_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lhas anyone got
any rules for ground combat campaigns.
I'd like to play some games where the strategic decisions impact the on table
action. Ideally I'd like a map where the map scales to the table so if
there's a hill on the map then there's a hill on the table. I'd also like some
simple supply rules but I don't really want logistics to dominate the game.
Some recon and surveilance assets would also be useful
I don't like GWs campaigns where you take your standard table top army and get
to reuse that army for every game.Â
Who has done games like this?
Any input or ideas appreciated.
Thanks
John
John,
I have done several mixed FT/DS/SG weekend conventions with four 3-4
hour slots worth of gaming around a theme campaign.
The first and most memorable was the Assault on New Provindence, an ESU attack
on a NAC planet colonized by expatriate fisherfolk from the Canadian
Maritimes, the New England Coast, and a few other
fishing-rich areas of the world.
This led to the identification of my friend James Hilchie as "Comrade
Hil-Chi-Minh" (of the ESU) and the famous quote from General Sarno to
the ESU Commander, taking a page out of the Bastogne books more or less. When
confronted with orbital bombardment, ground troop landings, and a fiercely
spirited counteroffensive that was deemed to have broken the ESU invasion
force, General Sarno opened a channel to the ESU Admiral in charge and said
"Get your a$$ back to Eurasia." (It pretty much summed up the attitude of
those in New Providence to the invasion and their spirited defense)
This campaign consisted of an FT battle (the approach) which the ESU was going
to win, but the question was how pyrrhic would the victory be, then a DS2 game
to neutralize the Planetary Defense Center, then a Stargrunt game two sessions
long where the ESU tried to take the main starport on New Providence.
In each battle, the side that did better (vs. scenario victory conditions)
would get a reinforcement chit or two (depending on how well they did). They
started with 3 in their pool and could win more.
The chit was worth about +/- 10% to their force size and they could
choose which of the 4 time slots to spend the chit in and when during that
slot to summon reinforcements. The ESU used theirs finishing off
the PDC, which they eventually took by massive VTOL-mobile assault,
and during the starport assault. The NAC used some during the Starport fight
and I think one during the FT battle to kill a few more ESU troops before they
got to the fight.
With something like this, I found it easiest to setup an overall storyline and
let scenario outcomes impact forces and conditions for victory in subsequent
scenarios. The reinforcement chips gave commanders a chance to have an impact
in strategic asset allocation in a dynamic way. This somewhat covered
'logistics' too.
I think you'll find most real battlefield maps are too big for an SG board.
Maybe DS could do it. But much terrain is lost below the granularity of DS's
1"=100m. In SG, we rarely see sufficient relief on game boards to match many
fo the areas I've lived in (hilly country in Eastern Ontario). You just
couldn't capture this without some really crazy hills (my folks place is
probably 150m up from the bottom of the hill 400m to the NE that the road
comes in on... at the back of our yard is about a 20m steep slop, at the sides
about the same drop but over 50m or so, and at the front, no drop to speak
of).
So you'll be best off just trying to create 'representative' terrain that
gives the feel of your real map. Give google maps a try and pick some place
you like the look of and that can guide your board setup.
I've done this a few times with similar results with different scenarios.
Tom B
I've been thinking about this for a while, and still no results. Some
thoughts:
Political decisions have to be exogenous (outside the direct control of the
player). That doesn't mean the politics isn't important, but their political
masters remain a level above them. What they do has to fit political
constraints, and the progress of the war has political implications. Even in
dictatorships, the political and military roles tend to diverge. This casts
the player as a general officer.
The tabletop games that result should represent narrative "turning points".
They should either be critical moments in the war when everything turns on the
skill and courage of a few men or engagements that are meant to be typical of
how the war was going in general at that moment.
The "turning points approach" has three advantages. It doesn't force you to
play one system or another. If two people want to play stargrunt, then why
should they be playing dirtside? Or vice versa. Second, it's always relevant;
that is, you're not rolling up scenarios which are foregone conclusions, and
the battles are dictated by and help to decide critical military events.
Third, the battle fits the subjective experience of experiencing the history
of a war: a series of decision points and critical junctures. I guess there's
a fourth point, two: it cleanly separates the strategic from the tactical. So
strategy doesn't just feel like tactics with larger formations.
The consequence is that there isn't really a direct connection of the campaign
map to the game table. You're also not following one unit from battle the
battle. Like I said, I'm still working on it and am not making much progress
(at the moment it's still mostly narrative and negotiation rather than a
system).
On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 8:32 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> has anyone got any rules for ground combat campaigns.
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 09:12:41AM -0500, Robert Mayberry wrote:
> The tabletop games that result should represent narrative "turning
I think you may be a genius.
The problem I've met with Full Thrust campaign systems (most certainly
including ones I've worked on myself) is that if tactical considerations
feed up into the strategic level - at the simplest level, "I won this
battle, so I'll have more forces available for the next battle and my
enemy will have fewer" - then one side tends to build up a momentum that
makes the later battles rather less fun for the other side. (It's entirely
realistic, of course...)
