Artillery and Naval Gunfire Defensive Support?

[Capt Cliff]

Does friendly artillery or friendly ships at sea provide any defensive fire support when units are being attacked? In the old V4Victory games you could allocate arty to units for defensive fire support missions. How does BIN and BII do this? A good example is during Sicily invasion the Herman Goering PZ Div was about to over run the 1st ID off Gela beach when the USS Savannah intervened and blew the snot out the the HG PZ Div. If this isn't modelled correctly in either game the the system is grossly defficent and hurts the US units. The US Army's abillity to do TOT or time on target with multiple arty units save countless units in WWII from being over run. Elsenborne ridge is another good example, without the artillery laying down barrage after barrage the Bulge would have had a different name, the northern shoulder would not have held.

[Fred98]

Artillery fire can be from naval units or from ground based artillery units.

Attack:

In an attack you might come up with odds of 6-1. If you apply one artillery unit (either naval or ground based) the odds come up to 7-1. If you add in another artillery unit the odds are raised to 8-1 and so on.

Obviously the higher the odds the greater the chances of success.

Some artillery unit (both naval and land based) have 2 “shifts”. If you add in one of these the original odds of 6-1 increase to 8-1. Add in another and you get 10-1. There are even some units with 3 “shifts”.

All artillery units have a range. Naval units can be moved around in the ocean and land artillery units can be moved around the map.


Defensive artillery fire:

In the game, units move from one hex to another. The terrain in each hex is different and effects movement. And each unit has different movement capabilities and as the weather changed this too restricts movement.

Further, a unit must trace supply to a supply source.

Defensive artillery can be land based or naval based. It’s used thus: You place “interdiction” in an enemy controlled hex. The hex may or may not have an enemy unit. “Interdiction” does not attack an enemy unit.

If you place it ahead of advancing enemy it increases the penalties in the hex and slows their movement.

If you place it behind the enemy, it restricts their supplies and ultimately blunts their attack.

Interdiction is very powerful. It has stopped countless allied units from being overrun.

Obviously crossroads are popular places for interdiction.

There is also air interdiction to represent air power. And the enemy has AAA units to counter air interdiction. Nothing can counter naval/artillery interdiction. Nothing.
.

[Toby42]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

Does friendly artillery or friendly ships at sea provide any defensive fire support when units are being attacked? In the old V4Victory games you could allocate arty to units for defensive fire support missions. How does BIN and BII do this? A good example is during Sicily invasion the Herman Goering PZ Div was about to over run the 1st ID off Gela beach when the USS Savannah intervened and blew the snot out the the HG PZ Div. If this isn't modelled correctly in either game the the system is grossly defficent and hurts the US units. The US Army's abillity to do TOT or time on target with multiple arty units save countless units in WWII from being over run. Elsenborne ridge is another good example, without the artillery laying down barrage after barrage the Bulge would have had a different name, the northern shoulder would not have held.

This is one of the things that is really missing in this game. That is the power of naval units directly on land units. All that they do is give offensive and defensive benefits. I agree with you, that the naval guns did bombard German units directly and helped stabilise the beachhead. This is not present in this game....

[Capt Cliff]

Treale,

I am glad you agree with me. The game is improperly modelled for operational combat! US tactical doctrine was hold them with infantry, move them with armor but destroy them with artillery! Artillery and especially naval units need to be to be put on gunfire support missions. All the naval units, the BB's, CA's, CL's and DD's keep the German armor at bay while the beachhead built up and wheeled artillery landed. There's a book called "Steel Inferno" about the 1st SS PZ Korp in Normandy and it's quite plan they had to hide from the Jabo's and the artillery/naval gunfire. It's worth reading.

I own BIN but I won't be buying BII until this is fixed. I guess Combined Arms is the next possibility, I hope they do it right!

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

I own BIN but I won't be buying BII until this is fixed. I guess Combined Arms is the next possibility, I hope they do it right!

Capt,

What exactly do you think needs to be fixed?

BII engine allows for naval and air assets to both interdict movement (fully fixing armor) and to be decisive in combat.

Treale's comments appear to be about the effectiveness of naval assets in the scenario (I agree myself that they do not influence the battle enough in Husky)... this is a scenario design issue.

