Font You Very Much

Awhile back I posted about a scaling issue that I had with the Airborne Assault games (Highway to the Reich, Conquest of the Aegean, and Battles from the Bulge). It even affected the new game back when I tried the core engine. Those games worked fine on my Windows 7 machine up until sometime in November 2014 when the scaling issue reared its ugly head. I had thought it was an issue with my AMD video card, however several driver updates had gone by without a resolution.

Forward to the Past

Given the myriad of issues that I am having with some games in the Windows 7 environment (as well as AMD video card specific game issues), this weekend I began the process of rebuilding my Windows XP computer. I had tried a dual boot option with my Gateway however it didn’t work, and even if it did in hindsight it would not have resolved the scaling issue with Command Operations (and other Airborne Assault games) as I would still have been playing off of the same GPU and drivers.

Command Ops Scaling Issue

I am not sure when this occurred, but it had to be some time after the last post I made about this series of games. All of my Airborne Assault engine games (Highway to the Reich, Conquest of the Aegean, and Command Operations) now have what appears to be a scaling issue where the text and graphics on the left side of the screen image are out of alignment. I have checked several forum threads from what remains on the Matrix site and attempted to adjust monitor scaling but to no avail.

Conquest of the Aegean Tempe Gorge Crisis

April 17, 1941 Tempe Gorge, Greece: The Battle of Tempe Gorge was a rearguard action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces against Axis units during the German invasion of Greece. While the Australian component retreated to the south, the Tempe Gorge location was selected as a suitable place to perform a holding action against the enemy which had significant more manpower and equipment at their disposal than did the Allies.

The Allied units were designated as “ANZAC Force” and led by then Brigadier General Arthur Samuel Allen, consisting of a depleted group of soldiers fighting with mortars, small arms, scattered artillery equipment and short of ammunition. This force was expected to hold off the advancing German 6th Mountain Division commanded by General Ferdinand Schörner as long as possible to allow for the larger forces to the northwest to withdraw to the Thermopylae Line via Larissa.

Conquest of the Aegean Battle for the Maltese Cross Conclusion

This is a continuation and a conclusion of an after-action report that I started for this what-if scenario back in January 2012. For whatever reason (that completely escapes me now) I never completed the write-up for this game although I had all of the relevant screen shots up through the end game. It was just waiting on my C drive for me cobble together the semblance of a completed AAR.

This scenario pits the Axis Army Group against the Allies Middle East Command in a historical what-if interpretation of OperationHercules, the planned but never-executed joint Italian-German invasion of Malta. The Axis force consists of two reinforced divisions, one parachute (7thFlieger Division, Fallschirmjäger & Luftlande-Sturmregiment, Fallschirmjäger) and one mountain (Gebirgsjäger) which drops on Qrendi Airfield initially and other areas during the reinforcement schedule.

Conquest of the Aegean Parachutes over Corinth

This is a what-if scenario from the original Conquest of the Aegean (COTA) game, which has been updated into the Command Operations universe with the recent release of Command Ops: Battles for Greece expansion pack. A German parachute regiment must take and hold the Corinth Canal Bridge until reinforcements arrive, while an Allied brigade must retake it and exit to the South.

The Corinth Canal Bridge is the lifeline for 4th NZ Inf Bde, which is currently in a rearguard position at Erithrai, astride the German axis of advance from Thermopylae. This makes it an attractive target for the Germans, and although their ground forces are still far off, they have a parachute regiment in reserve. Corinth is an ideal objective for such a force.

Setback and Rebound

The Allied ANZAC 6th Australian Infantry Division represented by Allen Force faces off against the Axis 9th Panzer Division represented by one infantry and one Panzer brigade in a fictional scenario that is Tutorial 2 in COTA. I will not be following the tutorial for this write-up.

While most war game tutorials are on the easy side to bring the new gamer up to speed, this specific scenario can be quite a challenge if the available supporting assets (MG's, AT's, Artillery and Air Strikes) are not fully taken advantage of.

Battle for the Maltese Cross

Qrendi Airfield, Republic of Malta: This scenario pits the Axis Army Group against the Allies Middle East Command in a historical what-if interpretation of Operation Hercules, the planned but never-executed joint Italian-German invasion of Malta.

The Axis force consists of two reinforced divisions, one parachute (7th Flieger Division, Fallschirmjäger & Luftlande-Sturmregiment, Fallschirmjäger) and one mountain (Gebirgsjäger) which drops on Qrendi Airfield initially and other areas during the reinforcement schedule.

Elasson Rearguard

Tsaritsani, Greece: This scenario pits the Axis XXXX Armee Korps against the Allies 6th NZ Infantry Brigade. The Allies objective is to essentially delay the German advance in the sector to prevent a clean breakthrough while using delaying tactics and bridge demolition in their withdrawal to Larissa.

The Allies have 4,532 personnel, 75 armored fighting vehicles, 502 non-armored fighting vehicles and 75 guns units at their disposal for a combined Anti-Personnel rating of 1,114, Anti-Armor of 1,012, Bombardment of 370 and Armor of 151. There are no scheduled reinforcements.