I think that one might implement your idea mostly at the campaign level: "You
won this battle, therefore you have a material advantage and things go your
way for a while. So instead of playing through the next year in monthly turns,
we'll just skip ten turns ahead to when the enemy breakout attempt happens..."
R
> RBW wrote:
> The problem I've met with Full Thrust campaign systems (most certainly
Well... it *could* go that way. Or it could go "I won this battle,
the enemy fell back on his base areas - so now I have even more
systems to cover with slightly fewer ships than I had before, and
it'll take my reinforcements even longer to reach me..." :-7
Later,
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:
> Well... it *could* go that way. Or it could go "I won this battle, the
It all depends on the loss rates for victor and loser, as the assumptions
about rate of replacement for both ships and crews.
In most Full Thrust games I've played, unless you totally guess wrong or
otherwise screw the pooch in a major way, the loss ratios are pretty high for
both sides. Not mutual annihilation, but not far from it either. Frankly, I'm
not sure either side would be in a position to do much after a major battle.
Again, this depends on your assumptions for crew recovery, crew replacement,
and ship building speed and capability.
In FT campaigns with usable construction with in game time, of course, it can
also depend on arcane things like rules for taking over assets. Do you get to
start using captured shipyards? Resource generators?
Yes, and you are quickly bringing the war to your opponent, no, and you are
fighting increasingly long supply lines, as well as being spread out covering
territory.
Merde, I love this stuff!
The_Beast
John Atkinson wrote on 12/28/2009 12:01:24 PM:
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Oerjan Ariander
That's why I decided to abandon "clock time" in favor of "strategic time".
Most of your decisions are being made automatically; either by your
subordinates, or your advisors (with a rubber stamp) or by heuristics you use
privately. We want to minimize those in a campaign system, and focus on the
few decisions which really matter.
In that context the economic, political, organizational, technological and
logistical factors are still important, but they shape the nature of the
decisions you are presented with, rather than creating a deterministic link
from situation to outcome. I don't like games which are decided in drydock
when you design your ships; I like games where your ability as a gamer during
the game itself decides the outcome.
To me, the fruitful question is: "What decisions will a
general/admiral make in a future war?" I'm thinking that computers are
already to some extent automating supply (logistics) chains. What WOULDN'T be
automated? I'll have to leaf through Sun Tzu again.:)
Rob
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Robert Mayberry
> <robert.mayberry@gmail.com> wrote:
The interesting problem with automating strategic decision making is best
exemplified by WWI's tyranny of the train schedules (Germany only mobilising
against Russia, not against Russia and France simultaneously, being outside
strategic planning 'forced' the preemptive attack on France). Decisions have
to be made with incomplete information and while automated decision making can
make for fast responses, it is apalling bad at making appropriate responses.
The local commander makes an aweful lot of decisions, as he cannot wait for
orders from outside the system. Feints and counterfeints, while never knowing
if the deceptions are working in real time, will feature big in a Full Thrust
campaign.
I suspect that the most realistic FT campaign would have a space master who
knows everything, all of the time, two strategic commanders that make
decisions based on what information gets forwarded to them, and a pool of
players that make the local decisions write the reports that get sent up the
decision chain. It is possible for strategic commanders to also take part in
tactical combat, if the time and place of the battle can be concealed from
them. Adding to the uncertainty of the strategic commanders is the delay in an
order's arrival. If things are really chaotic, units intended to act on an
order may not be capable of completing the order when it arrives, or even
still exist.
Those of us on the list with active FT players local to us should volunteer to
be local commanders and resolve combat. Those of us without local opponents,
but with time on hour hands should volunteer to be space master, strategic
commanders, or commanders not at the sharp end figuring out what orers to cut
for local reserves based on standing orders from above and the paltry
information coming in battle reports.
I am not sure that the result would be fun, but the complete after action
report, including a comparison of what was true when a decision was made
versus what was known when a decision was made would be
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lWhen we played
FT campaigns we had up to 12 individuals playing each controlling their own
empire. Â The Geopolitical situation resembled some combinaiton of 18th
century diplomacy and "survivor". Sure you could take your fleet and smash it
inot the enemy. Typically you would get a nice bloody victory with the loser
losing 75% of their ships and the winner 50%. The bigger the fight the better
for everyone else. Â The neighbours of the two players involved would now be
faced with the choice of what to do. The player with most of their ships
destroyed would likely fall to the victor and you could not let the victor
have all of those resources. They would then have a double sized economy and
would be able to domino their opponents getting bigger and harder to stop as
they went. Â So you got people invading the defeated player jsut so they could
get some of the resources and ensure that not all of the resources went to the
victor. Â There is also a small window of opportunity to attack the victor.