If there's interest in having the naval assets be decisive then a variant scenario would take me about 30 minutes to make.

By not getting BII you miss out on the SSG scenarios and some really great free battles that are available. Opn Merkur is an unbelievably good battle and I think the three free Master of Battle scenarios are excellent, they play significantly better in BII (compared to BIN).

JSS

[Fred98]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff
US tactical doctrine was .........

What about when you play Germans v Russians? Did thye use the same doctrine as the US?


Or how about any scenario that historically has little artillery present?

[Toby42]

ORIGINAL: Joe 98

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff
US tactical doctrine was .........

What about when you play Germans v Russians? Did thye use the same doctrine as the US?


Or how about any scenario that historically has little artillery present?

That's not a fair comparison of his comments [:-]

[pterrok]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

Does friendly artillery or friendly ships at sea provide any defensive fire support when units are being attacked?

The answer is yes and no. IF the arty has symbols on the defensive side of the counter then it will provide that many shifts to defense IF it's in range and supplied. This happens automatically with the computer adding the single arty with the most defensive shifts. If you have overstacked the hex then the computer will add the two best defensive arty pieces.

What JSS is alluding to is that in Husky:

a) The ships do NOT have defensive arty symbols
b) The range of the ships is not great enough to be very useful even if they did!

So if there was a great crying out demanding that ships provide this support ANYONE could go in and add it in the editor. (Just make a copy of the scenario first!)

[Toby42]

I think that a lot of things are either put in or left out because of :

1.) It would take too much extra programing to make it work

2.) It is there to not portray a simulation of events, but to make a playable balanced "Game"

3.) Or the game system can't handle it

[Gregor_SSG]

ORIGINAL: Treale

I think that a lot of things are either put in or left out because of :

1.) It would take too much extra programing to make it work

2.) It is there to not portray a simulation of events, but to make a playable balanced "Game"

3.) Or the game system can't handle it

You know, all of these statements can be true, at different times, and in different situations in a game design process, but this is not always a bad thing. Let's examine the issue of offensive capabilities of artillery as an illustration of this.

To respond to the first charge, we do have code in the game system that allows 'artillery' to directly attack units and cause casualties. It's called Carpet Bombing. We put that in because we felt it was a demonstrable historical situation where massed firepower could cause enough casualties in a single day to warrant step losses under our game system. We don't feel that, in the normal course of events, field artillery should be directly able to do this. So where we think it's necessary, we do the extra programming work, even though Carpet Bombing is only used a couple of times in one single scenario in Battles in Normandy.

To respond to the charge, we never lose sight of the fact that we are making a game, not recreating history down to the last bullet. But there's more to a game than its design, the actions of the players have to be considered as well. That's right, you guys have a lot of responsibility for how games are designed, and how we handle artillery is a perfect illustration of this.

Imagine the situation where artillery can cause actual step losses. The first action of (almost) all players will be to round up every single artillery unit on the map, select a target and pound it into oblivion, repeating until all artillery was used. Then they would blame us for allowing them to do it. Now we could have implented a whole lot of rules to restrict artillery usage to historically eligible formations, but since a lot of the artillery units are corps and army level units, that might not solve the problem. Instead, we allow artillery units to contribute shifts to combat, and can set a maximum number of artillery units allowed. This ties offensive artillery to actual combats and prevents the open slather approach which might otherwise result.

The rationale for defensive use of artillery is the same. We can't put in a system that would allow players to exploit it on offense or defense. Additionally, we decided to make allocation of defensive artillery an automatic process, because if we didn't, PBEM games would be rendered impractical, as a single turn would have to shuttle back and forth for every attack in which it was possible that the defending player could allocate defensive artillery.

As for charge 3, all I can say is that if we thought that artillery should be able to cause casualties, then we could have programmed it that way.

Gregor

[Toby42]

Very well explained..

