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OK, here is a great idea for a scenario. The game is supposed to support maneuver warfare ideas, which I like a lot.[:D]

William S. Lind's "Maneuver Warfare Handbook" contains a couple of scenarios he has used for maneuver warfare training of the Marine Corps, for example exercise number two on page 98. It would be interesting to see to what extent the game encouraged one to follow the suggested decisions. [8D]

Although the maps are not of high quality, I suppose that they could be scanned and be playable.

Unfortunately I have never designed a scenario, so this job is beyond my competence. But maybe someone with the competence sould follow up on this idea. How about it?[&o]

One difficulty is that Lind recommends that orders take the form of missions instead of objectives. But it is difficult how this can be implemented for a computer player who, being a machine, understands objectives but not missions, which by their nature are more vague and leave more room for flexibility.[:'(]

In any case training scenarios are fun. The tutorial scenarios are great and worth playing over more than once.But here is another idea. How about scenarios where the player is given orders then left to carry them out.Then at certain pre-programmed points, he would be requested to decise what he would do when, say an unexpected situation pops up. Of course he would be encouraged not to look at the solution ahead of time.Or such scenarios could be put up one week and the solution would be given only the following week.

As a matter of fact I just remembered that there were problems like this in some of my old wargaming magazines. In one of them, the reader was put in the position of a Company commander who was asked to open a route for a fast-moving brigade coming down the road. When he reached the river, he found that the road split into two shortly before two bridges defended by enemy units, and he had to decide whether to divide his force and go after both bridges or to go all-out for only one. The road had to be opened before the brigade arrived. Then he had to spell out how he would go about carrying out the plan (recon, bombardment, etc) given the short time available before the brigade arrived.[&:]

Henri

from Henri
 
Unfortunately I have never designed a scenario, so this job is beyond my competence. But maybe someone with the competence sould follow up on this idea. How about it?[&o]

 
Neither had anyone else. It's not difficult to whack up a scenario, especially with the import/export force list option. Keep it simple to start with and before you know it you will surprise yourself with what you can create. Have a go Henri. [:)]

Hi Henri,

The Muddy River tactical exercise in Lynd's book ... I recall that one.

One difficulty is that Lind recommends that orders take the form of missions instead of objectives. But it is difficult how this can be implemented for a computer player who, being a machine, understands objectives but not missions, which by their nature are more vague and leave more room for flexibility.

That's true. However, I wonder if making the objective radius bigger could circumvent that problem. For example in the scenario editor you create an objective in the bridge at route 8 (speaking about the before mentioned exercise here). If you make the objective radius small, like 200 meters, the computer opponent will focus on that terrain feature (BTW, not really maneuver warfare, too much focus on terrain). However, if you make the objective radius bigger, like 1 kilometer) the computer opponent will likely not only to take the bridge but also expand the bridgehead. This last would look like the computer opponent is aware about the commander's intent (hold the bridge for the Marine Regiment to cross), but still keeping individual initiative on how to do it (not just defending within meters the bridge).

The game is supposed to support maneuver warfare ideas, which I like a lot.

I would appreciate if you comment on how the "filters" Lind proposes stand or work within the engine.

Thanks in advance.

But here is another idea. How about scenarios where the player is given orders then left to carry them out.Then at certain pre-programmed points, he would be requested to decise what he would do when, say an unexpected situation pops up. Of course he would be encouraged not to look at the solution ahead of time.Or such scenarios could be put up one week and the solution would be given only the following week.

I like the idea of weekly or monthly released short scenarios that the readers could try. Followed by a discussion among people on what they did. A kind of "Panther's War College". The forums have wonderfuls AARs and plenty of discussion on why the authors did what they did. But still, short scenarios discussion could encourage people who has little or no time to write a detailed AAR to share their command experiences.

A "Panther's Gazette", with selected questions from users and answers from the more experienced would be nice too. I recall the "TacOPs Gazette" and it was great.

One difficulty is that Lind recommends that orders take the form of missions instead of objectives. But it is difficult how this can be implemented for a computer player who, being a machine, understands objectives but not missions, which by their nature are more vague and leave more room for flexibility.

