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...And I'm sitting here waiting for a phone call, so I recall I had a couple of random ideas yesterday (it happens occasionally).

The first one has to do with the varying reliability of tanks.  One of the overlooked merits of the Sherman, for example, was that it was reliable.  A Sherman that gets to the battle beats a Panther that doesn't, every time.

On the other hand, the Russians used to shed tanks like mad whenever they advanced.  So did the British, when they were struggling with their series of early cruisers.  The early German Panthers and Tigers had major problems -- indeed, this may help to explain why the Tigers were often in separate battalions.  The unit was going to have to stop every few miles to allow the breakdowns to catch up...

Anyway, it could have a real impact.  For example, when 3rd Armoured Brigade evaporated in front of Rommel's first advance across Cyrenica, many if not most of the losses were from simple breakdown of the worn Italian and British tanks it was equipped with.  The unit literally disappeared as it withdrew from El Agheila to Tobruk -- and only part of those losses were due to lack of fuel and/or German action. In the fighting in North Africa, the Stuart was inferior in most other respects to the British cruiser tanks it supplemented -- but it was reliable. Look up serviceable strengths for the British armoured brigades in Crusader, and I think you'll find the Stuarts comprising a larger and proportion of the force as the battle goes on.

So I was thinking a 'reliability' value for tanks would be real nice.  The lower the value, the more likely the tank is to be 'shed' whenever the unit moves.  We already have a movement attrition routine, so it seems like this might be possible.  Adding to the attraction, those of us who are used to using the Bioeditor could freely modify this rating for whatever scenario we're working on.   If complexity is a concern, the default value could simply be left at whatever it is now for all tanks -- and then those with definite opinions about early Panthers could go at it if they wanted to.

Now what was the other idea...and when is this woman going to call?

ORIGINAL: jmlima

Actually it is relevant when you use him to defend your positions, as when you stated that he would need a lobotomy (your words) before a proposed change would be implemented.

My comment was obviously directed at Colins idea, not Ralph.

Regardless, do you seriously want to delay the release of 3.4 for another year and a half so Ralph can evaluate the hundreds of suggestions in the Wishlist?

And you're wrong, he is perfectly capable of estimating the time it will take before he starts doing it, any professional can do that in his area of expertise, to a reasonable degree of precision. That's how you do feasibility studies.

No. I'm right. I speak from hard earned experience developing 3.4. We tried very hard to pick the easiest items with the biggest payoff. Everything was much harder than we ever dreamed. That's why we must choose the very best ideas to implement. They have to be like Caesar's Wife: Above suspicion.

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Note that this is why in the real world commanders get very nervous if they have no reserves. You see, you have these troops you haven't committed to combat, and you use these to...

The front doesn't crater till you run out of reserves. Even then, before it does, there is some repostioning involved.

But is it workable? You seem to think I'm wedded Curtis-like to my solution and only my solution. I'm not -- it's your invariable tactic of stonewalling regardless of the merits of the situation that gets on my nerves.

I'm not stonewalling. I'm pointing out that Item 5.9 is a much better fix.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: jmlima

Actually it is relevant when you use him to defend your positions, as when you stated that he would need a lobotomy (your words) before a proposed change would be implemented.

My comment was obviously directed at Colins idea, not Ralph.

Regardless, do you seriously want to delay the release of 3.4 for another year and a half so Ralph can evaluate the hundreds of suggestions in the Wishlist?

Speaking for myself, not at all -- unless of course 3.4 is intended to be the last revelation, etc. However, I doubt that. Whatever would we have out cozy little chats about if that happened?

And you're wrong, he is perfectly capable of estimating the time it will take before he starts doing it, any professional can do that in his area of expertise, to a reasonable degree of precision. That's how you do feasibility studies.

No. I'm right. I speak from hard earned experience developing 3.4. We tried very hard to pick the easiest items with the biggest payoff. Everything was much harder than we ever dreamed. That's why we must choose the very best ideas to implement. They have to be like Caesar's Wife: Above suspicion.

The difficulty here is how which ideas are decided to be 'the very best.'

