REVIEW OF ATTACK VECTOR: TACTICAL.

Attack Vector: Tactical is, basically, the most intricate and scientifically accurate spacecraft combat simulation available today. If you’re interested in the ultimate in realistic space combat as can be extrapolated from current scientific knowledge and technological possibilities and you’re willing to put a lot of effort into it, then it’s the game for you.

AVT is, as the name implies, a tactical game with some strategic elements. Most of the strategy can be ignored if you wish to focus on the tactical elements, but it does little good to win a battle if afterwards you have too little fuel or life support to reach home.

The game is quite detailed and requires the tracking of large amounts of information, fortunately the designers have added several things that make it easier for most gamers to get thru the process.

The first are the detailed ship control cards, called AVIDs, that allow you to track your ship’s orientation and vectors in 3 dimensions. The AVID is, frankly, one of the best designed game aids I’ve ever seen.

The second is the detailed and comprehensive training missions, which use a combination of step by step instructions and Pavlovian conditioning to help players grasp the basics of ship orientation, rotation and movement vectors. Yes, I said Pavlovian conditioning. In the training scenarios you use chocolate candy (Though you can substitute some other form of treat. I used cherry lifesavers.) as a reward mechanism. You place the chocolates at various locations on the map, and when you learn the basics of movement and shooting you get rewarded for successfully completing training tasks by being allowed to eat the chocolates you move over or shoot.

One piece of advice I might give to someone going thru the tutorials, as I did, is to use one of the box miniatures and the tilt blocks provided to help you grasp the idea of ship rotation and tilt as you learn to diagram such details on the AVID, it helped me a little in getting the 3d aspect down.

AVT has some other good points, like the fact it makes realistic use of nuclear weapons instead of, like so many SF wargames, assuming that everyone either forgot how to build nukes once they had space travel, or adhere to some covenant banning their use.

As for the downside, this is basically the “Phoenix command” of space combat systems. Phoenix Command was an incredibly detailed and realistic roleplaying game system with an emphasis on personal combat, and while it was hailed for it’s groundbreaking realism, it failed in the end due to the sheer complexity and difficulty of the system.

Still, the game has an appeal to it, and anyone who can master it has earned his “hardcore gamer” badge.

Also, the game maintains a fair sense of humor, as evidenced in the ramming rules. I give it another good point for having the courage to lay out a future history that proposes a realistic, though unpopular, resolution to some of the major problems facing the real world today.

To give further credit where it’s due, I must say that Ad Astra games has excellent customer service, and replaced some misprinted books I got in my copy of AVT promptly and courteously.

All in all, I’d recommend AVT to those who like real, hard science in their science fiction, and the game could possibly serve as a valuable writing aid to someone who wants to write spacecraft combat oriented science fiction.