Point of Attack 2

The history of wargames that cover modern conflicts is a long and twisted tale, full of titles that were "almost good" and others that never should have seen the light of day. For whatever reason, wargames covering this particular time period just don't enjoy the popularity of those set during WWII, the Civil War, or the Napoleonic era. Perhaps it's because combat in earlier periods was generally simpler and more straight-forward. During the Napoleonic wars, for example, battles were fought with the use of cavalry, infantry, and artillery in their traditional roles. WWII too is covered from many different aspects, but almost always with an eye toward keeping the game accessible, user-friendly, and appealing to many different types of players. The people who develop such wargames are very often programmers who tend to be amateur historians at heart. In stark contrast, modern era wargames are often developed by ex-military officers and are infamous for their uncompromising approach to the intricacies of how combat is really planned and executed on the modern battlefield. Combat is faster, more complicated, information-driven, and an order of magnitude more lethal. This means small mistakes may become game ending disasters in the blink of an eye. Many of these wargames started life as either training tools or simulators for the US military. Point of Attack 2 is just such a title, but is it a good wargame? Read on.

Point of Attack 2 (POA2 for short) started life as a military simulation developed for the US Air Force. Even a quick glance at the interface and unit graphics belies its origins. On the surface, POA2 is a standard hex-based, turn-based wargame not completely unlike other recent wargames. Although the system is capable of other scales, 100 meters/hex is the usual. Under the hood, however, POA2 is quite different than the standard wargame fare that is offered by other developers. Weapons systems are modeled in great detail with nearly 200 different possible data entries for each system. That isn't all. POA2 models ammunition completely separate from the weapons system data with extreme detail in this area as well. The simulation also takes environmental considerations into account, such as weather, smoke, cratering from explosives, morale, radar, sensors, and much more.

Installation of the game was straight forward and I encountered no bugs during this process. I also discovered that the CD needn't be in the drive to launch or play the game, which was a pleasant surprise. The game comes on a single CD and takes up about 1GB of hard drive space.

At this point I think it's fair to mention the system requirements for POA2. HPS recommends a 2.5Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, and a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Yes, you read that right! These would be very high system recommendations even for a cutting edge, action-oriented 3D game. Many gamers with less than state-of-the-art PCs will, of course, ask "can I play this simulation on my computer?" The short answer is yes, however, the game may run very slowly while resolving combat. POA2 is a very complicated simulation and there is a lot of number crunching going on in the background while the computer is sorting things out. When playing larger scenarios, combat resolution can take a while even on a high performance rig. Slower machines should be able to handle the simulation as long as players stick to the smaller battles. I tested POA2 on a 3.0Ghz Pentium 4 and the system performed well, although the largest battles still take a while when things really start to heat up.

After installation, players are faced with the formidable task of actually learning the POA2 system. This is the first place where the simulation stumbles as POA2 does not include any sort of written manual, opting instead for an html-based manual that installs with the game. Some gamers may find this to be a significant annoyance. The electronic manual is somewhat of a hit and miss affair. While useful, it fails to adequately explain many aspects of how POA2 actually works. The manual has pages and pages of detailed information on different types of fighting positions, bunkers, and descriptions of hull-down basics for armored vehicles, which is doubtless great information for both veterans and players who may not be familiar with the details of modern warfare. The manual also includes some charts on energy weapons, spalling, the effects of fog of war and much more. Yet despite this detail the manual isn't always as clear as it could be. Certain topics such as the scenario creation process are not covered at all. Worse, the manual talks about both military theory and the simulation, and it isn't always clear how or if how these things actually come into play during the game. In addition, some planned features that didn't make it into the release version of the game are covered in the manual, thus causing further confusion.

The POA2 electronic manual is useful, but it would have been nice to see a printed version accompany the game. Printing costs continue to soar, and no doubt HPS opted to omit the printed manual to keep the costs of the sim below $50. It would have also been nice to see the full manual in the form of a standard windows help file. As it is, the manual is available in html and pdf format only. The manual is 150 pages in length, which means it isn't always that easy to find what you're looking for. If the manual were in help file format, players could use the search function to more easily locate information.