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Thinking about the merits of one of my suggestions -- that under certain circumstances artillery and armor be converted to 'static' equipment that the player has the option of abandoning, this has the merit of covering more situations than I realized when I proposed it.

I was of course thinking of it as a way of allowing defenders to retreat in spite of a lack of supply. However, in a different form, it happens a lot.

Specifically, amphibious evacuations. At Dunkirk, Greece, and Crete, the British were able to bring off a lot of men -- but they had to leave their equipment behind. Right through the summer of of 1940, British Home Forces were still fielding artillery units serving as infantry -- and this happened again on Crete. These were artillery units that had had to leave their guns behind. Something similar would have happened if the Germans had ever managed to break out of Stalingrad -- indeed, the need for such a measure was one of the arguments against staging the breakout at all.

Inasmuch as I'm wrestling with a scenario where I would like it to be possible to stage such evacuations, this particular idea has more attractions than I had realized.

Item 9.9 in the Wishlist.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: jmlima

Actually it is relevant when you use him to defend your positions, as when you stated that he would need a lobotomy (your words) before a proposed change would be implemented.

My comment was obviously directed at Colins idea, not Ralph.

Regardless, do you seriously want to delay the release of 3.4 for another year and a half so Ralph can evaluate the hundreds of suggestions in the Wishlist?

And you're wrong, he is perfectly capable of estimating the time it will take before he starts doing it, any professional can do that in his area of expertise, to a reasonable degree of precision. That's how you do feasibility studies.

No. I'm right. I speak from hard earned experience developing 3.4. We tried very hard to pick the easiest items with the biggest payoff. Everything was much harder than we ever dreamed. That's why we must choose the very best ideas to implement. They have to be like Caesar's Wife: Above suspicion.

So, please elucidate me. Firstly you say that the wishlist does not serve as more than a repository of info that may or may not be used, then you say that looking through the wishlist would delay the issue of a patch that has been in the works for well over a year. Please tell me the connection between both things. What's the connection between both. I must also add that Ralph said that the patch was done, and now going through playtest to iron bugs. Again I ask, please elucidate us about the connection between reading a wishlist (done by Ralph), and doing the playtest (being done by the playtesters), and how would one be delaying the other. Specially given that no features where supposed to be implemented, Ralph would only be going through the wishlist.

Second, if that's the way you guys work, then I will refrain from further comments. If you guys cannot even estimate how much work it will take to make a small change contained in a patch , then please tell us how do you expect to even be able to pull off a TOAW 4.

And a third question, if the programmer does not read the wishlist, then who directs him about the changes to be introduced? Who is in charge of the overall team? Who judges how long would something take Ralph to do?

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Yes -- but to some extent that's my point. Depending on the circumstances, some fodder is going to be locally available, and within reason, your horse will keep 'running' for a while after the gas gauge touches empty.

The gist of it is that as with leg infantry, the decline in ability to move and loss of combat potency due to lack of supply is much less marked than it is with artillery and mechanized troops. This is why, for example, when the Sixth Army was planning its breakout from the pocket, it was planned to leave all artillery and all armor behind. Anything that relied on an engine couldn't move. Infantry still could -- particularly if the alternative was to be left behind to the tender mercies of the Red Army.

If we had a mechanism that properly reflected the difference between these two curves, we'd have a better game. After all, in TOAW, if one did break out of Stalingrad, it would be your tanks and motorized artillery that would be most likely to make it to safety. That's the opposite of what would in fact have happened.

If we had component supply we could better address this and many other movement factors. There would be justification for a greater movement allowance disparity between 100% fuel and 1% fuel than we now have with just 100% supply vs. 1% supply - now we don't know whether the supply deduction came due to movement or combat. With component supply we would.

Obviously, there could be separate rules for different movement types. I'd like to see foot movement more dependent upon readiness (basically equivalent to fatigue) and motorized movement less dependent upon readiness, etc.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Note that this is why in the real world commanders get very nervous if they have no reserves. You see, you have these troops you haven't committed to combat, and you use these to...

The front doesn't crater till you run out of reserves. Even then, before it does, there is some repostioning involved.

