TacOps

Major Holdridge has been doing some great one-person-programming for years now. His TacOps tactical simulation game is one of the very best I've ever found: it doesn't rely on gosh-wow-cool graphics or unrealistic-but-spectacular effects. It's a remarkably good simulation of a battalion-to-brigade level military operation:

I.L. Holdridge didn't intend to design a tactical simulation used by the armies of four nations. He just got tired of playing with tiny tanks. "I wanted to play armor miniatures without a footlocker full of manuals, dice, tapes, terrain boards and painted vehicles," he said.

Frustrated by lack of time, space and opponents, many war-gaming hobbyists have switched from board games and miniatures to computer games. Holdridge did one better and designed his own computer game. A decade later, "TacOps" is played by thousands of hobbyists. It's also an official training simulation used by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, as well as the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand armies.

This was more than serendipity. Holdridge is a retired Marine Corps major who started as a private, worked his way up to become an infantry officer, and finally spent a dozen years as an intelligence officer. In an era when militaries are increasingly using entertainment games, "TacOps" is one of a handful of hobby games/defense simulations designed by active or former officers.

"TacOps" is a platoon-level simulation that looks like a CPX map exercise. It pits American (or Canadian or Anzac) forces against opposing force units that tend to resemble the armies of the former Soviet Union, China and North Korea. Map scale is 10 meters per screen pixel. Icons represent one to 15 vehicles, squads, teams or individuals.