Carmonette © 1953 Operations Research Office.
A two-sided small-unit combined-arms ground-combat simulation. Carmonette is a mathematical model of battle which simulates in a simple straightforward manner, the step by step progress of an isolated battle.
Carmonette consists of two parts. The first, which details the manner of simulation of the combat activities of the individual participants in each battle, is in a high state of development. The second part, which deals with the integration of these separate combat elements into sensible and meaningful battles, is less well established.
It can handle up to 36 units on a side. These units are generally vehicles or infantry squads. The units may be of four different types distinguished from each other by their composition, capabilities, and vulnerabilities. Up to nine different weapon types may be given to each side and up to four of these may be assigned to each unit. Weapons are characterized by their ranges, rates of fire, and kill probabilities against various units.
The terrain is partitioned into a 36 by 36 set of grid squares. These squares are arbitrary in size but are usually selected to be 100 meters on a side and hence the 1296 squares cover an area about 2 miles square.
CARMO in Carmonette stands for Combined ARms Computer MOdel.
While the first computerized simulation of conventional combat was Air Defense Simulation, developed by the Army Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University in 1948, the Carmonette series was a later variant of the genre, described as the first digital computer game.
It was designed so that all the calculations may be carried out on standard general purpose digital computers, except that a limited number of high level decisions may be injected into the battle during the calculations.
The program, exclusive of the editing and analysis routines, contains about 8000 two-address instructions and 40,000 to 50,000 data items packed into another 8000 words. About 2500 words describe the current state of the system, 2000 are used for the constant terrain description, and 3500 or so are devoted to special tables used throughout the calculation.
The frequent reference to 36 is related to the number of bits per word in the computer. Much of the data is stored in terms of bit maps. The 36 by 36 terrain compartments are mapped on the 36-bit positions of each of 36 consecutive words in the computer memory. The presence of a particular binary terrain characteristic in a grid square is then represented by a bit in the corresponding bit position. Similarly the characteristics of the various units are described on a bit-by-bit basis.
About 25 minutes of computer time were used to simulate 12 minutes of battlefield time. The output edit and Analysis was a separate process and requires about 30 minutes per play.
It was followed by Carmonette II which included infantry (1960-65); Carmonette III which added armed helicopter support (1966-1970); also Carmonette IV added communications and night vision.
Principal architect: Richard E. Zimmerman
The Carmonette code was later rewritten for the IBM 7040 computer.
Game Playing with Computers, Donald D. Spencer (1968) Page 12
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