[GZG] System Diversity

I found it interesting with John and Eric talking about their large custom
fleet experiences that they talked about the fear that one design or system
might predominate.

> From a game perspective, that's a bit boring. Point.

But, from a real world perspective, in the age of battleships, everyone built
them. They built gun platforms with armour. There weren't a lot of flavours of
them beyond what the local tech limits imposed. There were destroyers too.
Both were pretty common at the time.

In WWII, and for a while in the early days after, Aircraft Carriers were the
big thing. They still are, but now they are so expensive only a few select
nations have them and only one or two have several of them (real CVN style
carriers anyway). In WWII, Canada, Britain, USA, Japan, and possibly someone
else had them.

In the cold war, NATO and the Soviet Block built lots of tanks, APCs,
fighters, bombers, and ground attack craft. With a few particular notable
exceptions, each side built classes of the same role because they needed to
fill that role.

I guess where I'm going with this as it applies to FT or SG or DS: We often
design for flavour in races. Life doesn't seem to match that
quite as much - technologically, once something is out there, if
there's a war on, you develop a counter. If its a good offense, you copy it.
You try to come up with your own, but chances are the enemy is watching you
and has some whiff of what your doing to duplicate it. And roles follow
evolving doctrine and the march of time, so those tend to have some similarity
too.

So, I expect any major power in the GZG verse that could make MDC/5
armed tanks probably would for their MBTs. There would be uses for other tanks
(mostly economic ones where you might want to deploy a crappy tank for cheap
bucks) but you'd have the big one for mainline tank on mainline tank clashes
with the other side.

Similarly, if (for instance) K-guns turn out to be pretty spiffy, soon
everyone would begin using them. It might take a bit of time, but eventually
you'd see it and the time window is faster by far in wartime. If missiles
proved to be slayers for fleets, no fleet would show up without lots of PDS
and ADFC. It would be pointless and bloody otherwise. If fighters have a
critical point where they crush line ships, you know that people would bring
at least that many to a fight and the other side would compensate.

I guess what I'm getting at is that successful (good value for the
dollar/pound) systems in the real world that fulfill a commonly
understood role (which is probably 75% of all military systems for the big
powers) would exist in some for or another in the other guys arsenal. Now
sure, Brits have more focus on armour and US perhaps on speed in MBTs. Maybe a
Russian DD looks different than a US DD built at the same period, although
they probably are more similar than different.

We worry about flavour. Real procurement systems worry about efficacy and
economics. If they can deliver the good system the enemy is using (or a
refined one!), then they will. If not, they'll find a way to counter it. But
no one, for instance, deploys an MBT with zero armour value. It just isn't
done. So flavour doesn't substitute for efficacy.

I say this because I've seen some fleets built without a particular role of
ship while other fleets focus intently on it and neither strikes me as the way
it would actually be (unless the design is clearly superior and everyone would
then build it or unless it sucks entirely then no one would). There will be
cases where one side builds something unique or particular to their odd needs,
but I'd say that's
less than 25% of designs. (S-Tank, I'm looking at you...)

So, if you are trying to model the real world, as soon as the humans could
reverse engineer (or even just copy) an alien system with moderate cost
effectiveness, they'd do it. And vice versa. We'd see
human ships with K-guns or KV with Grasers (as an example) in short
order.

Of course, that's more boring for a 'game flavour' but I used to play a lot of
microarmour and it never occured to me to be bored with soviets versus NATO
just because both sides had tanks, APCs, strike planes, and infantry. The fun
was in what you did with them and how doctrine suggested you fight them.

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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
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learning how to play and experimenting with FT designs and technologies some
people designed fleets that were heavily based around one technology
especially heavy missiles.

You could let Darwinism take it's logical course and then everyone ends up
with the dominant technology and defences and players can exactly copy each
others ship designs it turns into chess with more counters and dice.

From a personal point of view I don't enjoy playing games that rely heavily on
FT ordnance. The two fleets sit at opposite ends of the table and fire
missiles at each other or launch fighter squadrons ship manouvre is largely
irrelevant. Those kind of engagements might make for interesting novels but
they make for boring games.

Tom makes a good point. You need to ensure that there is a reason to have
different types of unit, different mission capabilites need to be required. In
DS if you didn't care about holding terrain and the playing area was flat
featureless plain with no cover then everyone would use tanks, unless they
couldn't build them. In FT if all you play are large fleet action then
destroyers are only viable for the fringes because they get chewed up pretty
quickly. So you need to ensure the games require you to have multiple mission
capabilities to encourage players to take fleets made up of different types.

You also need to ensure that it's viable to have different army compositions
and not just the optimum. If you want to play things other than warsaw pact vs
nato, say a hypothetical invasion of the African oil fields you need to ensure
that the gaming is interesting and not just a slaughter by one side or other.
If you don't do this you ensure that you can only play warsaw pact vs nato and
can't simulate other opponents.

IÂ think FT would be a much less attractive game if you could quickly get to a
point where a particular formula dominated.

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