Operation Sealion
Hi there, I found this game looking for something like Talonsoft's West Front, which I played when it came out.
Living in the UK, I was interested in the Operation Sealion scenario. We live very close to the "Ironside Line", which was to be the inland defensive line designed to slow the advancing Germans down while a counter attack was organised. It's strange walking around our village to see a 6 pounder emplacement next to the road, pill boxes in the middle of fields and concrete wedges beside roads designed to hold steel beams to block roads. There are also tank traps around the town, called "Dragons' Teeth". I was interested to know if this would be a component of the game, also what sort of strength would be assigned to the home guard units , old men and boys armed with WW1 rifles and pitchforks but also barrels of burning oil and other unconventional weapons - again just to slow the attack down while the regular army could form up somewhere further inland.
By way of feedback, when I played West Front, the most satisfying part was programming in your moves, and then watching them play out. Although brief, with the right sound effects and speed it can be the best part of the game.
I wonder a bit about the air power side of things. When I was 13 or 14 we used to play wargames on a table tennis table, using houses from my brother's defunct railway set and models paid for with car washing & dog walking money. Air power always seemed to irritate the players. It comes out of nowhere and seems to ruin your plans and seems unfair that it can strike so hard and then disappear again. I notice that the aircraft in your game seem to site very close the target. Aircraft move a lot faster than ground forces and need airfields. To get around the "unfairness" and reflect reality, the airfields should be a good way from the targets, maybe the target should be selected a go before they're deployed somehow allowing lighter forces to move back into cover or out of sight. Anti-aircraft power should be very available and results should be very hit & miss (tank destroyers can really ruin your day, should have limited ammunition). Aircraft shouldn't be able to hang around in the air waiting for a target. The right balance of reconnaisance, bombers and fighters is vital. Difficult as it becomes another parallel game with another set of rules. Maybe best if there simply aren't too many aircraft. Only my thoughts.
Very inspiring to see you taking on the "Big boys" and have confidence in yourselves to come up with something still relevant today. We're not all FPS crazed, some of us like to use our brains too. My friends and I used to imagine how the new computerisation would be able to create much faster, realistic and amazing games - so glad that wasn't available now I see how my boys seem to be sucked into Fortnite.
Hi Oldgamer, thanks for taking the time to share, I actually played among the bunkers myself - there was an old german line on Drava in Valpovo, hometown of my parents.
I think it was built around Balaton offensive, and you can actually find Valpovo on the Balaton map of the Panzer Corps.
I have a very mixed feelings about Sealion, I've mentioned it in the interview here:
https://www.wargamer.com/articles/interview-klotzen-panzer-battles-wargame/
" For Sealion, I was surprised how improbable it was once I started digging into it. But with slight tweaks it might have been possible. Say Bf-109’s had an external fuel tank ready and that the British didn’t bomb Berlin? So the Luftwaffe continues with their airfield attacks and possibly breaks the RAF. Most of the historians agree that the German HQ was right when they stated that Operation Sealion was impossible without air supremacy and a completely decimated RAF. However, there is a chance that Sealion might have been doable."
I've read the accounts of BEF veterans and I was surprised at the sorry state UK land army was following Dunkirk. So it's just a question of whether german transport capacity was in sorrier state than UK defense capacity. I've heard about drum bombs and the like, and using wooden beams to disable the tracks of the panzers, but to be honest it looks like it was envisioned by someone that never saw combat. I can't imagine those methods stopping the Panzers.
Anyway, you are probably aware that our game is on a much higher-level than West front, so operational instead of tactical. So it's all abstracted - we have fortifications and they encompass trenches, anti-tank obstacles, barb wire and earthwork bunkers. Also, homeguard units are just divisions with low attack and anti-armor attack values and high morale.
As for the planes, I spent a lot of time looking for a system that closely resembles what the ww2 air power was all about, you can read the wargamer interview to understand my thought process. I am actually very proud of it 🙂 and have high hopes of how fun it will be. The idea is to have airfield-based planes that can attack any hex in their combat radius around the airfield. They are considered based on the airfield, so when the airfield is bombed they get damaged, but player actually sets them the target hex and they are shown operation on that hex. So they appear to be on some hex away from the airfield but they are just doing sorties there. They of course can't hang in the air waiting for the target, but that mechanics closely resembles how US used the planes in Normandy and afterwards - planes would be assigned a patrol area, and there would always be a few planes lurking above the roads waiting for the target. And our system models this nicely IMO. It is a game within a game, but that was intentional - I like complex games because it allows for many different approaches, achieving air superiority being one of them. I think Luftwaffe ate 40% of the total German military spending, so I tried reflecting that in the game, we have planes taking some 30% of the total units. We have just started testing so I'll se if we'll reduce that, hopefully not.
Thanks for the kind words, I really feed on them 🙂
As for the games today, this is a very broad topic that scares the bejesus out of me. I see kids in steam reviews clocking 5000, 7000, 9000 hours on one game! This is not how young people should spend their lives. Occasional play is fine but too many games are designed with causing addiction in mind, first was diablo 2, as a master check before WoW was released. And it works too well. I am fighting tooth and nail for my older son not to go down that road and would wholeheartedly advise to fight addiction in your boys if you think it's gone too far. I wish you all the luck I can imagine, from one parent to the other.
Hi Zoran
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply to every part of the my post. Nothing there has stopped me thinking I might get into turn based gaming again!
If you can pull off a game as complex as you suggest and keep the playability, it would be great. One thing struck me looking at the history blogs is that there are resources lacking in other games. Where a game is less about reactions and narrow FP perspectives, I'd have thought there's more likely to be an interest in the context - from armour developments etc to operational detail. Certainly my experience with table top gaming that an interest in the game naturally leads to an interest in the elements that make it up, so it's a commercial proposition to give detailed background info on all parts of the game and access to the reasoning behind unit strengths/weaknesses. Looking forward to the release.
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