SCENARIO: The Vietnam War Deluxe; 1965-1975

*turns on CCR*



(just some q&d ps work, just for fun...)

 

good news on the South East Asia Front

i launched the alpha version of the biq the other day. i did not fully finish the gfx adds. but i thought i would start the proverbial engine to see how she hums i did not add in any unit gfx yet. some are newer, added some time in 2009 iirc. i need to review all of the applicable unit gfx made since about '09 and assess what goes in etc. a lot of the game mechanisms are being 'tested' in this alpha stage. i need to confirm a few things before cementing certain aspects of gameplay.

1st picture is the Saigon city screen. we can see a lot of the adds i made with buildings and resources. looking at the resources, the Village one is sort of like the Industry resource in AoI wherein it allows for certain higher-ended buildings and overall, boosted production rates compared to the other smaller cities. the P-O-L resource is for mech units and a building or two (and tile bonuses too). Airbase and Airstrip allow for certain city builds and also have an airfield underneath of them. rebasing of air units will be limited to fixed wing and rotary aircraft. so in addition to be able to land in cities, they will be able to land on these resource (airfield) squares as well. the US Firebase resource acts in this same way too. most of the larger US firebases during the war had an airstrip of some sort capable of handling fixed wing and rotary aircraft (but not jets). the CTZ resources isolate the wonders which spawn US infantry units. there are four of them (I-IV). to the right and left sides of the bottom part of the screen show building and wonder gfx. i haven't reset the tech tree yet. so they are all appearing in the build queue. once i can flesh out alpha testing, i will re-do the tech tree some. it will be quite an undertaking. but i think i have a template. so this will help. i'm seeking to expand and polish up the existing rudimentary tech tree. it will sort of be in the mold of AoI, with a military path, an industrial-type path, and for this one, a Hearts & Minds path. science stuff is a WIP.

picture 2: US Fire Support Bases in the Central Highlands. not entirely sold on resource gfx i ended up choosing. it is the colony gfx from the Terrain_Buildings sheet (i think). i putzed around on the GIMP with a variety of different configs for this one but i couldn't find a good enough one and sort of settled for this less cluttered one. these resources also have airfields under them. so the fixed wing (A-1s and T-28s i think) and helos can land here (ie rebase); C-130s can, too. each tile holds a few arvn rifle companies, a 105 mm arty piece, a huey slick, one of the trainer t-28 COIN aircraft (coin=counter-insurgency), and a US Ranger lrrp team (llrp=long range recon patrol). through 60-80 turns of several test runs, Charlie steers well clear of this area where it's set up so that there can eventually get interlocking fields of arty fire (once the 155s become available, 2 range).

pic 3: a screenie of my last test run, central highlands with Charlie All Around Me

pic 4: editor shot of the Red River Delta in North Vietnam. note how the river tiles are off a tad. i'm experimenting with setting the Capital (ie palace) as requiring a city be on a river in order to build it. point is to try and isolate NV's ability to have it's center of empire along the ho chi minh trail. and also to ship down 'war materiel' from this area shown in the image to the 'capital' located down along the HCMT. think AoI with returning raw material units but it's all land based and only for the commies. it will be search and destroy for the SV side (hopefully, needs A LOT of testing). Radar Station resource gfx appear in the pic as well. this is for AAA units for the NV side and target practice for the american aircraft.

picture # 5: the Mekong Delta, SV's most productive region

 

I like the changes. The no man's land is a cool concept and the firebases looks interesting.

One thing i always wondered was why the US airborne troops had lesser values than the regular infantry. They seemed to have quite the reputation with the VC and NVA.

 

thanks. re the airborne troops - they typically were equipped with less than the regular infantry. things like heavy weapons sections of their companies and such. they couldn't really lug all of it out onto the battlefield. i do know that they were indeed beastly, especially in the highlands. i'll look at it again, maybe boost them up a notch or 2

 

update 9 march

more progress i gave up on my early alpha tests to revisit the tech tree. as noted before, i wanted to try and revamp the tree some and remove that locked-up feel to it (orig version had research locked at 15 turns, no branches on tree, straight shot). i kicked around a bunch of different models and finally settled on one that breaks all the techs (almost all of the orig ones + a few new ones) into four (4) eras instead of the original one (10). so, with that said there will be era1 @ 1965-1967, era2 @ 1968-1970, era3 @ 1971-1973, and era4 @ 1974-1975. there's some logic between the era differentiations. 1st era was the big buildup, an emphasis on hearts&minds, 2nd one the buildup continues and most importantly, it's 'After Tet' where most historians draw a line in the so-called sand. 3rd era is the gradual bring-down, the 'Vietnamization' if you will, the gradual transfer of responsibility to the ARVN. last era is what we can see as the beginning of the end for the RVN. they're on their own and the US withdrawal was essentially complete (it was mostly complete from a combat POV by mid 1973 or so).

