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BCT Commander

by Peter D. Pawelek

Article Type: Review
Article Date: May 02, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: BCT Commander
Category: Real-Time Battlefield Simulator
Developer: Patrick Proctor/PROSIM
Publisher: Shrapnel Games
Release Date: Released
Min. Spec: P133 or better; 16MB RAM; 30MB HD; Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
Files & Links: Click Here

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A Sim with Depth



BCT Commander Splash Screen

My first encounter with Cpt. Patrick Proctor’s Brigade Combat Team, a real-time brigade-level tactical combat simulator, was about two years ago when I tried a demo of the earlier release. After tinkering around with it for a grand total of ten minutes, I brusquely deleted the game from my system. I was discouraged by the primitive graphics, the non-intuitive game interface, and a general feeling that game was ‘user-hostile’ as opposed to user-friendly.

The dark ages.

So, it was with some trepidation that I took on the assignment of reviewing BCT Commander, the new release from PROSIM and Shrapnel Games which is essentially ‘BCT Gold’: the original game patched with a bunch of new features and improvements, the BCT Construction Kit, which allows users to edit their own scenarios, and BCT Expansion Sets 1 and 2, and an additional twelve scenarios not seen before.

I've discovered that BCT Commander does not lend itself well to a cursory glance. In fact, the game demands your undivided attention. My usual approach to trying out a new game is to just install the damn thing and play around with it. Usually the game is intuitive enough to be self-explanatory, and I'd be up and running in no time flat.

This approach doesn’t work with BCT Commander. Oh no. You must sit down with the manual and read it very, very carefully. Thankfully, Shrapnel provides a real, honest to God, 120-page printed manual with the game. Since BCT Commander requires careful study in order to master it, a printed manual is essential and I’m glad that Shrapnel realizes that fact. The manual is dense and informative and, fortunately, a pleasure to read. In fact, chapter 2 provides you with a very well written tutorial that will teach you the basics of the game in about a half hour. Just the basics, mind you. This is a game with so much depth that it has a tiny black hole at its centre.



A Simulator’s Simulator

To really appreciate BCT Commander, you have to understand its roots. It was designed by Capt. Patrick Proctor who has worked intimately with Janus, the U.S. Army’s major brigade-level tactical simulator. Janus, which is notoriously intimidating and complex, runs on mainframes and requires highly trained people to operate it. But it provides a painstakingly detailed real-time simulation of a modern combat environment and handles just about every factor that may affect that environment. Proctor, inspired to produce a faithful re-creation of Janus that is able to run on a home PC, single-handedly designed and developed Brigade Combat Team after two years of hard work. People who have seen Janus indeed agree that BCT provides a remarkably similar gaming experience.

Once you wrap your head around the idea that BCT is not so much a simulation of modern combat as it is a simulation of a high-fidelity modern combat simulator, things start to make sense. The bad things, like the primitive graphics and awkward interface, are intentionally Janus-like. But so are the good things: highly detailed contour maps with multiple zoom levels substitute for hexgrids, a real-time combat environment realistically simulates events as they would happen on the battlefield, and it boasts detailed modelling of just about every hard factor contributing to the outcome of a particular combat event using MILES (Multiple Integrated Engagement Laser System) data parameters.

As a supplement to the excellent manual, the CD contains a PDF copy of the 340-page army field manual FM-101-5-1, which explains real-world military operational terms and graphics symbology that BCT faithfully uses. Reading over this manual will really enhance your BCT gameplay experience, and it’s clear that it was not included on the CD as mere added filler.



Interface

Once you accept the peculiarities of the interface, which is unforgivingly modal, it becomes a very powerful tool for organizing and commanding your units. What do I mean by ‘modal’? Well, let’s say that you want to put some of your tank elements in defilade (i.e., you want them to find terrain features that they can hide in to make them less visible and harder to hit). To do this, you’d select the option ‘Defilade’ from the main menu. A little check mark appears beside the word ‘Defilade’ in the menu. Now, every time you click on a unit on the map it will go into defilade formation until you go back into the menu and remove that little check mark. This takes some getting used to and if you’re absent minded (like I am), you’re going to initially spend a lot of time figuring out that you’re in a mode and selecting units to do things that you really didn’t want them to do.

