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First Look: Rowan’s Battle of Britain
by Bob "Groucho" Marks
A Stuka engaging in channel harassment.
The flight model (FM) is very challenging. I have actually heard it described as "over-modeled", a contention I disagree with. Flying these aircraft to edge of their performance envelopes without actually crossing that dashed line on the performance graph (the very essence of dog fighting, in my opinion) is half of the fun---maybe even five-eighths. The end result of BoB’s approach to flight modeling is not anywhere near as "organic" or "natural" feeling as the model presented in Il-2 Sturmovik, for example, but it has a certain suspension-of-disbelief charm to it. Once again, veterans of Mig Alley will recognize elements of the F-51 FM in BoB. Depending on the airframe you are flying, when the difficulty is cranked to "hurt me" levels, each flyable aircraft exhibits unique advantages that must be exploited and weaknesses that must likewise be minimized. The carbureted engines of the early Spitfires and Hurricanes starve for fuel and sputter when pushed over into negative Gs, but are able to handily out-turn the fast, fuel-injected Messerschmitts.
The Me-110 in BoB lives up to its real-world, and somewhat dubious, distinction of being a fighter in need of its own escort: under most circumstances, it has the turn radius of a freight train. Vicious accelerated stalls, secondary spins, and airframe failures are swift, violent, and something to be truly reckoned with while dog fighting. Besides these flyable fighters, the famous yet vulnerable Ju-87 Stuka is available as a flyable aircraft. Should you choose to be bit more passive in the air, you can fly as a gunner, in your choice of positions, in the Ju-88, He-111, and Do-17 airframes. This can be more than a little nerve-wracking. I for one dislike leaving my fate in the hands of an AI pilot. The task of shooting marauding fighters, without your AI pilot being able to maneuver within the tightly-massed bomber formation, sports a challenge all its own.
The campaign screen
Scramble!
The "Hot Shots" missions are great for a quickie, but the heart of BoB lies in the campaign. Again, MiG Alley vets will feel comfy here, though the newer sim's campaign is much more detailed and complex. Since only those two desperate months in the late summer of 1940 are modeled (that’s eight weeks, give or take) the level of almost anal-retentive resolution available is intense. You'll have to take judicious care to manage your pilot and aircraft resources. If micro-management is not your style, you can choose to automate some of the more tedious functions.
With the option of playing either the British or German commander or pilot, one can play either using the given information or by using a historical perspective. What if the Luftwaffe sustained their attacks on military targets---radar sites, war production, and airfields--- rather than diverting precious resources to the terror bombing of London? With BoB you can accelerate the Volkswagen buyout of Rolls Royce by almost sixty years. OK, so it’ll be more of a hostile takeover, but you get the idea.
The campaign is broken into four phases:
- The coastal shipping harassment by Luftwaffe forces,
- The military target strikes on England,
- The Blitz,
- The Final Showdown.
You can play from the initial tangles over the channel which, if memory serves, was a ploy to draw the RAF out, or any of the other phases. Chatter and voice briefings fill the air as you study the campaign map. Again, even in the map mode, scalability is evident in that the map can be set to display either circa 1940 symbology or the more intuitive, modern symbols. Intelligence, reports, and more are quick to clutter your war map as you drill down as deep as you see fit---once again, like MiG Alley, only more so.
In my mind, the coolest thing about the BoB campaign is the ability to preset "triggers" to alert you "there’s some action here, old boy, would you like to join us?" With the ability to designate a favorite squadron (or not) and what events to cue a message (takeoff, cruise to target, first contact, engagement, whatever), the commander has the ability to run the war yet jump in and smite a few Jerries, eh wot?
Did I finish a campaign? No. Granted, this is a very early yet complete version of BoB, but it was very unstable. Instability is to be expected at this stage of development, but the notoriously squirrelly MiG Alley campaign has been out for quite some time without a satisfactory patch. While far too early in the game to raise much concern, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. With the added complexity of BoB’s campaign, one hopes the Quality Assurance folk at Rowan are extra vigilant.
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