Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

For me, if you want to only incorporate the items of your wish-list, then so be it, we would indeed have a fine simulation, and I would be very happy. As it is, the wish-list seems to be nothing more than wishful thinking, without any real produce as an outcome, hence, it remains as theoretical and unproven as any of the other ideas tossed around, and subject to questions being raised on it's validity. In fact , I would be glad to be proven wrong, and see that wish-list implemented. Please do not let any objections get in the way of seeing it implemented in my lifetime.

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There's one point I never saw discussed though, the feasibility of implementing the wish-list items, versus the feasibility of incorporating some of the 'work around' ideas being tossed around. I think Ralph could chime in on this one also, if he so pleases of course. Since he is actually the one doing all the work.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
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I think Ralph should keep developing the game and not waste time trying to gauge which those hundreds of items will take more or less time. That's rarely possible before the fact anyway.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright


Now this actually illustrates one reason attempts to talk to you are fruitless.

Whatever the other shortcomings of my idea, you obviously failed to consider what I said.

If units cannot fall into negative supply while defending, they aren't going to fall below 1% supply unless they attack, and so cannot fall into the state of negative supply while defending.

Yet you promptly pose this as an objection.

Allright, I suppose if it doesn't move at all, that will work. But, generally, there is some repostioning before the front finally craters. Regardless, they will be stuck the very next turn after they retreat.

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Let's rattle off some more objections:

Players have no option. "Thou Shalt Not Moveth Thy Tank or Thy Artillery". Contrast this with Item 5.9: The player could opt to press on (Rommel-like) if he felt the situation warranted it. His forces would drop equipment as he did so, but perhaps the enemy will prove to be too weak to resist even the weakened pursuers.

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The vanguard of any advance/spearhead will be (drumroll, please): Anything except armor! That, of course, is if you allow mechanized/motorized infantry to be exempt. If not, the spearhead will be foot units! Or maybe AAA - depends upon just who this is applied to.

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It doesn't fix the infinite supply line issue. Infantry can press on to infinity at 1% supply forever. They can circumnavigate the Earth multiple times and still press on. Contrast this to Item 5.9, which absolutely ends it. The further one gets beyond the full supply net the slower one must proceed to avoid attrition.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

For me, if you want to only incorporate the items of your wish-list, then so be it, we would indeed have a fine simulation, and I would be very happy. As it is, the wish-list seems to be nothing more than wishful thinking, without any real produce as an outcome, hence, it remains as theoretical and unproven as any of the other ideas tossed around, and subject to questions being raised on it's validity. In fact , I would be glad to be proven wrong, and see that wish-list implemented. Please do not let any objections get in the way of seeing it implemented in my lifetime.

The Wishlist is exactly that - nothing but a record of everyone's wishes. It serves only two purposes: To keep them from being fogotten, and to keep people from needing to constantly repeat them here.

I don't see any reason why suggestions shouldn't be subject to critical scrutiny before being implemented, though. Do you?

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There's one point I never saw discussed though, the feasibility of implementing the wish-list items, versus the feasibility of incorporating some of the 'work around' ideas being tossed around. I think Ralph could chime in on this one also, if he so pleases of course. Since he is actually the one doing all the work.

I think Ralph should keep developing the game and not waste time trying to gauge which those hundreds of items will take more or less time. That's rarely possible before the fact anyway.

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ORIGINAL: Panama

I want to play the scenario. I don't want to spend all my time messing with logistics. If it gets more complicated than ammo and fuel then keep it as it is.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay



Oh, and that Cossack cavalry division does use fuel. It's just not gasoline - it's fodder.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

More immediately, I just don't see much validity to your attempt to address this problem by distinguishing between POL and ammunition.

Component supply will help some. But the main feature I'm hawking is Wishlist item 5.9. Take a look at that (I summarized it in post # 669).

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Taken in context, that's a really witty remark.

I suppose I should keep quiet while being falsely accused of ... whatever it was you were implying.

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You are, after all, the guy who thinks supply is like cell phone coverage. If ten people can talk in Eastern Oregon, a hundred can, and likewise with the supply paradigm TOAW uses. If the Wehrmacht can support an attack by two divisions on Murmansk, it can support an attack by twenty.

Didn't I just answer this canard back on post #89 in the FITE Opinions thread?

Regardless, I'll repeat it: That was never my position. My position was that addressing this would only usefully benefit a specific suite of scenarios. Most would not really benefit. It was a priority issue.

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Actually it is relevant when you use him to defend your positions, as when you stated that he would need a lobotomy (your words) before a proposed change would be implemented.