The improved look of BCT:Commander.

Things start to become second nature after a bit of practice, though. The interface will allow you to group ad hoc task forces on the fly. Select a bunch of units on the map by shift-clicking them or dragging a box around them, and then assign a hot key number to that formation and you have an instant task force. Then you can start assigning sophisticated movement and order sequences to this group by specifying an order and then simply pressing your assigned number for the task force.

Although it is intimidating, the interface is actually very well designed. There are usually three ways by which you can perform the same task; many menu options are replicated as toolbar buttons, and some are available as speed-menu options which can be called up by right-clicking on one of your units on the map.



Graphics

This is where BCT has drawn a lot of criticism. The graphics are very sparse. Things have improved, however, from the original release of BCT. As opposed to an all-black background, BCT Commander has a colored map which is much easier on the eyes. Also, this updated release uses NATO symbology to represent the on-map units as opposed to cartoony unit silhouettes (although you can revert back to the original style silhouettes as a game option). Terrain features are not common on most maps in BCT Commander and most combat will take place on open ground. Some terrain, however, has been introduced since the original release, including forests and urban areas which impact on units’ visibility and fire effects.

Scenario deployment.

The game maps, which can be hundreds of square kilometers in area, represent real-world terrain and have been developed from 1 degree USGS DEM maps. This means that when you see a hill on a BCT map, it exists in the real world somewhere. Terrain is represented as simple contour lines. It takes a while to get an appreciation of how these contour lines represent elevations (although a digital readout of terrain elevation at the mouse cursor is always given on the status bar at the bottom of the screen). These maps could benefit from using color gradations as a visual cue for elevation changes.

Superimposed on the maps are functional graphics that reflect modern military symbology. These include maneuver lines, phase lines, enemy SITTEMPs (Situation Templates), man-made obstacles, fortifications, and minefields. These functional graphics can be toggled on and off according to your preference of how cluttered you want your game maps to be. In addition, a 1x1 km grid can be superimposed on the game map to help with range calculations.

The most effective graphical tool in the game is the LOS fan. This can be invoked for any position on the map. When you activate the LOS fan, it will show you radiating yellow lines that indicate what positions are visible from that particular location. This is an extremely useful tool to be used in conjunction with plotting movement and finding defilade positions. This is the best implementation of an LOS tool that I’ve seen in any computer wargame.

The innovative LOS fan.

Gameplay

After you’ve gone through the tutorial and have played a few scenarios, gameplay is incredibly smooth. The game is real time, where one second of game time accurately represents one second of real time. You can play with the clock: either stop it whenever you desire, or use it to compress time up to 1 second of real time equalling 8 seconds of game time. You will find yourself stopping the clock very frequently to adjust your units’ orders to the developing combat situation (and things can start happening very quickly).

Situational awareness is limited to spot reports. You can call up a Spot Report log which lists that last couple dozen incidents that your units have been involved in, or you can zoom the map to the most recent Spot Report. These reports are quite terse (e.g., ‘Unit XX X has fired on enemy unit YYY with a .50 cal MG’), and although it might impinge on the ‘fog of war’ aspect, I would appreciate (even as an option) to see more information available to the player during the game. You’ll find yourself using the Spot Reports and unit info boxes to assemble an overall intelligence picture of the battlefield. Unfortunately, there are no in-game tools to track these Spot Reports over time (perhaps the equivalent of putting little flags on a battle map, for instance) which would aid immensely in predicting enemy actions.

For battles on this scale, timing is everything and BCT Commander provides you with the tools to accurately synchronize your forces movements. Routes can be plotted for each unit (either while the clock is stopped or while it’s running), and waypoints (or ‘nodes’ as they’re referred to in the game) can be designated as either ‘stop’ or ‘go’. This allows for finer control over the synchronization of your force's movements. This system is quite elegant, but not as sophisticated as the one implemented in the tactical map of Steel Beasts, where you can program a wider array of actions at a given waypoint. To avoid the tedium of individually plotting routes for each unit, you can copy and paste routes from one unit to another (or from one unit to one of your dynamically-assigned task forces). Furthermore, task forces can be plotted to follow a unit ‘in line’ which allows for column formation movement.

