Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

I do think this copying stuff 1:1 should be left in the past but there is nothing wrong with borrowing a theme or idea to build your own scenario with it. I don't even know why you'd want to do a 1:1 thing as Command's engine is designed to do more and there is so much more info available on orbats, units etc.

Mike

Actually I do like the idea of comparing these scenarios 1:1 in Command. If they were fun in Harpoon then even more so in Command.

ORIGINAL: SireChaos

I´m more in favor of alt-hist Cold War era scenarios/campaigns.

One possibility would be that the Able Archer situation turns, not to nuclear war, but to a conventional war, because the Soviet Leadership thought Able Archer presented the preparations for a NATO invasion.

Another would be that, after Gorbachev comes to power, hardliners who don´t like the way he´s taking the Soviet Union conspire to assassinate him and blame it on the US (I was thinking maybe a plane Gorbachev is on gets shot down with one of the Stinger missiles the US supplied to the rebels in Afghanistan, one or more of which could have been captured by Soviet forces) - from there, the build-up to war could go much like in Red Storm Rising.

What hardliners? Tikhonov blew his wad getting Chernenko in power and had no support to challenge Gorbachev's election and Ligachev didn't have the balls to pull that off even if he wanted to! These guys didn't want war, the demise of only Gorbachev would have done little to change the course, they'd have to kill 60 percent of the Politburo for that, and they certainly wouldn't do it in a way to lead to war with NATO. Tikhonov wanted to preserve his country - not hurl it into a destructive war with the West, that win or lose would set the USSR back decades in economic growth - if the country wasn't destroyed.

The 'hardliner' war craving boogie man that always creeps up in books, movies, games, etc. just didn't exist.

ORIGINAL: Russian Heel

ORIGINAL: SireChaos

I´m more in favor of alt-hist Cold War era scenarios/campaigns.

One possibility would be that the Able Archer situation turns, not to nuclear war, but to a conventional war, because the Soviet Leadership thought Able Archer presented the preparations for a NATO invasion.

Another would be that, after Gorbachev comes to power, hardliners who don´t like the way he´s taking the Soviet Union conspire to assassinate him and blame it on the US (I was thinking maybe a plane Gorbachev is on gets shot down with one of the Stinger missiles the US supplied to the rebels in Afghanistan, one or more of which could have been captured by Soviet forces) - from there, the build-up to war could go much like in Red Storm Rising.

What hardliners? Tikhonov blew his wad getting Chernenko in power and had no support to challenge Gorbachev's election and Ligachev didn't have the balls to pull that off even if he wanted to! These guys didn't want war, the demise of only Gorbachev would have done little to change the course, they'd have to kill 60 percent of the Politburo for that, and they certainly wouldn't do it in a way to lead to war with NATO. Tikhonov wanted to preserve his country - not hurl it into a destructive war with the West, that win or lose would set the USSR back decades in economic growth - if the country wasn't destroyed.

The 'hardliner' war craving boogie man that always creeps up in books, movies, games, etc. just didn't exist.

interesting point.

ORIGINAL: SireChaos

I´m more in favor of alt-hist Cold War era scenarios/campaigns.

One possibility would be that the Able Archer situation turns, not to nuclear war, but to a conventional war, because the Soviet Leadership thought Able Archer presented the preparations for a NATO invasion.

Another would be that, after Gorbachev comes to power, hardliners who don´t like the way he´s taking the Soviet Union conspire to assassinate him and blame it on the US (I was thinking maybe a plane Gorbachev is on gets shot down with one of the Stinger missiles the US supplied to the rebels in Afghanistan, one or more of which could have been captured by Soviet forces) - from there, the build-up to war could go much like in Red Storm Rising.

I tend to agree with Russian Heel on this one. The Soviets were certainly ready for war, if it came, but I suspect they knew enough about what nuclear bombs could do, early on, that they were not planning to start a war with NATO. The stakes were too high. Even if they could have taken out most of NATO air bases with preemptive strikes, unless they could be sure of taking out most of the American and British boomers, they would have been looking at three or four times the death toll they suffered in World War II.

The Soviets were willing to risk war with Afghanistan because a) Afghanistan did not have nuclear weapons, b) Afghanistan was not part of an alliance whose members had nuclear weapons, and c) they probably did not think it was going to turn into their version of the Vietnam War.

As for a World War III that does not go nuclear, the only things I can think of are...

