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Paul Vebber -> (12/18/2000 6:50:00 AM)
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Turns and time - one of my favorite "soapbox" occasions...
First my assumptions:
1) Combat is inherantly more asynchronous than synchoronous.
What does that mean? It means that one part of front (unit wise) moves at a different rate than another part of the front. For reasons best laid out by Col Boyd (of OODA loop fame) each unit marches to the beat of its own drummer. This is the princple failing of gaames that attempt to set a strict time limit on a turn and allow all units to operate at some fraction of theoretical maximum each set time increment.
I use the term "miniature-itis" to describe it becasue it was most common among tactical minis rules where each turn is 30 sec or a minute and movement rates were based on d=r*T and not OODA. The result was a Brigade level encounter moving form recon to contact to massig and breakthrough all in 30 or 40 game turns - or 15-20 minutes in "real time" when such an evolution would be lucky to occur in full daylight on a summer day.
IGO -UGO games are teh ultimate in asynchronous representation - EVERY unit performs its move before another moves. This in itself "warps time" to a certain extent. THe alternative is the "newtonian clockworks" where players give orders to units and they move in near perfect synchronization. Ask any Battalion CO and the hardest task in combat is kepping the rates of advance of his companies synchronizzed. THat is one reason there is such current emphasis in "network -centric warfare" circles about achieving the Holy Grail of self - synchronizing forces. THer Germans were able to accomplish this throught their doctrine of Auftragstaktic better than any other army in WW2 and this allowed them to hold off Soviet Tank armoes with regiment kampfgruppes and delay the whole bloddy Allied army in the West to a few hundred yards a day.
2) Since IGO-UGO is the "extreme" of asynchronous behavior, one must bse game design decisions not on what any particular unit can theoritcally do in a turn, but on what a SIDE - over the course of a two piece turn (both IG and UGO) can accomplish.
THe argumant for a strict adherance to a time frmae is correct if you are concerned about trees, but at the cost of seeing the forrest. In a game concerned with a few plattons, essentially operating synchronously, the "trees are more importan than the forest and a "clockwork" engine like CM has works very well. IGO UGO give's folks fits. But as you ad units, the tables turn and particularly if you move one company before moving any units of another, or play with a time constraint online where you can only move a portion of your force befor the enemy gets a chance to move part of his) then IGO UGO - as the forrest is concerned, actually is "more realistic"..becasue it captures this problem of achieving sychronization.
3) So the result is a "turn" (a pair of player turns) describes as "several minutes" CAN"T be a set period of time, it must be assumed to be a bit abstract, based on the intensity of the action. Combat - even at close quarters, was not the continous thing games typically prtray, but a mostly inactive place punctuated by fits and starts of advaces, firefights, and withdrawls. This is why "real" battles generally took hours where gamers play the engagement in minutes. TO properly restrict the players OODA loop would result in an extremely frustrating process that was largely out of teh players control. THe "God-game" view players want, is directly at odds with reality, so the need to "telescope time" to account for the players omniscience and BORG like OODA loop.
SO game time DOES warp, and in an IGO UGO system, one MUST abstract time or the forrest will be lost. THe view of teh trees does suffer for this, but THe basic design intent of SP was always aimed more at portraying the forrest, then the specifics of each tree. We ahve tried to give more definition to the trees, but its still an abstract artists landscape, not a realists portrait of trees.
As to the need fo a huge pile of troops to advance...the US army found that a 3-1 advantage at the point of attaack was necessary to HAVE ACHANCE - 5-1 was considered the norm for a 50-50 chance and 7-1 desired to keep the chance of failure acceptable low in a "key engagemet". (I belive thats found in the 1949 edition of FM 100-5)
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