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And you're wrong, he is perfectly capable of estimating the time it will take before he starts doing it, any professional can do that in his area of expertise, to a reasonable degree of precision. That's how you do feasibility studies.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Note that this is why in the real world commanders get very nervous if they have no reserves. You see, you have these troops you haven't committed to combat, and you use these to...

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But is it workable? You seem to think I'm wedded Curtis-like to my solution and only my solution. I'm not -- it's your invariable tactic of stonewalling regardless of the merits of the situation that gets on my nerves.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Actually it is relevant when you use him to defend your positions, as when you stated that he would need a lobotomy (your words) before a proposed change would be implemented.

My comment was obviously directed at Colins idea, not Ralph.

Regardless, do you seriously want to delay the release of 3.4 for another year and a half so Ralph can evaluate the hundreds of suggestions in the Wishlist?

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And you're wrong, he is perfectly capable of estimating the time it will take before he starts doing it, any professional can do that in his area of expertise, to a reasonable degree of precision. That's how you do feasibility studies.

No. I'm right. I speak from hard earned experience developing 3.4. We tried very hard to pick the easiest items with the biggest payoff. Everything was much harder than we ever dreamed. That's why we must choose the very best ideas to implement. They have to be like Caesar's Wife: Above suspicion.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Thinking about the merits of one of my suggestions -- that under certain circumstances artillery and armor be converted to 'static' equipment that the player has the option of abandoning, this has the merit of covering more situations than I realized when I proposed it.

I was of course thinking of it as a way of allowing defenders to retreat in spite of a lack of supply. However, in a different form, it happens a lot.

Specifically, amphibious evacuations. At Dunkirk, Greece, and Crete, the British were able to bring off a lot of men -- but they had to leave their equipment behind. Right through the summer of of 1940, British Home Forces were still fielding artillery units serving as infantry -- and this happened again on Crete. These were artillery units that had had to leave their guns behind. Something similar would have happened if the Germans had ever managed to break out of Stalingrad -- indeed, the need for such a measure was one of the arguments against staging the breakout at all.

Inasmuch as I'm wrestling with a scenario where I would like it to be possible to stage such evacuations, this particular idea has more attractions than I had realized.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Actually it is relevant when you use him to defend your positions, as when you stated that he would need a lobotomy (your words) before a proposed change would be implemented.

My comment was obviously directed at Colins idea, not Ralph.

Regardless, do you seriously want to delay the release of 3.4 for another year and a half so Ralph can evaluate the hundreds of suggestions in the Wishlist?

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And you're wrong, he is perfectly capable of estimating the time it will take before he starts doing it, any professional can do that in his area of expertise, to a reasonable degree of precision. That's how you do feasibility studies.

No. I'm right. I speak from hard earned experience developing 3.4. We tried very hard to pick the easiest items with the biggest payoff. Everything was much harder than we ever dreamed. That's why we must choose the very best ideas to implement. They have to be like Caesar's Wife: Above suspicion.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Yes -- but to some extent that's my point. Depending on the circumstances, some fodder is going to be locally available, and within reason, your horse will keep 'running' for a while after the gas gauge touches empty.

The gist of it is that as with leg infantry, the decline in ability to move and loss of combat potency due to lack of supply is much less marked than it is with artillery and mechanized troops. This is why, for example, when the Sixth Army was planning its breakout from the pocket, it was planned to leave all artillery and all armor behind. Anything that relied on an engine couldn't move. Infantry still could -- particularly if the alternative was to be left behind to the tender mercies of the Red Army.

If we had a mechanism that properly reflected the difference between these two curves, we'd have a better game. After all, in TOAW, if one did break out of Stalingrad, it would be your tanks and motorized artillery that would be most likely to make it to safety. That's the opposite of what would in fact have happened.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Note that this is why in the real world commanders get very nervous if they have no reserves. You see, you have these troops you haven't committed to combat, and you use these to...

The front doesn't crater till you run out of reserves. Even then, before it does, there is some repostioning involved.

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But is it workable? You seem to think I'm wedded Curtis-like to my solution and only my solution. I'm not -- it's your invariable tactic of stonewalling regardless of the merits of the situation that gets on my nerves.

I'm not stonewalling. I'm pointing out that Item 5.9 is a much better fix.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Yes -- but to some extent that's my point. Depending on the circumstances, some fodder is going to be locally available, and within reason, your horse will keep 'running' for a while after the gas gauge touches empty.

The gist of it is that as with leg infantry, the decline in ability to move and loss of combat potency due to lack of supply is much less marked than it is with artillery and mechanized troops. This is why, for example, when the Sixth Army was planning its breakout from the pocket, it was planned to leave all artillery and all armor behind. Anything that relied on an engine couldn't move. Infantry still could -- particularly if the alternative was to be left behind to the tender mercies of the Red Army.

