I'm thinking mostly of FT as I write this, but it could apply just as well
anywhere else.
It seems to have been fairly comprehensively established that the
combat-effectiveness and construction/training cost of a unit are not
simply related. Construction costs make sense when one's running an extended
campaign with replacement units coming in; but what are
combat-effectiveness points really good for? SG2 doesn't have them at
all; DS2 showed how hard they can be to get right. Why bother?
The standard approach seems to be "to balance pick-up games". But this
is intrinsically unrealistic; if the forces were really even, why would either
commander have attacked? From what I've read, most commanders given the choice
to attack would rather have at least a 2:1 force
advantage, so unless we assume that every power has ESU-style commissars
forcing its field officers into attacks for which they're
under-resourced...
No. A "balanced fight" makes no sense historically or psychologically, for all
it's convenient for a game. Can we instead find a way of
creating realistic battles as pick-up games? And can
combat-effectiveness points be a useful tool in that process?
I think so; but it needs a change of attitude. Rather than "let's put our
forces on the table, slug it out and see who wins", the approach would be
"here's a situation, see who can make the best of it".
Assume there's a basic ration of victory points for the scenario, derived from
specific objectives: a freighter that's part of a convoy (which might be
something both sides wanted control of, or might be something one side wanted
to destroy), a location that you have to have
troops in when the other guy doesn't (basic attack/defence), or
whatever. That part of the game is zero-sum: there are only so many
points to be won, and they will be won by one side or the other.
Now, compensate for force sizes. Each side's score multiplier is something
along the lines of:
(surviving points) * (enemy's original points) / (original points)^2
So. You go in with 500 points against a 200-point defence. You lose 200
points during the attack. Your score multiplier is
(300*200/500/500)=0.24.
If the enemy had inflicted those losses on you with a 100-point defence,
it would be 0.12; if you hadn't taken any loses at all, it would be 0.4. This
gets multiplied by your basic victory points to assess how well you did;
whoever scores higher is the winner. It's entirely possible to take all the
objectives, but to use up so much manpower and materiel doing so that you end
up the loser...
Advantages:
- encourages preservation of own forces
- doesn't directly reward destruction of enemy, unless it helps gain
basic victory points
- gives resonably sensible results with very unbalanced sides
Does this make sense? Has anybody tried anything of this sort?
Hello Roger, One of my old (out of print and long since forgotten) minitures
rule set does just exactly what you propose. It generates a "political"
victory point schedule along with a military victory schedule of points. From
that, a winner is selected. I will have to see how the points were awarded to
see if that makes sense for your proposals...
> Does this make sense? Has anybody tried anything of this sort?
From: Roger Burton West
> but what are
<snip>
> No. A "balanced fight" makes no sense historically or
On idea I liked was "define a scenario and a defending force. Bid for the
amount of attacking force that you feel is needed to accomplish your
objective. Whoever bids a lower attacking force plays the attacker." This
doesn't work too well for scenarios in which
fog-of-war is important but for pickup games I think it would be okay.
I think what's really needed would be creative ideas for scenarios, and some
description of what makes dense or open terrain and the effects that they
have.
Back when the original AH Squad Leader came out in 1977, John Hill included a
cool scenario designer lnk to a deck of standard playing.
Each player drew a playing card and matched it to chart that gave a
pregenerated force. So if I drew a "10" I might get a short company and no
support. My opponent would then draw maybe "2" and get a full infantry company
with massive support. Other cards were drawn for victory conditions.
The sides were rarely "evenly matched" but the games were challenging.
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million
typewriters, and email is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
[quoted original message omitted]
> Scott Watts wrote:
That is one way to play the random scenario generator. And it could certainly
produce some highly imbalanced games.
I was under the impression that the defense was randomly generated from the
deck of cards and the offense was bid upon using the points system. The low
bidder took the offense. I can dig out my SL rules to check.
I have had some (fleeting) ideas towards developing somthing like this for my
own use... For pick up games maybe...
Players deside what their forces are. (maybe use a table for this also?) Both
sides roll on each table.
First table: Force condition. Put in things like: No effects.
Battle damage -- Force is licking its wounds from a recient action.
Lose/damage some units... (roll randomly?)
Low on supplies -- force hasn't been supplied reciently. (maybe
make players roll for any ordinace based weapons, ect?)
Part of force lost -- Part of player's forces enters game later
on...
ect.
Second table: Intelligence stuff Put in things like:
Compleatly blind -- player has no information on the situation.
Old info -- Opposing player's force is presented as differant than
it actually is...(maybe make the player scan units? ect.)
Good info -- Sees everything.
Or something like this. If it could be kept somewhat generic, then we could
apply it to any game... :-)
Donald Hosford
> Roger Burton West wrote:
> I'm thinking mostly of FT as I write this, but it could apply just as