There is a training game, "Close Combat Marines", in which the objectives are hidden from the player. The player only finds out about them after the scenario ends. The creators claim that they didn't want the trainees to focus too much into pieces of terrain.

Chelco,

You sound like the ideal person to form and run the Panther War College! It might work. I usually find that the more community is oriented to SP, the greater the degree of input you can get. When the community gets focused on MP, people clam up about their strategy and techniques.

Re:  objectives v mission  :  this can be worked around, at least for the player by not giving objectives to him, only giving them to the enemy AI to help guide it.
 
I think a Panther War College is a terrific idea, and I love the idea of having Combat Decison problems for the subscribers to solve.   I wonder how many people would be interested in this.  Keep it going lads, I think you are onto something, and draft MarkShot, he is a natural  [;)]
 
Bil

ORIGINAL: Chelco

The game is supposed to support maneuver warfare ideas, which I like a lot.

I would appreciate if you comment on how the "filters" Lind proposes stand or work within the engine.

Thanks in advance.

I wish I knew. At this time, I do not know enough about how the game works, and I would have to re-read Lind"s book to refresh my poor memory. maybe I can try later, but the programmers of the game would be the best qualified to answer this question.[&o]

Henri

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
Chelco,
You sound like the ideal person to form and run the Panther War College! It might work. I usually find that the more community is oriented to SP, the greater the degree of input you can get. When the community gets focused on MP, people clam up about their strategy and techniques.

Thanks Mark, I'm flattered for your remark. To be sincere I was thinking in Steve and you when I threw the idea in. The war college could be a natural extension to the tutorials and the mini-guide. Indeed, the war college could kick off with people posting how they did in the tutorials. The game is so deep that I find myself playing the tutorials over and over, there is always something new I want to try or something that I forgot to check.
Cheers,

Well, it would be nice if the War College featured realistic problems put together by someone with actual military experience and historical research. Truth be told, I only know the game engine well, but without a mouse I would have been lost in the 1940s.

I would be nice to see various projects grow up around the game that are undertakings of the player community. Of course, Matrix might provide some hosting resources (like a forum). However, the most prolific expansions/mods/clubs for most games grow up out of the player community, since when you depend on the developer that's where you often hit a bottleneck.

ORIGINAL: Bil H

Re:  objectives v mission  :  this can be worked around, at least for the player by not giving objectives to him, only giving them to the enemy AI to help guide it.

Well, that's what I did in my HttR Cologne scenario to some extent, partially unintended, because I wanted the AI to react in a certain way (which looks a bit scripted).
Although the ultimate goals were mentioned in the detailed briefing, the main objectives wouldn't be activated until day 7 (i think :p), which forced the player to think about several different approaches. Plus, I want players to create their own strats, instead of them processing a typical "chain" of objectives (secure A, B, C, in a row), predetermined by the scenario designer.

There is good and bad news about the ability of COTA to simulate maneuver warfare, but the good is rather impressive...

The bad:the AI is of course objective-oriented, whereas maneuver warfare requires mission-oriented orders, which leaves much more initiative to those receiving the orders.There may be ways of improving this as seen above, but the orders still must be specific.

The good: I just finished playing the "Tanks at Plomonton" (or something like that) as the Axis, and something very interesting happened.In this scenario, the Allies are holding a road and a rail tunnels across a ridge about 300 m high that seems impassable to vehicles, since the slope is typically 40 degrees or even more (vehicles cannot climb slopes of over 30 degrees without a road).The Germans have a Kampfgruppe equivalent to a reinforced regiment- only one battalion is available on the first day, and a British brigade is initially defending the tunnels, with probably more on the way. [:D]

Since the two adjacent tunnels are known to be initially weakly defended, I ordered the German brigade to assault the defenders, setting the assault marker one km past the tunnel to ensure that they would drive out the defenders. Because it was already 15 hours, I knew that most of the fighting would have to take place at night, but I figured that if the initial assault failed to break through, the next day's reinforcements could either punch through or veer right after the river crossings and slam into any incoming Allied reinforcements on the flank.

