IRC people know it, maybe a few other people have seen me mention it, but everyone who's heard thought was really interesting, so I'll make a thread about it.
I'm currently taking a class called U.S. Military History. This class is an examination of leadership, military unit/command hierarchy, previous wars the U.S. was involved with, and military technology. As far as I know, the closest high school class to "History and Moral Philosophy." My teacher joined the US army in 1976, was received his commission in 1980, and retired a Major in 1994. Went to several schools in the army: Airborne, Ranger, Jungle Operations, Northern Warfare Operations, Pathfinder, Sniper, Special Forces, HALO, and Scuba-Schools and Courses, and he's fluent in 3 languages.
Anyway, after that, he came back here and made this U.S. Military History class. One of the most interesting things about his final exam is that it takes about a month of class time to do, is itself a learning experience, and all at the same time evaluates the things you've learned about leadership and military hierarchy and operations.
All throughout the year, depending on if you turn your homework in early, do an excellent job on it, you can get promoted through the ranks. Things go from Corporal all the way to Captain. Since I'm an over achiever, I'm a Captain. Now when these things really take meaning is for the final exam itself. The final exam itself is a battle set in southwest Afghanistan, using a hex based board and foam plates to denote elevation. Taliban Insurgents are trying to prevent western infidels from invading their homeland. I don't know the American objective since I'm the Taliban "Ultimate Leader". The class was split into two teams, the Taliban and the Americans, both having their own ranks and hierarchy.
My team includes myself, a Second-In-Command (2IC), an 82mm mortar commander, a T-62 commander, a T-55 commander, and 3 infantry commanders. We have AAA guns distributed among pretty much everyone. I myself have a BMP-2, a PT-76, some command vehicle that I forgot its name, but it doesn't do anything, 3 ZPUs, and one stationary 57mm flak AA gun. 2IC has a T-72 an AA gun, an anti-tank gun, and an AT-5 guided missile system. Both of my tank commanders have 4 of their respective types of tanks, and my infantry commanders each have a huge Platoon’s worth of infantry, suicide donkeys (like suicide bombers except donkeys), 3 trucks with mounted machine guns, a BMP-2, and 1 truck with an AAA gun in it. My 82mm mortar guy has one huge artillery gun and 4 82mm mortars.
I don’t know too much about the Americans other than that they are a Stryker company and have a real rank hierarchy with Officers and most NCOs. So far I’ve seen 4 105mm MGSs and about 8 Strykers with just machine guns on them.
The game itself operates with a hex grid, over-laid by a coordinate grid, ie 723261, or (72.3, 26.1) for people who like maths better. There are 4 levels of elevation, ground level, 50 feet up, 100 feet up, 150 feet up, and 200 feet up. They’re pretty much just like Starcraft cliffs, only with bigger ramps and stuff. The field is about 10km x 10km or so.
There are 2 ridge complexes on the northern two-thirds of the map, plains on the bottom third, and there’s a bombed out town in the bottom. I’ll see if I can get a scan of the map later.
The West ridge is pretty indefensible with pretty much all ramps, and the Eastern is fine, with a good amount caves and choke points.
The game itself functions as such: The beginning of everyday, we start with artillery, used by a series of two die rolls, one for where we hit and another for if we killed anything. Then there’s the movement bound, where we take the pieces we move and move them 2 hexes for infantry 12 hexes for wheeled vehicles, 8 for tracked vehicles, and 40 for airplanes (But only the Americans have airplanes).
Combat functions as such: After everyone moves, we have people roll a 12 sided die 3 times. Once to “see” the enemy, if you make that roll, then you shoot your weapon and roll again to hit them, if you make that roll you roll again to deal damage. Depending on that roll you can either have no effect, you can disable it, or kill it outright.
Anyway, we started on the north half, with the ridges. All our guys are hidden, so they can’t see us, but since they’re in Strykers moving across open land, we can see all of them.
After we learned that, starting on Monday this week, we went into secluded planning. The Americans went into a different room to plan, and we stayed in the classroom with the map. The highest rank was in charge of planning, so it was me in charge of the 7 other Taliban people.
For three and a half days, we figured out where we would put are people, when we would pull back, and what to do if we our plan went wrong or one of us died. Then, today we started the actual final.
--Day 1-- (Will be about 6 days)
No one had any artillery target, because we couldn’t see each other.
The Americans drove right up in 2 groups, one group towards the valley in between the two ridges. This group had 4 MGS 105mm Strykers and a couple normal ones, and the other had about 8 Strykers.
The group with the 105mm cannons, the just parked right out in the middle of the open and haven’t moved since. They’ll make a real nice 82mm mortar target tomorrow.
The other group is moving up along the outside of the indefensible ridge clumped up in a column, maybe trying to flank us. But we’re ready. We tried to fire an AT-5 at a Styker that passed by at 500 meters, but we couldn’t “see” it, so we stayed hidden and didn’t fire.
So far the game is looking somewhat favorable.
More updates will come as the exam progresses.
