"Fulda Gap" Map Study

As some might already have found out, one of my favourite scenario for a sim is the 1980s central europe theater. In this topic I will try to outline a possible choice of a new map for one of ED's future projects.

One of the big problems of a germany map is that it would be quite large, with a dense population and dense infrastructure, thus making it very development resources demanding. We also learned how much work the current map was for the ED team and generaly how demanding the process of map building is. Therefore I think it would be unreasonable to try to make a complete germany map, but instead make a more specific selection of the theater.

My choice fell on the Fulda Gap. In the case of a warsaw pact invasion of western europe in the 1980, the Fulda Gap defines the location of the major soviet push into western germany. This "gap" lies in central Germany near the city of Fulda, where the distance between East Germany and the Rhine river was the shortest. Principal oponents in this secor where the Soviet 8th Guards Army and the US VII Corps. Soviet forces would have tried to cross the border, advance in the direction of Frankfurt with it's key military installations and cross the Rhine river, from where the soviet tanks would have spearheaded in the direction of Paris and the english channel. The US VII Corps had the duty to delay the WP advance as much as possible until reinforcements from the USA would arrive. In the case of war in europe, WP forces would have attacked along the whole East German and Czechoslovak border, but the biggest strike would have happened in the Fulda Gap.

I will now try to outline a possible map for this scenario. The map is intended to provide the playgrounds for a western CAS oriented sim, featuring the A-10 and the AH-64 ( both possible candidates for ED's future ).

This map shows Germany as a whole with the iron curtain marked in red. I have added the 6 bases where A-10 where forward deployed from their UK hombases ( Forward Operation Locations ).

Here you see the actual outlines of the map. The map is 200*200 Km in size, giving it a size of 40'000 km2. The map covers main axis of a soviet advance from the border trough Frankfurt to the Rhein river. There is not much East German terrain itselfe, as the action would have taken place in the border region and western from there. The two A-10 bases Sembach and Wiesbaden are included in the southwest, with Frankfurt in the middle. I didn't expand the map further west to cover Nörvenich AFB, as I wanted to avoid the region of Köln-Bonn, wich is the most densly populated region of western germany.

This is the Fulda Gap map overlayed with the contures of the Crimea for size comparison. You see that the map is quite small.

Here you can check some general data of the map area. The datas are from the year 1972. Considering the small size of the map and the fact that it features a area without too much population and industry centers, I think it could be doable from a developers point of view.

What makes that map so attractive is that it is the ultimate anti-armour scenario. It is what the A-10 and the AH-64 have been designed for. The map features a terrain with many hills and forests with plenty of oportunitys to use the ground as cover. It also has some urban areas like Frankfurt and hosts a great deal of military installations. And you have a plausible, semi-historical scenario with a believable and strong opponent.

Of course one can argue that the map is too small and compared to other sims it is indeed. But one has to remember in wich context the map stays. For a helicopter sim the map big enough ( how big were the maps of Longbow 2 ? ) and for the A-10 the map includes the historical operation areas ( as far as I can see ). Yes, the map is too small to feature the A-A war, strike missions or a flyable eastern side, but that is not the scope of the map anyway. This is a map for a CAS sim. And I think ED would do good if they would narrow down to scope of what they want to simulate.

Another advantage of the map is it's central location, wich makes it a good starting point for map extensions. In future addons, the map could be expanded into the north to cover the british sector of the front with Harriers and Jaguars doing the CAS job, into the south-east to cover the struggle in Bavaria or eastwarts into East Germany to enable a more deep simulation of the whole A-A and A-G war and eastern flyable planes.

Considering how much work it is to build the maps, it might be a good strategy to build a small part first and to expand this map over the time. A new approach ED has recently taken with the flyable planeset.

Another point that is worth to mention: This scenario would be semi-historical in two ways.

1st: It would feature a war that never happened, altoug one that was very possible with OOBs that existed.

2nd: For gameplay ( and perhaps ethical ) reasons, the campaign should be non-nuclear. This is so for semi-historical as even a conflict limited to europe would have gone nuclear on a tactical level almost certain.