Although I generally favor the indirect approach, in this case it is of the utmost importance to control the tunnel so that later German forces can avoid the Allied main defenses in the mountains.The ideal British defense would be a delaying defense along the furthest river, which could retreat across two rivers before falling back to the tunnels, and such a delay could be fatal for the Germans; although the British had not deployed on such a line, they might if they were given time to dig in, otherwise they could be caught flat-footed by my rapid advance if they tried.

My brigade containing a mix of infantry and armor plus supporting elements slammed into the tunnel area a couple of hours before dark, and a furious firefight broke out.

As darkness fell, the AI surprised me. Although it is practically impossible to find by oneself, my brigade commander saw that about one klick West of the tunnels, there was a narrow path up the ridge with slopes of up to 29 degrees - one degree less than the limit for vehicles! [X(]

So he ordered his whole brigade up and over the slope, brushing off the surprised defenders on the top,and installed his brigade on the objective point across the tunnel, thus cutting off supplies to the tunnel defenders and preparing a squeeze on the tunnel defenders for the next day when reinforcements would come. Now this is what I call intelligent intepretation of one's orders, totally in the spirit of maneuver warfare![8D]

When the first German reinforcement brigade arrived the next day, the tunnel defenders were forced to defend from two sides and were beaten into the ground. British reinforcements attempting a relief effort were hit on the flank by the third brigade arriving early on the evening of the second day, and the British circumstances became impossible. After wiping out the tunnel defenders, my forces had a whole day to mop up the disorganized British remains. Although the scenario requires exiting from the bottom of the map and I exited none, I gained a decisive victory when the British surrendered as the last of their forces were about to be annihilated.

Another bad news is that this game shows that the map contours are insufficient, as discussed in another thread: I was certain that my motorized forces could not cross the ridge- and probably so did the scenario designer! [;)]It took a while for me to find the narrow path with a slope of 29 degrees, and there is no way that one can guess that it is there until one sees vehicles using it.[:(]

Since we know that the maximum slope for vehicles is 30 degrees, I wonder if it would be possible to have a button to show such paths over mountains?

Henri

Henri,
 
All you had to do was use the  shortest pathing tool - just click on the map once on each side and watch where the path is drawn.
 
Also I take issue on the distinction you make between mission and objective oriented orders. This is typical military pap based on flawed logic. Theoretically there is no real distinction. Both have a subject ( ie the force assigned ). Both have an action or task type ( eg. defend or delay or deny ). And most importantly both have an object to which the action is applied ( eg. a map location/area or enemy force or whatever ). In practice, your mission orders are couched in general terms ( eg. deny this area to the enemy ) while your so called objective orders are couched in specific terms ( eg defend this location ). But essentially they are one and the same.
 
The implied distinction is that missions enable the subject to use their initiative while objectives do not. But this is pure semantics and certainly doesn't apply to the way in which we use them. First off, the human player may indeed completely ignore the objectives assigned. He has complete freedom to employ his forces as and when he chooses. For the AI controlled side, it will interpret its objectives according to a wide range of factors and will often use its initiative to develop a plan to achieve them.
 
For instance, when assigned a Secure objective it may decide that if it controls the objective already it would be best to send out blocking forces to delay the enemy that threaten the objective. In so doing these may be despatched many kilometres away and delay through a series of leapfrogging actions. If the enemy penetrate the perimeter of the objective it may launch a counter attack to evict them. If the objective is enemy controlled, it will advance to the objective. It may choose one of a number of approaches and if enemy is encountered on the way it may bypass or attack them. If the objective is held in strength it may launch an all out coordinated attack.
 
In other words the AI controlled side continually reassesses its situation and replans accordingly. In short it uses it's initiative. For the human controlled side we have turned off some of the reassessments for it's AI controlled subordinates. This is to encourage the player to get involved. One option in the future would be to provide options for activating the various reassessments when issuing orders. In other words enabling AI subordinates more initiative.
 
What we do not currently have are things like areas of operation to constrain the area in which a force can operate, nor named areas of interest, which would allow the user to define objectives as a polygon rather than a circle. We also don't have what could be termed higher level task types, such as "destroy the enemy in area X".
 
All of these things though are just aids to defining what a force must achieve.
 
