Implicit Orders, and ROE

[Sockeye]

I wanted to get some feedback on this little situation I was playing through tonight in Harpoon: ANW. Just a simple scenario, but after successfully blockading North Korea once again, the Good Guys got an ROE Violation at endgame due to an apparent mistake on my part when interpreting orders. So….

Orders [verbatim]: “You are to prevent access to or from North Korea by any transport vessels. You are not to engage Chinese units unless you are engaged by them. Preserve your force; losses of any kind are unacceptable in the current political climate.”

After successfully identifying all comers, I dispatched what North Korean sea trucks there were, plus diminished the ranks of their small antique missile-boat squadron, and as a perk, Tomahawked the hangars at Nampo to get pesky MiG-21s off the backs of my team. Throughout my rampage of wanton destruction, I took care to leave the Chinese and neutral vessels alone after fly-overs by my Seahawks.

At some point though, I found that one of those neutral ships had slipped into Nampo harbor. I took her to be docking, and was fully aware that she was neutral, but when the orders tell me to stop “any transport vessels” on course for North Korea, I take that to mean neutral shipping as well—Harpoon’s away! After that, two other neutral vessels were peacefully talked out of heading for Nampo.

So, other than the international headlines having a field day, was I in the wrong with that shot? Was I an overzealous capitalist pirate, simply causing some collateral damage while saving the Free World from another of Kim’s diabolical schemes, or simply saving him the embarrassment of such a scheme ultimately going nowhere?

You tell me!

[Raptor1]

Of course you are an oppressive imperialist pirate, how dare you disrupt the shipping of the great leader?!

[Herman]

I believe that you are at fault for the ROE transgression.

You had a really nice command-level crisis. Often, scenario designers use such stringent ViCond as a technique to "rein in" over-zealous commanders like yourself.

By having tough ViConds, he can often prevent a player from indiscriminate destruction and it is a good limitation on the firepower of a particularly powerful side. As you can see, the USN can quite easily devastate the DPRK by itself. The restrictive ViCond was probably used to create such a situation and force you into a command crisis.

So, how about a game of ANW head-to-head, sometime?

[Sockeye]

Yeah, I thought that there was just enough ambiguity in the word "any" to make the scenario interesting at that point; otherwise, I was just practicing putting names to blips. If really faced with this situation, I probably would have placed a Collect call to CINCPAC to get some clarification, but nobody likes indecision, right? Anyways, 20/20 hindsight.

I'd probably be up for some head-to-head in the near future, but it'll be a bit before I can give you a run for your money

I got ANW sometime last year for a change of pace, but had to redeploy to the littorals off the Real Life coast soon after, so I'm only now really devoting time to the program. Currently I'm working my way through the "Papa and Son" battleset to bridge the gap between the tutorials and taking on the entire Soviet fleet. The learning curve for me seems to be finding the right balance of computer- and manual-control over my OOB. Too much of either, and I'm steamin' for a reamin'!

It's definitely interesting putting together everything studied individually over the years

[Herman]

If you are using that battleset, I recommend that you use the PlayersDB version of it so that you will have the least number of potential problems.

Harpoon ANW users can get the:
Complete Harpoon ANW Library

I'm in Edmonton (GMT -7) and can play any time. Just send me a time and place and we can have a game. Introductory-level games take as little as 40 mins to get in and out.

Welcome aboard, shipmate.