Once More, Into the Breach

Submitted by Eric Daniel

Well, Paradox Interactive has finally released their next installment of the HoI line, aptly titled Hearts of Iron 3.  For those of you who are not familiar with the line, HoI3 is a real time based grand strategy game centered on the Second World War (1936 - 1948.)  In HoI3 you can play one of more than 150 nations (be Finland, I double dog dare you) and you are personally responsible for all aspects of nation management, to include economic and industrial policy, military readiness, technology research and development, and politics and diplomacy.

If you’ve never played a game like this, let me warn you up front - This is not a simple game.  While not complex to understand (a market economy, after all is just buying and selling stuff, right?), nor difficult to play, this game put the grand in grand strategy, and spelled strategy with a capitol “S”.  The decisions you make in 1936 will determine your success or failure in 1943.

Victory conditions are relatively simple and the same as the two previous games in the line; amass victory points.  The world is divided into provinces, some of which have a numerical victory point value assigned to them.  Political factions (there are three main ones in the game - The Axis, Allies, and the Comintern) accumulate VPs by occupying these provinces and at the end of the game, which ever faction has the most VPs wins.  Of course, if you want to set your own victory conditions, like survive until 1945 as a free and independent Finland, you can do that too; the game does not require you to play by “its” rules.
For the veteran HoI player, there have been a number of changes introduced, while some familiar item effects have been modified and function differently.

First, and most notably, the world got bigger.  In HoI2 there were about 2,600 land and sea provinces for you to maneuver your forces on.  Now there are about 14,000.  What paradox essentially did was take the existing provinces, and subdivide them into additional areas to give you more tactical flexibility in maneuvering your units.

Second, diplomacy has been expanded, both in its scope and how it is enacted, and politics (internal diplomacy if you will) was added.  Now, instead of a numbers based display of how various countries are aligned politically, you see nations on a triangular shaped graph (with each point on the triangle representing one of the three game factions), with each nation represented as a circular icon.  The closer a country is to you politically, the closer its icon will be to yours on the graph.  In addition, a new element had been added to diplomacy - espionage.  Now, in HoI3, you can generate spies which will go out and perform any number of a dozen or so different functions, from stirring up trouble in opposing countries to realigning the political landscape in your own country to offing your opponent’s researchers.  Now, I have to admit, when I first opened up the diplomacy window and say the spies tag, I had Master of Orion 3 flashbacks.  Fortunately, you can let the AI (or your “viceroy” for another MOO3 reference) handle the spy program while you get on with the business of taking over the world.

Politics is new in HoI3 and is essentially an internal form of diplomacy.  As events occur in your country, the relative popularity of the various political factions in your country change, which can make specific ministers available.  As with diplomacy, you can take a direct hand in shaping your countries political landscape, in the form of modifying economic policy, education policy, military policy, and the like.
Another aspect of diplomacy that has changed is the application of historically relevant events, such as the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, and the Annexation of Czechoslovakia. Rather than occurring automatically, the event will appear in your diplomatic events queue, and once you meet all the requisite conditions, you can enable the event at any time.

Thirdly, technology development has undergone a “something old, something new” transformation.  Gone are the research teams of HoI2 (something which I sorely miss, as I felt they added a lot of historical flavor to the game.)  In there place you now have a generic research capability (much like you did in HoI1) where the amount of research you can conduct is based on the number of “leaders” (think of leaders as a subset of the manpower pool; you use leaders to conduct R&D, diplomacy, espionage, and fill the officer and NCO ranks of your units) you have available and dedicated to conducting research.  In addition, they have brought back a HoI1 style tech tree; rather than develop a single item, such as intermediate fighter, you now have the option of developing specific components, which allows you to customize the nature of the units you construct (which is something I’m glad they brought back.)  In addition, HoI3 uses a “historical” year modifier in the tech tree to curb unrealistic development, by imposing a severe research time penalty on technologies researched more than 3 years “ahead” of schedule.  What this means is that, while, as the German player for example, you might meet all the pre-requisites to begin early jet engine construction in 1938, since jet engine technology did not become available “historically” until 1943, you will be severely penalized if you begin research any earlier than 1940.

Fourth, unit construction, especially ground unit construction, got a lot more dynamic.  Before, in HoI2, you built ground units and had the option of attaching brigades to them.  Now, in HoI3, ground units are made up exclusively from brigades (between 1 and 5, per division, with about 20 different brigade types (depending on tech level) available), you just decide how many each division has, and what they are (this allows you to make units as big (and as expensive) as you want.