[Capt Cliff]

Gregor,

I believe you put your finger right on it when you said you are making a game and not recreating history. I like playing combat simulations, games that recreate the battlefields of WWII, the American Civil War or the Battle of Napoleon from tactical (Combat Mission), to operational (V4V series) and to strategic (War in Europe, sorry it's a board game). If what you said is true then you should not toute the game as having any historical significance AT ALL. It's "Space Invaders" in Normandy and not "THE BATTLES IN NORMANDY" or "Battles in Italy", for the "battles" are not being accurately represented. The artillery and the naval gunfire support does not recreate what occurred ion a WWII battlefield. Artillery and Naval Gunfire support should be able to attack enemy units separately and help defend against enemy attacks. If I want to play a computer GAME I'll fire up Knights of the Old Republic, now that's a COOL game.

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

Gregor,

I believe you put your finger right on it when you said you are making a game and not recreating history. I like playing combat simulations, games that recreate the battlefields of WWII, the American Civil War or the Battle of Napoleon from tactical (Combat Mission), to operational (V4V series) and to strategic (War in Europe, sorry it's a board game). If what you said is true then you should not toute the game as having any historical significance AT ALL. It's "Space Invaders" in Normandy and not "THE BATTLES IN NORMANDY" or "Battles in Italy", for the "battles" are not being accurately represented. The artillery and the naval gunfire support does not recreate what occurred ion a WWII battlefield. Artillery and Naval Gunfire support should be able to attack enemy units separately and help defend against enemy attacks. If I want to play a computer GAME I'll fire up Knights of the Old Republic, now that's a COOL game.

Capt,

Do you play any of the DB games? Your comments here are way off the mark. You're saying equivalent of: "I want artillery to destroy full strength battalions every turn"... Now that's not historically accurate in anyway.

DBWWII is a really great game engine for recreating the flow and feel of an OPERATIONAL level campaign. It does this better than any other game (both MHO and many respected game reviewers). If you like V4V and Combat Mission, chances are you'll like the way DB plays out combat at a truly operational level.

JSS

[Toby42]

There has to be some in between ground where something different is possible. I agree, I don't want artillery to complete destroy units. But at the same time, artillery caused the majority of the casualties in WW II.

If German tanks ran loose on the beaches of Normandy or Italy, naval gunfire would have decimated them. That is not possible with the current system?????

I still like the series as the best that is available...

[Capt Cliff]

Treale,

Artillery did destroy units! During the Bulge a regement of 12th SS PZ attacked the 1st ID outside Bullingen (sp) and got wiped by the VT fused arty! They were shattered and houres de combat (sp) for about a week, then returned at 50% strength if that. The most extreme is the carpet bombing Panzer Lehr endured during Cobra. Lehr was shattered and was not reconstituted until way after the Noramndy campaign was finished.

Units in BIN or BII should not be destroyed but shattered/disappear to reappear say within a week at a depleted strength. Instead of this silly two to four hits there should be a percentage strength bar that decreases to a point the unit vaporizes. Both games are quasi-operational/quasi-strategic games. They use regements with some battalions, but mostly regement level. Regements don't disappear for good, unless you hit them with a 5 klick nuke! They lose command and control and just disappear until they rallies around the flag, so to say.

JSS,

DB WWII?? Never heard of it. Got a website link you can provide me. What we need now is "Streets of Stalingrad" for the computer!!! I've played the board game with the cool non-NATO counters, just gives a great feel to the experience.

Come on Combined Arms!!!

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

JSS,

DB WWII?? Never heard of it. Got a website link you can provide me. What we need now is "Streets of Stalingrad" for the computer!!! I've played the board game with the cool non-NATO counters, just gives a great feel to the experience.

Come on Combined Arms!!!

Capt,

Here's the link: www.matrixgames.com

It would be better if you played the games before trying to find fault with them. DBWWII series (KP, BIN, BII) is winning numerous gaming awards because its truly good. Good in the best operational wargame ever made for the computer kind of way.

Enjoy Combined Arms when it comes out. I'm looking forward to that release myself. Expect it'll be another great game. Loss is yours if you don't play BII until then!

JSS

[Gregor_SSG]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

Treale,

Artillery did destroy units! During the Bulge a regement of 12th SS PZ attacked the 1st ID outside Bullingen (sp) and got wiped by the VT fused arty! They were shattered and houres de combat (sp) for about a week, then returned at 50% strength if that. The most extreme is the carpet bombing Panzer Lehr endured during Cobra. Lehr was shattered and was not reconstituted until way after the Noramndy campaign was finished.