POA2 includes one introductory tutorial. The tutorial consists of an extremely simple scenario, which is accompanied by a series of pop-up slides that introduce the user to the very basics of the system. The problem is, that's all the tutorial does. It doesn't even attempt to cover any of the more advanced features, thus the player is left to figure out a lot of things on his own. That might be forgivable in a simple first person shooter game, but the lack of a really beefy tutorial is likely to cause a lot of unnecessary pain and frustration for beginners. The tutorial scenario consists of a couple of US tanks that square off against a couple of Soviet-built tanks on an almost flat map. There isn't much to do during the tutorial as there are no helicopters, artillery, or air support involved. Why HPS neglected to include tutorials for the use of airpower, helicopters, artillery support, NBC warfare, and engineering operations is a mystery.

POA2 has a huge amount of fairly complicated information to present to the player throughout the course of a battle, and the simulation attempts to present this in a format that would be familiar to any commander in the US Army. As the player moves the mouse over the map, information is displayed about the current location in a pop-up box. Elevation, known units, terrain type, mines, obstacles, and more all update in real time as the cursor moves around the map. The attention to detail here is quite impressive, as even if the cursor is moved off-map, the interface will display the distance to the nearest map edge.

Detailed information about both friendly and enemy forces is displayed under the staff officer section. This area consists of standard military "S" sections, which present all known information about the situation. S1 - personnel, S2 - intel, S3 - Operations, S4 - logistics. There is also a section for the FSO - artillery, the ASO - air support, and a section on communications.

The S1 section shows the player current casualties, morale, weapons status, and leader information. POA2 includes "leaders" which add to the overall effectiveness of units that they are assigned to - most of the time. In an unusual twist, some leaders in POA2 can actually be detrimental to particular aspects of a unit depending on the characteristics of the assigned leader. For instance, a leader may be very good at rallying troops, but poor at targeting. In this case the unit would be hard to break, but might fire less effectively than others. Players do not have direct access to view a leader's statistical ratings during gameplay, thus always leaving the commander (the player) with some element of the unknown. This approach yields mixed results. On the one hand, not allowing the player to view the leader's statistical ratings does make the simulation less "gamey" in some respects. On the other hand, there really isn't any way to see exactly what effect -- if any -- the leader is having on the situation. Since the leader's effects are basically transparent to the player, you'll end up ignoring them for the most part.

Leaders can effect the following areas:

* Morale
* Communications
* Targeting
* Competence
* Initiative
* Aggressiveness

The S2 deals with information on enemy activity. The information presented here is, of course, only as good as what has been reported by subordinate units. The information is fairly basic compared to that given on friendly forces. The S2 will also give an estimate of how much of the enemy's force is currently known and where they are concentrating their force.

The S3 section is mainly used to display which friendly units have been given orders and which have not. The player can select the unit of his choice from the display and give orders directly from here, or exit back to the main map and give orders by right clicking on the unit.

POA2 limits the logistics process to ammunition only, and tracking this is the main purpose the S4 display serves. Complete information is given on the current ammo load of the specified unit. As most battles in POA2 last about 1-3 hours of real time, the developer did not include more in-depth logistics functions. Vehicles and aircraft do not run out of fuel as this is beyond the scope of the game.

The FSO and ASO are used to track the current status of fire missions and incoming air support. Orders can also be given from this area.

POA2 was created to simulate battle primarily from the perspective of the battalion, brigade, or task force commander and information is presented to the player with this in mind. Real life commanders make decisions and issue orders, but they rarely have all the information they would like on where the enemy is and what they are up to. The simulation attempts to raise the bar for fog-of-war effects over anything that has yet been seen in the genre.

Information on enemy forces can be gathered in a variety of methods. Some intel may be available to the player at the start of the scenario due to signal intercepts, friendly reconnaissance efforts, satellites, aerial recon, and HUMINT. The amount of information that each of these methods supplies is determined by force levels, which are set by the author when the scenario is created. Once the scenario begins, further information can be gained during the course of the battle, however, even "known" information isn't entirely trustworthy. When hovering the curser over an enemy unit the player will be presented with current info for the unit, but this information will be marked according to how old it is. For example, a player may see 3 enemy tanks marked occupying positions on a ridge, but the information is marked as being 12 minutes old. The older the information is, the less likely it is to still be correct. The only sure way to determine if the information is accurate is to send out additional recon elements.

Fog-of-war applies to each unit in the game on an individual basis, thus each unit only knows what it can see and what has been reported to it. There is frequently a lag between the time a friendly unit gathers information and the time the SITREP ( a report on enemy activity) makes it to higher HQ. This means that it is possible for an individual unit to know about enemy units and activity that the player cannot see. But POA2 takes this concept even further by limiting the player's knowledge of friendly units. This is something rarely seen in any wargame and lends an added degree of realism to the system. A unit always knows its own situation, but higher HQ may not.