You often see the military use the term "commander's intention's". This is used in some cases to define the order in more abstract terms - eg "prevent the enemy force at Y from reinforceing his position at X". In other cases it is used to provide a context for this mission - eg you will attack from X to Y and "your force is the right flank of a double envelopment". Sometimes it implies an additional task - eg. defend town Y and "you are to provide early warning of enemy advancing from town X" ( in other words put out a blocking position towards town X ). Sometimes it defines a constraint - eg you will delay the enemy from reaching town X and distrupting the FUP of the main attack ( in other words hold them up until the Reorg at the FUP is complete ).
 
Commander's intent is often expressed in very general terms. This works well for intelligent human commanders who can interpret and derive precise meaning from the general statement. Computers alas have limited abilities in that direction. They invariably need specifics. After all it all boils down in the end to "1s" and "0s". Our approach is to encapsulate orders in specific terms and to provide as much other qualifying data within the order settings as is required ( eg. secure crossing for the Attack ). Then within the planning and reassessment code we provide the smarts for the AI to interpret and develop options.
 
Thanks for bringing up this point Henri. It's good to discuss this. [:)]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

.........nor named areas of interest, which would allow the user to define objectives as a polygon rather than a circle..............

Oooooooooh custom polygon objectives.....I'd be eternally thankful if you'd add that to your huuuuuuuge TT-list [&o], it would be a major improvement for the scenario design!!!!!

Also, this reminds me of an issue on maps like Malta, for example. The circle objectives let the AI regroup/spread out on those mini-peninsulas near the main objective/harbour. It causes major losses on the AI side, because the AI keeps moving (instead of attacking) units from one pensula to the other, once the exits are close to being blocked by the player, the AI does that even after the player's forces shut the exits.

On the player's side, the AI uses to do weird things when ordered to attack the tip of a peninsula. Sometimes 90 percent of the forces (which are supposed to clean up at the penins. tip) leave one peninsula, leaving the "exit" open, just to move to the other peninsula nearby. The only solutions:

a) you gotta detach units and use single units as cleaners (takes some time if forced to take on a fortified AA unit) or
b) you gotta throw in (move-task/attack-in-situ) vast numbers of troops with lowered aggro level.

Is there any chance that this gets fixed? (BFTB won't include Isles/peninsulas tho, but a fix would be quite useful for custom scenarios).

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Henri,


Also I take issue on the distinction you make between mission and objective oriented orders. This is typical military pap based on flawed logic. Theoretically there is no real distinction. Both have a subject ( ie the force assigned ). Both have an action or task type ( eg. defend or delay or deny ). And most importantly both have an object to which the action is applied ( eg. a map location/area or enemy force or whatever ). In practice, your mission orders are couched in general terms ( eg. deny this area to the enemy ) while your so called objective orders are couched in specific terms ( eg defend this location ). But essentially they are one and the same.

The implied distinction is that missions enable the subject to use their initiative while objectives do not. But this is pure semantics and certainly doesn't apply to the way in which we use them. First off, the human player may indeed completely ignore the objectives assigned. He has complete freedom to employ his forces as and when he chooses. For the AI controlled side, it will interpret its objectives according to a wide range of factors and will often use its initiative to develop a plan to achieve them.

[:)]

Well I did not write the book on maneuver warfare, but I beg to differ: it is NOT a matter of semantics.[:-] Here is what Col Wylie (who wrote the exercises in Lind's book) says in Maneuver Warfare handbook.

"Mission should not be confused with objective. ...Objective will be an aiming point. Objective as stated under mission tactics will often be selected by subordinate commanders on their own within the scope of the mission assignment. The mission is to prevent an enemy from crossing a river. A suitable objective might be a bridge or a ford or a hill overlooking the enemy. Which of those objectives is the most suitable may be a thing only the subordinate commander may determine after he arrives on the spot. He must have direction on his way to the river in question. When he moves out from his position, his objective may well be the bridge. But before he arrives there, he may find it appropriate to change his objective to the river or the ford. The object5ive may change in the course of battle..."

A detailed exposition of missions and objectives takes a whole chapter and more of Lind's book, of the Marine Corps warfare handbook and other books, and it would not be appropriate for me to quote it all here, but the above should be clear enough.

The difference is clearly illustrated by Wylie when he mentions the Allies taking heavy losses in Vietnam to take hills that had lost all strategic and tactical importance.

