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DSWargamer -> RE: Hexes in SC3 (8/3/2013 2:13:09 PM)
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Too often too many developers think it is a crime to represent something as an abstraction.
Is isn't a crime if the counter isn't an actual ship.
In Advanced Third Reich, the ships stayed in the port, and the missions were abstractions. You didn't move counters around, you made decisions based on how to employ the resources with an eye to when and where, but, at the end of the resolution, the player either won or lost the engagement the counter reflected the losses and the units remained where they were based.
We all know the history of the battle involved in the sinking of the Bismarck, but a game doesn't need to have a counter with the word Bismarck written on it to reflect the impact the Bismarck would have had, if the RN had refused to fight it out. In A3R the British player merely refuses to engage in simulated abstracted contesting of the effects of the Bismarck on the convoy system. If you don't fight, you suffer economic repercussions. The only time I want to see a counter with the name Bismarck on it, is when I am playing a game that is ONLY fighting that epic event and nothing else.
Ship and sub counters in SC1 only permitted crazy strategies which I saw plenty of. They were given odd sounding names, and merely reflected courses of action which has NOTHING to do with history at all. But the player was free to do it all because the counters were present and thus just something to fiddle with. France for instance, a popular action was to just cash in the whole damned fleet and use it to buy ground forces. Sell of the RN for troops and send the entire British military to France to shock the crap out of the Germans expecting there to be no real opposition. It also highlighted a dreadful weakness in the AI, as the AI simply couldn't relate to a preposterous action taken by a human mind to do something so utterly illogical. The AI never invades, so why waste units sitting in Britain eh.
The only way to simulate the battle of the Atlantic at the grand strategy level, is the A3R method. The moment the counters become identifiable units, you have basically chosen the wrong design. The AI will not succeed and the human will be free to think abusively ahistorically and there simply won't be any point in designing for history after the first turn of the game.
Hexes are fine for ground combat, but are nearly valueless for naval warfare. A tank runs out of fuel differently than a battleship. And in the middle of the Atlantic, let alone the Pacific, you won't be driving up to a fuel depot either. You can't resupply a battleship with an air drop. In A3R, a port held sway over an entire front. Being based in Gibraltar meant a force could influence both the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. It's why that annoying spec of land was so valuable.
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