Do all these fog-of-war effects make POA2 a better simulation? Well, that's a difficult question to answer and it greatly depends on what the player expects from the sim. For starters, the multitude of fog-of-war effects make POA2 a much harder game to master than most other wargames. In addition, it's not always clear why something is happening the way it is. Once gameplay begins, there isn't any way to tell how information was gathered on a particular unit, as the player doesn't see the actual SITREP. To a degree, this is a debatable design decision. The end result is that it denies the player the ability to know which forms of intelligence gathering are actually working and which ones are not. This is information a real life TF commander would have access to (at least part of the time), and more than likely would directly influence how he might choose to use his remaining S2 assets. It would be nice to see this information added to the existing information currently available in the S2 section. At any rate, the cumulative effect of all this fog-of-war is that units can sometimes appear and disappear from the map, which can be disorienting to players accustomed to standard wargame fare like Steel Panthers or East Front. Although imperfect, this system does come closer to presenting the player with something similar to the level of fog-of-war a real life TF commander faces than most other wargames. HPS should be given credit for attempting to push the envelope here just a bit.

The way fog-of-war is implemented in POA2 can have other effects on combat that some players may find strange. POA2 creates units by assembling several weapons systems or soldiers into a "multi-part unit." Units that have several types of weapons system assigned to them are handled differently by the game engine than those with a single type. For example: a unit that has three M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks assigned will be displayed by the game engine as a single unit. In contrast, an infantry squad that has five soldiers with M16s, a SAW gunner, and an M203 grenadier must be merged into a multi-part unit. The system will display the soldiers with M16s, the SAW, and the M203 as three separate entities. The player can toggle a interface option to either display these as a single icon (compress multi-part units) or show them as separate icons. At this point readers may be wondering exactly what purpose displaying the units in this fashion serves.

According to Scott Hamilton, the developer of Point of Attack 2, the game engine tracks individual units by weapons type because each has different characteristics that effect spotting and combat resolution. If our squad from the above example advanced across an open field, it is then possible that the SAW gunner might be spotted and fired on by an enemy unit using defensive fire while the other soldiers in the squad remain unseen. The same thing can happen in multi-part units composed of different types of vehicles. A tank will have a harder time remaining unspotted than a light vehicle will. The effects of handling multi-part units in such a fashion can be debated, but one thing is for sure: the way such units are displayed during gameplay is simply non-intuitive and downright confusing at times. If we were to "compress" the multi-part squad, it wouldn't appear as the symbol for an entire squad. Instead, only the top unit would be displayed, while the other entities in the unit remain hidden underneath. If the unit has different weapons systems assigned, then each of these will be grouped together in a separate icon even though the compress command is toggled. This is an aspect of the game that may deserve further attention from the developer. As it is, players can easily mistake or even lose some of their own forces! Add to this the unpredictable fog-of-war effects, and gameplay can get a bit overwhelming at times.

Fog-of-war notwithstanding, POA2 spares no expense to make combat as detailed as possible. Although the game is turn-based, combat is resolved simultaneously in a series of "pulses." During each pulse the simulation will move units, conduct defensive fire, and units will generally attempt to carry out the orders given to them. The player has the option to observe the action in real time and detailed information is reported in a pop-up dialogue box. POA2 uses the huge amount of data available for each weapons system and ammunition type to determine if a hit was successful and what effect it had. The amount of time that elapses during both turns and pulses is variable and is set by the scenario author according the the scale of the scenario. Shortening or lengthening these settings is a trade-off between added realism and longer games where more player interaction is required.

Although it's obvious a lot of attention to detail went into planning and programming the various aspects of POA2, the same can't always be said of the quality assurance process. Some combat functions in POA2 simply did not work out of the box and the game has several serious bugs that are potential show stoppers. For starters, a bug prohibits helicopters from moving at all during gameplay. Worse, helicopters don't seem to be able to engage enemy units at all and are frequently shot down by enemy ADA as a result. Even more annoying is a bug that causes many passenger units to be unable to unload form their carrier unit. Infantry is frequently unable to dismount from APCs. How these bugs, along with several others, made it through beta testing is a mystery. There are bugs present in every piece of software, but these "show stopper" bugs really should have been caught in the initial stages of testing. HPS has been actively engaged in tracking down and correcting most of the smaller design flaws and bugs that were present in the game out of the box. The helicopter and movement issues have since been corrected with a patch and the game is generally a lot more stable than it was.

