Scramble ramble #1

The day is barely six hours old and I’ve already experienced one “crippling defeat”. If November 5 continues in this fashion, I’ll be bankrupt by sun-up, homeless by lunchtime, and dead by nightfall.

While veteran combat flight simmers probably won’t regret purchasing Scramble: Battle of Britain, a new Early Access wargame from Slitherine, they may be taken aback by the competitiveness, maneuverability, and pace of some of the ‘crappier’ crates.

Although the brace of Bf 110s I was attempting to best this morning started with a positional advantage, and one of my two Spits perished in a (possibly) foreseeable collision, during the last few days I’ve had brushes with the twin-engined type on much leveler playing fields and still emerged the loser.

Do the devs need to think about nerfing their big Messerschmitts, or have decades of butchering Bf 110s in BoB flight sims simply given me unrealistic expectations? Ask me again in a week’s time, and I might have the answer.

Ignore minor gripes about suspiciously uncatchable Stukas, surprisingly agile Bf 110s, and exclusively briny backdrops, and ignore the elephant in the mess room that is missing Hurricanes, Heinkels, Dorniers, and Ju 88s, and Scramble and I are getting on famously.

It’s not often that I encounter a digital wargame that feels this fresh… this groundbreaking. Endeavouring to translate dogfights and intercepts into subtle tactical tests without the traditional crutches of hexagons/squares and distinct altitude levels, was a bold move. Throwing WeGo turn structuring into the mix at the same time, borders on the reckless. Yet Slitherine have, with the odd proviso, pulled it off with aplomb.

Scramble’s sky skirmishes are thrilling, unpredictable, spectacular, and (largely) believable.

I still find aiming somewhat tricky (Discovering the G key – this moves the camera to the end of your trajectory line – helped considerably with aligning attacks) and big scraps slightly overwhelming, but it’s not hard to envisage solutions to both of these problems.

Ideally, Scramble will exit Early Access with semi-independent wingmen as an option. In big furballs you won’t need to choreograph every single friendly flying machine on the screen. Players that wish to will be able to issue sim-style instructions to specific aircraft. ‘Cover me’, ‘Protect the Stukas’, ‘Attack my current target’… that sort of thing.

Judging by the current build’s skirmish generator and ‘Squadron Leader’ campaigns (In SL you manage a RAF squadron over 30 days of randomly generated action) the engine can only support engagements involving twelve or fewer aircraft. This doesn’t sound a lot, but when you consider you could end up plotting the manoeuvres of six of those aircraft more than seventy times during the course of a scrap, the need for commandable/resourceful comrades, should become apparent.

(to be continued)