1. The initial battles of World War III are a stalemate--neither side fighting in Germany, Norway, and Greece is losing so badly that it feels it has to resort to tactical nuclear weapons. At the end of the first week, the Soviets have gained control of some territory, big chunks of Germany, Norway, and Greece, but not all or even most of those countries. The Soviets might stop their advance and focus on cementing what they had won. NATO might start getting ready to push them out. That gives us convoy scenarios, etc.

On a scale of 1 (impossible) to 10 (this is absolutely what will happen), how plausible is this?

2. Tactical nuclear weapons are used in Germany and Poland, and the results are so horrifying that both sides call a temporary truce while they lick their wounds and quietly agree that the rest of World War III will be fought with conventional weapons, and that no matter what happens no actual invasion of either the Soviet Union or the UK will occur, and that the losing side will accept any other losses and not use nuclear weapons.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how plausible is this...that after all the theoretical papers and war games and so on, actually seeing those five or ten million burned dead bodies in Germany and Poland would shock both sides into saying, "We are going too far and we have to stop. Now."

Even more plausible to me is the possibility of more proxy wars. More wars like Korea, the Six Day War, the Vietnam War, Afghanistan, etc. Even proxy wars where some American and Soviet forces came into direct conflict, if it was over something like Chile or Benin, and there is no direct threat to either superpower, it seems less likely that the conflict would turn into a global and/or nuclear war. Certainly if it was just the superpowers arming their proxies--the Soviets giving guns and ships and planes to Benin and the U.S. doing the same for Togo or Ghana or something--the risk goes down even further.

What are your thoughts on all this?

I tend to avoid RSR-esque WW3 scenarios not just for the reasons Russian Heel and you mentioned-I.e., little political will even among hawks on both sides, there have to be contrived reasons why it wouldn't go nuclear, etc..., but also because I think they're just overdone.

What I'd do is explore lesser-known but still possible parts of the Cold War. To give one example, a JCS memo of potential options in response to China's nuclear program in the early 1960s included operations against their maritime trade.

These ranged from a difficult and blatantly agressive (and therefore unlikely) full blockade to simple maritime harassment and shows of force that nonetheless had the ability to escalate. You could definitely make a scenario out of that, and even though the PLAN as a whole is quite weak in that time period, there's still a threat to individual units.

Actually I think all of the plots mentioned here are plausible. But if we try to hard to make something sound legit then it becomes contrived. The politics and players are on stage even now for such a conflict to transpire. As long as there are opposing political ideologies and power to be gained by expanding political power then there will always be those willing to sacrifice a nations treasure and population to achieve its goals. All you really need is a fltashpoin.

ORIGINAL: Stevechase

Actually I think all of the plots mentioned here are plausible. But if we try to hard to make something sound legit then it becomes contrived. The politics and players are on stage even now for such a conflict to transpire. As long as there are opposing political ideologies and power to be gained by expanding political power then there will always be those willing to sacrifice a nations treasure and population to achieve its goals. All you really need is a fltashpoin.

Exactly. Maybe the "hardliners assassinate Gorbachev" scenario isn´t plausible - but the Able Archer scenario is, as would be a "Cuban Missile War".

My main point was this almost deus ex machina of the "communist hardliner" or 90's buzz word "Russian ultra nationalist" is just something people accept as being plausible without knowing Soviet or 90s Russian politics. It seems like any series of events can happen no matter how outrageous as long as a pretext of them being done by "hardliners" or "ultra nationalists."

The thing to understand about the 'hardliners' is they watched the rebuilding (or helped rebuild) their country after a catastrophic civil war and then defended their country in the most destructive war in history and then rebuilt it again. They were hawkish only when they were certain the war wouldn't be brought to their people. That was the whole reason behind the Eastern European satellite states, a buffer between home and potential enemies.

The whole Cold War was based on misunderstanding and posturing and false reading of the posturing. A scenario (well, series of scenarios) I am building is based on this. Pershing deployment leads to a feeling of a need for response - SS-20s to Nicaragua, This leads to a need for a bigger presence in the Caribbean, Soviet Union creates the Caribbean Naval Squadron (a command based in Cuba but made up of rotating ships from the Northern and Black Sea Fleets) The US sees this as a threat, (ability to close the Panama Canal, operating in strength that close to the US, nuclear weapons in close proximity) Of course this is no different than the position the US is in towards the Soviet Union, the USSR see this as a balance the US sees it as a threat. Two ways to view one thing - neither side backs down or looks at the other's point of view which was common and then you have The Soviets and Americans shooting at each other in the mid 80s in the Caribbean.

