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ORIGINAL: pad152

Speaking of WITP, two things that help.

Randomness

One thing that helps make the AI playable is the randomness of combat, sometimes very strange things happen like a (PT boat sinks a battleship). Yes strange things did and do happen in war, sure some people complain this is impossible and should never happen. Yet it's things like this that adds that uncertianty to war not found in other war games that helps keep it fresh. You would never find this level randomness in a board or John Tiller game.


Fog of War and Combat reports

Combat reports in WITP are notorious inaccurate, this seems to drive new players crazy [:D](how come those 6 Zero's shot down all of my B-17's, this must be a bug). Sometimes it's weeks in the game before you really know if you sunk that battleship or carrier. Just like in real war, combat reports are almost always incorrect. This really adds that fog of war that's missing in all board war games and most computer war games.

These are two things that only can be done with a computer war game. To many ports of board games to computer make the mistake to only give the player the same old dice results for combat, and limit fog of war to what they can or can't see on the map. This makes a lot of combat in war games boring/dry and limits the buyers to only those true die hards of the board game.

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ORIGINAL: Neilster
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For the same reason, IMHO, deliberately inaccurate combat reports don't seem appropriate. An air commander is hardly going to miss that many of his bombers got destroyed or damaged in a week long offensive against the Ruhr. Nor will a 1941 Soviet armoured corps, shattered by days of combat with German panzer forces, be mistaken for one in good condition, ready to fight.

Having said that, MWiF's scale makes FOW (Fog of War) of production and units even more interesting. There can be some very nasty surprises in store for those too adventurous because losses are often on a large scale. I think FOW will be one of the things that makes MWiF much better than cardboard WiF.

Cheers, Neilster

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ORIGINAL: amwild

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ORIGINAL: Neilster
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For the same reason, IMHO, deliberately inaccurate combat reports don't seem appropriate. An air commander is hardly going to miss that many of his bombers got destroyed or damaged in a week long offensive against the Ruhr. Nor will a 1941 Soviet armoured corps, shattered by days of combat with German panzer forces, be mistaken for one in good condition, ready to fight.

Having said that, MWiF's scale makes FOW (Fog of War) of production and units even more interesting. There can be some very nasty surprises in store for those too adventurous because losses are often on a large scale. I think FOW will be one of the things that makes MWiF much better than cardboard WiF.

Cheers, Neilster

I agree that a player probably should not be given inaccurate information as to the status of his own forces, but Fog of War could give inaccurate information about enemy forces.

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If all a player's unit(s) in a single hex are destroyed by an enemy unit that was not in contact at the beginning of the phase, and there are no friendly units "in sight" (i.e. no surviving friendly units in adjacent hexes, or the surviving friendly units in adjacent hexes are in terrain with limited visibility such as forest or mountain hexes), the player may not be given totally accurate information (or even any information if the defeat was sufficiently overwhelming) as to the enemy unit(s) that did the deed. It is far more likely that this sort of inaccurate or absent data will occur in air or naval combat, but it is not impossible in land combat.

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To use your examples, An allied air commander is hardly going to miss that many of his bombers got destroyed or damaged in a week long offensive against the Ruhr, but he may not know that the reason for the greater-than-expected losses are due to the introduction by the Germans of the Me-262 as a front-line unit. All that the surviving pilots may report in such a situation is that they were attacked by "Something new which is really fast and has really big guns".

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A 1941 Soviet armoured corps, shattered by days of combat with German panzer forces may not be able to report just which German panzer units attacked them if they were caught by surprise.

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There is a situation in which a player might be given inaccurate information as to the status of his own forces - a land unit may be disrupted (but not destroyed) by combat, but may be mistakenly (until the next phase) be reported as destroyed if there are no other friendly units in direct contact. This could be accounted for as a disruption in communications leading to the presumption of the loss of the unit, until communications are restored. In WWII conditions, this sort of thing is not impossible. This isn't modern times where a soldier may be able to dig his mobile/satellite phone out of his pocket...

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These sort of things couldn't happen in cardboard WiF, but a computer would make this pretty easy to achieve in MWiF.

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We have to remember that a MWiF hex represents (from memory) about 1600 square km of terrain. An infantry unit represents 3-5 divisions or perhaps 50 000 troops, with all of their command and control apparatus. I don't think the terrain of, or absence of, adjacent units is really the vital thing. All of the components of the defeated divisions are going to be sending reasonably accurate reports of the strength of enemy forces up the chain of command. Whilst these might become somewhat garbled, the high command is going to get a pretty clear idea of total enemy strength. For this reason I don't think it would ever be appropriate to have no information of enemy strength in this situation. However, perhaps only an approximation of the combat and movement factors of the enemy might be gleaned.