Well, actually -- and if it were anyone else, I would think it would pass as an indisputable observation -- in non-TOAW reality, generals usually hold a reserve out of combat for just the reason a mechanism along the lines of what I am suggesting would simulate.

In TOAW, one basically does want it all up on the firing line. You can always peel units out as long as one stays in the stack. It wouldn't hurt if this was rendered more problematical -- and if one did want to think about withdrawing before one's units were exhausted.

But is it workable? You seem to think I'm wedded Curtis-like to my solution and only my solution. I'm not -- it's your invariable tactic of stonewalling regardless of the merits of the situation that gets on my nerves.

I'm not stonewalling. I'm pointing out that Item 5.9 is a much better fix.

Yeah -- and it stands out like a sore thumb. Curtis actually constructively responds. It could even be considered the exception that proves the rule. I suppose I'll now have to concede that you don't 'invariably' stonewall. You usually stonewall.

Otherwise, 5.9 is not a 'fix' in the sense that it solves the problem. As I promptly agreed, it is an improvement -- but it hardly makes the issue go away.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for 5.9. If it's been tested, and if it's in the next patch, great.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Yes -- but to some extent that's my point. Depending on the circumstances, some fodder is going to be locally available, and within reason, your horse will keep 'running' for a while after the gas gauge touches empty.

The gist of it is that as with leg infantry, the decline in ability to move and loss of combat potency due to lack of supply is much less marked than it is with artillery and mechanized troops. This is why, for example, when the Sixth Army was planning its breakout from the pocket, it was planned to leave all artillery and all armor behind. Anything that relied on an engine couldn't move. Infantry still could -- particularly if the alternative was to be left behind to the tender mercies of the Red Army.

If we had a mechanism that properly reflected the difference between these two curves, we'd have a better game. After all, in TOAW, if one did break out of Stalingrad, it would be your tanks and motorized artillery that would be most likely to make it to safety. That's the opposite of what would in fact have happened.

If we had component supply we could better address this and many other movement factors. There would be justification for a greater movement allowance disparity between 100% fuel and 1% fuel than we now have with just 100% supply vs. 1% supply - now we don't know whether the supply deduction came due to movement or combat. With component supply we would.

Obviously, there could be separate rules for different movement types. I'd like to see foot movement more dependent upon readiness (basically equivalent to fatigue) and motorized movement less dependent upon readiness, etc.

You seem to be ignoring the point that fuel supply and ammunition supply usually move in tandem. Indeed, often if there's no fuel one can't get the ammunition, so any distinction becomes academic.

I see this as something that wouldn't actually be harmful but is a pointless complication that wouldn't address much of anything.

...and infantry movement rates aren't particularly dependent on readiness. Well disciplined infantry will keep slogging along even if their tongues are hanging out. In the Battle of the Marne, the French captured trenchfuls of German soldiers that had literally slept right through the attack -- about as unready as you can get. Yet these same soldiers had been logging their thirty km a day right up to the time of the battle. It's not like they crossed the Belgian frontier doing fifty km a day and then slowed to ten km as they got tired. The variation in response to 'readiness' would have been sharply limited.

One thing I find disturbing is that most of your ideas seem to bear little direct connection to historical reality. They usually seem to have passed through some medium such as an SPI game. In short (vide the wadi as trench thing) you don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about. So right now, we appear to be in some peril of getting a mechanism for reducing foot movement rates that not only won't reflect reality, but will never have even referred to it. It's like the early Bush administration's plans for Iraq or something.

ORIGINAL: jmlima

So, please elucidate me. Firstly you say that the wishlist does not serve as more than a repository of info that may or may not be used, ...

Correct. It's just a list of everybody's wishes.

...then you say that looking through the wishlist would delay the issue of a patch that has been in the works for well over a year.

No I didn't. I said doing a feasibility study for the hundreds of items would do so.

Please tell me the connection between both things. What's the connection between both

?? I guess that there's hundreds of items on the list.

I must also add that Ralph said that the patch was done, and now going through playtest to iron bugs.

Ralph get's carried away a bit. I suppose you could say that all the features are implemented, but not bug free. But, I would say they're not finished till all the bugs are out.