Having said this, COTA DOES to some extent allow objective orders to approximate mission orders, for instance by changing the settings for aggro, casualties and so on which can increase or reduce the importance of the stated objective and therefore allow a unit to adjust to changing circumstances such as meeting opposition on the way to an objective.

Still the COTA objectives cannot be changed without incurring a considerable delay (unless orders delays are turned off), and the objective DOES remain terrain, contrary to Liddell Hart's view that the objective should not be any terrain, but the enemy.

In my example of the tunnel, objective-oriented orders would have set a start line, a deployment, a schedule, a point of attack and the degree of casualties acceptable before backing down. Mission-oriented orders would have been to clear the tunnel so that upcoming friendly forces could pass though in order to avoid having to butt their heads against strong mountain defences. There might have been additional orders such as making sure that no enemies could stay near enough to the road to delay the passing forces. Such mission-oriented orders would have to clearly state the superior commander intent as well as missions given to at least two command levels higher.

The AI in this case seemingly interpreted my orders as mission-oriented by "realizing" that there would be a better chance of clearing the tunnel by crossing to the other side, since reinforcements could mount an attack from the other side. This was probably due to my not paying attention to the settings and putting the objective point far enough behind the bridge so that the AI may have thought that he should attack there using the path of least resistance. It turned out to be a "brilliant" move, but I doubt that the AI considered the fact that the incoming reinforcements coud serve to attack the enemy from two sides.[:'(]

Henri

OK good stuff.[:)]
 
As I said IT IS A QUESTION OF SEMANTICS. Let's apply a bit of intellectual rigour to this discussion shall we.[:)] You cite a reference from the Maneuver Warfare handbook which states that "The mission is to prevent an enemy from crossing a river". Now while a river is not a point but a line it is still an object. I contend that all orders boil down to three fundamental components, namely subject, action, object. The issue being argued in that handbook, if I'm not mistaken, is that objective based orders have the object as a single point or location whereas mission based orders employ a wider range of options for the object - eg a line, an enemy force. But regardless of this semantic difference, their mission orders still comprise the same fundamental components.
 
When we analysed this back in 1996 we recognised this distinction as it is used within the military. However, we also saw that from a logic and certainly from a programming and code design perspective the distinction should be avoided. Why? Because it artifically constrains and doesn't scale well. Instead we designed our order structure using the three fundamental components. We have the option to specify any game entity as an objective. The fact that we choose in most cases to restrict the human user to areas ( location plus frontage and depth = area ) is in part for simplicity purposes - this is a game after all - and in part to reduce the amount of processing required ( eg analysing threats to to a line requires that you segment the line into locations/areas and analyse each of these, thus it is always going to require more processing ). In the future as machines get more powerful, we may not have to bother with this concern.
 
As I mentioned in the previous post we also enable the AI controlled side to develop plans based on delaying enemy threats. We don't at present provide the human player with this same capability. Rather we require that the human player specify a series of waypoints along which it will delay, independent of any specific threat. The reason for this is that the current intel system would need significant enhancements so that we could identify and name groupings of reports. At present reports of enemy forces are not grouped. But this is something for the future.

BTW a little side note. When I was junior officer in the Army Reserve back in the 1970s I was employed to write up the training instructions for the Infantry Training Course to be conducted at the annual camp. I put a lot of time into preparing that instruction and planned out everything to the best of my abilities. It took some six months of part-time work to complete. Come the annual camp I was appointed as one of the platoon commanders on the course. After a few days I realised that the standard of participants we had was much higher than the level we originally anticipated. So I proposed at the nightly debrief that we could accelerate the training schedule.
 
A very experienced warrant officer took umbridge to this suggestion, especially since it came from such a junior whipper snapper. He attempted to put me in my place by stating "what would you know, better and more experienced minds than you have prepared this instruction". Being young I failed to resist the temptation to score the point and so I pointed out that in fact it was I who had written it. You could have cut the air with a knife. I might add that later I was to learn heaps from that warrant officer.
 
But the point I want to make here is that any written work is a work in progress. What is written should be judged on its merits alone. Use your own discrimination to analyse and verify it.
 