In addition, HQ units are now managed in a completely different way.  As before, leaders assigned to units have leadership traits and a skill level, and their rank determines how many units they can effectively lead in combat, but now, HQ units are created from that generic “leadership” pool you have available to perform R&D, espionage, and diplomacy, rather than as a manufacturing product.  Once formed, you can assign subordinate units to the HQ, following a “standard” military layout (divisions are assigned to corps, corps are assigned to armies, armies are assigned to army groups, army groups are assigned to theaters.)  This organization provides a number of advantages.  First, the leadership modifier applied by your HQ is applied to any subordinate unit engaged in combat that is within range (the range of your HQ units increases the further up the chain you go) and second, it makes it easy to grab specific units by simply selecting a HQ and highlighting it’s subordinate commands (for example, if you wanted to grab every division in First Army Group, all you’d have to do is select the 1ST AG HQ, and then select the subordinate armies; all the armies, corps and divisions subordinate to 1st AG would get selected and highlighted.)  This makes it very easy to manage broad front warfare like what you might find in Eurasia.

Amateurs discuss tactics; professionals discuss logistics

While combat remains largely unchanged from HoI2 (the game still takes into account weather, temperature, visibility, terrain and time of day) one of the things that has seen a significant increase in accuracy is supply management; go to war with inadequate supplies or a substandard supply line, and you’d better hope your troops brought lots of books to read.  Supply management is the most critical aspect of combat in HoI3.  Units out of supply will not move and will fight at a grave penalty.

Your ability to push supplies to the front is affected to some degree by technology, distance, and the weather, but the greatest influencing factor is the infrastructure of the provinces between your units and the supply depot.  The higher the infrastructure rating, the faster, and more efficiently supplies move.  This becomes especially relevant for those conducting seaborne invasions a la D-Day.  Fail to secure a port in the first 30 days of landing and your offensive will officially grind to a halt.  Moreover, gone are the days of building numerous port upgrades and keeping them in the production queue until you make landfall; HoI3 will only allow you to place one naval port upgrade in a province, provided the province doesn’t already have an existing facility.  Lastly, you can’t front load a province with supplies using the convoy system either; the game won’t allow you to ship more supplies to a port than the port can handle, so smaller ports means smaller convoys.  What all this means is, before you invade, do your homework; research your potential landing sites, the near by ports, and what their rating or capacity is.

In addition, I am told that Paradox also corrected a number of game play issues from HoI2.  For example, for those of you who remember playing Germany in HoI2, commerce raiding simply did not work; you could reduce England to zero convoy vessels and still they would plug along, happy as could be.  Well now, no convoys means no commerce, and now you really can starve England out.  AI aircraft must also follow the same flight restrictions as player aircraft do, specifically, they must fly the most direct route to their target, and if the target is out of range, they must rebase.  On a broader scale, Paradox basically leveled the playing field by making the AI adhere to the same gameplay rules and restrictions that the players must adhere to.

While the game itself doesn’t have any major faults, there are a number of things that are quirky and annoying about the UI.

For starters, you can’t “grab and drag” the map.  Your only options for moving around on the map are either click on a point on the small “macro” map down in the lower right hand corner of the screen, or move your mouse cursor to the map edge and wait for the map to scroll.  This will lead to lots and lots of overshoot as you scroll past the unit or province you’re looking for.

Another annoying effect is technology development.  As you complete research on a specific level of technology (light tank engines rank 3, for example) the computer will immediately launch into rank 4 without telling you, whether you wanted to initiate the research or not.  Now, on the flip side, research is never lost, so even if you do accidentally delve further into a piece of technology than you wanted too, you can shift the research to a different field without loosing the gains you made “accidentally.”  Perhaps the most annoying, however, and again this made me think of MOO3, is the lack of information provided to you in the production queue.  In HoI2, you could look at the units you were building in the production queue to determine what “level” (Type VII, or Type IX submarines for example) they were, and decide if it was worth it to continue producing those units, and upgrade them with more modern technology once they were built, or shut down the line altogether and start a new line of more advanced equipment.  In HoI3, unfortunately, all you see in the production queue is a line indicating that you are building a submarine of some type, the cost of that production, and how long till the next one is built.  Moreover, you can’t click on the item in the queue and get any sort of pop up window.  The only way to work around this is to physically write down what it was you started building and when you started construction, and then refer back to your notes as new weapon systems become available.