Let's summarise:

+Semi-historical, believable scenario

+Interesting terrain

+The "true" playgrounds for the A-10 and AH-64

+Good base for map expansions

-Relative few Km2 for high development effort

-Too small for complete simulation of air war

-No flyable eastern side possible

Perhaps this small study can motivate others to do something simmilar for their favourite maps. I would like to hear other ideas.

you'll like this one:

-No flyable eastern side possible

I like your sense of humour :)

-SK

Uh... sorry Mbot but I think you missed that ED are Russian developers, and a lot of the Russian public don't appreciate being portrayed as the bad guys any longer, either? ;)

Maybe you should reconsider and have NATO invade instead this time around. ;)

I don't think they ever saw themselves as the bad guys. ;) The Soviets were actually just as convinced as NATO was that the "other" side was going to invade them. Their doctrine, from what I gathered, was purely defensive as well. Oh well...life is no fun without a "good versus evil" conflict. :icon_jook

TBH, any new maps for any of eds new stuff that they be developing, I think should incorporate the mid-east, large expanse of flatish terrain which is devoid of buildings etc, will make the game run faster, and in todays climate, I think the mid east would be a good map to fly over.

I think its time to ditch the east/russian versus west/nato campaigns and move to something that is more relevant to today, to keep people interested in flight simming. My opinion is that however much fun it is to fly any of these maps, East versus West has been done to death, and a new area of conflict would be much better than Europe.

Just my tuppence worth.

Flame on :P

The historic campaigns would be cool, but I agree with you Scotsman...these scenarios have been done...and done again. How about a campaign over the Kashmir region? It certainly would make us all more aware of combat load and density altitude. Much of the relative "coolness" of a campaign is based on mystery, and, quite frankly, there's not much mystery left for me as far as the old Soviet Union goes. They were playing out the same "invasion" scenarios in their heads too. :D

Taiwan/China or Alaska/Bearing Straits gets my vote.

Who would be the opposing forces in the Alaska/Bering Straits scenario?

the russians, YET AGAIN :(

if only alqaeda had an airforce :D

the russians, YET AGAIN :(

 

if only alqaeda had an airforce :D

Fine, the CHINESE this time :p

Speaking as Canadian, I don't mind if somebody portrays us as evil aggressors.

Canadian war plan vs. USA and Russia:

(1) Concede Russian land rights to Nunavut eskimos

(2) Concede USA land rights to Mexicans

(3) Position country between two nuclear powers and say :bebebe:

(4) When enemy ICBMs are launched - duck

-SK

But, you ARE the future aggressors, SK. Just have a look at this recent photo I took at work.

Now...the Snowbirds weren't performing at any local airfield that I'm aware of when this was taken, so, what's the purpose of this aircraft being here? Huh?!!! I think he was just here to gather intelligence on our defenses. ;) ;) ;) :cool: :icon_jook :D

TBH, any new maps for any of eds new stuff that they be developing, I think should incorporate the mid-east, large expanse of flatish terrain which is devoid of buildings etc, will make the game run faster, and in todays climate, I think the mid east would be a good map to fly over.

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I also think that behind ED's probable choice of mideast there is the fact that is a flat and little populated area, much easier to model. And they already have islamic-style buildings in lomac.

 

I think its time to ditch the east/russian versus west/nato campaigns and move to something that is more relevant to today, to keep people interested in flight simming. My opinion is that however much fun it is to fly any of these maps, East versus West has been done to death, and a new area of conflict would be much better than Europe.

 

Yours is quite a common opinion, but it's a shame that is not supported by facts. Cold war scenarios were not really modelled very much in flight sims, and there are really few exceptions. One of them is Microprose's stealth series (F-19 and F-117), which belong to the early nineties (15 years ago!!!). There you could fly against Soviet forces in Germany and North Cape, but it was much more arcade.