Plotting movement routes.

Combat occurs automatically when units come within range of an enemy. However, you do have control over the SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) of each unit and can specify engagement parameters such as fields of fire, whether to hold fire or engage at will, or whether to find a defilade position when coming under fire. A number of good sound effects will cue you as to when combat is occurring. Once again, the outcome of a combat is limited to terse Spot Reports and I would like to see more detailed information available to the player.

In addition to direct fire from your armored and infantry units, the game provides a very detailed treatment of indirect artillery fire support. Artillery units are controlled through fire orders and fire missions. Fire orders specify which of a wide array of ammunition will be used (conventional HE, rocket-assisted HE, DPICM and BBDPICM bomblets, FASCAM (mines), smoke, illumination, white phosphorous, chemical (if OPFOR), and nuclear), the sheaf (or footprint), number of rounds fired, and priority. Fire missions physically plot the location of where the artillery rounds will hit, and these can be synchronized through a sophisticated Time On Target mechanism. In addition to artillery, you can call in air support (either rotary or fixed-wing) if available.

Planning a fire mission.

In addition to synchronizing your force movements and artillery strikes, it is essential to synchronize the breaching of your enemy’s defences in order to stage an effective attack solution. Usually you will have access to a wide number of different types of breaching units, from tanks with plows to engineers. Each breaching unit is specialized to clear a particular type of obstacle. Obstacles include minefields, tank ditches and wire and can either be deployed at the beginning of the scenario, or placed dynamically during the game (e.g., laying minefields with FASCAM artillery).



Multiplayer

BCT Commander can be played head-to-head with another player over a number of different types of connection: direct TCP/IP, modem, and LAN. The server or host chooses the scenario and sets up the initial game parameters. In-game, both players can negotiate whether or not time compression is to be used, although either player can stop the clock at any time.

My one experience with multiplayer was a quick game of the DVATTK tutorial scenario over a TCP/IP Internet connection. Once my opponent and I got through some initial difficulties, the connection was quite smooth and the game played nicely with no noticeable lag.

It was clear, however, that in the heat of battle with another player the clumsiness of the interface makes it difficult to change orders on the fly. In multiplayer, it's essential that both players be patient enough to have the clocked stopped frequently to revise unit orders since it's very difficult to do this while the clock is running.



Scenarios

With the inclusion of the two expansion sets and additional scenarios, BCT Commander ships with over fifty scenarios in total. These scenarios range from hypothetical engagements that a recruit might encounter at the National Training Center (NTC) to actual historical battles like the Israeli defence of the Golan Heights during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Since BCT Commander shipped after Sept. 11, there are also scenarios set in Afghanistan representing typical engagements that may be taking place during Operation Enduring Freedom.

A typical scenario OPORD.

Scenario Editor

BCT Commander comes with a full-blown scenario editor that was initially sold seperately as the 'BCT Construction Kit'. You can edit just about every aspect of a scenario including the OPORD, OOB, phase lines, deployment of mines and other obstacles, etc. The only thing you can't do is to create your own map. As mentioned earlier, BCT Commander uses 1-degree USGS DEM maps, but they've been converted into a proprietary format. A utility to convert real-world DEM files into BCT *.map files would be a very useful addition for scenario designers.

Scenario editor.

Conclusion

The modern battlefield is a very fast-moving place where timing is everything. BCT Commander excels in giving you all the tools necessary to effectively synchronize your assets with the goal of defeating your enemy. Once you've mastered the game system, which has a steep learning curve, you can appreciate how Cpt. Proctor has managed to create a very fluid and flexible gameplay system that at the same time retains the high fidelity of a true military simulator. BCT Commander is an excellent product, and I highly recommend it to those who are willing to commit the time and effort necessary to enjoy a very deep and rich simulation of modern combat.




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