the maps the contours are navigable but clicking ‘exactly’ where you want can be a pain.  Further you have to be careful as units have essentially no independent path finding AI – they’ll defend in place (they’re not helpless), but they will not figure out how to go around an obstacle.  Firing is equally simple – right click, click, click and your unit is shooting.

Interestingly, I noticed that as long as you can manage to keep them on the same contour level, any slope may be traversed laterally which seems a little unrealistic.  I know a buddy of mine swore he couldn’t roll a Hummer even though he tried, but I wouldn’t want to have to dash around a hill at a 45-degree tip in an M3. 

One of the things Patrick really wanted to address was the command burden of the player.  Acknowledging that only a ‘real-time’ sim is realistic, and recognizing that it would take the resources of a Microsoft to build individual-unit helper AI’s, Pat resolved on a very simple and effective tool seemingly ignored by a lot of current real-time programmers: the PAUSE button.  I’m entirely with him on this one – in real life, a Brigade commander would tell his subcommanders to ‘take the town’; they would tell their subordinates ‘you go left, you go right’; and so forth.  An overall commander wouldn’t realistically have to issue individual orders to combat teams, so rationalizing this by allowing the player to pause seems to me an elegant workaround.

Further, since waypoints come in two flavors (‘stop’ and ‘go’) you can lay out your entire formation’s advance with precision at the very beginning of the battle (admittedly this can get a little tedious), ordering units to stop to cover while others advance, etc.  This allows your units to operate with some autonomy and you only have to really focus on the places where action is happening.

Terrain is abstracted – that ‘green hashed blob’ is a forest for example – but rather than detracting from the game it fits consistently and neatly with the contour-map theme.  I very much like the fact that reality rules here – you have a complete picture of the terrain you will be operating on.  This is 2000 – nobody’s wondering about if there’s a town on the other side of the hill.  Of course, what’s defending that town is commonly in question.  Fog of war – in the sense of enemy units – is present all the time as far as I can tell, but if you’re a reality buff, you shouldn't be turning that off, should you?

The AI is adequate, but understandably narrow – depart radically from your operational area when you are the attacker and you can simply drive behind them and win.  But if you do play ‘by the book’ and stay in your zone, the AI defense can be pretty good.  When I was on defense, I found the AI tends to ‘lead with the nose’ a little frequently and can be sucker punched with flanking counterattacks.  But if you are stupid enough (or your force is such that you have no choice) to try to stand your ground in front of the AI, you will have a bad day.  The AI excels at proper timing of its concentrations (far, far better than I was), dropping a barrage on your defenders, followed up by a brief air or heli attack to paste any armor still evident, and then the inevitable wave of mech infantry.  Ugh.  If nothing else it teaches you that standing still in the modern battle is suicide.

As mentioned before, there’s not a lot of helper AI, but ProSim has made sure there are many configurable opportunities to set systems and unit behaviors to setting which reflect your own preferences and play style.

Really, I feel the place in which BCT excels is in its multiplayer – TCP/IP, IPX, modem, serial – everything’s supported.   There’s a “commanders list” on its hosted site, helping you to find other humans to play against.  Their Arena even lets you view games in progress – something I normally would enjoy immensely but I was never lucky enough to find anyone playing (my weird hours more at fault than the game).

One thing that small companies have going for them is that they can offer a great deal better customer support and Capt. Proctor is no exception.  He maintains a close eye on the forums (Pat, you’re based in HAWAII and you’re spending your time at a COMPUTER?  This guy’s dedicated!) and answered my questions posted there almost immediately (to whit: note that I’m still waiting on a question I posted to Talonsoft more than a month ago…).

Brigade Combat Team delivers a very playable modern combat simulation, with a minimum of frills but a maximum of realism.  I enjoyed it a great deal.

If you like to comment on this review, please post a message at the forum.
Reviewed by Steve Lieb