each era will have four (4) branches to the tree: one for Air Force (USAF mainly), USN aircraft (buildable now but only in 2 spots), Hearts & Minds, and Army (or ground forces in general). i haven't set the branches of the tress yet nor have i set x/y coordinates in the editor (soon). but the order is pretty much set. just need to plug in coordinates and make some other slight changes. i'm also going to toy around with the science screen interface (as well as some other interface stuff). point will be to try to give it a period feel or at least a jungle-fied feel.

here's the lineup for era1:

Air Force : USAF I (F105D f/b) --> Arc Light (B52) --> SEAD I (EF105F Wild Weasel)

USN aircraft : VF I (F8H) --> VA I (A4F) --> VF II (F8J)
VF is the prefix for naval fighter aircraft, V = carrier. so VF and VA = carrier attack aircraft.

Hearts & Minds : Espionage (allows missions sm wonder) --> MedEvac Tactics (allows healing in enemy sm wonder) --> Combat Engineering (allows building of Combat Eng sm wonder, spawns them) --> US Special Forces (allows sm wonder builds for SF unit spawns) --> Hmong Collaboration (allows for sm wonder that spawns Montagnard rifle co's)

Army/Ground : 155mm arty (simple enough) --> Air Mobile I (UH1 Slick transport helo) --> Fixed Wing Gunships I (AC-47) --> Rotary Wing Gunships I (UH1 Cobra)

the Hearts & Minds section and the Army section aren't fully set yet in terms of naming. that is all semantics although what they'll unlock is set.

i'm excited to report that not only have i set the pre-lim tech tree but i've also made from scratch some new tech icons i'm getting better with the GIMP.

 

here are the images, converted over to .png format:

1. Arc Light : perhaps the most effective tactical bombing campaign in the history of aerial combat

2. SEAD I : Suppression of Enemy Air Defense, pioneered by US pilots. elite airmen with sophisticated equipment (for the time, standard now in all f/b's)

3. USAF I: the roundel of the USAF, basic in terms of gfx but surely descriptive on the tech tree backdrop

4. VA I : naval attack aircraft

5. VF I : naval fighter/bombers

 

Buffs? Lol, an old Air Force vet?

Anyway I remember trying this scn awhile ago.
I liked it.
It even encouraged me to read more about the war.
Can't wait to try a new version.

thx

 

Big Ugly Fat F%#!-er

not an air force vet just an enthusiast of the era

 

Very cool scenario and it definitely captures the feel of the war.

A suggestion on the airborne (and airmobile possibly also). They were indeed lightly equipped compared to regular infantry. They had far less organic support weapons and logistical capability. They made up for it with high morale, aggression and unit cohesion. You could reflect that with high attack and decent defense strength but lower bombardment value. They could also have less HP to reflect lack of staying power (at least against heavy units) with the limited heavy weapons and supply that they brought into the field.

 

El Justo,

I've run into an issue with your scenario. I downloaded both of the files you posted in the OP, and I'm missing a lot of stuff. I tried to start the scenario, and whenever I did I got this error message.

Snooping through the things I downloaded, I found a few things.
1)You have a lot of buildings in the pedialcons.txt doc.
2)All I have in Art\Civilopedia\Icons\Buildings is shantytown-large.pcx and shantytown-small.pcx.

Did I do something wrong? Solutions? The only solution i can think of would be saying "screw this issue" and start deleting all of the mentions of buildings I don't have in the text doc.

 

That sort of error message usually means you don't have the folders set up in the proper place/way. I have the same files on a really old compy and it works fine, so the first thing you should do is check your folder paths to make sure they are correct.

 

YGBSM - I bet you know what that stands for too.

I wasn't USAF from that era but in the earlier 80's
I was stationed at the maintenance base for B-52
(as air traffic control thank to Reagan)
We used Buff in the call sign when they were in testing or maintenace.
The pilots would treat the aircraft as fighters (see one in an overhead approach)

There was also a guard unit that flew the F-4 E or G at that time (wild weasel)
A lot of the pilots were Vietnam Vets. The River Rats is what I want to say.
They would always "buzz" the tower. YGBSM !!!

 

Where's the link(s) to the newer revised version that was discussed back in Mar 2012?

 

I don't think that they were posted. I'd love to have them though.

 

sorry guys. forgot to post that i put this stuff on the back burner for a time. i did get some work done on the files before stopping though. in time, i'll get back to them

 

Sorry to poke something that appears to be dead. But is there any place to download this scenario from, in whichever state it currently was? Stormoverciv is pretty much out of the count, and that appears to be the only place where you can download the main files.

 

I have it........

 

it's worth playing .

 

Blimey, I've been out of the loop for 8 years and there are still active posts. Cool!