Please find below a list of sources I used researching and balancing the Able Archer Cold War Scenario.
By no means does this list claim to be complete or contain all material, and I am hard pressed to get on with work, so I will use this rather like a repository - dropping in what I got while I have some free minutes.
If you are interested in the background of the cold war and Able Archer specifically, please check out the following link for a good documentary on the topic:
Documentary ABLE ARCHER 83 https://youtu.be/7ciy5R-tLiE
*TLDW: In 1983 the world nearly ended because of a year full of bad events, a nuclear war exercise held by NATO and Soviet paranoia resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy and vicious cycle of mounting tension.
When we set out to create a scenario about the Cold War going hot in the mid 80's it was immediately clear to everyone involved, that we would approach it from a very different angle then our regular game maps.
While "sandbox" type gameplay makes total sense and is a lot of fun in open PVP strategy games, the challenge of re-creating a specific time and feeling of an actual or imagined conflict made it necessary to deviate from our regular way of working.
Being a cold-war kid myself, and having grown up with marching soldiers, helicopters and armored vehicles during REFORGER for most of my childhood, there has always been a macabre fascination with the question of "What would have happened, if...?"
A 1980's NATO vs PACT World War 3 has over the years remained one of the most frightening yet tantalizing hypothetical military encounters, conjured up time and again in movies, books and games.
With CON being a multiplayer war-game and not a military simulation, it was clear to me that while creating the balancing we would need to focus on retaining the balance and setting of the conflict, while translating and converting the hard military data.
Our aim over the last weeks has thus been to create a working and fun asymmetry of economies and forces, which is so typical for this time period while retaining maximum replayability and unpredictability.
In the end only time and our players will tell, if our aim has worked out. If not, we will adjust and modify until it has.
As usual there are many things to consider while sifting historical material, such as contradicting numbers and missing information. In essence the ingame balancing is an amalgamation of documents and statistics spanning the 1980s.
Some documents refer to military intelligence from the late 70s while others where compiled at the end of the cold war, after the fall of the iron curtain in 1990.
The first task was to identify the economical strength of nations during the time period of the mid 80's - made more complicated by to the fact that the communist Warsaw Pact nations did not publish their GDP figures.
Once I had all the data and found a way to translate them meaningfully into the game (while retaining a semblance of balance and play-ability) I continued by adjusting the map to represent the new setup.
The next step now was to define the staging areas, bases, and defensive perimeters along the Iron Curtain and again adjusting the map.
After this I looked specifically at the historical level of military equipment and level of technology in use for each nation - and you will be surprised at how sophisticated the Soviet forces actually were...
Once this was in place, I started digging really deep into the NATO documents - creating a first "balance of power" sheet, essentially comparing both forces with each other and defining a force factor for most major unit classes and areas.
Then I dug even deeper and started compiling and reading specific ORBAT's for each nation for the late cold war period. ORBAT's are Orders of Battle, essentially listing all units, personnel and equipment of a force in time and place.
Obviously these again had to be converted to our game system, preventing pile up and crazy numbers while retaining a convincing and fun force composition.
The main challenge was to create detailed charts for every nation on the map, converting real life equipment and manpower to something we could use in the game.
While going through the material it immediately struck me, how different some of the sources I used, were quoting their numbers. This is explicable from a historical perspective but once again shows how careful the term "reality" must be handled when dealing with previously top secret military material. A large part in the noticed differences surely is due to each faction's agenda - both NATO as well Warsaw Pact had strong interests at either downplaying or over exaggerating certain aspects and threats for their own benefits. Never simply treat one number as the "truth" when actually there are several others contesting it for a very good reason.
For example it is of course true that the US had many more carriers than the 3 depicted at the start of this scenario, but I essentially halved the available carriers for all nations - to not let this become another Midway.
The actual force of carriers used in the Atlantic was somewhere in the range of 6-8 usually - depending on their status and world events. Often these ships would undergo lengthy repairs and upgrading, meaning that these units in game terms wold not be present or simply represent any newly built ship, created by the player.
In most cases I also took the freedom to convert Divisions to Battalions - as our game has a very vague military sizing system and doesn't simulate true military force composition as would be expected from a complex game such as Gary Grigsby's War in the East, just to name an extremely detailed example. Just like with all other conversion and adjustments the devil lay in the detail and there was no applicable "all-fomula". More important to me was the overall balance and feel of the game, while ensuring the correct overall force balance and feel.
Setting up the units was the next big task, requiring me to hand drop every unit onto the map, due to the specific national differences and necessary stacking composition for larger divisions. In general it can be noted that air units are less prominent as in most free CON games, rather emphasizing a varied unit-mix. This also helps create the unique feeling for the setting.
//G
By no means does this list claim to be complete or contain all material, and I am hard pressed to get on with work, so I will use this rather like a repository - dropping in what I got while I have some free minutes.
If you are interested in the background of the cold war and Able Archer specifically, please check out the following link for a good documentary on the topic:
Documentary ABLE ARCHER 83 https://youtu.be/7ciy5R-tLiE
*TLDW: In 1983 the world nearly ended because of a year full of bad events, a nuclear war exercise held by NATO and Soviet paranoia resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy and vicious cycle of mounting tension.