If we had a mechanism that properly reflected the difference between these two curves, we'd have a better game. After all, in TOAW, if one did break out of Stalingrad, it would be your tanks and motorized artillery that would be most likely to make it to safety. That's the opposite of what would in fact have happened.

If we had component supply we could better address this and many other movement factors. There would be justification for a greater movement allowance disparity between 100% fuel and 1% fuel than we now have with just 100% supply vs. 1% supply - now we don't know whether the supply deduction came due to movement or combat. With component supply we would.

Obviously, there could be separate rules for different movement types. I'd like to see foot movement more dependent upon readiness (basically equivalent to fatigue) and motorized movement less dependent upon readiness, etc.

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

So, please elucidate me. Firstly you say that the wishlist does not serve as more than a repository of info that may or may not be used, ...

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...then you say that looking through the wishlist would delay the issue of a patch that has been in the works for well over a year.

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Please tell me the connection between both things. What's the connection between both

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I must also add that Ralph said that the patch was done, and now going through playtest to iron bugs.

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Second, if that's the way you guys work, then I will refrain from further comments. If you guys cannot even estimate how much work it will take to make a small change contained in a patch , then please tell us how do you expect to even be able to pull off a TOAW 4.

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And a third question, if the programmer does not read the wishlist, then who directs him about the changes to be introduced? Who is in charge of the overall team? Who judges how long would something take Ralph to do?

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

You seem to be ignoring the point that fuel supply and ammunition supply usually move in tandem. Indeed, often if there's no fuel one can't get the ammunition, so any distinction becomes academic.

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I see this as something that wouldn't actually be harmful but is a pointless complication that wouldn't address much of anything.

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...and infantry movement rates aren't particularly dependent on readiness. Well disciplined infantry will keep slogging along even if their tongues are hanging out. In the Battle of the Marne, the French captured trenchfuls of German soldiers that had literally slept right through the attack -- about as unready as you can get. Yet these same soldiers had been logging their thirty km a day right up to the time of the battle. It's not like they crossed the Belgian frontier doing fifty km a day and then slowed to ten km as they got tired. The variation in response to 'readiness' would have been sharply limited.

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One thing I find disturbing is that most of your ideas seem to bear little direct connection to historical reality. They usually seem to have passed through some medium such as an SPI game. In short (vide the wadi as trench thing) you don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about. So right now, we appear to be in some peril of getting a mechanism for reducing foot movement rates that not only won't reflect reality, but will never have even referred to it. It's like the early Bush administration's plans for Iraq or something.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

You seem to be ignoring the point that fuel supply and ammunition supply usually move in tandem. Indeed, often if there's no fuel one can't get the ammunition, so any distinction becomes academic.

But they're not expended in tandem!

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I see this as something that wouldn't actually be harmful but is a pointless complication that wouldn't address much of anything.

It addresses the need to be able to move without blowing off all your ammo and fight without blowing off all your fuel. And, as I said, it could justify stiffer consequences for 1% fuel to movement and 1% ammo to combat strength than 1% supply now does.

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...and infantry movement rates aren't particularly dependent on readiness. Well disciplined infantry will keep slogging along even if their tongues are hanging out. In the Battle of the Marne, the French captured trenchfuls of German soldiers that had literally slept right through the attack -- about as unready as you can get. Yet these same soldiers had been logging their thirty km a day right up to the time of the battle. It's not like they crossed the Belgian frontier doing fifty km a day and then slowed to ten km as they got tired. The variation in response to 'readiness' would have been sharply limited.

Because they recovered their fatigue each night. Had they been force marching - moving day and night - their rates would have plummeted.

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One thing I find disturbing is that most of your ideas seem to bear little direct connection to historical reality. They usually seem to have passed through some medium such as an SPI game. In short (vide the wadi as trench thing) you don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about. So right now, we appear to be in some peril of getting a mechanism for reducing foot movement rates that not only won't reflect reality, but will never have even referred to it. It's like the early Bush administration's plans for Iraq or something.

I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. And, I'll take SPI over you any day.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Oh yeah. There's the other thing.

Ships shouldn't be able to provide fire support beyond the coastal hex.

As a rule, they didn't -- not in World War Two. I've long noticed this, and right now I'm reading Atkinson's The Day of Battle: the War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

Sure, ship's guns were used a lot -- but as a rule, only when the enemy neared the coast. Their effective range -- for whatever reason -- doesn't usually seem to have extended more than five kilometers inland. Maybe Normandy and the Pacific can provide some examples of deeper fire support -- but even if they do, it still doesn't work to have battleships able to proovide dedicated fire support 30 km inland as the default position.