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ORIGINAL: amwild

My point is that there are circumstances in which complete information on enemy forces may not be available. Maybe my examples weren't the best, but the amount of information available may depend upon the degree of the victory/defeat. A swift, crushing defeat as the result of a surprise attack tends to leave the surviving people in the unit less able to report their circumstances than a prolonged marginal defeat where both sides know where the enemy is.

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Opponents could be aware of a unit's type and even its name under this sort of FoW, but may not be informed of any or all of its combat values (replaced by question marks or something so the players know this isn't a glitch) - or vice versa... This may not be common, but it would be interesting on occasion.

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As to my idea about a player's disrupted units "dissapearing", the computer would hide the disrupted counter (from either its player, the enemy player/AI, or possibly both) as if it was destroyed, until- say - the owning player's next phase. (I'm not exactly a WiF expert here, I've only played a few samll scenarios a decade or more ago, so I'm guessing a bit here.) The unit is still there, and if any player attempted to occupy the hex, the flipped unit would reappear immediately. The enemy would be as able to occupy the hex as they would a hex that is occupied by the flipped unit if it wasn't hidden - except that they may not be certain that it was there until they tried the move and ended up in combat. IIRC, in WWII there were occasions when units blundered into enemy units, one or neither of whom realised that the other was there until the shooting started.

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Think of it like this: an infantry unit is attacked by and retreats from enemy armour, and is disrupted, losing its communications in the process. If communications cannot be restored immediately, HQ may think the unit has been destroyed, until such time that communications are restored, or another unit happens upon the unit in question. When the unit retreats, the disorder caused by loss of communications may give the enemy the illusion that they are destroying the cohesion of the unit, which may regoup unnoticed by their enemy a little while later, remaining combat-effective to some a greater degree than the enemy believes.
Naturally, a disrupted unit vanishing like this would be more likely for units that are short on heavy equipment - like infantry units or irregulars. Its harder to hide/miss armour or artillery.

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This sort of missing unit FoW option would work especially well with ships - combat damage could wreck radios that might take days to repair, or the damaged ship might even just show up at the nearest friendly port. Bad weather would be a necessary factor if the ship was part of a convoy or taskforce, but even this wouldn't be impossible. The sea is a big, empty place, after all.

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I don't see how aircraft could dissapear and reappear - their short fuel supply makes it far more likely that if a plane doesn't show up more or less when expected, it isn't ever going to. Pilots could be (and were) easily presumed lost and returned later.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

Such FoW that amwild describes is good for a tactical or operationnal wargame, not for a grand strategic wargame.
The scale here is 80 km per hex, 2 months per turn (about 1-2 weeks per impulse), 300-500 planes per aircraft counter, 50000 mens per land unit.
At such a scale, FoW cannot exist.
At such a scale, all Army commanders know where the enemy armies are and who they are.
Unknow units doesn't exist, at such a scale.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

Such FoW that amwild describes is good for a tactical or operationnal wargame, not for a grand strategic wargame.
The scale here is 80 km per hex, 2 months per turn (about 1-2 weeks per impulse), 300-500 planes per aircraft counter, 50000 mens per land unit.
At such a scale, FoW cannot exist.
At such a scale, all Army commanders know where the enemy armies are and who they are.
Unknow units doesn't exist, at such a scale.

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ORIGINAL: Neilster
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Yes, but as I've already explained, swift, crushing defeats of the sort you describe are not what land combat in WiF models. In the several days of combat that occurs, over a front about 100km long, plenty of information about what is happening would go up the chain of command. Take the destruction of Army Group Centre in June 1944 for example. The German armies were rapidly crushed by massive and fast moving Soviet forces and although Army Group HQ was unable to effectively intervene, they were all too aware of the strength of the opposition. Overruns might be an exception but that is destruction during movement and I have already argued for possible FoW for adjacent enemy units rather than automatic revelation.

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The status of smaller formations can often be ambiguous or unknown but for the reasons I've stated above, the status of 50 000 troops and their associated support infrastructures is likely to be quite well known, even if it's bad news. Also, if a unit is supposedly destroyed, someone, either the phasing or non phasing player, removes it from the map. You haven't explained how this can be handled or the case of shattered units. When you talk of units blundering into one another, you again seem not to grasp the scale of WiF's land units. Corps, and even divisions don't move without dedicated recon units probing ahead and local attacks being launched to find weak points. Small units can bumb into one another but not large formations.

