Onside report – Rain of Drones: v2 – Ivanivka

This was my second try at a game about the military use of drones. I moved my scenario to the current Ukrainian Russian conflict from the Mexican / USA Drug Smuggling conflict. I did this because the use of drones in the “drug wars” had an additional layer of complexity in the civil use of military force in a conflict that was not all out war.

Game Aim

This game is a multiplayer, team-based, back to back wargame where players engage in a fight over a small village in Ukraine 2024, with the emphasis on the use of attack drones.

The premise of the game is that the introduction of the military uses of drones has brought about major changes to modern warfare.

The game was a prototype and would no doubt have big holes in it.

Discord Server for the Rain of Drones – Ivanivka.

The Game I Wanted to Design

As I developed my game I had a few other ideas that I wanted to test.

• How to run an online game using Discord channels that were dedicated to either orders or feedback etc – my idea was to avoid the massive scrolling effort one channel induced, particularly in Jim’s recent game “Just One Road”.
• I also wanted to resolve combat using the players rather than putting the burden on the Control. My reasoning was that as a drone attack is very visible to the attacker, via video feeds, and visible to the attacked. Thus there would be no need to keep the attack and its outcome hidden. So the attacking player would resolve combat. This also reflected the serial nature of drone attacks. I have watched videos of the “day in the life” of a Drone Operating unit, and they serially attack a target until eliminated or a higher priority target comes up.
• I wanted all players and Control to use one Conceptboard – with separate sectors for the Ukrainians, Russians and Control. This would enable Control to copy the units and other screen furniture – e.g. arrows and grids – from one map to the other. I also hoped it would make things easier for Control, rather than having to hop from window to window they could zoom out and then move to the sector they needed to within one Conceptboard.

My game also required the following:

• A wargame, at the Company level, with infantry, mortars, trucks, artillery, trenches, strongpoints etc. This should be a wargame in itself. This was something I neglected in my focus on the Drones
• A mechanism for surveillance by specialist drones (MALE or LALE ISR). This would require orders to be written to the ISR Drones, Control to then take the “viewed zone” to the map board, dice for detection and then reporting back to the player
• A mechanism for logistics. An easy target for Drones is soft skinned transport and also the use of large drones to lift supplies to isolated units in the front line.
• And the rules to assemble a drone package, deploy them to the board. The difficulty here is the classic one of attempting to integrate air power with the land battle – aircraft, including drones, move so much faster than land based troops and vehicles.

In retrospect I think I took on too much!

Here are the Game Rules for anyone interested to read through – format: Google Doc.

The Game We Played

The game was played Online via Discord and ConceptBoard.

I recruited Jur to be my assistant control. We had three players, Jim, Nick D and Sophie and one rustic observer, Evan, somewhere in Wales.

I had pre-deployed most of the units to the board and left the players some units in reserve to deploy, or some strategically important units like the Electronic Warfare (EW) units to decide where to deploy.

I had written an Order of Play – that was 12 items long – but in following this through I think the first game turn ran well. We managed to play through a full turn and the setup in an hour and I think we would have moved to 20 minute turns.

Order of Play – Rain of Drones – Ivanivka

What I had to fudge, invent or otherwise add to the game during play

• I had not specified a map scale, a game turn duration or worked out movement rates. The problem with focusing on drone warfare is that they just move directly to their target multiple times in a move. It’s almost as if the Drones are hawks hunting slow moving rodents. I decided, during the game, that:
  • Each grid on the map was 200 by 100 metres
  • Game Turn was 2 hours
  • Movement Rate was 4 orthogonal grids for infantry per turn
• Casualties. I gave each unit a status from 3 – 0.  Fresh units started at 3, then reduced by one for each hit, until being removed when they reached 0. Initially I had made some graphic numbers to add to a unit suffering casualties but I preferred using purple splats to represent hits. Logistics worked by removing one splat per log unit brought to the unit.
• I think getting the players to run the Drone combat worked except one thing I had overlooked – there were some factors that were not known to the attacker – usually the presence of EW etc. In practice the attacker allocated their drones serially to attacks, resolving each one and then allocating the next drone, with Control rolling the dice. This worked out well. A shared cognitive burden. It also reflected the fast, serial attacking methods of drone units.

Conceptboard – Control’s view

Drone Operations and Tactics – Wrestling with Jelly

This YouTube video inspired the setting of the scenario, and also provided me with a lot of the graphics I screen grabbed and then adapted for the game.

The video is worth watching as an introduction to some of the tactics of drone warfare. No doubt it was out dated when it was made and will age rapidly as new tech and tactics are introduced.

New tactics that could decide Russia-Ukraine war

One of the players mentioned that I was trying to “wrestle with jelly” in trying to make a game about a dynamically changing conflict.

Drone warfare in itself has moved through several iterations already in the war.

• In 2022 ISR drones were being used as observers to bring in artillery fire to destroy armoured columns,
• In 2022/23 FPV drones directly attacked high-value Air Defence vehicles and light armour, now in small packets or columns
• In 2023/24 we had some counter EW that was reducing the dominance of FPV
• In 2024/5 we saw the introduction of optical fibre controlled drones attacking anything with the temerity to move – in response infantry now moves in small teams, infiltrating or using motorbikes
• And in the near future we have the promise of mother ships, launching swarms of FPV drones and the creation of autonomous interceptor and kamikaze drones, without the burden of human operators

Future Game

The players had useful suggestions about how I might develop any future game.

One suggestion, that makes a lot of sense, is to abstract the wargame element of the game and focus on the drone operators game. Perhaps abstracting attacks rather than attempting to run a multi-faceted wargame that also happens to use drones. Make it a game about the drone operators decisions. With some tech.

Another suggestion was to run two games, one without drones, and one with drones. This would have to be a much reduced wargame as above, but might illustrate what I was intrigued by, are drones the Revolution in Military Affairs, that some allege.

What I will do.

I need to step back from Drone Warfare and concentrate on other game ideas I have kept bubbling. Simpler games. Games that require less mechanics and less graphics!

I have learnt a lot about Drones and modern warfare. I am grateful that CLWG and WD members have enabled me to put on these two games and indulged me. I suspect I have taken on too much and do not have the time, or inclination to put in the really hard work that this type of “wargame” requires. But you never know.