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ORIGINAL: Panama

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Oh yeah. There's the other thing.

Ships shouldn't be able to provide fire support beyond the coastal hex.

As a rule, they didn't -- not in World War Two. I've long noticed this, and right now I'm reading Atkinson's The Day of Battle: the War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

Sure, ship's guns were used a lot -- but as a rule, only when the enemy neared the coast. Their effective range -- for whatever reason -- doesn't usually seem to have extended more than five kilometers inland. Maybe Normandy and the Pacific can provide some examples of deeper fire support -- but even if they do, it still doesn't work to have battleships able to proovide dedicated fire support 30 km inland as the default position.

And Leningrad. You forgot Leningrad. All the way to Gorodok on the Neva, south of Schusselburg.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Actually, they often are.

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See the scale thing. Also -- unless you are planning to allow for foot movement rates of 50 km in a day -- it's irrelevant. The stock foot movement rate isn't force marching in the first place.

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Then you're making a mistake, to skip the false modesty. I have a hell of a lot of good ideas, whatever my other shortcomings.

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First off, it gives you zero access to the raw data. You just have to accept SPI's ideas of how to represent the terrain, the OOB, etc.

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Second, someone designing a wargame -- unlike someone designing a book -- has to fill in the gaps. He can't just not specify how many tanks the 23rd Armoured Brigade had on whatever the start date of the scenario is -- he has to put his money on some number. This renders all 'information' in the finished game suspect. You have no way of discerning just how well-documented any 'fact' presented in the game is. This is part of the nature of the beast.

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See the problems with 'Fire in the East.' Your approach essentially says, 'all Soviet units were up to TO&E and ready to go on June 22. It's right there in the game.'

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Third, I remember SPI. They were five-six guys cranking out a wargame in the magazine every month or two months plus another game on the side in about the same interval.

More power to 'em -- but I wouldn't assume the results were researched with any great care. Read a book, come up with a mechanism to simulate whatever struck you, grab an atlas, and get with it. Not really reliable material, to say the least. I could play their 'Fall of Rome' game and have a fine time. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about what actually happened, how things actually worked, or what the possibilities were on that basis. Similarly with their 'France 1940' game and 'Panzerblitz,' (which began life as an SPI product) incidentally. Great fun -- the actual correlation with reality is completely problematical.

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Now, when you're designing a scenario, you can 'reinvent the wheel' or not, as you please. One realizes what the foibles of various designers are, and takes their work with the appropriate grain of salt. In your case, I would assume I'm getting a reasonable cover of an SPI game.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay



It isn't a matter of scale. Start walking and don't stop. Your pace will slack off - all the way to zero eventually. Fatigue definitely impacts march rates. Battle fatigue too.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Left to the game engine, these squadrons can flail opposing forces up to twenty kilometers inland. It becomes very hard to hold a line near the coast.

In fact, and going by what actually happened both in the Syrian campaign and in Italy, ship's guns could be have a big impact -- but usually only right on the coast. As I say, as a rule the limit for really effective fire seems to have been something like five kilometers.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay




This is sort of like claiming that Ford makes lousy cars because the Model-T didn't have a CD player. Well, the Model-T was a marvel of technology for its time, and changed the world. And Ford has advanced since then the same as other makers.

For example, most of the Talonsoft Battleground series of games were direct conversions of SPI titles. And there were plenty of other excellent titles beyond those. CFNA, War in the Pacific, Highway to the Reich, The Next War, To the Green Fields Beyond, just to name a few.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay




Same as any other secondary source. Like Glantz or Nafziger, for example. I use as many sources as I can get, including secondary ones.

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Second, someone designing a wargame -- unlike someone designing a book -- has to fill in the gaps. He can't just not specify how many tanks the 23rd Armoured Brigade had on whatever the start date of the scenario is -- he has to put his money on some number. This renders all 'information' in the finished game suspect. You have no way of discerning just how well-documented any 'fact' presented in the game is. This is part of the nature of the beast.

On the other hand, the game has to actually work. That gives it a legitimacy no book or document can ever match.

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See the problems with 'Fire in the East.' Your approach essentially says, 'all Soviet units were up to TO&E and ready to go on June 22. It's right there in the game.'

When I was researching "Soviet Union 1941" I made a comparative study of the OOBs & TO&E of all existing Barbarossa scenarios. Nobody had the same answer. Some of them were pretty awful. But the combination of them all formed something of a concensus that was superior to any one of them by itself. And filled in a gap or two that other sources couldn't.