With them haveing taken their fleet and invaded another player, They have less
defences and currently less ships. So they could now be ripe for attack. And
you can't let them get their hands on the other players resources either. Â
Makes for a very careful campaign system.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lThe kind of
ground compat campaign I am thinking of would be at a smaller level something
like a division or battallion sized engagement. Â You could then line up
seveal players on the same side, each with their regular table top forces to
make up their combined formation. One player could then be the supreme
commander of each team. Â I have been reading about the Korean war recently
and some of the battles there sound like they would be very interesting to
form the basis of the campaign. Especially as they are not well known and so
might not be immediately recognisable as the template. Â Orders from HQ could
then be a card system indicating mission orders which may not often make sense
or be impossible. The supreme commander then gets the job of assigning the
orders to their individual commanders. Players could get points for orders
achieved and black marks for orders not fulfilled. Â One of the best events I
ran was a map based large scale engagement where two sides were advancing
towards a meeting engagement... Becaue the map had the terrain on in people
could pick roads to move down and difficult terrain to hide their infantry in.
People also needed to run reconassance elements to locate the enemy so they
could be engaged. Even though we were using scifi roles to play the game we
had deployments that felt realistic, recon elements up and flanking, main body
and assault and fire support elements as reserves. Â In the end victory was
had by the smallest of chances, the supreme commander of one side was killed
when their transport was straffed by an air attack. This through their side
into confusion at the crticial moment. Â One other fun element we had was the
communicaitons system. Each player got their own map and marked their units on
it where they thought they were. They could then communicate their
intelligence with their suprememe commander and other by leaving them a
message on the dictaphone. The supreme commander also got to leave orders for
their commanders by the same mechanism. Once all the orders were in they were
then replayed to the entire group of players. So orders were encoded with call
signs and code words, except for the really desperate who were transmitting in
the clear. Â Made for a good game. I'll have to do it again.
> At 1:43 PM -0700 28/12/09, Richard Bell wrote:
How about a late Roman / Justinian Byzantine era political
setup with several space masters and strategic commanders?
Ideally the "court" is several role players who are all jockeying for power
and favour within the political system and don't really care what happens on
the frontiers. The "generals" are the miniatures players who just want to lead
armadas and fight battles...but the court decides what resources each generals
gets.
It would help solve the domino effect of compounding assets, because
successful generals would be nobbled by their own side appointing their own
favourites in charge of newly conquered territories, insisting that advances
be made equally on all fronts, and so on.
Fits in well with decadent empire space opera genres such as Asimov's
Foundation.
cheers,
Well, the scenario I've been playing of late has been an ongoing
semi-campaign where I'm both space master and playing the bad guys, much
like a D&D dungeon master might do. I don't keep very specific victory
conditions beyond just giving them an idea of whether they're on the offensive
or the defensive and what's at stake, and what their resource limitations are.
(beginning brain dump, if you don't want to read four one-paragraph
after-action reports, skip onward)
In the first battle I had one friend playing the good guys, with one large
Kra'Vak weaponed dreadnought with multiple layers of armor anchoring up a
fleet of otherwise human beam armed smaller vessels, against a set of arachnid
battlecruisers throwing alpha strikes of SMLs and SMRs with the occasional
cloaked ship in there. At this first chapter of the story, the dreadnought was
to be the first striking back to try to push the arachnids back from eating
everybody while they tried
to reverse-engineer as much of the technological discoveries as
possible. Hence the victory conditions generally were, "stop the bugs and
don't lose this particular ship." This was achieved, so we went on.
A second friend came in, so we came up with a carrier-based force with
an escort group of fast pulse torpedo and needle beam armed cruisers to join
in, against the same enemies with slightly upgraded forces to indicate that
the bugs are now beginning to regard this bunch as a threat rather than just a
slightly challenging meal, and now they wanted
to track down and hit a humanoid frontier-core system. The good guys
from the first game had a few of their older ships refitted as smaller
battleships with a mixture of K'V and human tech, but still nothing on the
level of the dreadnought. Things went rather badly for the good guys due to
some miscalcuations, the dreadnought was damaged but not destroyed (most armor
gone), all of the cruisers of the reinforcing clan got destroyed, along with
most of the carrier fighters and other refitted ships. The good guys managed
to withdraw the carriers and the dreadnought, so they hadn't had a terrible
fleet asset loss (other than increasi ngly expendable "pocket battleship"
elements refitted from older light carriers that were mainly there to hold the
line while better ships were being built and brought up), but they lost the
system.
The next battle represented the good guys' efforts at retaking the system.
This time around the bugs made a few overconfident mistakes while the good
guys brought up some MT missile cruisers to try to give their fighters a hand,
along with a pair of newer dreadnoughts (the original one being repaired after
the previous fight) along with a few
more carriers refurbished from merchant hulls rebuilt as quick-build
warships. Te uncloaked elements of the bug force got wiped out without really
firing a shot. However, at the same time, one of the dreadnoughts got caught
out of position and ate a missile strike that damaged the power core and
ultimately destroyed it. The bugs then unveiled their heavier cloaked elements
and destroyed the other dreadnought, but couldn't follow it up heavily enough
that the carriers
weren't able to re-arm their fighters, and the bugs re-cloaked and
abandoned the field before they had to eat massed torpedo bombers again.
