SEOW Ground War
The Scorched Earth Online War allows commanders to control the movement and facing of ground units in the campaign. Commanders also have the ability to create new ground units, based upon the availability of reinforcements. Without ground units a side is unable to capture ground objectives (bridges, airfields, industrial installations etc) and move the front line. According to the campaign design, maps may not contain ground unit supply points: in this case no ground reinforcements are available to the commander.
- Controlling facilities and moving the front line
Ground units are required for a side to gain control of a facility. A facility could be an airfield, a factory, a bridge or any other landscape object. Control is determined as follows: • Are your ground units within 1 km of the facility? • Are there enemy ground units within 1 km of the facility?
As long as there are enemy ground units within the COntrol Radius of the facility its status will be in dispute. The table below shows facility status based on ground units in the vicinity.
| Ground Units Belong to: | IFriendly Unit within 1 km | Enemy within 1 km | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friendly Unit within 1 km | Friendly controlled | In dispute | |||
| Enemy within 1 km | In dispute | Enemy controlled | |||
The front line is determined by a choice of modes set in the DCS tool. The modes are (1) No front line; (2) Front lines drawn only from strategic control (i.e. drawn from control of airbases, industrial facilities); (3) Front lines drawn only from strategic and military control (i.e. adding the locations of “controlling units”, i.e. armour, artillery and mechanized platoons). Mode 2 is recommended to generate slow-moving front lines, while Mode 3 generates very dynamic front lines but with the drawback of the front lines being able to indicate where advanced enemy units are.
- Ground unit recon
Ground units provide reconnaissance information to the commander in a similar fashion to successful recon flights. When an enemy ground unit moves to within a unit’s spotting range a recon report is made. This report is generated by Scorched Earth and will be marked on the map (with the one hour delay if Fog Of War option is used, i.e. if the enemy unit is spotted during the 06:00 mission you will see the report on your map interface for the 08:00 mission). A single spotting of a unit will never achieve 100% recon on that unit - commanders need repeated spottings to generate maximum information on an enemy unit. Spotting efficiency depends on time of day (low efficiency at night) and distance.
The spotting range examples are: mechanized infantry at least 3.6 km, artillery at least 7 km and tanks at least 4.5 km. Ships have a much larger spotting range (up to 45 km for capital ships) but they can only detect other naval units at this range.
- Ground Unit Combat
Ground units will fight it out in the IL-2 missions flown as part of campaign. The results of these combat engagements is read from the log file by the DCS when analyzing a mission. If the Fog Of War campaign option is selected, combat results are subject to the 1 hour delay for all intelligence information from ground units. Unit destruction icons are placed on the map interface to aid the commander in planning missions.
