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Helicopters in MC
Below is a section on the Designer notes on Helicopters. There has always been much discussion on Choppers in this Series and of any unit in PzC\MC these units are the most troublesome. More players figure out ways to use these unit in ways they were never designed, intended or consdered when we first made this game.
Many people don't know it but even the original Fulda Gap game was delayed in release by several weeks because of tester input on Choppers by myself and the guys who were helping me test this game (I wasn't involved in the early design stages)
Anyway - I feel that not everyone will like these rules because they will prevent or discourage tactics that they may have developed over time. But during the test we saw helicopters even used in AI Play in ways that just didn't make sense in REAL LIFE.
So - FWIW - I figured we might as well get this out on the table now so you can see what we've done here. And we hope that most player will like and embrace them.
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Love them or hate them, you can‟t really have a Modern Campaign Series without helicopters. And yet, over time these units - or the rules surrounding them - have given rise to the most bizarre and unrealistic tactics we have ever seen in either the Panzer Campaigns or Modern Campaigns games. In early iterations of the rules, players would fly them deep into enemy territory to occupy key objectives on the last turn of the game, or block the arrival of reinforcements; the list goes on and on. Helicopters represent - more-so than any other unit - the largest abstraction in the game. When you consider a machine that flies at speeds of 150 mph or more, stays in the air for perhaps, at most, two hours at a time, and carries some heavy firepower, it can be a recipe for trouble. How do we make these units work in a game where a single turn is three hours during the day?
The first thing we did was borrow an idea from player created scenarios; that is the use of FAARP, or Forward Area Arming and Refuel Point. In Game terms a FAARP is merely another HQ unit. It is smaller, more vulnerable, and generally slower than other units, and has a short command range. Actually, the command range value used was taken from British Brigade HQs in Panzer Campaigns - Sicily ‟43, where we wanted the British Army to fight within more strict organizational lines, as compared with the more free wheeling US units.
The advent of the FAARP‟s generally greatly reduces the helicopters effectiveness, if it goes too deep in the enemy rear. Nonetheless, we can‟t prevent people from doing it. FAARP‟s alone were not enough to curb these adventurous flights, as we‟ve seen in game play using the mods, as well as our test plays of the Danube 85 scenarios. Players continued to find effective ways to use these units within the game rules, which made sense, even though they were not the way we felt helicopters would be used realistically. Such tactics involved blocking retreat routes for the strategic defender (generally NATO), or using them to isolate key defence positions, as isolated units lose morale and are much less effective. Our point was - and is - that while a helicopter was a threat, and a serious one, it could not really hold ground. It could not fly over the hex for the entire three hours anyway, so in a sense it would not isolate units by hovering over a key hex at the end of the turn.
What we envisioned were rules that encourage a player to use helicopters to fly in and attack units fast, and then use their speed to move away to safety fast. Or to stand off near a key hex, where the enemy is expected to move, and then during the other player‟s turn use Opportunity Fire, under AI control to attack the phasing player, in locations where they can‟t easily move up units to attack them. Here is what we came up with: First of all, we adjusted the values we had in the OOB to make these units more vulnerable to AA Fire. What we discovered was that when these units were assigned Defence values in the original Fulda Gap game, those defence values were calibrated compared to other ground units. The problem was that the ground units were normally fired at by other ground units using hard and soft values which are, in general, much higher that the unit AA values. We didn‟t want to make these units completely ineffective game wise, so we up-gunned their hard attack values as compared to the exact same ground units, to take into effect the height advantage the machine in the air will have. Missiles fired from the air will have a greater chance of hitting tank turret tops and APC decks where armour is not as thick as say the front aspect, which is normally facing the enemy. Furthermore, fast units that attack as helicopters do will have more chance of getting side and rear shots on these vehicles too.
We still needed John Tiller to adjust the code to make the old legal, but “gamey” tactics less attractive to players. So we had the Zone-of-Control effect for supply purposes removed from the helicopter units. This removed the helicopters‟ ability to isolate other ground units. The second thing we did was to borrow from John Tillers‟ Napoleonic Series an optional rule to prevent these key units from blocking retreats and causing extra causalities.
In the Napoleonic Series, John explained, players were using small Skirmisher units from blocking the retreat of much larger formed units. The optional rule is admittedly a “gamey” response to a “gamey” situation, whereby using such units to block will cause them to be eliminated if the blocked unit‟s retreat route is cut. Pretty drastic! Yes, we know, but consider first that:
a) it is an optional rule only, so players may opt out of it even though the rule will be ON by default when the game is loaded: and
b) this rule can‟t be exploited by the other side, since there is no way you can force the other player to use helicopters to surround you.
So, for this rule, we are quite prepared to provide perhaps a “gamey solution” to “gamey play”, otherwise why are the helicopters placed in a location to block units?
The combined effect of all the helicopter changes is you should use helicopters to move up, fire, and then move away to a safe hex where the enemy player cannot see them and get free shots at the more fragile helicopter units (That is the other side won‟t have enough units or movement points to chase the helicopters). Lower defence will encourage players to move their helicopters to more safe hexes at the end of their turn. Extra attack will make them more effective to attack or ambush units when employed as we think they would be in a modern war. In summary, the ONLY helicopter unit that players should leave next to an enemy at the end of a turn is a “Man” type unit that is Deployed, or not in Transport mode, as such a unit represents "boot-on-the-ground" soldiers, deployed, and in position to hold ground. All other landed vehicle type helicopter units, or all flying helicopter units, will not block supply and are subjected to elimination with the new rule.
When it comes to helicopters, or any other type of unit, or any rules we devise, however, we can‟t anticipate everything players can do within the rules with the units we created, rules we designed for their employment, etc., but we are committed, where possible, to make changes to the game engine to encourage players to not find creative ways to use units beyond that for which they were originally created in terms of modern battles.
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