The next one after that, the good guys figured out by methods derived from Nth
generation descendants of what we're using today to find exoplanets, figured
out what probably looked like a bug home system, and went after it with the
surviving carriers, the original repaired and refitted dreadnought, a second
dreadnought built to the refit specs, and a new set of light escort cruisers
(probably remote controlled from the dreadnoughts) whose main mission was to
sit in a group of three surrounding a dreadnought and screen it from salvo
missiles while launching MT missiles of its own. The carrier clan adopted
reverse
engineered cloaking devices for their hit-and-run tactics and sent a
pair of these, with orders to try to avoid revealing just how much new tech
was in them from not only the enemy but also their allies. Meanwhile, the bugs
had their cloaked force from the previous game reinforced by a couple of giant
"hive fortress" ships that were loaded to the antennae with point defenses,
following their previous tactic of hoping to cripple the fighters so that
either the hive fortresses could wade through them and then kill everything or
at least they'd give the cloaked force another clean shot to alpha strike.
This one started out badly, the fortress ships wiped out all the fighters, and
one of the dreadnoughts got blasted away. The other dreadnought made ready to
escape, and then a couple things happened. The bug's cloaking detachment came
up right on top of the carriers, but they had just enough scatterguns to
survive the first alpha strike and FTL out... but they were close enough to
the bugs that one of the carriers exploded, taking out most of the cloaked
detachment with it. Right about the same time, a whole pile of MT missiles
came in and took out both of the hive fortresses (which had
worn out their scattergun-like point defense missiles on the fighters).
What had been looking like a situation where the good guys were suspecting
they
were in a losing hit-and-run turned into one where they managed to
wipe out most of the bug force... BUT they did so as they were already
withdrawing from the battle, so they failed to hold the bug home system, so
they accomplished a vast tactical victory but strategically failed at the same
time. This may result in the bugs being simply more pissed off than ever
rather than particularly scared, since their considerable infrastructure is
still intact even if a lot of their warships got blasted away... but at the
same time, the rate of loss in the last couple of battles has been high enough
that their resource advantage isn't going to hold up if they don't start
winning some more. The arachnids are also part of a larger imperium that
they've been hiding this entire war from in hopes that their masters won't
notice before they've eaten the humanoids, but now that things are starting to
go increasingly badly they may have to make a few interstellar communiques in
order to sa ve their home systems if things continue to go badly...
(end of after action reports, stop skipping)
So in a nutshell, we've played four games in various degrees of scale --
the first game was about 4k NPV per side, then went to about 8-9k, then
about 12-13k, then about 17-18k, which represented one side mobilizing
while the other side increasingly came to devote more resources out of the
realization that they had a real threat on their hands. In each case, the
victory conditions were more dire for the humanoids than the
arachnids -- the humanoids were more or less fielding their first and
only line of defense to try to push the bugs back while they fully mobilize
their economies to defend themselves, while the arachnids have considerably
greater reserves of ships and more industrial resources to rebuild them, plus
a lot of allies they can call upon. At any given point, the humanoids could
potentially lose the whole war if they lost too much of their fleet, while the
arachnids are hurling ships at the problem in hopes that it'll eventually
break under the sheer weight but are eventually likely to run out. The good
guys have been winning by
two-to-one NPV margins, and the bulk of their losses have been in
fighters (which I figure are fairly easily replaced) with the occasional
dreadnought or smaller battleship (which aren't). Both sides are gradually
adapting their doctrines and tactics to stop what the other is doing (the good
guys have escort ships screening their dreadnoughts from salvo missiles, while
the arachnids are starting to make enough use of interceptors to at least
weaken fighter strikes on the way in, in hopes
of turning it into more of a ship-to-ship battle), and while each battle
is roughly evenly matched (following somewhat of the "turning point" idea)
each one does affect how the victory conditions and scenarios change for the
next one. I'm also making a few deliberate tactical
errors on the bugs' part where they may get overconfident and/or where
they aren't anticipating things the good guys will do, and using a few tacti
cs that they would use from a role play standpoint that I wouldn't necessarily
want to use normally (e.g. keeping large cloaked detachments that won't be
there to support the uncloaked parts for large periods of time).
Anyway... long-winded stuff, hope it's at least semi-interesting to
somebody.
E
[quoted original message omitted]
My concept for having linked scenarios over a weekend was:
1) If you want to put on a weekend of fun, you need to be able to supply
forces. Doing that while in another country (usually where I attend such
events) means having a very accurate grasp of what to bring before you leave.
2) Having linked tactical events with limited player input into force
compositions and reinforcement schedules makes for fun games at the table with
predictable force sizes. If you tinker it right, no battle will be a walkaway.
3) In order to have any sort of narrative throughout such a series of events,
you need to either presume outcomes strategically (in my example, the ESU land
on New Providence) because 'that's what should happen given they are invading'
OR you have to have a first event with some sort of decision tree behind it
for possible outcome scenarios (ESU failed to invade and were decimated, ESU
failed to land troops but their space fleet is intact, ESU landed
successfully). You then have to tree off potential options for subsequent
games (some of which could link back to other options you develop). If you go
the 'decision tree' route, you can end up with quite a forest of possible
outcomes when you get 4 or 5 sessions deep.
This is why I went with a narrative. Besides, most historical campaigns, you
know the general scope of what happened (ESU invaded Winchester, for instance)
and you might even know the outcome, but a lot of the details (how many people
died, who was the hero, what objectives succeeded or did not) are unknown.
