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vahauser -> RE: My Thoughts Regarding "Historical" Core Forces in Campaigns (1/24/2007 3:10:50 AM)
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FlashFyre,
The way I see it, it is not easy to define what an “average” WW2 battlefield is.
In fact, if somebody were to conduct a survey as to what the “average” WW2 battlefield was, I bet every single person surveyed would give a different answer.
For instance, in the example you posted above, I would have said that the panzergrenadier company was supporting the Tiger company, in which case that situation might be considered pretty typical. Indeed, it is easy to imagine building an entire kampfgruppe around a Tiger company.
I understand that there is a burning desire among some people who play SPWAW to be “historical”. I might go further and say that the word ‘burning’ isn’t a strong enough word. Perhaps ‘all-consuming’ compulsion might be more on target. The reason I started this thread is because I’m interested in discussing what “historical” means.
Personally, since I can’t define what “historical” means in terms of SPWAW, then I adopt a different approach.
For instance, I’ve played Long Long Road many many times. I used to have the stamina to play a whole campaign of Long Long Road in a week or two. Those days are long gone (I can barely play a few turns per week these days), but I am very familiar with that campaign and every battle in it. At the very beginning of that campaign Wild Bill states that, “You’re going to need to choose a balanced force of armor and infantry for the struggles that lie ahead of you.” Well, there is no historical force in the US Army that had a TOE with that balance of armor and infantry on the battalion-scale that Wild Bill has designed his campaign for. So what you end up with is a German-style kampfgruppe. But the issue is deeper than that.
Your American kampfgruppe is going to be called upon to do all sorts of fighting in all kinds of situations and weather and terrain over the course of nearly three campaign years. That’s the challenge that Wild Bill built into his campaign. But a kampfgruppe that worked in 1942-43 might not work at all in 1944-45. The problem is that the game does not give you “historical” TOE changes. The campaign gives you generic “build points” with which you have to repair units, upgrade units, change units, and all on a “use or lose” basis. But there is absolutely NOTHING historical about that. And so the people who have an all-consuming need to be “historical” find themselves in a very un-historical situation.
For example, suppose that after a battle Wild Bill provides you with a few hundred build points. Let’s say that after you repair your units you have around 100 points left. If you don’t spend those points then they are gone forever. The bad news is that the battles are going to get harder because Wild Bill has designed his campaign knowing that your force is supposed to get stronger, so he has made the battles harder to compensate for that. That is good game design. But it is not historical. Not historical at all. Now let’s further suppose that you didn’t have enough points to buy any engineers when you first purchased your core. But now you realize that you need some engineers. Engineers aren’t cheap so you can only afford a couple units. What do you do? If you don’t change some of your existing units now into engineers, then you might not have a good opportunity to do so later. I would be very tempted to take a couple trucks and turn them into halftracks and a couple machinegun and/or bazooka teams and turn them into engineers to ride in those new halftracks.
Now, the people who have an all-consuming compulsion to be “historical” might look down their noses at such “un-historical” behavior on my part. But I claim that the situation that the game put me in to begin with was not historical at all. Quite the opposite in fact. And yet, I needed those engineers. The bazookas/MGs weren’t doing me much good at the time. I either change into engineers or possibly lose the opportunity forever. It is a ridiculous situation the game has put me in. Use them or lose them. How un-historical is that?
And so, I come right back to where I started this thread.
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