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Serious gaming vs. simulation - scenario design


Brad_Edmondson

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Now that I’m sorta back into Steel Beasts (the Army sent me away just as I was about to start making scenarios…) I want to share my experience with ‘serious gaming’ versus simulation gaming. By ‘serious gaming’ I mean simulation used for military training purposes and by ‘simulation gaming’ I mean online gaming for fun. I’ve done both now and can see where ‘simulation gaming’ can benefit from some of the lessons learned in the ‘serious gaming’ world, chiefly player organization and scenario design.

For those who remember, I tinkered with a series of scenarios called Battle Labs as a civy Steel Beasts player with 1 Canadian Division. The impetus for this exercise was a general dissatisfaction with controlling the ratio of units to players and the need to at times micro-manage AI units. My aim was to find that happy medium between playing Steel Beasts as a tank sim and a RTS wargame. I don’t have my original notes handy, but three things I took away from the Battle Labs was:

1) Massing players together in a troop vs. players running individual troops provided the most effective combat power.

2) Further massing players within a troop as crew commander & gunner provided the best situational awareness and combat power.

3) AI units left alone against even a single player running his own troop were likely to be turned into mulch.

For company level or larger scenarios this meant that the players massed together as a troop scored higher locally while scoring lower globally against players spread out across the map in their individual troops. Winning the skirmish vs. the battle is another way of looking at it.

Creating a system to run individual platoons but pull players together into a single platoon for an engagement was never satisfactorily developed. Doing so demanded a high degree of communication and drill, perhaps too much to expect for casual gaming for fun.

After joining the CF as an Armour Officer I eventually ended up in a real Battle Lab while I let my bones knit (I’m accident prone) from a training injury. I never finished my training because I transferred out due to there being too many chiefs and not enough Indians in Armour for me to ever get a troop leading position. I still had my fun on the Leopard C2 and learned lots about tactics at all levels by instructing in the Battle Lab.

From the real Battle Lab experience I brought away more lessons learned:

1) To leverage the most training benefit scenarios need to be short and develop contact early. Too much time driving through the digital countryside enjoying the scenery wasn’t productive. Multiple students needed to be rotated through so, depending on the training level (crew commander, patrol leader, trooper leader), 30 minutes were about ideal. It was enough time for instructors to view students exercising battle drills and seeing if they could shoot, move and communicate. We’d normally start them on the LD and go from there.

2) Any unit in contact with the students had to be manned by a lab operator. Whatever the sim software being used, we wanted control over the engagement and instructors wanted to see what the students did from the god station to evaluate them. Control over OPFOR units also allowed us to test the student by forcing a contact and then falling back. Normally we’d shoot to miss as brewing them up on the first shot had little training value at the lower levels of training. Authority to kill a student came from the course instructors when they’d observed that a student was clearly retarded and was not aware of his situation.

3) The only manned student vehicles were the troop itself. Every vehicle had a crew commander and driver. The student under evaluation had an instructor as his gunner. If we had people to spare we’d fill all the gunner seats, but this wasn’t always possible, leaving other students to crew command and gun. The drivers seat was always filled because part of every student’s evaluation was to shoot, MOVE, and communicate. This meant being able to communicate with your driver on contact, as a crew commander would never have direct control over the vehicle. He could have direct control over gunnery though. Whether the student under evaluation or other students in the scenario, this setup provided a high degree of situational awareness that overcame the limits of the simulation (i.e. no peripheral vision, depth perception, sound, etc).

4) Everything not within the student map trace was notional. We would generate radio traffic for what went on left and right of trace but there were no AI units involved. We trialed some canned scenarios with AI units on the flanks going head to head but it just didn’t have training value. Because their in-game maps were disabled and students had to use in-game GPS and hard copy maps, there was no need to generate AI units that would never be seen. It was up to the student to update his map with new information, his position, and the position of his other CS.

Taking all of this into consideration, when the Army lets me get back to my hobbies I’m starting a new Steel Beasts campaign by building scenarios that may be a little different from the norm. Short and tight in length and scope will be the rule. My thinking is:

a) Nobody wants to be a driver so I won’t force that on anyone. You aren’t being evaluated; you’re here to have some challenging fun.

b) Losing your only CS early and waiting for the game to end is not fun. The scenarios are short (20-30 min) with clear objectives and small maps. Large maps with huge deployment zones allow too much roaming time to enjoy the digital flowers. This new option allows the ‘dead’ to move into gunner or driver spots until the scenario is complete.

c) One player, one CS, so we’re looking at a minimum of a troop (4 players) up to sqn size, fully manned crew commander stations, for large scenarios.

d) OPFOR is one player per BLUEFOR troop. OPFOR is more a challenger force to put the gears to the BLUEFOR players. Think of it as co-op + style play. The logic here is that the alternative, a short, tight scenario of equal force on force will likely be over in about 5 minutes seeing as 120mm smoothbore hits are rather unforgiving. The other thing I recall happening in that situation is the few survivors of the initial contact then play whack-a-mole against the other side. That can be fun, but can also go on forever while the rest of the players watch. In this new scheme the one or two OPFOR players are given direction on what challenge to press on the BLUEFOR team. These players essentially wargame their side.

