ORIGINAL: Jeffrey H.
What would I suggest ? I dunno how about realistic and meaningful and accurate values for offense, defence and movement ? Too much to ask for ?
Suppose that's were different people are having very different ideas. I prefer "qualifiers" as vague as a real field commander would have faced them, instead of accurate numbers: Intuition, derived from knowing the units and commanders past performance coupled with returns on supply stats, vehicle readiness, ammo etc. This is an origin for "human errors".
A real commander has to be much more careful about his orders, not only because he only has one head and career he can loose -- not so a player, he doesn't loose much by overextending, sacrificial/misjudged assaults etc. etc. Game goes on, there is no dice roll determining whether the game suddenly ends because the CIC is loosing his job. As such, uncertainty should lead to more conservative orders and slower op-tempo. And this uncertainty that a real field commander must have faced is probably very crucial for getting the right feeling of being up back in time in his spot. I guess without this factor, any game like this will not feel like having much to do with the war it is supposed to be related to.
Think of a game with FOW, and one without any FOW and perfectly accurate --even though average-- CV: They do play out very differently, especially human-vs-human, as you can proceed in much more computable fashion in one case, whereas you have to be more careful in the other. One shows the characteristics of uncertainties and human errors from real life, the other is more like chess or systematic number crunching.
Seems like this is another area of the game, where in an ideal world with infinite development-budget, a optional choice would have been added (in the main menu) to choose between qualifiers and numbers for CV, leader ratings, disruption etc., and the FOW/accuracy of these given to the player. Then everyone could have his/her favorite flavor. Perhaps such little details, maybe not taking much to code, would broaden the base of interested people beyond either the hard-core simulation fans on the one side, or the "clear rules and formulas game" group on the other. Or attract critics by both for choosing a compromise.
ORIGINAL: Jeffrey H.
I did admit that this is a pet peeve of mine, but for me it is important. "1=9" and "2?6" is just nonsense to me.
I understand your concerns, but mathematical operators, i.e. symbols, are often redefined in different contexts. A * can mean a lot of things depending on what it is operating on (numbers, vectors/matrices (tensors), functions, functionals etc.). And in informatics it is still another story. What is a ** in a mathematical sense? Not seen it yet to be used there. I wouldn't bother about any symbols meanings as long as their redefinition is explained.