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I'm perfectly aware of what you're on about, it's just not appropriate for the massive forces represented by WiF land units. A whole corps never loses its communications. It's a massive organisation consisting of dozens of organic or attached units, each with their own radios, runners, dispatch riders, carrier pigeons and landlines. A whole corps can't regain combat effectiveness without the enemy noticing because of the multitude of sources that would be providing evidence to the contrary. Battalion after battalion would be reporting stiffening resistance or local counterattacks. Regimental HQs would be passing on these reports. Again, you're underestimating the scale of the units involved.

...

I think there is more of a place for friendly FOW in naval combat but it still has to be remembered that the naval counters in WiF don't typically represent single ships.

...

As I've already pointed out, air actions represent several days of action. One's own losses and serviceability would be very obvious. A handful of pilots that were lost might turn up several months later after escaping but that's not worth modeling when there are hundreds in an air unit.

Cheers, Neilster

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ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer
I am not sure where my opinion falls on this issue. It is fairly obvious that there should be decent information about army groups in a hex even if the hex is off of the front line. Which unit may have been fairly easy to figure out from intel reports.

But Fog Of War may have had an instrumental part to play in the outcome....

Massive effort was put into a deception (coded radio messages and such) that made it look like Patton was in charge of a large force that would attack German holdings. I have always heard (correct me if I am wrong) that Hitler refused to release reserves to Rommel on D-Day because he was convinced that Normandy was a feint and the real invasion would occur somewhere else (Netherlands?). I have also heard it speculated that if Rommel had gotten the reserves, D-Day may have failed to hold the beachhead.

If all of this is true (IF IF IF), then the deception surrounding Patton's command may have been instrumental in success.

Also, I have always heard that the battle of Midway was won because we broke the code and knew what was happening. If (IF IF IF) we had not, or had not trusted the code breakers, part of the fleet might have been elsewhere (Alaska?) fending off an attack from a fleet that was not there.

If so (IF IF IF), then 'fog of war' would be an interesting addition to the game. I have seen very few board games that have been able to implement this. The only substantial game that comes to mind is Victory Games' Vietnam, In it, the VC counters had a side that had no information other than 'VC might be here'. You had to attack to find out if it were a VC or a decoy.

I have even heard that during the darkest hours of the Battle of Britain, cardboard replicas of Fighters were set up near airfields to increase the enemy's estimate of air power.

I think Fog Of War in some fashion is an interesting concept to add to a computer game if for no other reason than it is generally impossible to do with a board game but easy to do with a computer game.

I think it should be tied to air superiority in an area. For example, if a bomber gets through to a hex, then certainly, there should be more information available from the hexes along the flight path.

I also think it might be interesting to spend an O-chit on deception (ala Patton).

Just ideas... What does everyone else think? Are they tenable? Are they usable? Will they destroy balance in the game?

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ORIGINAL: Romulus68
While attending WiFcon we had a guest speaker, "Col. Vlass." (I think that was the spelling of his name) He lectured on the events of Germany's invasion of Russia in particular the situational reports. He has travelled extensibly to Germany and Russia and had ACTUAL copies of the reports used by the troops in the field. He stated that every unit had 50% of their troops assigned to recon at all times. He supplied us with sitreps of Germany and then sitreps of Russia at the same time intervals on the front. It was amazing how accurate they were. He went on to state they pretty much knew who was in front of them (unit names, troop estimates, readiness, etc).

Information past the "Front" was not as detailed, but they seemed to know where the Corps were located and coming from. Intel was acheived via spy planes, prisoners and spies in reference to troops coming from Siberia or the rear.

I think the Colonel is available to pick his brain. Would anyonne in the game design process like to contact him? He may provide some insight to the aspects of "Fog of War" from a realistic perspective.

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ORIGINAL: Neilster
Well, German strategic intelligence of Russia before the invasion was awful. They underestimated the size of the Red Army by about a half and the number of Russian tanks by about two thirds. I've heard a conversation secretly recorded by the Finnish secret service in which Hitler states that if they knew Russia had 15 000 tanks, they never would have invaded.