All in all though, I think the third version of Hearts of Iron is a definite improvement over the previous two.  With the expansion of the map you achieve a greater degree of tactical flexibility, the importance of supply defiantly makes playing island nations like the U.S. or Japan a challenge, and ability to make customized units allows you to more easily tailor your forces to mission specific needs.

Check out hearts of Iron 3 here.

If I Only Had a Brain...

Submitted by Eric Daniel, photo by Michael Yon

News flash folks – The Army has decided to review the suitability and utility of the “new” ACU camouflage pattern for the fighting in Afghanistan (This is old news to the folk in the SF community – They were granted an exemption a year ago to wear the old BDUs in place of the ACU in select theaters) and now they’re going to outfit two battalions with new camouflage uniforms.  But there’s nothing in the report that mentions correcting any of the more egregious faults with the construction of the ACU uniform itself.
 
While I was mulling over this tidbit, I came across an interesting photograph. It was a picture of some British soldiers returning from a patrol in Afghanistan.  What caught my eye was the number of “uniform violations” I saw.  Folks with their sleeves rolled up, some not wearing helmets, some with trousers bloused, some not, and the greatest infraction of them all, mixed uniforms!!  Can you believe it!!  There were soldiers, exposed to public scrutiny and ridicule, appearing in uniform items of different colors!!
 
Wow…. The irony of it all though is, I know there are folk out there saying exactly that, and I think this is where the Army is really going to miss the boat on this whole uniform redesign thing; the issue isn’t so much what color we make the uniform (though that is important), but just what exactly makes a combat uniform in the first place, and exactly how important “uniformity” (i.e. our fixation on wear and appearance) is in combat.
 
Firstly, let me say that I realize and fully endorse the idea that we need uniforms.  Besides helping to tell friend from foe, the Geneva Convention also requires it.  Secondly, I think Rumsfeld was right in that you fight with the army (or in this case the uniform) you have, not the one you want.  Thirdly, with that having been said, I think the Army needs to practice what it preaches regarding unit esprit de corps and readiness – a unit with high esprit de corps, cohesion, and morale will modify and personalize its equipment to meet individual and mission needs, which means taking the uniform you have and making it get the job done.
 
Why did those British soldiers look the way they did?  Because someone in their food chain used their brain and made some tactical decisions regarding “uniformity” and mission accomplishment.  The British don’t have a “one color works nowhere” uniform like we do; they have a green one and a tan one.  The problem is, they don’t operate in an area that’s uniformly green or tan, so in order to bust up their signature they mix the tops and bottoms.  I’m sure the decision to allow that was made at either the company or battalion (i.e. local) level, whereas for us (in the U.S. Army) such decisions are usually reserved for TRADOC. 
 
Why were their trousers unbloused?  Because it’s frikkin hot, that’s why.  I don’t know why the Army blouses its trousers (the story most commonly told is it originated with the paratroopers during WWII, who did it to provide additional storage space for things like socks and medical bandages) but in combat, blousing or not should be at the discretion of the soldier, for thermoregulatory purposes only.  If you’re hot, open em up and let some air in.  If it’s cold and windy, tie them off, but for God’s sake, let the soldier decide; calling back to Regiment to see if the wet bulb temperature warrants a unit-wide modification to the uniform is just silly (and for the record, I know there are some units out there that are actually combat minded and will make these decisions at the local level, I’ve just never served in one.)
 
The same applies to your sleeves.  Will the world come to a screeching halt, or will he become completely combat ineffective if Joe rolls his sleeves up a little to let some air in?  Or maybe he just wants to keep them out of his food, or out of the filth that he’s currently searching.  How many Americans have lost their lives from sleeve placement, and yet it is a “point of emphasis” in Army uniform regulation enforcement.
 
The U.S. Army is all about force protection, and that means you wear as much armor as you possibly can, always.  You never take your armor off (well except when you’re doing PT, because body armor isn’t part of the authorized PT uniform) and you most assuredly never appear in public without it.  When last I was in Iraq we had to go to Kuwait to pick up some equipment.  Division uniform policy at the time required that we would wear full kit when ever we were in theater, so while folk were wandering the PX in shorts, flip flops and Hawaiian shirts, there we were in 50 pounds of body armor looking like a bunch of wallies.  But we were safe!!  Yes, I understand that the warfare there is non-linear, and you can be attacked at any moment (for the record, our camp was rocketed almost daily yet in the year I was there we sustained no casualties) but you need to weigh the risk of hypothetical injury from a hypothetical attack with the real fatigue and discomfort caused by wearing all that crap all the time.  If Joe wants to shed his armor and dome of obedience inside the wire, let him.  Oh, if only the U.S. Army had the same faith in the decision making capabilities of its soldiers that it seems the MoD has in its.
 
