Use of Elite SF

John said:

> 1)If you have an elite commando on the

[Tomb] Ignoring heavily armed MP formations,
rear area security troops, and a chance encounter with a line formation
rotated out of line or new to the area.

Not necessarily. Ranger companies were
at D-Day, and the 1st Special Service Force
held a chunk of the line at Anzio. Even discounting any historical instances,
well, needs must when the devil drives. If you need bodies to fill a hole
(Battle of the Bulge, frex), you get them where you can.

[Tomb] True, but this would not be what I
would see as 'using them right' as John suggests. This is 'using them wrong
because you need to'. But every trained, expensive, experienced elite raider
you lose while he fights to plug a hole in LoB is going to cost you several
times the cost of a normal gropo to replace. So it is an inefficient use of
elite resources. Sometimes inefficient is necessary, so rules would be handy.
But just because you must do a thing doesn't mean it isn't 'using them wrong'.

[Tomb] I agree with John that a unit isn't
likely to self rally, but this hinges on the whole rallying issue. Units have
pulled back and went back in, but they were rallied. The question is at what
size can a unit realistically expect some possibility of an
organic self-rally? Fireteam? Squad?
Platoon? Company? I have seen and read
about instances of self-rallying in squads
and in platoon sized actions. One might say these actually occur in DS2
beneath the granularity level, so when a unit actually breaks and pulls back,
that means the morale of the NCOs and leaders who'd usually be rallying the
forces is also broken, and an external rallying is required. This would
explain the existing rules and not necessitate new rules.

[Tomb] Keep in mind that every
successively higher level GZG game abstracts a greater amount of the
underlying detail of what is happening (FMA Skirmish will still abstract some
micro-scale details, Stargrunt abstracts a
lot of details of what individual guys are doing, and DS2 abstracts details of
what is going on within platoons, and FMA Drop Troops will undoubtedly
abstract the details of the actions of companies or battalions, etc.). This
abstraction is significant because it means a lot of underlying detail is
subsumed.... troops who are showing good morale in DS2 may already have
broken, started to retreat,
and been rallied - all without any visibility
on the DS2 game board.

Tomb.

> At 04:01 PM 12/8/2002 -0500, Tomb wrote:

Then I said:

> Not necessarily. Ranger companies were

back to Tomb:

> [Tomb] True, but this would not be what I

Well, I disagree somewhat.  :-)  Regarding the Rangers, while their
original purpose was raiding, if the invasion worked there wouldn't be any
more raiding. Using elite forces to take targets that *had* to be taken, even
if they weren't hundreds of miles behind enemy lines is more or less doctrine,
though I guess you could argue Pointe du Hoc wrote that role into Ranger
doctrine. In addition, I really can't agree with your last sentence. "using
them wrong" implies (to me, I hasten to add) that you had a choice and picked
the wrong one. Doing something you must do removes the possibility of it being
either right or wrong; it just is [1]. This may very well be a personal
definition thing, though.

> --- Thomas Barclay <kaladorn@magma.ca> wrote:

> [Tomb] Ignoring heavily armed MP formations,

Wehreupon SOF units either end up mostly dead, get really grateful to the Air
Force for saving their butts, or hide.

> [Tomb] True, but this would not be what I

Bingo.