WitP II Ground Combat Model Discussion

Gary Grigsby's strategic level wargame covering the entire War in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945 or beyond.

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el cid again
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Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:40 pm

RE: WitP II Ground Combat Model Discussion

Post by el cid again »

Since WITP is primarily a naval air game, I favor retaining same hex combat - which is better modeled by same hex combat. Having had to work out a same hex combat system for a different naval-air game, I can report (with some surprise) that, if you get it working, same hex land combat systems not only can function well, they have some advantages over traditional "attack the units in the adjacent hex" systems. The main difficulty is "how do you create the effect of a line" in a same hex combat system? That is, why can't a unit just march through your line? Turns out this question is not hard to answer - and the germ of the answer is in the present rules about moving from an enemy ZOC to another. Given the scale of the theater, the scale of WITP II is likely to remain pretty large - I personally hope for the UV scale of 30 NM per hex - which is also 1 million to 1 - or 1 mm = 1 km - and a very good scale for operational combat. But the resultant hexes are so large same hex combat makes more sense than adjacent hex combat does - technically speaking.

Due to the sheer size of hexes, I do not like stacking limits per se. I prefer other effects to be functions of unit density. There are reasonable limits to how many units can participate in combat, for example, but these should not limit how many units can be present. A hex of 625 square nautical miles is pretty big and can hold millions of people. On the other hand, a tiny atol, or fraction of an atol suitable for a base, probably cannot hold more than a division (see Tarawa's Bateo Island for example). You might want to have several sizes of atols - Kwajalein (the world's largest) and Truk could hold a corps easily - but some volcanic islands (I am thinking of Tulagi here) might have a problem with a regiment. So stacking limits for REALLY SMALL land bodies might make sense, as opposed to stacking limits in Australia or China or Japan.

If you do NOT have same hex combat, how can you attack an atol or small island (within one hex) at all? It makes more sense to have your troops ON the island - and fighting for control of it - than to have them somehow "in the water" - which they might not be in fact.

Anyway, if you wish to keep the advantages of same hex combat systems in terms of range measurement, modeling air and naval battles, and modeling fights over small places, there are ways to do this that will work for vast areas as well. They are not something players are familiar with - and my experience is that new ideas are unwelcome - but I believe this may be a case where that is not sufficient grounds to reject the concept. IF it can be made functional and easy to learn, and if it facilitates a better integrated system, then it may be the way to go.
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