The Vassal game engine as a support for modeling digital forces

The following article was written for PAXsims by Philippe Lépinard, Emma Germain-Leclerc, and Andréa Melo.

Philippe Lépinard is an associate professor in information systems at IAE Paris-Est, the university management school of Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC).

Emma Germain-Leclerc and Andréa Melo are in their second year of the Master’s degree in Information Systems Security Management at IAE Paris-Est.

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Preliminary caution

This article focuses on the next step of the french digitization of the battlefield through the lens of Combat Collaboratif Infovalorisé (Cooperative Engagement Capability). The lexical field of this topic is extensive, and translations of terms between French and English don’t necessarily convey the underlying concepts beyond the words themselves. Nevertheless, our work doesn’t require such a high level of precision and discusses solely on a general tool for discovering, or even learning about, the digitization of the battlefield. We therefore apologize for any approximate translations.

General context

As part of the EdUTeam educational and research project on game-oriented learning, conducted at IAE Paris-Est and the Institut de Recherche en Gestion (IRG, UR 2354), we are studying the different uses of wargaming in social sciences (Lépinard, 2025). This article reports on exploratory work carried out in February 2026 during a 28-hour introductory course on wargaming with 17 students enrolled in the Master 2 program in Information Systems Security Management.

Technical and human architecture

The technical objective of this course was to design an educational tool for simulating modern networked-centric warfare (NCW). To do this, we first deployed the Vassal game engine. This is a FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) that allows users to play games (initially analog) remotely. It does not incorporate any artificial intelligence. The game elements (pawns, cards, etc.) are moved by the players using a mouse.

In our context, we repurposed Vassal to represent the Common Operational Picture (COP). However, the game did not take place in Vassal. In fact, to represent combat operations in the field, we relied on the Armageddon War tabletop wargame from Flying Pig Games, whose Vassal module is officially available free of charge (Vassal cannot function without a module, i.e., a digitized game). The game’s context is contemporary and therefore incorporates modern ground equipment.

In summary, students play two physical games and manually enter the data into Vassal. This first level, although not automated, corresponds to troops in combat. The information is automaticaly then sent to students located in another classroom. They represent military leaders who are far from the combat zone but have access to the same data as their subordinates. At this level, a second manual action takes place. An operator concatenates two Vassal tactical situations into one by aggregating the data received in another Vassal instance, which is connected to the level 3 (theater) commander (Figure 1). Thanks to this architecture, and despite two manual transmissions, all participants in the simulation are in a digitized bubble. Of course, the highest-level commander has a complete view of both battlefields, but only with the positions of his direct subordinates in order to respect the subsidiarity of command. He also has broader capabilities at his disposal, such as artillery, helicopters, etc. This entire structure requires at least 14 people: 4 players (level 1 leaders), 2 referees, 4 level 2 leaders with 2 operators (considered offside), and 2 level 3 leaders (Figure 2). For our tests, we added observers and a Vassal technician (a student too) who could move from room to room. However, it is entirely possible to increase this number by creating multiple roles without adding to the technical and manual workload.

Figure 1: Synoptic view of the final structure

Experimenting with Combat Collaboratif Infovalorisé

While technical architecture and identifying the associated human resources were important objectives, the course focused on discovering the French concept of Combat Collaboratif Infovalorisé (CCI), defined by Fouillet as “integrated tactical capabilities, agile and accelerated to increase the effects produced and provide optimal concentration-dispersion capabilities” (2020, p.48). CCI comprises several components, three of which we have attempted to represent: collaborative observation, collaborative protection, and collaborative aggression (Fouillet 2020). While Vassal enabled us to implement collaborative observation, the Armageddon War game rules were modified to represent the defensive (collaborative protection) and offensive (collaborative aggression) bonuses of CCI units. To do this, and thanks to a resolution mechanism based on a single roll of the dice, we tried two techniques: improving or reducing the quality of the dice (the game already includes this option for other actions) and increasing or reducing the number of dice. However, these solutions don’t refer to actual data. We imagined them based solely on academic and military readings dealing with CCI. The results are nonetheless interesting, with 11 games won by the forces (CCI) out of 15 games played, with a 100% win rate when the CCI faction was particularly aggressive. While these results obviously have no scientific value, they nevertheless provide a basis for discussion around the gaming table and help to understand the concrete effects of units with digitized capabilities.

Figure 2: Playing area with the four level 1 leaders (Vassal) and the two referees

An experiential case study

This course on wargaming, taken in the second year of the master’s program, proved to be relevant for continuing a case study conducted in the first year of the master’s program in an experiential manner. At the beginning of this academic year, the initial course on information systems invites students to work on the evolution of french battlefield digitization over the last 30 years by establishing links between the course theory (Lépinard, 2026). However, there is a lack of real-world application. The system we implemented in February 2026 could well become an extension of this rather theoretical teaching by immersing students in a realistic environment requiring few resources (Vassal and a contemporary wargame). Furthermore, as we have already presented on PAXsims (Frédy & Lépinard, 2025), our work once again falls within the practice of analytical wargaming as a qualitative research method. Although this is not a research project as such, we have seen the richness of the discussions surrounding CCI, particularly with regard to the weapons currently deployed in real conflicts but absent from games that were initially intended to model combat in the late 2020s.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the entire class of 2025-2026 of the Master 2 in Information Systems Security Management for their commitment to this experimental course and for writing the collective report, which is particularly rich in lessons learned.

References

Frédy, J., & Lépinard, P. (2025). Qualitative research and analytical wargaming. PAXsims.https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2025/03/06/qualitative-research-and-analytical-wargaming/.

Fouillet, T. (2020). Demain des opérations collaboratives ? Revue Défense Nationale, 829(4), 47-52. https://doi.org/10.3917/rdna.829.0047.  

Lépinard, P. (2025). Panorama et perspectives du wargaming dans les sciences sociales. Management & Sciences Sociales, 41(2), 158-175. https://doi.org/10.3917/mss.041.0158. 

Lépinard, P. (2026). La numérisation des forces terrestres – Une étude de cas pédagogique parfaite pour l’enseignement du management des systèmes d’information. 20 ans de numérisation des forces terrestres : état des lieux et perspectives, Paris.