Second, if that's the way you guys work, then I will refrain from further comments. If you guys cannot even estimate how much work it will take to make a small change contained in a patch , then please tell us how do you expect to even be able to pull off a TOAW 4.

Start. Then continue till we're finished.

And a third question, if the programmer does not read the wishlist, then who directs him about the changes to be introduced? Who is in charge of the overall team? Who judges how long would something take Ralph to do?

Ralph decides what he wants to do. But he is persuadable.

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

You seem to be ignoring the point that fuel supply and ammunition supply usually move in tandem. Indeed, often if there's no fuel one can't get the ammunition, so any distinction becomes academic.

But they're not expended in tandem!

I see this as something that wouldn't actually be harmful but is a pointless complication that wouldn't address much of anything.

It addresses the need to be able to move without blowing off all your ammo and fight without blowing off all your fuel. And, as I said, it could justify stiffer consequences for 1% fuel to movement and 1% ammo to combat strength than 1% supply now does.

...and infantry movement rates aren't particularly dependent on readiness. Well disciplined infantry will keep slogging along even if their tongues are hanging out. In the Battle of the Marne, the French captured trenchfuls of German soldiers that had literally slept right through the attack -- about as unready as you can get. Yet these same soldiers had been logging their thirty km a day right up to the time of the battle. It's not like they crossed the Belgian frontier doing fifty km a day and then slowed to ten km as they got tired. The variation in response to 'readiness' would have been sharply limited.

Because they recovered their fatigue each night. Had they been force marching - moving day and night - their rates would have plummeted.

One thing I find disturbing is that most of your ideas seem to bear little direct connection to historical reality. They usually seem to have passed through some medium such as an SPI game. In short (vide the wadi as trench thing) you don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about. So right now, we appear to be in some peril of getting a mechanism for reducing foot movement rates that not only won't reflect reality, but will never have even referred to it. It's like the early Bush administration's plans for Iraq or something.

I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. And, I'll take SPI over you any day.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

You seem to be ignoring the point that fuel supply and ammunition supply usually move in tandem. Indeed, often if there's no fuel one can't get the ammunition, so any distinction becomes academic.

But they're not expended in tandem!

Actually, they often are. More to the point, at the level TOAW works at, they usually are. Your approach would lead to us trying to decide if that 25 pounder still has AT ammunition left, or only HE.

I see this as something that wouldn't actually be harmful but is a pointless complication that wouldn't address much of anything.

It addresses the need to be able to move without blowing off all your ammo and fight without blowing off all your fuel. And, as I said, it could justify stiffer consequences for 1% fuel to movement and 1% ammo to combat strength than 1% supply now does.

This just isn't something that has been a common phenomenon. I have no doubt that there was some instance of a force having plenty of ammo but no fuel -- just as I can find examples of infantry units marching 50 km in a day. However, we need to look at what usually happened -- and what the impact is at TOAW's scale.

As a rule, forces that are low on ammo are also low on fuel, and vice-versa. What's more, those that are low on fuel are impeded in their ability to fight -- even to bring up whatever ammo they may have in plenty. In a way, it's like the wadi/river thing; at the scale TOAW operates at, they tend to present as the same problem.

...and infantry movement rates aren't particularly dependent on readiness. Well disciplined infantry will keep slogging along even if their tongues are hanging out. In the Battle of the Marne, the French captured trenchfuls of German soldiers that had literally slept right through the attack -- about as unready as you can get. Yet these same soldiers had been logging their thirty km a day right up to the time of the battle. It's not like they crossed the Belgian frontier doing fifty km a day and then slowed to ten km as they got tired. The variation in response to 'readiness' would have been sharply limited.

Because they recovered their fatigue each night. Had they been force marching - moving day and night - their rates would have plummeted.

See the scale thing. Also -- unless you are planning to allow for foot movement rates of 50 km in a day -- it's irrelevant. The stock foot movement rate isn't force marching in the first place.

The current TOAW rate and mechanism for foot infantry actually works pretty good -- if one takes care not to put so many trucks in the unit that they wind up accelerating the infantry. As I recall, a pure rifle unit with high readiness will do 35 km a day over plain, already converted terrain. As it falls to low readiness, it'll go to about 25 km a day - but no lower.

