Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over Arnhem
by Peter D. PawelekArticle Type: Preview
Article Date: May 13, 2002
Product Info
Product Name: Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over ArnhemCategory: Operational-Level, Real-Time Wargame
Developer: Panther Games
Publisher: Battlefront.com
Release Date: May 2002
Sys. Specs: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here
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A Dream Come True?
A little while back I was having lunch with a wargaming buddy of mine who (unlike me) has had some actual military experience. I asked him what his ideal wargame would look like, and without hesitation he told me that units would not sit on a hexgrid superimposed on a map, but would have a footprint of area occupation defined by unit frontage and depth. Judging from the demo of Battlefront Games’ Airborne Assault: Red Devils Over Arnhem, my friend’s ideal system has just become a reality.  |
| 'Airborne Assault' splash screen. |
Airborne Assault is an operational-level wargame that covers the 1944 Market Garden campaign in the Second World War, in which the Allies made bold, if not reckless, use of paratroopers to land in Holland and seize the bridges spanning the Rhine in order to speed the advance into Hitler’s Germany. As brigade/division commander, you will plot operational orders to your forces composed of battalions and companies (which total to approximately 60,000 men for the larger scenarios), and watch the battle unfold as the friendly AI implements your orders and engages the enemy. The full release of the game has just gone gold and is due out in a few weeks. In the meantime, a playable demo is available for download and what follow are my initial impressions of the game based on the demo.
The Airborne Assault demo comes with four scenarios. There are two smaller tutorial scenarios to get started, and two larger brigade-level operations in which you play either as the British, with the goal of securing the bridges across the Rhine, or as the Germans in which case you must hold your ground for as long as possible. You achieve victory by fulfilling a number of scenario-dependent objectives including the securing of bridges, occupation of crucial territory like landing zones, and inflicting enemy casualties.
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| Scenario selection screen. |
Hexgrids Are, Like, So '90s
What makes Airborne Assault different from most other operational-level computer wargames is its innovative treatment of how its maneuver units (companies and battalions) are represented on the map. The unit counters still have the standard boardgame-like appearance, which has been adopted by computer wargames for years, but there is no hexgrid on the map. Instead, you plot routes through a simple point-and-click interface and the friendly AI takes care of the details of implementation.The interface layout is intuitive and very professional in appearance. The map dominates about 75 percent of the screen real estate, with a game panel occupying the remaining 25 percent on the left side. The game panel contains all the buttons and tabs you need to give orders and read about unit status. The game interface is reminiscent of the fine work that was done by Atomic Games for their V for Victory and World at War games. The map artwork is very well done, and the maps are colored according to terrain elevation as well as other landmarks such as forests, farmland, and urban areas. A one-kilometer grid can be superimposed on the map to give you a better idea of unit scale.
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| Game interface. |
Unlike most wargames, the ground occupied by the unit is not limited by the graphical representation of the counter. The units have actual frontages and depths that are controlled by the player and are meant to represent the different formations that the units can adopt. This unit ‘footprint’ is portrayed as a white rectangle superimposed over the unit counter. For example, if you specify that a particular company be in column formation while moving, this rectangle will become quite narrow and its longest dimension will be along the axis of unit movement. If the unit encounters an enemy while moving, it may automatically deploy into a line and you’ll see the change occurring on the map in ‘real time’.
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| Issuing a movement order. |
The Thinking Man's Clickfest
Although the game plays in ‘real time’, you can always pause the battle to change orders and unit stances. When you activate the game by starting the clock, you can play at three levels of time compression. The slowest level is not strictly in real time, and it appears that ten real seconds is approximately equivalent to one minute of game time.A wide array of unit orders can be plotted at waypoint nodes: Attack, Defend, Probe, Move, Delay, Withdraw and Secure or Deny Bridge. For each order, you can specify how it will be executed. This includes the formation the unit will adopt as well as its speed, aggressiveness, rate-of-fire, and the amount of losses its willing to take in order to achieve its goals.
C&C (Command and Control) is very elegantly handled, since you use exactly the same orders interface to plot orders waypoints for a battalion as you would a subordinate company. In this case, all companies attached to the battalion will execute the order with the details handled by the friendly AI. So, you can either micromanage and control each company as much as possible, or you can plot overall battalion objectives and sit back to watch the battle unfold.
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| Command and Control. |
I find the game system a bit odd due to a confusion of scale. Clearly, it’s an operational-level wargame given the scale and size of the maneuver units. It appears, however, that combat is ranged to a certain extent since units can engage each other out to about two kilometers depending on their unit type. What is unclear is that given that ranged combat is occuring, how does the game handle visibility, line of site and range effects (usually in the domain of tactical wargames)? More visual cues explaining how terrain and range affect the ‘fog of war’ would be useful here.
"Be A Good Chap and Brew Up Some Tea After Moving That Battalion…"
The AI, both friendly and enemy, appear to be quite competent. In past computer wargames, friendly AI’s have been notoriously bad at plotting movements towards objectives, and you’d often find your units hopelessly congested in traffic jams as they mindlessly tried to advance on an objective. In Airborne Assault I am pleased to say that the AI is flawless at executing your movement and attack orders. Of course, your units may behave unpredictably in reacting to enemy fire, but this is encouraging to see as well. The enemy AI appears to be quite aggressive and will attack at unexpected times and places. Given this, I’m pretty sure the single-player experience for the full release of Airborne Assault will be quite satisfying. The game can also be played in multiplayer mode over TCP/IP, but I have not had a chance to evaluate this feature  |
| A paradrop in progress. |
Clash of the Icons
Although this system is very intuitive and well-implemented, I often find myself sitting back and feeling detached from the action. Once you’ve given your overall orders there’s very little for you to do except to watch the friendly and enemy AI’s duke it out.Part of the problem lies in the graphics and sound. Although the system is innovative for having unit footprints with frontages and depths, this innovation is stifled since these footprints are still anchored to the map by traditional unit counter graphics. When units start moving around the map, your eye is drawn to the unit counters that often appear to be aimlessly bopping around. It would be much more effective to just show the unit footprints and facings, since you’d get a better feel for the real ground that these units occupy. Colored lines connecting engaged unit counters depict combat. This is accompanied by inadequate sound samples of single weapons being fired. Once again, this doesn’t convey the sheer scale and ferocity of clashes between company-level forces.
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| Combat at Deelen Airfield |
Another part of the problem here is that not enough feedback is given to the player during a battle. Although you can easily pause the battle and inspect each unit for its level of fatigue, morale, suppression and cohesion, somehow this doesn’t translate into an immersive experience. I have the feeling that there’s a lot more going on under the hood, but the designers haven’t gone the extra effort to show the ‘guts’ of the system.
It also doesn’t help that the demo comes with a very uninformative tutorial manual in PDF format, and little else in the way of online documentation. I really hope that the full release will come with a big fat manual filled with detailed descriptions of the game mechanics, since this is what I will need to really appreciate this system.
Bottom Line
I’m always optimistic about new and innovative wargaming systems, and I recommend checking out the Airborne Assault demo for this reason. Hopefully, the full release will be accompanied with more in-depth information on the game systems and mechanics to give the player a fuller appreciation of an obviously rich and detailed simulation.Resources
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