My aim remains to find that happy medium between sim and wargame styles of play. My experience is that you can do one or the other well, but not both at the same time, regardless of software platform.

When I’m back home I’ll start bashing away at building these scenarios. That’s over a month from now, so comments/critiques are more than welcome.

Good to be back…even if the Army sent me away again just as I came back…

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Wow. Memories..........

I remember the Battle labs and I can still remember many details of Battles, including Battle lab6 which I Co'ed. The Battle Lab project played a big part in My development as a player and Commander in my early Sb years. There is alot of universal SB lessons in those aar's concerning command and control, Organizing mass attacks and untilizing or dealing with sniper tanks. Newer and veteran players can still learn from the Wealth of SB knowledge that the labs produced.

Also looking at the participants from the various aar's, Sean, 12alfa, and Myself are the only former battle labs participants still playing online on a regular basis. I am only 32 but I feel old.

Edited by Brun
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Here here! Defiantly agree with all of the above!

I believe you were my CO on at least one of those Brun - excellent times.

My wife and I are now officially empty nesters and have re-located from SoCal to South Carolina (slowing down). Currently my internet connection is terrible, but I expect to have that corrected in the next few months.

In the meantime, I plan to start playing Single Player again and relearn all the stuff I forgot plus all the new additions to SBPro. Perhaps I will be ready to join you by the time you get your first scenario published Brad!

~mm

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Well come on over. :)

I run activities along these lines every month in the RL.

Tp / Sqn / BG trg, TEWTs, CPXs, all have application.

There was a time when I was doing it every day (but not with SB unfortunately) and swore I'd never play another sim again. I imagine gynecologists lose interest in their focus the same way.

Well, here I am...Steel Beasts just has that special somethin'-somethin' to bring me back to gaming :D

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Well come on over. :)

I run activities along these lines every month in the RL.

Tp / Sqn / BG trg, TEWTs, CPXs, all have application.

Understood, sir. I realize that a person in your position gets many hours of use out of SB. I imagine not all of it is for leisure, either. If I had the proper set-up, I'd like to join in on the multi-player fun. I just like hearing about how the software is taken very seriously, and studied in detail. I'm certainly no longer professional military, but I enjoy learning about how the software is used as a "professional" utility. Part of why I enjoy SB, is that fact there seems to be quite a lot of utility, with regard to learning important tactical lessons, in a real-time environment. It's kinda neat to put myself in the position of someone who has to make a tactical decision, to role-play in a sense. If there is anyway to learn how one comes to the decision that is made in reality, I'm all ears.

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Interesting post. I think it would be nice to see some pragmatic application of Steel Beasts as a simulation, versus a game. I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops, keep us posted.

This has already been done In the Vigilant Guardian Campaign, Brave Rifles Campaign, And the Current Campaign going on every weekend. The German community has also had some more realistic battles. Main difference in relaistic style and Gamey style is the Comms and the pace of the battle. Both of which slow down as the realism level goes up. Simple tasks become harder.

Where this Realistic style has not been done alot is Vrs an opponent that is fully crewable and not Red f8 controlled or scripted ai. Knowing that the other side is Fully Crewed by hummans usually causes one side to cut corners and throw the comms manuall out the window and retrun to a more streamlined fast paced So called "Gamey" method of doing things. I don't think I Have ever played a scenario vrs a fully crewed opponent and stuck with a chain of command seperate whisper channel type comms. The realistic stuff seem to be only with scripted red co-op or Head to red.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just finished my Field Ambulance course and can see a niche for SB in creating videos for teaching points (mostly brigade level movement and where CSS fits in, especially ambulance shuttles). I've done this before with a battlegroup bridge crossing and learned there's a more efficient way of doing it than scripting the entire scenario. A better way is to direct users and capture the action. It's far easier to reset if you don't get it right the first time.

The one shortcoming of Pro PE for making videos like this is no in-game free-roaming camera like the referee mode in the Pro version. This makes getting the right perspective quite difficult.

Any word on SB2 having this function or will I need to get a license for Pro?

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The one shortcoming of Pro PE for making videos like this is no in-game free-roaming camera like the referee mode in the Pro version. This makes getting the right perspective quite difficult.

How about using a transparent skin on a helo for a make-shift version?

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Good to see you back, I remember the Battlelabs too. Lots of good skull sweat in your initial post. A quick question, are you certain that the vehicles with 2 crew were more efficient than the single player vehicles?

My experience was that it was really hard to coordinate...

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