That's not bad. I'd go with 'fixing' something else, personally.

One thing I find disturbing is that most of your ideas seem to bear little direct connection to historical reality. They usually seem to have passed through some medium such as an SPI game. In short (vide the wadi as trench thing) you don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about. So right now, we appear to be in some peril of getting a mechanism for reducing foot movement rates that not only won't reflect reality, but will never have even referred to it. It's like the early Bush administration's plans for Iraq or something.

I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. And, I'll take SPI over you any day.

Then you're making a mistake, to skip the false modesty. I have a hell of a lot of good ideas, whatever my other shortcomings.

However, let's leave me out of it. I've pointed out the flaws with your reasoning about wargames before. But I'll do it again.

First off, it gives you zero access to the raw data. You just have to accept SPI's ideas of how to represent the terrain, the OOB, etc.

Second, someone designing a wargame -- unlike someone designing a book -- has to fill in the gaps. He can't just not specify how many tanks the 23rd Armoured Brigade had on whatever the start date of the scenario is -- he has to put his money on some number. This renders all 'information' in the finished game suspect. You have no way of discerning just how well-documented any 'fact' presented in the game is. This is part of the nature of the beast. See the problems with 'Fire in the East.' Your approach essentially says, 'all Soviet units were up to TO&E and ready to go on June 22. It's right there in the game.'

Third, I remember SPI. They were five-six guys cranking out a wargame in the magazine every month or two months plus another game on the side in about the same interval.

More power to 'em -- but I wouldn't assume the results were researched with any great care. Read a book, come up with a mechanism to simulate whatever struck you, grab an atlas, and get with it. Not really reliable material, to say the least. I could play their 'Fall of Rome' game and have a fine time. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about what actually happened, how things actually worked, or what the possibilities were on that basis. Similarly with their 'France 1940' game and 'Panzerblitz,' (which began life as an SPI product) incidentally. Great fun -- the actual correlation with reality is completely problematical.

Now, when you're designing a scenario, you can 'reinvent the wheel' or not, as you please. One realizes what the foibles of various designers are, and takes their work with the appropriate grain of salt. In your case, I would assume I'm getting a reasonable cover of an SPI game.

Great. However, that you base your notions of military reality on such stuff and then modify the system itself accordingly is distressing, to say the least. It's like discovering that your brain doctor takes pride in the fact that he didn't read a book all the way through medical school.

Oh yeah. There's the other thing.

Ships shouldn't be able to provide fire support beyond the coastal hex.

As a rule, they didn't -- not in World War Two. I've long noticed this, and right now I'm reading Atkinson's The Day of Battle: the War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

Sure, ship's guns were used a lot -- but as a rule, only when the enemy neared the coast. Their effective range -- for whatever reason -- doesn't usually seem to have extended more than five kilometers inland. Maybe Normandy and the Pacific can provide some examples of deeper fire support -- but even if they do, it still doesn't work to have battleships able to provide dedicated fire support 30 km inland as the default position.

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Oh yeah. There's the other thing.

Ships shouldn't be able to provide fire support beyond the coastal hex.

As a rule, they didn't -- not in World War Two. I've long noticed this, and right now I'm reading Atkinson's The Day of Battle: the War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

Sure, ship's guns were used a lot -- but as a rule, only when the enemy neared the coast. Their effective range -- for whatever reason -- doesn't usually seem to have extended more than five kilometers inland. Maybe Normandy and the Pacific can provide some examples of deeper fire support -- but even if they do, it still doesn't work to have battleships able to proovide dedicated fire support 30 km inland as the default position.

And Leningrad. You forgot Leningrad. All the way to Gorodok on the Neva, south of Schusselburg.

ORIGINAL: Panama

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Oh yeah. There's the other thing.

Ships shouldn't be able to provide fire support beyond the coastal hex.

As a rule, they didn't -- not in World War Two. I've long noticed this, and right now I'm reading Atkinson's The Day of Battle: the War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

Sure, ship's guns were used a lot -- but as a rule, only when the enemy neared the coast. Their effective range -- for whatever reason -- doesn't usually seem to have extended more than five kilometers inland. Maybe Normandy and the Pacific can provide some examples of deeper fire support -- but even if they do, it still doesn't work to have battleships able to proovide dedicated fire support 30 km inland as the default position.