What about scenario's based on the US' current foreign policy "noliner" stance, lol

I loved the China Series, hours, days, months playing these http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=19#19

but I agree with Mike

Right or wrong, realistic or fictional the storylines are what suck users into the scenarios they're playing and hopefully entertains them for abit. So I don't think there is anything wrong with playing with Cold War or present day politics and its really up to the scenario designer to do a good job with it to draw users in. The "art" of all this is being able to draw players into your narrative. This skill requires practice though so give each other a break and remember at the end of the day somebody is just trying to provide a good time.

The August '91 coup would seem to suggest there were, in fact, hardliners at that time at least, although I agree that they were almost certainly not wanting war with the west, they WERE wanting to reverse or stop, the Gorbachev led thaw in relations with the west.

ORIGINAL: navwarcol

The August '91 coup would seem to suggest there were, in fact, hardliners at that time at least, although I agree that they were almost certainly not wanting war with the west, they WERE wanting to reverse or stop, the Gorbachev led thaw in relations with the west.

Of course there were 'hardliners' I named two of them, but their hard line was based solely on internal policies - the wish for international adventurism died with Andropov. Their distaste wasn't the relationship with the West, but the perversion of the system with the perestroika. Changes that were needed but done too quickly causing the downward spiral to increase speed. By 1985 here was no saving the country. The hardliners thought they could slow or stop it by rolling back the changes. They didn't have the support of enough of the Politburo or the people to do it. The absolute catastrophic failure of the '91 coup illustrates that.

I think you all have really good ideas here. Perhaps some kind of collaborative effort amongst those of you interested. Think about it. Maybe a you could pool your ideas and come up with a basic Modern Coldwar/WW3-ish premise that would be plausible and engrossing and add depth to a series of scenarios.

You guys got me thinking about various ways to approach this and I came up with a sort of generic template for an escalating proxy war...

At level one, two smaller countries (or two sides in a civil war) are fighting. Each side is being supplied by a major or global power. This might be just one scenario or it could be several.

At level two, a major power (or superpower) steps in on behalf of its client/ally in the region and attacks one of the smaller countries (or sides), the enemy of its client state/ally in the region. Its counterpart, the other side's patron, may do the same (i.e., Big A attacks Little B, and then Big B attacks Little A). Again, this may be one scenario or several. A variation on this would be if the major power (Big A) is trying to supply its client (Little A), and its enemy (Little B) attacks the convoy, etc. At this level, major powers are fighting, but fighting respective client states rather than each other (e.g., U.S. in Vietnam).

At level three, the same thing happens, but this time, the opposing major power intervenes (i.e., Big A attacks Little B, but Big B tries to stop the attack). Now we have escalated to the point where the forces of two major powers are openly fighting each other, although only in a regional conflict (e.g., Korea), not in an all-out war.

At level four, one of the major powers tries to take the fight directly to its counterpart and knock them out of the region. An example would be a Middle East war, where the Soviets have been supporting Syria, and the U.S. is supporting Israel, and the U.S. decides to simply sink the Soviet battle group in the Mediterranean and thus cripple Syria once and for all. This is meant to be a decisive battle that will clearly establish who has influence in this part of the world. Depending on how much the major powers have invested in the region, this could be one scenario or several. This could escalate to a global war, but this template assumes that once someone is a clear winner at this level, the major powers step back, take a breath, and start negotiations rather than continuing to fight.

What do you guys think? Does this make sense? Am I missing anything?

As a follow-up to the last post, here is a sample what-if proxy war in six stages (each one might have a scenario dedicated to it)...

In 1973, instead of a decisive coup, Chile breaks down into civil war; this assumes Allende is able to keep some of the military loyal. The Soviet Union moves to supply Allende with weapons and "military advisors." The United States backs the anti-communist rebels, who control much of the military in the country.

1) Air battles take place between opposing sides in the civil war.

2) American pilots assist Chilean pilots in raids.

3) More raids take place, but recently delivered Soviet SAMs now play havoc with Chilean rebel planes and American planes.

4) The United States decides to eliminate the problem and hit the SAM sites.

5) Soviet submarines go after the American battle group off Chile.

6) The American battle group, having survived the submarine attacks, goes after the Soviet task force/convoy bringing more weapons to Allende.

With the destruction of the Soviet battle group, the Soviets concede defeat and withdraw.

What do you all think? Comments? Suggestions?