One of the good things I have learnt to do since programming AI is to pare things down to the bone. You have to do this for the computer. It in the end it must deal with pieces of data. Subtle inferences and vague concepts are not it's strong suit. But in paring down you realise the fundamental building blocks on which these inferences and concepts are based. Once you get these right you can start to write code that enables the computer to simulate these to some degree. We have a long way to go still.
 

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

.............You have to do this for the computer.............

Now, then be a good boy (programmer) and implement polygon objectives for the installment that is supposed to follow BFTB. !!!!! [&o][&o] [8D] [:)] [;)]
[&o]

Arjuna,

You are defending the COTA program, and I am defending Maneuver Warfare, so there is both a dichotomy and an overlap in our views. I am not criticizing the game, just trying to have a critical look at how well it simulates maneuver warfare. I don't know the nuts and bolts of the program, so I have to base my jusgments on partial information from limited observation.[:'(] And I admit that my views are strongly influenced by the game of chess.[:)]

I may point out that the WW2 German theory (upon which Lind and Wylie say they base their theories) does not use the word "objective"at all, but another word meaning "point of atttack". Lind says that for lack of a corresponding English term, he continues to use the word "objective", but with the meaning of the German term.

Leonhard in his book on maneuver warfare points out that the Soviets have their own maneuver warfare theory, which has some common points, but which emphasizes planning and leaves little room for low-level initiative. Perhaps COTA is closer to this type of maneuver warfare.

If computers could well simulate maneuver warfare, real-life battles would be run by computers and not by humans. At least for now, there is no way that a computer can do as well as a competent military officer, but it can be a useful aide for number crunching and can appear intelligent to some extent. But I agree that it would be too much to ask a computer for instance to change its objective because the enemy has redeployed.[8|]

While I'm at it, i may as well point out that not everyone in the military agrees with maneuver warfare, and some who pay lip service to it don't apply it. This is the criticism that Leonhard expresses in his book "Maneuver warfare and the airland battle", where he claims that the US army pretends to use it, but in fact uses classical attrrition warfare. He illustrates this with a scathing detailed review of the First Gulf War, among other things.

Well in any case, COTA is a fine game, and a lot of fun to boot.[&o]

Henri

ORIGINAL: hen5ri

I may point out that the WW2 German theory (upon which Lind and Wylie say they base their theories) does not use the word "objective"at all, but another word meaning "point of atttack". Lind says that for lack of a corresponding English term, he continues to use the word "objective", but with the meaning of the German term.

I would love to hear errr....read the German term, in case it's mentioned anywhere.

Also, it seems that the "POA"-theory (if it was ever supposed to be used, at all) hasn't been applied to many operations in later stages of the war, at least. Many operations were goal-oriented, especially in Russia (Kursk, Charkov, Stalingrad, etc.), reaching for final goals by focusing on a series of (given) points of attacks OR through bypassing/advancing moves conducted by agile motorized/armoured troops. The latter had been grimly advocated by Generaloberst Guderian ("Combat with combined Arms").


The initial push into France (1940) rather qualifies to be influenced by a POA-doctrine, as the few objectives (except for the goal to bypass the Maginot-Line) didn't drive the thrust that was carried out eventually. The rough objective here was to perform a fake-attack in the Netherlands, in order to flank the BEF and disintegrate/crush it, though.

Example for objective-oriented operations:

After the initial order to prepare an Offensive in the West had been roughly worded by Hitler (Battle of the Bulge - Ardennes offensive, codenamed "Wacht am Rhein), 3 plans had been prepared (2 had been put together by their 2 originators Model + Rundstedt, called the "small solution" - a least common denominator - , in fear of Hitler opting for his own risky plan), where 1 plan (the final one) was roughly transcribed by Hitler himself and explicitly planned by Jodl and the subordinates in the OKW.

The latter plan carried the ultimate goal (ideal) of regaining control over Antwerpen, intending to deny the use of the deepest harbour to the Allies, a harbour that would ensure the delivery of vast numbers of badly needed supplies for Allied operations in early 1945 - along with a couple of secondary objectives, which were in fact favoured to be the main (and only) objectives (until new/refreshed forces had been gathered - after the Allied advance had been stopped, the situation would have been re-assessed) in parts of Model's and Rundstedt's plans....