And Leningrad. You forgot Leningrad. All the way to Gorodok on the Neva, south of Schusselburg.

Still 'n as a rule...

Two of the scenarios I'm working on -- Seelowe and one covering the Commonwealth invasion of Syria involve what are really rather modest naval squadrons that can provide fire support.

Left to the game engine, these squadrons can flail opposing forces up to twenty kilometers inland. It becomes very hard to hold a line near the coast.

In fact, and going by what actually happened both in the Syrian campaign and in Italy, ship's guns could be have a big impact -- but usually only right on the coast. As I say, as a rule the limit for really effective fire seems to have been something like five kilometers.

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Actually, they often are.

No, they are not. Movement does not expend ammo. Firing a gun does not expend fuel. And this is a serious issue with TOAW. It means you can't manuever against the enemy, because if you do, you'll be treated as if you're out of ammo by the time you get there. That has serious consequences all the time. It gives players little choice other than to bludgeon their way straight ahead, regardless.

And, as I've said over and over, it will allow the game to justify stiffer consequences to the unit combat strengths for 1% "ammo", and to the movement allowances for 1% "fuel" than can be justified for the simple 1% "supply". That's the very issue this whole discussion started about.

See the scale thing. Also -- unless you are planning to allow for foot movement rates of 50 km in a day -- it's irrelevant. The stock foot movement rate isn't force marching in the first place.

It isn't a matter of scale. Start walking and don't stop. Your pace will slack off - all the way to zero eventually. Fatigue definitely impacts march rates. Battle fatigue too.

Far more importantly, it really shouldn't impact motorized movement rates. Worse, readiness is increased the same per unit distance for foot and motorized units. This pretty much cancels the combat advantage motorized infantry has over foot infantry.

Then you're making a mistake, to skip the false modesty. I have a hell of a lot of good ideas, whatever my other shortcomings.

SPI over you any day and twice on Sunday.

First off, it gives you zero access to the raw data. You just have to accept SPI's ideas of how to represent the terrain, the OOB, etc.

Same as any other secondary source. Like Glantz or Nafziger, for example. I use as many sources as I can get, including secondary ones.

Second, someone designing a wargame -- unlike someone designing a book -- has to fill in the gaps. He can't just not specify how many tanks the 23rd Armoured Brigade had on whatever the start date of the scenario is -- he has to put his money on some number. This renders all 'information' in the finished game suspect. You have no way of discerning just how well-documented any 'fact' presented in the game is. This is part of the nature of the beast.

On the other hand, the game has to actually work. That gives it a legitimacy no book or document can ever match.

See the problems with 'Fire in the East.' Your approach essentially says, 'all Soviet units were up to TO&E and ready to go on June 22. It's right there in the game.'

When I was researching "Soviet Union 1941" I made a comparative study of the OOBs & TO&E of all existing Barbarossa scenarios. Nobody had the same answer. Some of them were pretty awful. But the combination of them all formed something of a concensus that was superior to any one of them by itself. And filled in a gap or two that other sources couldn't.

Third, I remember SPI. They were five-six guys cranking out a wargame in the magazine every month or two months plus another game on the side in about the same interval.

More power to 'em -- but I wouldn't assume the results were researched with any great care. Read a book, come up with a mechanism to simulate whatever struck you, grab an atlas, and get with it. Not really reliable material, to say the least. I could play their 'Fall of Rome' game and have a fine time. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about what actually happened, how things actually worked, or what the possibilities were on that basis. Similarly with their 'France 1940' game and 'Panzerblitz,' (which began life as an SPI product) incidentally. Great fun -- the actual correlation with reality is completely problematical.

This is sort of like claiming that Ford makes lousy cars because the Model-T didn't have a CD player. Well, the Model-T was a marvel of technology for its time, and changed the world. And Ford has advanced since then the same as other makers.