The problems with the free form campaign where people can build anything or
deploy any mix of available strategic forces as they see fit:
1) Logistics - If you can't decide until the day of the game, you'll
have to have all your game resources on hand
2) Walkaway battles - You'll get someone who brings a tommy gun to a
knife fight.
3) Lack of Miniatures - You'll eventually get someone to build
something (like say a particular cruiser design) for which you just don't have
20 of them for a given battle.
The momentum problem RBW mentioned is also likely. I know Robert M says he
likes battles at the board to determine outcomes, but realistically, this
isn't the truth. Sun Tzu will tell you that you are supposed to arrive at the
field of battle having already one. In the real world, production advantages,
technological breakthroughs, etc. will inevitably give strategic advantage
which will show up at any battle. "Hmmm... that blasted American showed up
with USAF.... I guess we don't get to do much with our armour...".
Truly free form games with no referee exerted central narrative or at least
significant confounding factors will tend to lead to fights you can't or won't
run. And they WILL be what would be the turning point fights.
On the other hand, you can apply constraints to the campaign:
- timescale is such as to preclude ship construction
- timescale is such as to preclude all but smaller ship replacement,
don't lose your wall of battle ships
- winner of an engagement gets more salvage % due to holding the field
(where that makes sense)
- external political/command direction determines the course of
battles you will fight
- the 'turning points' are taken to be key, fairly even battles, in an
overall even conflict where things actually did hang in the balance OR where
VPs are not awarded for winning a fight (if the battles aren't even) but for
how well you did versus how well you probably should
have (did you have good luck/skill, or the reverse?)
- One other approach is to include some rules that say 'as your forces
grow and you win more systems/land hexes on the planet, your
logistical expense and your patrolling commitment grows' - to help
keep things even for future battles, despite somebody winning prior
battles - this means a player can be winning the strategic campaign
but the tactical battles will still be a challenge... it sort of decouples the
tactical result from the strategic result in a way to counteract momentum.
Imagine that the strategic game is a linear scale
from -10 to +10 with -10 being one player winning, +10 being the other
player winning. It's results don't have much effect on tactical battles,
because as one of the players wins strategic battles, he has to allcoate his
larger strategic forces out to cover more (imaginary)
territory or placate more (allies/conquered areas). So strategic
battles have similar feeling, but where on the +/- track is dictated
by the results, so eventually someone will secure a victory on the strategic
level.
- Also, you can take a page out of Imperium. They had an odd mechanics
where, IIRC, peace could break out at odd times, the Imperial or
Terran player could get benefits/hindrances (Imperium releases more
ships into the war, Imperial shipbuilding bans are lifted, etc). These factors
can sometimes end the campaign suddenly or throw the strategic trend into
reverse because a 'major' outside impact suddenly comes into play.
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 10:16:01AM -0500, Tom B wrote:
> The momentum problem RBW mentioned is also likely. I know Robert M
Here's a thought. I'm not a great military theoretician but it makes sense to
me: in the real world, nobody deliberately goes into battle without a force
superiority (i.e. enough to be reasonably sure that he's going to win). So
battles are basically never going to be "fleet A and fleet B, of equal point
value, show up and shoot it out".
Battles that _do_ happen:
- ambushes of various sorts - one side is relying on surprise as a force
multiplier.
- one side thinks it has superior forces, but the other side has more
concealed.
- one side has inferior mobility and simply can't get away.
- last stand, hold off the attackers until something else has been done.
- attacking a point target, basically the reverse of last stand -
attackers are out to destroy a single high-value asset and don't really
care about their own losses.
Probably more that I haven't thought of. Seems to me that a campaign system
ought to concentrate on generating (and scoring) lopsided engagements of this
sort.
R
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org>
wrote:
> Here's a thought. I'm not a great military theoretician but it makes
Except under one circumstance:
The meeting engagement, wherein neither side really knows where the other is
nor what forces they have. They sort of blunder into each other, and fight
where they meet with the forces to hand, both side screaming up the chain of
command for reinforcements. These might be equal in forces by accident.
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org>
wrote:
> Here's a thought. I'm not a great military theoretician but it makes
Another element is this:
Defining "point values" in the real world is not a precise science. An
estimation of one's force and the enemy's depends on too many variables. If I
believe that the elan or inherent Teutonic racial superiority or better
training or superior doctrine of my force makes it equal to a materially
superior force, I might give battle.
And under some circumstances, I might be right.
I wouldn't say that it's *realistic* that battles are balanced going in.
Instead, I had two things in mind:
1) A campaign consists of tons of battles-- most of which are lopsided
or tactically uninteresting. But the ones we decide to *play* (the ones of
historical or tactical significance) are the ones where the outcome isn't
decided ex ante.
2) With that said, most generals don't have the luxury of sending overwhelming
force. Instead, they send whatever they can spare. And as John A. points out,
they are plagued with limited and often faulty information.
3) Running a ton of lopsided battles is boring. So (as often happens in the
Tuffleyverse) we sacrifice some realism to increase the gameplay.