When we set out to create a scenario about the Cold War going hot in the mid 80's it was immediately clear to everyone involved, that we would approach it from a very different angle then our regular game maps.
While "sandbox" type gameplay makes total sense and is a lot of fun in open PVP strategy games, the challenge of re-creating a specific time and feeling of an actual or imagined conflict made it necessary to deviate from our regular way of working.
Being a cold-war kid myself, and having grown up with marching soldiers, helicopters and armored vehicles during REFORGER for most of my childhood, there has always been a macabre fascination with the question of "What would have happened, if...?"
A 1980's NATO vs PACT World War 3 has over the years remained one of the most frightening yet tantalizing hypothetical military encounters, conjured up time and again in movies, books and games.
With CON being a multiplayer war-game and not a military simulation, it was clear to me that while creating the balancing we would need to focus on retaining the balance and setting of the conflict, while translating and converting the hard military data.
Our aim over the last weeks has thus been to create a working and fun asymmetry of economies and forces, which is so typical for this time period while retaining maximum replayability and unpredictability.
In the end only time and our players will tell, if our aim has worked out. If not, we will adjust and modify until it has.
As usual there are many things to consider while sifting historical material, such as contradicting numbers and missing information. In essence the ingame balancing is an amalgamation of documents and statistics spanning the 1980s.
Some documents refer to military intelligence from the late 70s while others where compiled at the end of the cold war, after the fall of the iron curtain in 1990.
The first task was to identify the economical strength of nations during the time period of the mid 80's - made more complicated by to the fact that the communist Warsaw Pact nations did not publish their GDP figures.
Once I had all the data and found a way to translate them meaningfully into the game (while retaining a semblance of balance and play-ability) I continued by adjusting the map to represent the new setup.
The next step now was to define the staging areas, bases, and defensive perimeters along the Iron Curtain and again adjusting the map.
After this I looked specifically at the historical level of military equipment and level of technology in use for each nation - and you will be surprised at how sophisticated the Soviet forces actually were...
Once this was in place, I started digging really deep into the NATO documents - creating a first "balance of power" sheet, essentially comparing both forces with each other and defining a force factor for most major unit classes and areas.
Then I dug even deeper and started compiling and reading specific ORBAT's for each nation for the late cold war period. ORBAT's are Orders of Battle, essentially listing all units, personnel and equipment of a force in time and place.
Obviously these again had to be converted to our game system, preventing pile up and crazy numbers while retaining a convincing and fun force composition.
- ORBATs look like this: http://coldwardecoded.blogspot.com.mt/2013/07/natos-northern-army-group-wartime-order.html
- Statistical Data for Army Sizes in 1985 (and today) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.TOTL.P1
- The Soviet/Warsaw Pact Ground Forces Threat to Europe https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1987/8718/871806.PDF
- Force Comparison NATO vs PACT https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_138256.htm and http://archives.nato.int/nato-and-warsaw-pact-force-comparisons;isad
- Obviously Wikipedia was a constant help in all of this as well as Military Factory: https://www.militaryfactory.com/
- And then there is global security with some really good info https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/syria/army.htm
- The IISS and its annual assessment of global military capabilities and defence economics https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/military-s-balance
- Also important info and source of real unit details: The Statesman’s Year-Book 84-85 by J. Paxton
- ... and many many other sites and info I didn't list or simply have forgotten
The main challenge was to create detailed charts for every nation on the map, converting real life equipment and manpower to something we could use in the game.
While going through the material it immediately struck me, how different some of the sources I used, were quoting their numbers. This is explicable from a historical perspective but once again shows how careful the term "reality" must be handled when dealing with previously top secret military material. A large part in the noticed differences surely is due to each faction's agenda - both NATO as well Warsaw Pact had strong interests at either downplaying or over exaggerating certain aspects and threats for their own benefits. Never simply treat one number as the "truth" when actually there are several others contesting it for a very good reason.
For example it is of course true that the US had many more carriers than the 3 depicted at the start of this scenario, but I essentially halved the available carriers for all nations - to not let this become another Midway.
The actual force of carriers used in the Atlantic was somewhere in the range of 6-8 usually - depending on their status and world events. Often these ships would undergo lengthy repairs and upgrading, meaning that these units in game terms wold not be present or simply represent any newly built ship, created by the player.
In most cases I also took the freedom to convert Divisions to Battalions - as our game has a very vague military sizing system and doesn't simulate true military force composition as would be expected from a complex game such as Gary Grigsby's War in the East, just to name an extremely detailed example. Just like with all other conversion and adjustments the devil lay in the detail and there was no applicable "all-fomula". More important to me was the overall balance and feel of the game, while ensuring the correct overall force balance and feel.
Setting up the units was the next big task, requiring me to hand drop every unit onto the map, due to the specific national differences and necessary stacking composition for larger divisions. In general it can be noted that air units are less prominent as in most free CON games, rather emphasizing a varied unit-mix. This also helps create the unique feeling for the setting.
//G
"Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion." Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
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