For example, most of the Talonsoft Battleground series of games were direct conversions of SPI titles. And there were plenty of other excellent titles beyond those. CFNA, War in the Pacific, Highway to the Reich, The Next War, To the Green Fields Beyond, just to name a few.

Now, when you're designing a scenario, you can 'reinvent the wheel' or not, as you please. One realizes what the foibles of various designers are, and takes their work with the appropriate grain of salt. In your case, I would assume I'm getting a reasonable cover of an SPI game.

If this discussion is going to turn on the quality of my scenarios, you may as well surrender.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay



It isn't a matter of scale. Start walking and don't stop. Your pace will slack off - all the way to zero eventually. Fatigue definitely impacts march rates. Battle fatigue too.

This is pretty representative of what you have to say.

The point would be meaningful -- if the TOAW foot movement rate for a fully rested unit represented continuous walking. At 35 km per every 24 hour period, it obviously doesn't. The rate isn't force-marching in the first place -- so to argue as if it does is simply pointless.

And so on, and so on, and so on... All you're doing is demonstrating how unfit you are for the position you hold. You're incapable of acknowledging that anyone else's ideas but your own have any merit, and unable to see the flaws in your own.

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Left to the game engine, these squadrons can flail opposing forces up to twenty kilometers inland. It becomes very hard to hold a line near the coast.

In fact, and going by what actually happened both in the Syrian campaign and in Italy, ship's guns could be have a big impact -- but usually only right on the coast. As I say, as a rule the limit for really effective fire seems to have been something like five kilometers.

There’s a thing called the equipment editor . . . a real easy fix to your boat problem and you wouldn’t be screwing up the game engine for the scenarios that use inland fire support.

Regards, RhinoBones

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay




This is sort of like claiming that Ford makes lousy cars because the Model-T didn't have a CD player. Well, the Model-T was a marvel of technology for its time, and changed the world. And Ford has advanced since then the same as other makers.

For example, most of the Talonsoft Battleground series of games were direct conversions of SPI titles. And there were plenty of other excellent titles beyond those. CFNA, War in the Pacific, Highway to the Reich, The Next War, To the Green Fields Beyond, just to name a few.

Sure: as wargames they were often commendable. This does not make them valid sources of data.

Gibbon, Carlyle, etc were major figures in the development of history as an academic discipline. It wouldn't really be a good idea to take their assertions as fact.

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay




Same as any other secondary source. Like Glantz or Nafziger, for example. I use as many sources as I can get, including secondary ones.

Second, someone designing a wargame -- unlike someone designing a book -- has to fill in the gaps. He can't just not specify how many tanks the 23rd Armoured Brigade had on whatever the start date of the scenario is -- he has to put his money on some number. This renders all 'information' in the finished game suspect. You have no way of discerning just how well-documented any 'fact' presented in the game is. This is part of the nature of the beast.

On the other hand, the game has to actually work. That gives it a legitimacy no book or document can ever match.

!

The problem with the reasoning here is that the means used to obtain the historical result often owe nothing to historical reality.

A good example is SPI's 'France 1940.' If one looks at how that works, first, there's a combat results table that grossly favors the attacker, and then secondly, the Germans are given tools to 'exploit the system,' so to speak. Like the 7-6 infantry corps that will always drive back the 6-6 French infantry corps in a system that permits only one corps per hex and makes a 3-1 a sure thing.

Hey -- lookit that! The Germans win all the time! Who'd a thought...

But that does nothing to demonstrate that the game simulates history. Bernie Madoff paid his investors 10% a year, every year. As it turned out, that wasn't because he could pick stocks.

See the problems with 'Fire in the East.' Your approach essentially says, 'all Soviet units were up to TO&E and ready to go on June 22. It's right there in the game.'

When I was researching "Soviet Union 1941" I made a comparative study of the OOBs & TO&E of all existing Barbarossa scenarios. Nobody had the same answer. Some of them were pretty awful. But the combination of them all formed something of a concensus that was superior to any one of them by itself. And filled in a gap or two that other sources couldn't.

The 'consensus' of all the scenarios out there...

That's how we long ago settled the question of creation. We consulted learned Jews, Muslims, and Christians. God created it all in seven days, obviously. Next question?