I'd add a few other things:
As several other people have pointed out, there are disadvantages to winning a
battle also (that breaks momentum). In WWI, the Germans didn't have a
logistics train that could keep up with their troops, so they couldn't exploit
their victories in the field. So I do like the
suggestion that momentum-breakers be included. I also like the idea of
exogenous shocks (political, economic, diplomatic) that act as
game-changers.
> From a game design perspective, balancing army lists is rough, but
The goal of a battle is often NOT "annihilate your opponent" except as a means
to some larger end. A good campaign system would set interesting objectives of
a battle beyond than simply attriting the enemy force, and setting limits on
HOW you're allowed to accomplish your goals. A good political system gives its
military what it needs to accomplish the objectives set for it, and avoids
meddling that restricts how the military pursues its objectives. Anyone ever
heard of a good political system? Me neither.
Instead, we have vague, inconsistent, irrational and mutually exclusive
objectives. The resources and tactics used are highly constrained, and the
goals shift over time. Even (perhaps especially) military dictatorships seem
plagued by this problem.
I think the first thing that has to get thrown out is a constant scale for
time and space. Time shouldn't be divided into hours or days, it should be
chopped up into significant events. Space shouldn't be measured in hexes, it
should be irregular districts or (better yet) key locations. The details of
getting from key location to key location are the midlevel officers' problem.
A challenge to any science fiction campaign system is ortillery. Orbital
bombardment is a problem for obvious reasons, and so we're constantly forced
to invent excuses for why ships aren't available on EITHER side.
Going BETWEEN star systems, things change a bit. Communication lags of months
or more, and an inability to see enemy ships before they enter the system,
imply that local governors and ship captains will have far more autonomy.
Encounter battles won't be centrally planned, they'll be haphazard affairs
that evolve organically based on what's available, what's needed and how the
local commander thinks the objectives should be adapted to the reality on the
ground.
In a multipolar world, you also have natural coalition-building
behavior, where lesser competitors team up to counterbalance the strongest.
Technology would diffuse faster than navies can be upgraded.
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
John makes some good points, although they are harder to justify in FT with no
real 'crew quality' or 'morale' than in SG or DS.
The reality of even battles that were not planned thus:
Side A had intel and decided they had, at the outset of planning, enough
available resources to accomplish their mission objectives despite side B.
Meanwhile, things changed. In mid op-planning phase, extra objectives
were added due to new intel arriving. Meanwhile, Side A hadn't got a complete
intel picture of side B.
Side B had also been moving in reinforcements that side A didn't find out
about.
So, side A commits thinking 'okay, we've got a few more objectives, but we've
still got force majeur'. Then they discover that B has reserves in place that
can quickly respond to the battle (an A
side-operation to block these reserves never got off the ground due to
a confusion about timing).
So A shows up to fight and B turns out to be more evenly matched. A could pull
out, but the objectives are linked to further exploitation planning that would
be ruined. Better they push on and see if they can break B. B, for their part,
are stuck in because they are in a defensive role.
So the more even fight occurs.
The interesting thing about how we plan battles today vs. FT period:
1) Today, we have lots of ELINT, IMINT, and sometimes HUMINT that tell
us what is where and when. Some of it is real-time. Thus we launch ops
knowing a lot about the opposition. Even with this, we sometimes screw up.
In the FTverse, if you posit some kind of jump-point system that can
be defended or a non jump-point system where jumps can be picked up at
long range on scans, real detailed intel about enemy forces that could be
hiding in the gas giant, hiding behind a moon, running silent in space,
sitting on an ocean bottom, lurking inside a spacedock so you
can't tell how many/what ship classes are there, etc. means that you
might just not be able to get very good intel.
It might be like Age of Sail admirals trying to figure out where the enemy was
and planning accordingly. 80% of their planning would be from estimates of
their own power and 20% from their best vague guess about enemy strength and
intentions because even if they could get
good data, it wouldn't be real-time data.
That helps to justify more even odds battles. Both sides just don't know
enough about the other side to make a highly reliable assessment.
There are tactical ways to ameliorate the risk to your main battle fleet:
Tentative engagement with scouts, trying to draw out enemy numbers and figure
out what he really has, but still parts of his fleet might be sitting blacked
out waiting for the attacker to commit.
2) In the real world, factors play into the game like:
- RoE
- Objectives that change mid-operation
- Forces that get committed (by an enemy unexpectedly) or detached in
mid-operation (sometimes your op just ends up not being as important
as initially thought as an enemy thrust may need countered nearby)
- You over/under estimate enemy strength, supply, morale or troop
quality
- You over/under estimate the challenges posed by terrain, obstacles,
etc.
- Anything you miss
- Enemy counterattacks or your own deeper attacks which serve to
impede enemy reinforcements or deny you expected reinforcements (or which
change the timing of arrival)
- Dictates as to what sorts of losses can be accepted before a side
has to concede the battlefield
Most of the times even fights have occured, somebody has missed something or
the other side has pulled a surprise out. Intel missed the movement of a
Panzer division, the enemy had a hidden minefield on
the one passable road to bring 1/3rd of your forces around his flank,
etc. There is also the 'we weren't really planning on pitched battle, but it
kinda snowballed'. Two probes meet, a meeting engagement happens, one side
decides to commit more, then the other side does, soon so much is committed
that it is an all out battle on a wider front without a really deep long term
plan except not to let the enemy breakthrough (complete with attacks and
counterattacks and reinforcements flowing in and wounded flowing out).