Well, as long as we’re on the subject of the Army’s new combat uniform color, while I laude the Army for looking into a more effective camouflage pattern, a new color is only half the problem.  What we need is a uniform that was built with combat in mind, not power point presentations.
 
The velcro has got to go.  I don’t know what idi…individual came up with this idea, but it is the worst of the worst.  Velcro just has no place on a combat uniform.  As I understand it, the rational behind adopting the velcro for pocket closures and patch placement was to eliminate the issue of lost buttons, facilitate securing the sleeve cuffs, and to save soldiers a couple bucks when they PCS.  Well, paying $2/patch every 3 years when you PCS (to sew on a different unit patch) is a small price to pay when compared to buying an entire uniform (remember, you can’t mis-match uniforms of different “ages”, so if you’ve got a faded uniform top with worn velcro, you can’t just buy a new top) just to replace an ACU top that has had the velcro pile “patches” wear out.  Moreover, while I’ve never lost a sew on U.S. ARMY tape low crawling in BDUs I have lost them, as well as that all important full color American flag, crawling around in ACUs.  This becomes a real mission critical issue when uniform conscious leaders identify the discrepancy and render you NMC until you acquire a replacement (naturally, a squared away soldier carries a pack of replacement unit patches, rank, and name tapes for just such an emergency, but the point is, we didn’t used to have to.) 
 
Velcro is also noisy.  Now, I’ve not done any scientific acoustical analysis, nor do I have any data to evaluate how many friendly positions were given away by the noise created by opening a velcro pocket, but coming from a noise and light disciplined oriented organization, I absolutely cringe with terror at the phrase “prepare to copy” because the next thing you hear is a patrol base wide “RIIIIIP” as everyone rips open their pocket to get their notebook out.  The bottom line here is, is the noise created by opening velcro pockets a tactical liability?  I don’t know, but it sure as hell makes a lot more noise than buttons.
 
Speaking of buttons, velcro is a poor substitute for them.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but trying to peel that tiny velcro flap on the ACU chest pockets is a real pain, especially with gloves on.  The same applies to the sleeve pockets as well.  More often than not, if I want to access these pockets I need to use both hands; one to pull open the pocket, and the other to pull back on my uniform to compensate for the friction of the velcro (that is until the velcro wears out or packs with mud, whereupon the pockets won’t close at all.)  Better that we’d retained the buttons (and I would have made them larger, to be easier to manipulate with gloves on.)  Finally, it’s an easy enough thing to replace missing buttons in the field (yes, a squared away Joe carries a sewing kit with him) but it’s flat out imposable to replace worn, torn, or frayed velcro anywhere.
 
It’s a combat uniform, not a prom dress.  How a combat uniform looks is important, I believe, but only from a mission accomplishment perspective, not a social perspective.  Combat uniforms should have pockets, and those pockets should be large and capable of carrying large bulky items, even if they do make you look “poofy.”  The original issue BDUs had large pockets on the blouse and on the trouser thighs, and these pockets were equipped with expandable bellows sides (as well as drain holes) but as time went on, the pockets got smaller and thinner until you got to the point that folk were cutting off the pockets off all together and just sewing pocket faces back on.

When I first got to Iraq in 2004 many of us cut the bottom pockets off our DCU blouses and sewed them on to the bicep.  While this provided us with access to a large pocket that would have otherwise been unavailable (covered by our body armor) as a sharp eyed and uniformity conscious CSM pointed out, that modification was not only not authorized but it didn’t look professional, and looks are everything (go take a look at pictures of all those uniformly dressed paratroopersfrom WWII.  How such an undisciplined and unprofessional appearing fighting force such as this, which would go into combat with unauthorized uniform modifications, ever beat the Nazis is beyond me.)

While the ACU pockets aren’t that bad, they certainly don’t have the same utility as the original BDUs (with the old BDUs you could put a complete MRE in the pocket and close it up, you can’t do that with the ACUs).  For starters, the calf and bicep pockets are simply worthless.  The calf pocket is tiny and down by your boot, which means it’s exposed to possible immersion in water or mud, so whatever you put in there had better be water and shock-proof.  The bicep pocket is small (one of the reasons they made the pockets slanted was to make them easier to get your hand in.  It also helps if you actually make the pocket big enough to get your hand in in the first place.) and with all that velcro on it, it’s a pain in the ass to open.  In order for me to open that pocket I need to grip the cuff of the sleeve with the pocket I want to open, just to create enough resistance to get the pocket to open.) 

