Q is for Quick fag card. I can’t look at card no.33 in Wills’ 1935 set ‘The Reign of H. M. King George V’ without thinking of a bizarre murder that occurred in Essex during WW2. At 1.45 on the afternoon of 23 July 1943, a sound like a thunder-clap rattled windows in the sleepy village of Rayleigh. The noise was generated by a Hawkins anti-tank grenade detonating beneath the seat of a bath chair occupied by disabled WW1 veteran Archibald Brown. As this excellent account of the Bath Chair Murder explains, the device had been put there by a desperate son determined to rid his family of an abusive father.

R is for Rocky separation

It sounds like Panthers Games’ split from Lock ‘n Load Publishing last year was far from amicable. Before Christmas, a clearly frustrated and disappointed Dave O’Connor used the Command Ops 2 Steam forum to broadside David Heath, LnL’s CEO. The good news is Dave’s business travails and bouts of COVID haven’t nudged him into early retirement. He’s still tinkering with one of the most capable, dynamic, and human AIs in computer wargaming:

“I’m still working on the AI overhaul. At my age I can’t put in the ten to twelve hour days like I used to, Real AI like we develop is very complex and these days I’m lucky to maintain the concentration for more than four hours each day. But I do work on it each week day.

Note what you most hear of these days regarding AI is about machine learning AI, which is a fancy way of referring to pattern matching. A machine learning AI’s approach to a wargame would be to build a database of decisions made by human players, identifying some key factors and guestimating the probability of success. Then when an AI player encounters a situation, it identifies the key factors present and then it searches the database for matches. It sorts these by descending probability of success and chooses the top one. It may have a few heuristics, which is a fancy term for an algorithm that tries to be smart. Eg by introducing some randomness to the selection of the option such as if our commander is inexperienced then choose one from the top ten options.

Machine learning AI never really simulates the decision making process used by humans. It doesn’t get down to the basic factors nor follow a logical analysis of the situation, Our Panther AI does and that’s why it stands out from the rest. But to model the human decision making process used by operational commanders requires a complex set of rules that need to handle a plethora of factors and cases.”

S is for Six Counties strategy game

Unsurprisingly, you won’t be able to swan across the Irish border with Chieftains and Saracens in Northern Ireland ’74. Although Every Single Soldier’s next COIN TBS (ETA Q1) shares an engine with Angola ’86, the gameplay sounds quite different: “The game is more urban, involves smuggling, bombings, riots, police actions, tracking insurgent leadership and different victory conditions (Good Friday agreement). If you have played A’86, you will totally recognize the mechanics but will have to wrap your head around a completely different strategy.”. As I struggled to stay on top of things in South West Africa and Angola, I’m hoping NI74 will either include some optional simplification settings, or, as a natural consequence of the theme, won’t dump quite so many units and decisions in my lap.

T is for Tram sim review next?

If THC seems somnolent next week, there’s a good chance I’m preparing a City Transport Simulator: Tram review for Friday. A fan of the older streetcars in ViewApp’s first light rail sim, if I do decide to take the plunge, I suspect I’ll end up critiquing the £40, seven-type Collector’s Edition.

U is for Utilisation experiments

The potent allure of sims such as RealFlight Evolution, aerofly RC, and LiftOff: Micro Drones means there’s little chance my Spektrum InterLink DX will gather dust this year. That said, partly to prove to Isla (THC’s parsimonious bean counter) that it was £100 sensibly spent, I have been testing the peripheral with other games. It got on like a Russian oil refinery on fire with Helicopter Gunship DEX and Nuclear Option, but my train and tram sim trials have thus far proved disappointing. Train Sim World, Derail Valley, and Tramcity Hakodate all snubbed the controller, and, after a promising start, Diesel Railcar Sim crashed repeatedly during the config process. I suspect I might be able to overcome some of the problems with help from Joystick Gremlin, but, honestly, I was hoping things would be simpler.