I have no problem with disproportionate battles. My observation in point
systems like FT and DS (and with rough ideas from SG) are that a 10% advantage
in forces is really a 10% improvement to your odds of victory, but a 20% force
increase is a 40% advantage, a 30% force ehancement might be a 90% increase in
odds of victory, etc. The numbers are fictional, but the idea is that when you
perturb away from an even fight, the further the disparity, the (greatly) more
significant the impact on the outcome. 5-10% change might be 'a slight
advantage', a 25% advantage might give you a very high odds of victory, and a
40% advantage can be crushing. You can use this sort of understanding to come
up with some reasonable victory conditions for uneven fights.... and then
evaluate results against those expectations.
I prefer uneven battles, or at least battles that aren't just meeting
engagements but have objectives. It's possible in some of them that neither
side will meet their objectives or both will because they might not actually
have objectives that are only 'blow up the other guy'. Maybe side A has
'secure a river crossing' and side B has 'score at least 50% attrition on side
A'. Both can conceivably satisfy their victory conditions.
T.
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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lAs I understand
it, the problem in WWI wasn't so much logistics as communications. You
attacked the enemy front lines and some of your assault units broke through
unfortunately these units could not signal the exploitation forces to get them
to the break through fast enough to exploit the breakthrough. Many battles had
the cavalry divisions sit back waiting for the signal that they could ride
through and exploit, because the infantry had broken through. The signal never
came in time and the defenders could reinforce more easily than the attackers.
 The classic logistics problem is the western desert in ww2. Both sides had a
supply base at opposite ends of the field of battle as the front lines moved
back and forwards it became easier for the defender to resupply and harder for
the attacker and so the pendulum swung back and forth. Â I think you also
overlook the political dimension. Going to war isn't a rational decision, it's
often armed robbery at nation level, they have something we want and we have
the means to take it. Or the government sees the way of externalising the
problems of its own people by uniting them against a common external enemy.
Winning the peace and having a vibrant economy with a happy population can
simply make you the target of those that don't have what you have. Many
countries believe that they are inherently superior to others and if they are
not at the top of the list then it is other countries that are holding them
down. All these kinds of ideas provide governments with the reasoning to go to
war. Â In one FT campaign my empire bordered another empire, my neighbour
wasn't particularly aggressive but had a larger economy so would out produce
me and would eventually be able to walk in with a much larger fleet. I had a
small opportunity to defeat my neighbours border forces and entrench myself in
the frontier. So I attacked with what I had. On paper (approximate ship sizes
I had the inferior forces) but my combat cruisers were more efficiently
designed that my opponents carrier cruisers and I had the tools to beat off
their attack and then kill them. I also ambushed the reinforcing battleships
(2 ships with no escort) and annihilated them with what looked like an
inferior force. However I used a new technology combination and tactics which
resulted in the destruction of the two capital ships for the loss of 6
frigates. These victories stunned my neighbour and forced him onto the
defensive to protect his core systems. It also elevated my threat level to all
my other neighbours while they tried to work out new counters to my technology
trap. Â In most of our FT campaigns, the main reasons battles are fought are
because there are resources that people want. Battles that are two one sided
usually has one fleet running pretty quickly unless they have to stand and
fight to protect an valuable installation or colony or some other kind of
strategic location. Otherwise it is because people want a fight, they think
that they can beat the enemy fleet either locally or on a broad front and want
to reduce the enemy fleet prior to invasion. I have seen several games where
the attacker thought they had the upper hand and then got defeated because
they lacked the doctrine to defeat the tactical puzzle the enemy fleet
presented. Â
 Â
________________________________
From:Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org>
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Wed, 30 December, 2009 4:33:39 AM
Subject: Re: [GZG] ground combat campaigns
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 10:16:01AM -0500, Tom B wrote:
> The momentum problem RBW mentioned is also likely. I know Robert M
Here's a thought. I'm not a great military theoretician but it makes sense to
me: in the real world, nobody deliberately goes into battle without a force
superiority (i.e. enough to be reasonably sure that he's going to win). So
battles are basically never going to be "fleet A and fleet B, of equal point
value, show up and shoot it out".
Battles that _do_ happen:
- ambushes of various sorts - one side is relying on surprise as a force
multiplier.
- one side thinks it has superior forces, but the other side has more
concealed.
- one side has inferior mobility and simply can't get away.
- last stand, hold off the attackers until something else has been done.
- attacking a point target, basically the reverse of last stand -
attackers are out to destroy a single high-value asset and don't really
care about their own losses.
Probably more that I haven't thought of. Seems to me that a campaign system
ought to concentrate on generating (and scoring) lopsided engagements of this
sort.
R
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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lI like Toms
point about underestimating your enemy.
