Dave Kohr has written: " "Porting" a board wargame to a computer for commercial sale is generally a waste of time and money, because existing board wargames don't exploit the real benefits of using a computer (such as the possibility of having much more hidden intelligence, handling much more book-keeping, getting rid of the old hex grid and using a highly detailed "real" map, and having a much more realistic command-and-control system where subordinate commanders are simulated using AI techniques). In the past, "ports" have not been terribly successful."

I don't know about this. If I look at a list of my favorite computer games, I see a whole bunch of ports of existing board and/or card games (not necessarily wargames, of course). There certainly seems to be plently of shelf space devoted to such games at my local computer retailer, which I would not expect to be the case if such games were not generally successful. The benefits you list seem to be mostly aimed at providing a more accurate simulation, not necessarily a better game. Of course, there is a segment of the wargaming hobby for whom simulation accuracy is everything, but there are also lots of folks who consider playability at least equally important, and I would think this would be especially true if you try to expand the market to include folks who have not traditionally been part of the board wargame market.

I personally like to understand the underlying game system so that I can more readily know what moves are possible and/or practical. For example, I don't consider a hex grid to be a negative feature, even in a computer game. I think it's a pretty good compromise between having a regular set of spaces to define movement and having realistic distance computations. It lets me visualize how a whole set of units can move to cooperate with each other, without having to ask the computer a whole bunch of questions about how far each unit can reach.

I personally would love to have a set of computer ports of the SPI games I own, especially if they were well done. Having even a somewhat poor computer opponent addresses the difficulty many wargamers have traditionally had finding opponents at mutually convenient times. Games with lots of bookkeeping (e.g., After the Holocaust) cry out to have something there to keep track of the details so you can speed up play. The ability to set up, save, and tear down the game almost instantly is a major advantage of computer over paper. Of course, one need not port blindly - when the computer does offer advantages (such as true hidden movement vs. inverted counters, or rolling for command control for each unit/stack individually rather than all units in a given hexrow), those advantages can be exploited. I just prefer that the result be something that is recognizeably playable as a boardgame, in principle.

The traditional disadvantage of computer games is the dismal state of AIs for many such games, and the greater complexity of wargames may bring this out to a greater extent. It's possible that that's one factor in making games with the "more realistic" features you cite above more popular - it's harder to criticize the AI if you don't understand the game system. Still, I think that computer versions can do two things to address this. One is the support for additional live opponents already mentioned in several threads - modem and network support, for starters. The other is to make the AI a separate programmable module that can be linked with the main part of the program, with a published interface for those who want to design their own. This would encourage lots of competition to improve deficient AIs, with results that could then be shared by a larger community.