JonS
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quote:
The bombing is something you just have to be upfront about. Say you need 'x' number of points per turn in 1943. 'y' number of points per turn in 1st half 1944...and so on. The players can decide if they want to bomb harder in earlier turns so they can bomb ground troops later...or whatever. Or if the ground campaign is slowing a bit..they can bomb harder to make up for it..or try and use the bombers to help the ground campaign. You cant really figure out an 'historical' number so bombing points can be used for balance and fun.
Either way...you need to know an expected value per turn of bombing so you can adjust accordingly.
But isn’t this begging the question; why is SB worth any VP at all? Or, more to the point, why is SB against only oil/fuel, manpower, and HI a war winner while SB sent against anything else is a criminal misuse of resources.
Strategic bombing in WWII was a just means to an end, rather than an end in itself. And that end was the defeat ... no, the destruction of Germany's means to exert its will on anyone anywhere. Heavy bombers were just a tool, one of many, working towards that end and there're lots of things they could be - and were - used for. But in the game there is only one thing they should do: attack exactly three targets - oil/fuel, manpower, and HI. Anything else is a waste at best, and harmfully counterproductive in VP-terms at worst. The player has no effective choice, since the decision has been made. There is no scope - in the game - for changing priorities, or evolving threats, or cause and effect interplay. The best thing to do, regardless of the date and context, is to just send everything after oil/fuel, manpower, and HI. Turn after turn.^
Leave it up to the player to decide what the SBs should be attacking, according to whatever their rationale is, and make them live with the consequences of that choice. Maybe the player decides that destroying the German's ability to produce armoured vehicles is what they want to do. Maybe that's because a lack of panzers will play directly into the Allied player’s chosen overall approach, or maybe it’s because they just really don’t like Duisberg. Either reason is fine. Or maybe the Allied player decides to go after manpower, and nothing else. Maybe it’ll work - who knows? Or perhaps the Allied player decides to target nothing but German ground forces in contact with the Tommies and GIs with his SBs. The German economy will remain untouched, but the troops at the front will be suffering - maybe it’s a good tradeoff, who knows? Probably no one who plays WitW, since ignoring fuel/oil, HI, and manpower is a fast track to a heavy defeat on points.
Certainly have some incentives/penalties to reward/punish behaviour that can’t be stimulated by other means, but keep it to a minimum. Take the completely arbitrary V-weapon penalty. What justification does that have? There is no point to attacking v-weapons, other than to avoid the penalty. There is no real cause and effect. It is also markedly a-historical. There is no in-game justification for the massive raid on Peenemunde on 23/24 August 1943, nor any of the other 1943 attack on V-weapons. In the game, on 31 December 1943 V-weapons are just a valueless distraction, then suddenly on 1 Jan 1944 they suddenly become the most important thing ever.
Let the Allied player attack - or not - V-weapons at any date. But make those attacks have real consequences. If the Allied player chooses to ignore the V-weapons, no problem. Except that they’ll start raining down in October 1943, and be coming down in great numbers by December. If the Allied player has an allergic reaction and chooses to send 1,000 bombers after them every week for the rest of the war … great! They will probably never appear. But the rest of the German economy will be cranking along at full speed. Either way it’s the player’s choice, and so are the consequences. Maybe any of those choices will accelerate the end of the war, maybe they'll retard it, but ending the war is the goal, not making piles of rubble.
And while we’re at it, make the V-weapons themselves a tool that is directly under the German player’s control. If I choose to follow history and send them all against the citizens of London, let me. But if I delude myself that they can hit industry, let me target specific factory types in specific locations (presumably with a low chance of success, and a high likelihood of spillover, either into manpower attacks, or just missing the entire city … which is always a reasonable prospect). Or maybe I think that targeting British ports is a good plan, or going after the Allied forces in their Normandy beachhead. All of those were valid choices for the German high command in 1944, but none of them are available to the German player.
In short: let the players make choices. Make those choices meaningful. And make the player live with the consequences of that choice, both the good and the bad.
Jon
^ I’m exaggerating a little here, obviously, for effect. I do realise I’m ignoring the absurd penalties related to u-boats and v-weapons.
< Message edited by JonS -- 5/5/2016 9:38:14 AM >
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RE: Campaign Game VP System needs revision - 
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