"Gunship!" takes place in central Europe (after "cold war" ended) but, again, there is no realistic modelling of the terrain. Falcon4 takes place in Korea. There is a Euro mod, but it's a mod, not a game....

"Tornado" had generic "european" and "desert" style terrains, but both were fictional.

 

could you please tell me which games simulated a cold war scenario (NATO vs Warsaw Pact)?

As for the scenario beeing done to death. I can't remember a decent sim wich featured the central europe theater. And if you have flyable A-10 and AH-64 ( wich is a possibility in the future ), the east vs. west cenario makes much sense in my opinion. Hey, we have east vs. west in Lock On too, only without a very believable location and scenario.

I think it makes sense to go into the past and feature historical or semi-historical scenarios, as in the current times there are few scenarios that would work well with flight simulations. Let's face it, in the past 15 years the west has mostly bombed 3rd world countrys that hadn't a real chance to win the confrontation. I don't see much potential for a fun flightsim here.

As for the russian beeing the "bad guys" again. Well, what do you expect when flying the A-10 or AH-64 ?

Personaly I hadn't even tought about the "good" and "bad" at all. I don't put too much politics in flight sims.

As for there beeing no flyable russian plane. I can't get that overall obsession with nationalitys at all. I am swiss, does that mean there has to be a flyable Pilatus plane in every sim ? We had sims with only one flyable side ( = plane ) in the past and it wasn't a problem then. The desire to have both sides represented with flyables broadens the scope of a sim very much and requires a much higher development effort. Having to simulate more stuff means less resources to spend on the things you simulate. Personaly I prefer a smaller scope with higher detail and good gameplay then a sim that tries to do everything but with less depth.

And in the case of a CAS oriented side ( a subject ED seems to like very much ), it is questionable at all if there is the need to have both sides playable. No player units ever meets in direct confrontation and you would basicaly have a western CAS sim and a eastern CAS sim that don't interact with each other very much.

Still I would like to mention the favourable location of the Fulda Gap for map extensions that could add new levels of airwar to the sim.

Thank you for your responses, some of the comments are indeed worth discussing in more depth. I think it is a interesting subject. But for now I have to go back to work :)

IMHO it's quite obvious that this scenario appears many times in simmers' wishes... it's not a news that each and every aircraft built in the last 50 years was planned with such a scenario in mind. Even most modern fighters were planned in that timeframe and for that purpose. That is just because R&D for a modern craft lasts tens of years.

Aircraft like Gripen, EF2000, Rafale and in some ways also the Raptor, were already in advanced planning phase when cold war ended. There were early drafts of EAP and Gripen even in the 1983 book "Modern Air Combat" so they can well be considered "cold war fighters" too....

The main obstacle to modelling such a scenario IMHO are the densely populated terrain and the huge size of the forces in the area. Just NATO's 2nd ATAF could count 700+ jet aircraft in peacetime, plus about some hundred of reinforcements. But it wasn't alone. Then you would have to add 4th ATAF to NATO side, and about three Air Armies to the Warsaw Pact side, with more than 2,000 aircraft. It's easy to see that you are talking about an order of battle of 4,000-5,000 aircraft, maybe more. Not to count land forces, which were really huge too...

For the "bad guys" syndrome, I don't think is appropriated. There are many sims about WW2 Luftwaffe vs Allied forces. Yet there isn't much to talk about who were the "bad guys" in that timeframe, but many simmers enjoy flying those technical marvels produced by Germany in that period. I think sims are just sims. Are games... are dots blinking on a screen. If I fly with a WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft it doesn't mean I'm a Hitler fan.

Back to the CEUR scenario, In the cold war both sides were taught to be the "victims" of a likely invasion. Yet only one side (AFAIK) had printed coins, money, medals, prepositioned weapons caches and "enemy-compatible" mobile equipment to use for a possible invasion of the other side. Guess which one it was... ;)

It's just a good thing that nothing happened IRL!

But that doesn't mean it would be a bad idea a sim with a "what if" cold war scenario.

How about a Florida / Cuba map?