Does having large pockets mean you have to walk about 24/7 looking like a corn-fed chipmunk?  Of course not, but it sure as hell would be nice to have the capability if you needed it.  Moreover, I don’t think it would be such a bad idea to re-introduce the large bellows pockets on the bottom portion of the uniform blouse.  Yes, I know, we wear body armor now, so those pockets are covered up, but that armor also covers up the top pockets we retained, and again, I’d rather have them and not use them, than want them and not have them; that or increase the length of the blouse and make it more like a safari jacket, where the bottom pockets are below the body armor.
 
As mentioned previously, buttons are great for closing up pockets, and we should have never gotten rid of them.  In fact, we could probably have made the pocket ones a little larger to make them easier to use with gloves on (I remember seeing old pictures of 1980’s era Canadians.  They had huge single buttons on their pockets, which allowed them to manipulate them with mittens on.)  The same can be said with respect to the zipper they use on the ACU blouse now.  Yes, it makes it easy to get on and off, and this can be a boon to medical personnel trying to get access to a casualty’s wounds, but Joe is just plain screwed if the zipper breaks; he has to replace the entire top rather than sew on a new button.

One item for which I catch a lot of flack, is my belt, or lack thereof.  I don’t wear one.  In its place I wear suspenders, and by suspenders I mean the riveted in, six button type suspenders, not those willie foo foo ones you use with your wet weather pants at the wash rack.  Wearing suspenders is a habit I picked up as a wildland firefighter for the USFS.  Between cutting line, running a chainsaw, or being on a southern California hillside where the temperature of the water in my canteen is 108, I found suspenders to be a significant improvement over a belt.  Not only do they keep your pants up, but they don’t constrict the fabric at your waist, which allows for a good flow of air, and it allows debris which may have fallen down your shirt to fall through your trouser legs, which can prevent chafing or similar friction related injuries.  While I’m not saying that suspender use should be mandatory, it should be a viable option in any combat uniform we select, which means the buttons should be built in.

I am told they made the ACU baggier than the BDUs but I don’t recall ever tearing out the crotch on my BDUs while now I can’t go six months without tearing one out in the ACU.  Combat uniforms should be baggy, everywhere, not just in the legs.  Remember the old issue OD-green field pants with liner and parka?  Well those days are gone, and all you have now is your uniform and your Gortex, so your clothes have to be cut large enough to accommodate the additional layers you’re going to be wearing in the winter to keep warm on patrol.

So, while evaluating a new color for our combat uniform is all good and well, I wish the Army would also take the time to stop and think about functionality of the uniform it was slapping that color on.

Carmex, The Stick that Clicks

 

Submitted by Eric Daniel

While out on AT recently I made an interesting discovery.  Carmex brand lip balm.  Ok, granted, it wasn’t an honest to God real discovery - I’ve known about Carmex lip balm for ages (I have a bazillion of those jars all over the place) and I know that Carmex comes in squeeze tubes now, as well as the traditional stick.  But for years, while in the field, I’ve almost exclusively relied on either ChapStick brand lip balm, or the GI issue stuff the medics hand out when we go to the field. 

Now, the one issue I’ve always had with my ChapStick is that it always seems to unscrew in my pocket.  As you may or may not know, the lip balm is in a tube with a little wheel crank at the bottom of the tube.  You turn the wheel, which drives a threaded rod in the center of the tube, which pushes the lip balm up out of the tube, so you can use it.  Well, rolling around in my pocket always seems to crank that wheel in the proper direction to push the stick out (I wonder if the fellers in Australia have this problem), which means that I have to crank it back in every time I want to use it.  This isn’t a deal breaker or a therapy requiring issue, it’s just annoying to have to “reset” your ChapStick every time you want to use it.

Well, apparently, the folk over at Carmex must have been having the same problem I was, since on their tubed lip balm, the wheel at the bottom of the tube has a friction lock on it.  This lock (and I’ve no clue how it operates, except to say that you can hear it “click” as you crank the wheel) provides sufficient friction on that central rod that it won’t accidentally advance the stick in your pocket, which, all things considered, I thought was a good bit of attention to detail.

Now, if only I could police up all those little jars and get them converted to sticks.

Check out Carmex products here.