Old Gamers Never Die (Sea Power Edition): ‘Desert Spear’ is a Fun But Inaccurate ‘Mod’

As many of my regular readers know, I’ve been a long-time fan of military-themed computer games, especially those set during World War II or in Cold War-turned-hot scenarios. I’ve been playing war games like Crusade in Europe, Silent Service II, M1 Tank Platoon, and Strategic Command WWII: World at War since the late 1980s, and even though I like other game genres, I don’t think they’ll ever eclipse my passion for military history or fighting simulated wars, both historical and fictional.

My current go-to PC game is Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age (Triassic Games/MicroProse), a naval strategy/real-time tactical simulation set between the early 1960s and mid-1980s that focuses primarily on Cold War era maritime combat between the U.S.-led NATO alliance and its Soviet-dominated “counterpart,” the Warsaw Pact. Released in Early Access mode last November, Sea Power offers a mix of official scenarios that either depict historical naval skirmishes during the Vietnam War, several Arab Israeli conflicts, and the Iran-Iraq war, or hypothetical clashes mostly involving U.S. naval and air forces against Iran, Libya, the People’s Republic of China, or the Soviet Union.

As such, Sea Power – which is still in Early Access as I write this – is the spiritual heir to several older games that I’ve played since 1987, most notably Strike Fleet (1988, Electronic Arts/Lucasfilm Games), Harpoon Classic ’97 (1996, Interactive Magic/Alliance Interactive Software), and Jane’s Combat Simulations: Fleet Command (Electronic Arts/Sonalysts).

Sea Power: The “Mod” Squad

Along with the many official historical and speculative missions that come with the base version of Sea Power, casual players and grognards alike can play customized “mods” created by tech-savvy players and simmers and available in the Steam Workshop. Some, like Jane’s Redux, are reverent homages to games that inspired Sea Power in the first place and either recreate or tweak scenarios from Fleet Command. Others, such as Dance of the Vampires, are drawn directly from other media. (In that scenario’s case, it’s a recreation of a chapter from the late Tom Clancy’s 1986 novel Red Storm Rising in which the player defends a U.S. Navy task force led by USS Nimitz from a Soviet air attack by Tu-16 and Tu-22M bombers.)

Now, even though Triassic Games’ developers work hard to get lots of details right in their work-in-progress, Sea Power is not a 100% accurate simulation of actual naval warfare (historical or hypothetical). On Reddit, for instance, I recently read a thread about how Soviet hardware – especially ships’ electronics and weapons systems – work much better in the game than their real-life counterparts, especially in Cold War-turns-hot scenarios. This was a deliberate choice made by the Triassic Games team to add some balance to the game; Soviet era military hardware of the 1980s looked impressive, even fearsome, but quality-wise it was not as good as anything the Americans or their allies had in service. If Sea Power had been designed to reflect that reality, NATO warships and aircraft would deal easily with Soviet/Warsaw Pact naval and air assets, and players who choose to play as a Russian commander would be at a huge disadvantage even against a basic enemy AI.

After all, Sea Power is a game designed to entertain, not to train the next generation of U.S. Navy officers. This is true of the base game, and it’s even truer for the various mods.

The Trouble with “Desert Spear”

Now, even though I acknowledge that Sea Power is a game and not a true-to-life simulation (even though the folks at Triassic Games take great pains to make it look authentic, both in the way the ships and planes look, as well as the use of real U.S. Navy/NATO NTDS symbols on the tactical display screens), there is one “mod” that irks me for its many inaccuracies.

That mod is Desert Spear, which is allegedly set at the start of the First Gulf War and places players in the role of a carrier battle group assigned to destroy the small but still dangerous Iraqi Navy in the early phases of Operation Desert Storm in January of 1991.

As the commander of Task Force 70 centered on USS Carl Vinson, you have several objectives in Desert Spear, including:

• Achieve air superiority over the northern Persian Gulf and protect the task force from enemy air attack
• Seek out the small but still lethal Iraqi navy before it can launch attacks against your task force
• Destroy Iraqi air defenses and an airbase near Basra, using your strike aircraft and shipborne guns and missiles, as well as a flight of B-52 bombers

All fine and good, and to me, it doesn’t matter that the mission is a mod and not one that comes in the base game. Indeed, I play more mods than I do official ones created by Triassic Games, so if I have any issues with Desert Spear, it’s not because I am prejudiced against “modders.”

As its “own thing,” Desert Spear is not a bad Sea Power mission. In fact, I recommend it – even though it is a long mission – to players who want to learn how to handle a carrier battle group without being overwhelmed by a near-peer opposing force (OPFOR) like Sea Power’s tweaked-for-balance Soviet Navy. Here, players can gain experience with air intercepts, combat air patrols, launching different types of strike packages, ship-to-ship combat, electronic warfare, and even the use of conventionally-armed B-52s. (The only area of naval warfare Desert Spear does not depict is anti-submarine warfare, and that’s because Iraq did not have subs.)

And with a difficulty rating of two stars, the American variants of Desert Spear make this mission an attractive one for Sea Power rookies who want some combat experience but aren’t quite ready for a more complicated and fearsome battle. (There is a four-star level variant in which players command the Iraqi forces, though.)

I said earlier that I know Sea Power is a commercial game for civvies and not a professional simulation used to train future naval officers, and that I’m cool with the game’s efforts to make the game less frustrating for players who want to command Soviet/Warsaw Pact forces against the Americans and their allies. So if Sea Power is “inaccurate” in many respects, that’s cool.

That said, I do wish that the modder who designed Desert Spear had tried just a bit harder to get some of the historical details of this “beginning of Desert Storm” scenario right, starting with the start date.

Historically, Desert Storm – the historical conflict depicted in Desert Spear – began on January 17, 1991, almost two days after the deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, the small emirate Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded on August 2, 1990 and forcibly annexed into Iraq, even though it had no legal right to do so. Logically, then, Desert Spear should also begin on January 17, 1991…at least if it’s going to bill itself as a mod set at the start of a real conflict.

Instead, the modder chose another date for his scenario: January 27, 1990. That’s almost a year before the start of the historical Desert Storm, and less than seven months before the invasion of Kuwait that led to the U.S.-led Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Another thing that bugs me about this mod is that its author didn’t – or couldn’t – choose to use Iraqi assets in Desert Spear. The MiG-25 Foxbat fighters and Tu-16 Badger bombers in the mod are depicted as Soviet planes in Red Air Force livery; I’ve seen other Sea Power scenarios where those planes sport Iraqi markings, so it’s more likely that the modder wanted to create the mission quickly and figured that no one would care about its historical accuracy.

And while the Red force does have a few Iraqi-flagged assets on display – including a few small seacraft and a missile-armed maritime patrol helicopter, the only way I can play Desert Spear is if I “Tom Clancy” a scenario in an alternate version of 1990 in which the USSR, Iraq, and Iran somehow become allies and invade Kuwait in December of 1989, thus provoking a U.S. response.

The mission, as its “own thing” set in a fictional conflict, is fun and somewhat challenging, especially if one is new to Sea Power and isn’t quite ready to go “toe to toe with the Russkies” in a World War III at sea situation. It’s challenging without being overwhelming, and beginners can learn how to perform carrier operations in a combat situation against a Third World regime equipped with Soviet ships, missiles, and planes in a relatively easy scenario.

But if you’re going to create a mod that bills itself as set at the start of a real conflict, at least take the time to make it somewhat accurate. You know, like using the actual start date of Operation Desert Storm instead of one from the previous year.