The hidden (political) objective was to break apart the alliance between the US and the UK. Ideally, the excessive numbers of casualties among the Allied armies would cause uproars in their "decadent" and "weak" democratic societies, which would then force one of their governments to withdraw vital amounts of troops, if not start a process of re-thinking among the Western Allies, which might lead to truce-negotations eventually.

Some of the military objectives were (the list includes objectives from the final plan too)....

a) to push a wedge between the American and the British forces, and,

after initial aggressive assaults would have cleared paths granting access to road-networks in the rear,

b) to expose British rearguard units and to enclose the bulk of the Brits (on the Allied left flank), encouraged by the element of surprise,

(armoured units were ordered to use a stringent set of carefully pre-planned waypoints, marking a set of roads and highways cutting through woods, in order to establish a certain level of protection (bad visibility) against fighter/bomber sorties)

c) to block any American advance threatening the left flank of the offensive,

d) to seize the huge fuel depot in Liège (Lüttich), rendering possible the final thrust to Antwerpen.

Also, a series of objectives - on a smaller scale - had been defined, absolutely.
Every road, every movement - even down to Bn/Coy level had been carefully pre-planned, even Para landings had been meticulously planned .....

(but badly executed - the efficiency hit ZERO % , because of the lack of fuel - for transportation to the airport - and the lack of training - most of the troops received instructions how to perform a para jump, but they never executed training jumps, many pilots weren't battle tested, causing a massive spread of troops, which then couldn't be collected/amassed in time to begin an assault - most became POWs),

.......with the last vital Panzer reserves supposed to be receiving (which weren't held ready as reserve, they acted as firefighter brigades prior to the start of the offensive, instead) orders from the OKW/Hitler, exclusively.

Anyway, I'd call all of this "objective-driven" warfare, if there's such a word, at all.

The plan (roughly transcribed by Hitler) was doomed from the beginning, as it favoured a relatively broad thrust, carrying less potential than the other plans at hand, which in turn favoured the concentration of troops (which would have either resulted in a massive withdrawal of troops in the east, or rigorous recruitment by altering age limits/qual. standards - the first was feared by Jodl/OKW, the latter was feared by Hitler, although Goebbels did just that in Febr./March '45, eventually), and a more powerful but smaller thrust (using 2-3 waves to keep the flanks clean) to reach and hold "minor" objectives (in Hitler's POV), in order to adjust the precarious situation in the West first, especially in the Aachen area, before attempting to reach for Antwerpen, or any other target.

...........But I agree that it would be too much to ask a computer for instance to change its objective because the enemy has redeployed.[8|]

I might be wrong, but I'd say parts of such a behaviour can be simulated by setting objective priorities and durations when setting up a scenario, I admit that a somewhat "real" flexibility could only be reached by implementing even the most basic scripting, though.

.........but in fact uses classical attrrition warfare. He illustrates this with a scathing detailed review of the First Gulf War, among other

This is only partially true, imho. There are examples in the first Gulf War (what we call the 2nd, with Iraq vs Iran being the 1st) that might appear as dated vestiges of attrition warfare (the aerial campaign preceeding the ground offensive: e.g. extensive B-52 bombardements, which never excessed 60% accuracy, afaik).
But the (sometimes ill-fated - e.g. helicopter crashes, arty missions causing FF incidents) combined use of arms, especially the use of fast units (tanks, A-10, Apaches where available, and Cobras) forming the thrust from the SW (from Saudi Arabia, during the ground offensive) features the ambitious use of maneuver warfare.

In the conflict of 2003, the rapid deployment of troops at Baghdad Airport and the preceding (bypassing) push, conducted by armoured elements, displays some fair use of manuever warfare, while other forces were about to keep Iraqi forces busy in the south (maybe even the other way round sometimes, since they seriously delayed the US advance a few times, or hampered the delivery of supplies).

That's a neat example (the thrust was risky though, since the number of US units deployed appeared to be less than adequate) of creating a kind of modern "Blitz" by using agile forces, instead of allowing the enemy to turn the war into a sole attrition conflict throughout the theater.

My 2 cents for now.

but another word meaning "point of atttack".

Is "Schwerpunkt" the word you are looking for??