There are numerous examples in WW2 of massive offensives being launched where those on the receiving end had almost no idea anything was up, let alone the strength of opposing units and follow-on forces. Barbarossa, the Moscow counter offensive, the encirclement at Stalingrad, almost all the Russian offensives after Jul 43, D Day and the Ardennes Offensive come to mind.

How the Axis would have any idea of the strength of individual units in the UK or the USA is beyond me.

Cheers, Neilster

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ORIGINAL: Neilster

Well, German strategic intelligence of Russia before the invasion was awful. They underestimated the size of the Red Army by about a half and the number of Russian tanks by about two thirds. I've heard a conversation secretly recorded by the Finnish secret service in which Hitler states that if they knew Russia had 15 000 tanks, they never would have invaded.

There are numerous examples in WW2 of massive offensives being launched where those on the receiving end had almost no idea anything was up, let alone the strength of opposing units and follow-on forces. Barbarossa, the Moscow counter offensive, the encirclement at Stalingrad, almost all the Russian offensives after Jul 43, D Day and the Ardennes Offensive come to mind.

How the Axis would have any idea of the strength of individual units in the UK or the USA is beyond me.

Cheers, Neilster

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ORIGINAL: Neilster

Re the FoW thing. The arguments expressed that there is a degree of it due to the game mechanics are valid but FoW would increase the unpredictability. If you've played CWiF with FoW you'll know that it forces you to play like a commander and not an accountant. Given that many (most?) playing groups have FoW house rules, to have none at all might actually make MWiF less like cardboard WiF.

I'm actually pretty relaxed about it but I detect in the anti-FoW camp the same whiff of WiF ([:'(]) fundamentalism that had people claiming that the single scale map would ruin the game.

MWiF provides an opportunity to introduce features that were impossible in WiF and that may seriously enhance the playing experience. FoW is a really great part of computer wargames and if we put anything like the effort that has gone into the map discussions into working out its nuances it shouldn't be too difficult to get it working. Well....apart from the actual programming it but that's not my problem [:D].

Anyhoo, I like to play Devil's advocate to ensure that ideas are explored. To be honest, I quite liked sorting through all the possible combinations to get that vital column shift.

Cheers, Neilster

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But in WIF number of combats , moves is limited each impulse. If it is necessary to carry out recons first then time is a wasting and I feel accomplishments each turn will suffer.

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ORIGINAL: mlees
I have seen "strategy guides" that detail the "perfect move" to break open the French line in '40.

It details down to the last build point the builds Germany must do from game start. It details the position of each unit, and what hex it attacks. Each attack strength is calculated out to acheive x:1 or better.

This type of micrmanagement is a time honored part of the game. But it is a tad gamey, compared to the real life examples.

IRL, the commanders did not use "just enough" to get 4:1 odds. They used everything they could afford to bring. (Supply being a factor there.)

The time honored method has the advantage of producing (more or less) predictable and desirable results.

FOW would make attacks a little more of a gamble. For example, I could know that the Japanese has a land unit stationed in Truk. But not the combat value. Weak or strong? Better invade the hex like you mean it...

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But in WIF number of combats , moves is limited each impulse. If it is necessary to carry out recons first then time is a wasting and I feel accomplishments each turn will suffer.

Well, we have the advantage of the computer doing all the calcs for us. What we could do is make recce a function of having units nearby:

Combattant Naval Units (non convoy/TRS) have a chance of reconnoitering the coastal areas the sea area touches.

Air units (including those on CV's, and those "flipped") have an innate ability to recon hexes within their air range, with a decreasing chance at longer and longer ranges.

Land units have a 2 or 3 hex recce range (to simulate observation planes).

This stuff can be modified by weather.

Now, we could do this a couple ways. FOW could mean that all units are hidden until "spotted". Or, unit positions are known, but their exact identity aren't known until spotted.

Combat reveals identity, of course.

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And is it deterministic or probabilistic?

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ORIGINAL: mlees

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And is it deterministic or probabilistic?

I am sorry. I dont know the difference between the two. Was the question rhetorical?

My main concern was to use some kind of process that didnt impact the mission activity limits.

Also of concern:

1) Should a player get free recce from all units, every impulse? Even if he passes? Or only units that are moved? Based on mission activity? (All land units search in a "Land" activity selection...) How about "flipped" units?

2) Is the info "carried over" the turn break into the next turn? (Like a "running tally".)

3) Once a unit is spotted, how does it become "unspotted"? Movement away from enemy forces?

All I can say is: Better you than me.