Is there a truly Operational wargame out there??

[SgtRock]

WitP:AE  is not an Operational games it's grand tactical!!

[Bison]

I'm confused by the title.  Why use Operational when it's a Strategic game that you are looking to play?

[MengJiao]

I'm confused by the title.  Why use Operational when it's a Strategic game that you are looking to play?

  There may be an inherent ambiguity in a game that focuses on Operations.  If you look at planning the Operation then it must be roughly a strategic game.
If you focus on executing the Operation, then it might be an operational game.  I myself would prefer a game that was at the Operational/Grand Tactical interface -- more or less the level of an early to mid WWII army commander (Russian), Corps commander (German, American, British) or even Theater Commander (Army Group E in the BAlkans or MacArthur's early days in Australia) or Front (Russian) commander.

[jomni]

I've been eyeing World in Flames for some time now. It looks to be a real monster strategy game, with a monster price ($99). Anybody out there tried it? I haven't found a single review.

Once you start playing, it's not such a monster as the program enforces the rules and guides you step by step along the way.  It tells you what you can do for each phase.  There are forms to resolve combat and everything is explained.  Despite global scale, units are Corps to Army Group (some divisions).   Not many units to move around the map actually.

But there are so many decisions to make at each phase so that is the most daunting aspect of the game for me.  But not so different from HOI or WITP.  In fact this one is simpler than the titles mentioned.

[sandman2575]

I'm glad OJ'sDad brought up the Vicky 2 example, since the same battle planner in Hearts of Iron III is an element of what I would ideally want in a grand strategy game in which warfare is operational, that is, is organized according to operations. 

Taking HoI3 as an example.  How would I turn this into an operational war game?

In HoI3, as is the case in a lot of grand strategy games depicting modern warfare, you can wage war pretty much at will by shuffling units around the map in whatever ad hoc fashion you like.  What I mean is, declare war on an opponent, and the ensuing combat is pretty 'free form' -- move this division here, another division there.  The OOB hierarchy gives some semblance of actual operational structure -- armies subdivided into corps subdivided into divisions, and so forth -- that was missing in earlier HoI titles, which just had stacks of units.  But really, how HoI3 warfare unfolds is really a matter of the player's whim. There's nothing *inherently in the game* giving structure to -- or limiting in any way-- (A) what your objectives are, (B) the timeframe in which they need to be taken, (C) the forces devoted to taking the objectives, (D) the resources (fuel, supply) allocated to those forces -- you get the picture.  These are the kinds of considerations a general staff planning an offensive operation would have to account for (these and many, many more of course).

So, suppose, instead of just declaring war on an opponent and attacking pell mell, you first had to *plan an operation*.  And I mean had to -- there would be a mechanic in the game that forces you to.  You would have to draw up an operational plan, or maybe even multiple plans that address different contingencies.  Here something like the battle planner in HoI3 could be very useful.  The problem , though, is that the battle planner is pure eye candy.  It's very nice to look at, but it has absolutely no bearing on game play.  You can completely ignore it.  But what if there were a game where you couldn't ignore it -- where you had to plan operations, and once launched, your freedom to change things -- objectives, OOBs, etc -- would be severely limited?  Once committed to the operation, you have to see it out as best you can.  Launching an offensive operation on one front would have serious constraints on your ability to launch offensives on other fronts (since resources are limited).  THAT is a game I would love to play. 
     
The flow of time would still be conventional -- day by day turns, real time, what have you.  But what an operational game would do is give some meaning to time -- make it precious and urgent.  Obviously there are plenty of games -- War in the East etc -- that have scenarios in which you have to take objectives by a certain turn or lose the scenario.  What if something like that -- but more interesting and sophisticated -- were integrated in  the more open-ended grand campaigns of games like WitE, HoI3, etc.?

Hopefully what I'm trying to describe as an 'operational wargame' becomes a little clearer.  If folks have suggestions for games that sound like they're attempting something like this, I would love to hear them.