Units in BIN or BII should not be destroyed but shattered/disappear to reappear say within a week at a depleted strength. Instead of this silly two to four hits there should be a percentage strength bar that decreases to a point the unit vaporizes. Both games are quasi-operational/quasi-strategic games. They use regements with some battalions, but mostly regement level. Regements don't disappear for good, unless you hit them with a 5 klick nuke! They lose command and control and just disappear until they rallies around the flag, so to say.

JSS,

DB WWII?? Never heard of it. Got a website link you can provide me. What we need now is "Streets of Stalingrad" for the computer!!! I've played the board game with the cool non-NATO counters, just gives a great feel to the experience.

Come on Combined Arms!!!

There are so many battles in in WWII that you can find examples of everything that you care to look for. For instance, in the opening weeks of Barbarossa, some Russian units fought to the last man, even when totally surrounded, while others surrender en masse at the first report of tanks somewhere on the their flanks. Our game has a surrender chance for units, so where do we set it? At 0%, (plenty of examples of that), at 100% (likewise lots of examples)or somewhere in between? What we're going to do is set it at a level which reflects the our judgement of the correct level of fragility within our game system. If, as with earlier games we didn't have a surrender chance in the game system, then we achieve that fragility by other means.

Should we apologise for this? Of course not, every game contains abstractions and choices by the game designers. I think that your choice of a linear strength meter is inappropriate, because I don't think there's an easily expressed linear relationship between the number of men in a regiment and its combat power. It also creates problems when comparing units with different numbers of men. Allied units typically had more men than equivalent German formations, does that mean that they fight better, or that they're more resilient because the same artillery attack causes proportionally less casualties to a larger unit? I don't think so, that's why we use the combat steps to avoid these problems, and to allow us to produce direct comparisons of combat power, which is what really matters, rather than raw numbers, which are only part of the equation.

Also, if you read all of my first post, you would have noted the fact that there is carpet bombing in Battles in Normandy, and you can in fact carpet bomb the Panzer Lehr, with often devastating results.

Naturally, you are free to agree or disagree with any or all of our design decisions. I'm just taking the opportunity to explain some of our thinking.

Gregor

[Capt Cliff]

Fine! I'll agree to disagree with most if not all of your design assumptions for both BIN and BII. The game system does not accurately represent operational combat operations in World War II. It's close, but no cigar! Come on Combined Arms!

[Gregor_SSG]

ORIGINAL: Capt Cliff

Fine! I'll agree to disagree with most if not all of your design assumptions for both BIN and BII. The game system does not accurately represent operational combat operations in World War II. It's close, but no cigar! Come on Combined Arms!

Well, it's impossible to have meaningful comparisons with an unreleased product, but we need as many people as possible making games to keep our genre alive, so sight unseen, I would also like to say, 'Come on Combined Arms!'

Gregor

[hank]

It seems like some of the things capt has mentioned is in the game. At least in BiN you do have individual artillery units and naval ships that can bombard an individual strongpoint. What needs to be added (and it may be available in the scenario builder) IMHO is the ability for these arty/navy units to bombard a unit in a hex (and like when bombarding strongpoints, you get a roll of the die and possible knock off a step).

... and the ability to call in an air strike without it being part of an assault.

... I don't know if you can set this up in the scenario editor ??

And the other thing capt touched on that I've been curious about is how steps indicate strength. It seems they should represent strength numerically to some degree. And if that were the case, the stacking limitations per hex IMHO should be determined by how many steps a hex can accomodate (set by the designer in the scenario editor). IOW, instead of a hex only holding 4-units maximum irregardless of how many steps each unit has, it could hold 12 steps (2-4 step unit + 2-2 step units or 2-4 unit steps or 6-2 step units (in one hex)... etc. )

The issue with how it works now, is that you may only have a bunch of 2 and 1 step units available - but you have a lot of them like (fusiliers, AT units, etc.) but you can only put 4 of them in a hex. Your enemy may have lots of 4 step units and he just loads up 3 or 4 hexes with 4 steps in each unit to get 80 or more steps attacking your one hex of 1 and 2 step units. A slaughter insues.

I've played a few strat games that seem to model better - how many GI's and Tanks you can cram into a piece of real estate.

just my HO... please forgive me for showing my opinion

[&o]

hank