While we're on the subject of stability, it's fair to mention that POA2 had some other fairly significant issues. The location information pop-up box couldn't be minimized and tended to block about a third of the screen in the release version. The option to keep it on top of the main game window can be turned off, however, once this is done there is no option to get it back! The only way to get it back is to resize the main game window and drag it from underneath. This is another serious interface issue that should have been taken care of in the beta phase. Also, the help files that display detailed information for individual weapons systems are missing. Although not a bug, the scenario selection window is crude and not very user-friendly. Scenarios are simply listed by their file name, not the title of the scenario. The only way to get information about what battle a scenario covers is to click on each individual scenario. Furthermore, there is no way to sort scenarios by date, location, or time period. Almost all of these issues have now been corrected with the first patch and HPS promises further enhancements to the interface and game mechanics in the coming weeks.

On the subject of scenarios, some gamers may be surprised to find that POA2 only contains a total of eight scenarios, of which one is the tutorial. Strangely enough, none of these cover amphibious assaults, airborne landings, NBC warfare, or helicopter air assaults. All of these things are possible within the POA2 game engine and it seems strange that HPS chose not to include them. It would have been nice to see a greater variety of battles included. Scenario authors could have reversed engineered these scenarios and used them as examples for creating their own battles. Although the user manual talks about a campaign mode, HPS has announced that this feature didn't make it into the release version of the game. All the included scenarios are stand alone battles which range from company to brigade-sized engagements.

Most military simulations don't break any new ground in the graphics arena and POA2 is no different. Having said that, the visual aspect of the game is acceptable and presents the player with enough options to satisfy most gamers. POA2 has the ability to use a standard military topographic map for an overall view the battlefield while zoomed out, but the game turns to a hex-based system at closer zooms. The simulation uses NATO symbology to display units on the map, with blue being friendly and red representing enemy forces. The combination works well, but one element that is conspicuously absent are operational graphics. Real world military operations are planned around phase lines, assembly areas, and unit boundaries, however, POA2 does not include a system for displaying these. The system really needs something similar to what Decisive Action has, and HPS has hinted that they are looking into adding this capability with a future patch.

Sound is pretty straight forward in POA2. The sounds are limited to a few explosions and machine-gun sounds, but they get the job done. Except for aircraft, there are no sounds for unit movement. My only complaint here is that it would have been a nice option to allow the player to toggle some "sounds of war" background effects to break up the monotony of hours of starring at the screen. No one needs music in a sim of this sort, but the echo of an occasional artillery round in the distance might have added a bit to the overall theme. This is a fairly minor complaint, however, as sounds don't play a major role in POA2.

Point of Attack 2 includes a full featured scenario editor utility which can be used to create any scenario the player wishes. Scenario creation is a multi-step process in which the player loads the map, selects all the force values, inputs the basic conditions under which the battle will be fought, then loads OOB information. Can scenario authors use POA2 to simulate any conflict they wish by using the various editors? Yes and no. POA2 was originally developed for the US Air Force and one of the stipulations of the military contract was that civilian owners of the software would not be able to edit or modify the existing weapons information.

The story behind the POA2 editor is somewhat complicated. According to HPS, the developer was supposed to limit civilian end-users from editing the database, but through a stroke of luck (either good or bad depending on your point of view) the game was released with a "bug" which allows users to edit at will. HPS immediately recognized the oversight and announced that a forthcoming patch would lock the database as was originally intended. This in turn provoked a firestorm of criticism from angry grognards who felt that locking the database was highly unfair. The issue would perhaps not have been as hotly debated as it was except for two key factors. First, the HPS webpage was not as clear as it could have been about which portions of the sim would be open to third party editing, and second, the equipment included with the game is limited primarily to Soviet and US designs. The lack of any European, Canadian, Israeli, Chinese, or Korean equipment sharply limits which conflicts the software can be used to simulate. Not a very happy state of affairs.