Arizona

IMHO it's quite obvious that this scenario appears many times in simmers' wishes... it's not a news that each and every aircraft built in the last 50 years was planned with such a scenario in mind. Even most modern fighters were planned in that timeframe and for that purpose. That is just because R&D for a modern craft lasts tens of years.

Aircraft like Gripen, EF2000, Rafale and in some ways also the Raptor, were already in advanced planning phase when cold war ended. There were early drafts of EAP and Gripen even in the 1983 book "Modern Air Combat" so they can well be considered "cold war fighters" too....

 

The main obstacle to modelling such a scenario IMHO are the densely populated terrain and the huge size of the forces in the area. Just NATO's 2nd ATAF could count 700+ jet aircraft in peacetime, plus about some hundred of reinforcements. But it wasn't alone. Then you would have to add 4th ATAF to NATO side, and about three Air Armies to the Warsaw Pact side, with more than 2,000 aircraft. It's easy to see that you are talking about an order of battle of 4,000-5,000 aircraft, maybe more. Not to count land forces, which were really huge too...

I agree to that. I think the most important reason I would like to see a cold war scenario is the fact that it has been the dominating influence in military aircraft design and tactics for many decades ( and the fact that I grew up reading books about it ). For me a A-10 just HAS to skim trough german forests :)

Good point about the scale of the conflict, both in numbers and on densely populatet terrain. I hope that my CAS only Fulda Gap approach would be a suficent solution for that problem, but only a developer could realy tell.

you'll like this one:

That map is absolutly great ! In fact I have been in the process of making exactly this in the past few days. Could you send me the Google Earth coordinates ? My e-mail is marcmarbot at hotmail.com

yeah we need to ditch west v east i agree totally, how about the North v South uk

yeah we need to ditch west v east i agree totally, how about the North v South uk

Im up for that let's teach those softies :icon_jook :icon_jook:icon_jook

How about an US civil war? Why keep beating up the same "vilains" to death all the time?

We never seen dogfights over sky scrapers before...Imagine the amount of avaiable hardware to fly and destroy...who needs russia or a skiny arab air force?:biggrin:

Throw in a few mercs from all over the world and we are set!

Yeah. The state of South Dakota cecedes from the union. But...it has one of the most powerful Air Forces in the world and has a large nuclear arsenal (Both would actually be true). That would be a cool scenario.

Uh... sorry Mbot but I think you missed that ED are Russian developers, and a lot of the Russian public don't appreciate being portrayed as the bad guys any longer, either? ;)

 

Maybe you should reconsider and have NATO invade instead this time around. ;)

Mbot, I like the scenario very much, but IMHO, the map choice is perhaps not the best, a small map gives little room for different missions and the lack of water and mountains is not so good.

Very good post though :)

Yeah. The state of South Dakota cecedes from the union. But...it has one of the most powerful Air Forces in the world and has a large nuclear arsenal (Both would actually be true). That would be a cool scenario.

But if you don't mind a unbelivable scenario... The Swedish-Norwegian Union was not broken up in 1905, the Norwegian uprising was quenched in their own blood... it is now 1987 and Norway are ready to break the involontary union by force... JA-37 Viggen, J-35 Draken vs. whatever planes that Norway had back then ;)

I don't like it, for me it has to be somewhat belivable.

 

But if you don't mind a unbelivable scenario... The Swedish-Norwegian Union was not broken up in 1905, the Norwegian uprising was quenched in their own blood... it is now 1987 and Norway are ready to break the involontary union by force... JA-37 Viggen, J-35 Draken vs. whatever planes that Norway had back then ;)

...and the war would be over in 2 days LOL ;)

Another scenario, would be India VS Pakistan. But I dont feel like to martirize the pakistanis furhter even if its only virtualy. Not the indians either. Great landscape to play though. China VS Tawian has the disavantage of being fought mostly over water and traveling through the distance between both countries would make missions long.

The only realy strong airforce I would like to demolish virtualy would be the israely AF. Lots of planes...good ones too. Smaller mission travels, in this hsitorical and mythical land.