In several of our FT games people got caught by surprise when they under
estimated how their opponents would counter their doctrine. In one campaign
one player took a fleet initially composed of micro carriers (frigates
mounting one squadron of heavy attack fighters) initially they met with
success but their enemies quickly adapted and the carriers found themselves
out fought by opponents that didn't fight exactly the way they wanted.
It's also easy to underestimate the player, if a person gets the reputation as
being not very good, their opponents don't think much of their tactics or
strategies. It's all the more memorable when these players come up with
something really good. In one game one of the less fancied players pulled off
the best turn one surprise attack ever seen. It took everyone completely by
surprise and would have been especially beautiful if the player on the
receiving end wasn't one of my allies who had just destroyed half his fleet
in a stupid battle with another player and lost his homeworld and another key
planet.
It looks like these things happen in real life, commanders seem to have an
amazing capacity for self deception, they ignore intelligence they don't like,
underestimate their opponents and expect their opponents to fight the same way
as they did in the last battle as well as designing their forces to fight the
wrong kind of battle.
So what sort of campaigns do people play with their SG or dirtside forces? Who
has run campaigns similar to the Hammer Slammers or
mechwarrior style regiment/ battlation level campaigns?
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Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
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Hello one and all,
I came across a very useful campaign system in wargaming magazine a while ago.
Set in a fictional modern era Balkan state, the political arrangements allowed
for a number of different forces to coexist and fight. The forces were (IIRC);
UN sponsored peacekeepers, local rebels, local government forces and foreign
special forces. The suggested campaign system (which I have mostly adapted for
a backwater moon for SGII) was that each player in the campaign picked a force
type and would play each other on a round robin or 'whoever turns up plays'
system. The system then would randomly generate a scenario (ambush,
infiltration, find the black box, rescue the downed pilot etc) and forces and
victory conditions to match (allowing a rebel force a decent chance to pick up
points against a special forces opponent). Victory points are then recorded on
a league table.
The assumption of the system was that there wasn't much that each of the
forces could do to change the overall political situation and so nobody is
seeking to change things, just try and achieve a string of successful missions
to please their political masters. Without regular opponents I have used this
as pretty decent one off scenario generator, but I think that it would bypass
a number of the main issues with campaign systems. Equally of course, it takes
away a bunch of the great things about campaigns if you like logistical
considerations, resource gathering etc. I'm not really sure how I feel about
these, particularly when considering their relevance to SGII.
If this is of interest, I'd be happy to upload the adapted document (very much
a work in progress), though I don't know where or how...
Richard,
I'd like to see it. You can email me a copy (kaladorn aaaaatttttt
gmail dotttttt com - heh, that ought to fool the robots....). I would
also like to know the magazine and issue as I might like to procure it if you
have the original reference.
The problem with hosting it (which normally someone here would likely
volunteer to do, since the list does not allow uploads) would be the question
of how derivative the work is. If it is pretty much identical to what came out
of the magazine, I'm not sure how comfy some would be hosting. If it is
'inspired by' but different in substantial particulars, I'm sure someone could
host it.
Then again, if it was released under something like a Creative Commons license
(unlikely in a magazine that you pay for), you could take and do what you want
with it with minimal restriction and not be infringing copyright.
At any rate, you can pop me a copy. It sounds like the level of scenario
generation that would be good for SGII or FMA Skirmish.
Tom B
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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l
I would be interested in seeing it.
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:24:57 +0000
From: Richard Kirke
Hello one and all,
I came across a very useful campaign system in wargaming magazine a while ago.
Set in a fictional modern era Balkan state, the political arrangements allowed
for a number of different forces to coexist and fight. The forces were
(IIRC);
UN sponsored peacekeepers, local rebels, local government forces and foreign
special forces. The suggested campaign system (which I have mostly adapted for
a backwater moon for SGII) was that each player in the campaign picked a force
type and would play each other on a round robin or 'whoever turns up plays'
system. The system then would randomly generate a scenario (ambush,
infiltration, find the black box, rescue the downed pilot etc) and forces and
victory conditions to match (allowing a rebel force a decent chance to pick up
points against a special forces opponent). Victory points are then recorded on
a league table.
The assumption of the system was that there wasn't much that each of the
forces could do to change the overall political situation and so nobody is
seeking to change things, just try and achieve a string of successful missions
to please their political masters. Without regular opponents I have used this
as pretty decent one off scenario generator, but I think that it would bypass
a number of the main issues with campaign systems. Equally of course, it takes
away a bunch of the great things about campaigns if you like logistical
considerations, resource gathering etc. I'm not really sure how I feel about
these, particularly when considering their relevance to SGII.
If this is of interest, I'd be happy to upload the adapted document (very much
a work in progress), though I don't know where or how..
http://agrenville.myminicity.com/
http://agrenville.myminicity.com/ind
http://agrenville.myminicity.com/tra
http://agrenville.myminicity.com/sec
In Memory of Russ Manduca 7/22/67-1/8/08
Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have
hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else
thereafter. ~ Ernest Hemmingway
"I'm a Member of Red Sox Nation"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc3CevHgms