Since POA2 was first released, HPS appears to be aware of the situation and has promised to add a host of foreign equipment to the database as a free download. The UK order of battle has been added with the first patch along with several of the more common cargo aircraft. French, German, and Israeli databases are are either in development now or in the planning stage. The addition of the UK forces greatly adds to the overall value of the product and should help broaden the sim's appeal among wargamers. Releasing the additional weapons and nations as a free download, instead of charging for them, also does much to soften the blow of locking the weapons database. Considering the huge amount of detail involved in adding even a single weapons system or ammo type to the system, there is, of course, a lot of time and effort involved. Nevertheless, HPS seems committed to making POA2 a success.

Nearly every other aspect of scenario creation remains open to editing at the player's discretion. Scenario authors can add new nationalities to the system (as long as they use weapons system info supplied by HPS) and can edit national characteristics and force structure as they see fit. The OOB editor is also open to editing, and the existing scenario editor has enough options to keep even dedicated scenario authors occupied for a while. The system, however, is not without its shortcomings. For one thing there are some awkward limitations on how scenarios must be edited once created. HPS failed to include any sort of documentation at all on how the scenario editor works when the game shipped. Many aspects of the editor are not completely self-explanatory and no tutorials were included to show new scenario authors how to do things. HPS has announced they plan to rectify this situation as soon as possible by releasing a completely overhauled and much improved version of the editor. They have also promised a new section for the user manual covering scenario creation once the new editor is complete. Both of these will be available as free downloads according to the game's developer, Scott Hamilton.

One other thing that I should mention is that POA2 does not ship with a map editor included on the CD. Currently, the only utility that is capable of creating maps for POA2 is Aid De Camp 2, a general wargame utility available from HPS. HPS has offered ADC2 at a discount to owners of POA2, however, some players may grumble about having to purchase a map editor as a separate product. Is this a fair deal? That depends on how much interest you have in the system and whether or not you plan to do any scenario creation. For this author the answer is yes. At a combined price of $90, my own view is that POA2 has the potential to be a system with great detail and serious replay value. Considering even a single Advanced Squad Leader module usually retails for around $100, my own personal view is that the software is worth it. Some potential buyers may be more cost sensitive than others, so bear in mind Aid De Camp 2 is a separate purchase.

One other thing that potential buyers need to understand is that Aid De Camp 2 is used to create the "zoomed in" hex maps for POA2 as well as programming the elevation and terrain type data for the topographic maps. One thing ADC2 cannot do, however, is create topographic map images. If a scenario designer wants to include the cool topographic map images for his scenario, then he will have to import a suitable map image that can be used for that purpose. POA2 works best with 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 maps, and topographic maps of those scales can be difficult to get hold of for many areas of the world.

Point of Attack 2 was designed with PBEM in mind. Setting up a PBEM game is simple. The player simply selects the human vs. human option, then starts the scenario of his choice. After plotting all orders the player will be prompted to input a password if desired, then the scenario is saved and emailed to the opponent. After the opponent receives the scenario and makes his own moves the game will resolve all combat and movement for that phase, check LOS, and begin the next turn. One nifty feature that HPS included is the ability to send text messages along with the scenario which pop-up when the opponent begins his turn. This feature could come in handy in a variety of situations.

Although it would have been nice to see some type of live head-to-head multiplayer option built in to the POA2 engine, the nature of the game makes such a design unlikely. The computer takes a while in-between combat phases, so head-to-head play would likely become boring and very time intensive. PBEM play is almost always the most important aspect of multiplayer wargaming and POA2 handles that mode reasonably well.

I experienced no additional stability issues -- over those already noted -- during PBEM. The system is simple and works well.

Point of Attack 2 is an ambitious title to say the least. Does it accomplish everything it sets out to do? No, not in it's current form. From my own vantage point it seems obvious that such a complex simulation should have undergone a more rigorous beta testing phase prior to release and HPS has done a good job recognizing this and responding to customer feedback. Some of the bugs present in the initial POA2 crippled important aspects of the game. For the most part, these were easy fixes for HPS to sort out and patch, but others required some time and effort to root out. With the addition of the first patch and the UK forces, POA2 is now a much better product than it was out of the box.

I found POA2 to be one of the most interesting games I have tested in some time. The software attempts to raise the bar in several of the deeper aspects of PC wargaming, which is an important goal to many wargamers, myself included. I'm willing to forgive many of POA2's teething problems because I see a system underneath that has great potential and the developer has responded in a very positive fashion to suggestions from around the community. With the release of the first patch, POA2 is now a much more stable platform and most of the bugs and smaller design issues have been ironed out. Gamers who don't have much patience should take their time and look very closely at POA2 before making a decision to buy.