ColinWright -> RE: The Truck Unit Icon (1/10/2008 5:57:16 AM)
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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit quote:
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ORIGINAL: ColinWright But in TOAW, supply points are sources of infinite supply. If they can keep one brigade operating at a given level, they can keep a hundred operating at that level at a given point. First, my comment referred to the implementation of Discrete Supply. You literally asked me for my input on it, so I provided it. You're the one who says that supply sources should be unlimited for that purpose: "It may be reasonable to treat supply as the ability to distribute supplies from an essentially infinite stockpile." Well here we're getting into some semantic confusion -- although I think you know perfectly well what I mean. By 'stockpile' I am not referring to the term as employed in the OPART manual. I mean the literal stockpile: the oil in the ground in Texas, the wheat growing in Canada, the artillery pieces coming off the line in Essen. I think that for our purposes its best to ignore such numbers. Rather and more generally, supply at OPART's level is a function of the ability of the combatants to actually distribute such goods within the theater of operations. That is primarily a function of transportation assets, and the logistical network, and such. Now, there's a semantic path in all that to continue to somehow justify the current system, but I'd rather you didn't take it. Why don't you think about how a good supply system would work, instead? ..for most scens it's fair to accept the infinite stockpile, as defined above, buuuuttttt it's a scale thing, if the map has the base sources on it then even the base-stockpile needs to enumerable. Take Ploesti, destroy Ploesti, isolate Ploesti, whatever, and the German gasoline number has to drop.. Yeah, but generally such effects occur outside the timespan of the scenario. The Schweinfurt raid proving successful doesn't have the least effect on the number of new Panthers actually reaching the front for at least three months. The scenario would have to be of truly gargantuan scale before Ploesti being bombed or not bombed would affect anyone. ..true, but the scens just seem to get bigger in scope, war in Europe, FitE, China 37 to 45, etc. Whether toaw was designed to do this size is now almost irelevant, the fact is those are the scens being produced and played, future toaw development has to take this into account.. ..i've about a eighth of a circular world map, land scale correct, view from the North Pole, finish that and WW2/WW3/WW4 become possible as scens, increase map size from 300*300 and the same game gets more detailed.. I can understand these things being fun to design -- but playing them? I remember playing one monster that was the front of an entire army group at 5 km per hex or some such absurdity. Each turn took -- and I am not exaggerating -- five hours to play. That was if one actually tried to follow some coherent plan and execute it with some tactical finesse, of course. You can't play these things intelligently -- you just can't. It's too hard to relate the overall picture to the tactical minutia. I mean, you can shove units and all -- but overall strategy has to just go out the window. I'm invading Italy and trying get Rome -- and why? Damned if I know. Just sort of happened. It was in front of me. Anyway, you're right. These things do keep appearing. Still, I'll certainly campaign vigorously against programming time and resources going in this direction. Given OPART's shortcomings in what it already professes to simulate, adding the features needed for 'strategic' warfare is a bit like installing computer-controlled guidance systems on a car that doesn't happen to have working brakes. How about getting the basic systems right first?
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