Even more ranting in praise of the Cold War for CMX2 :)

[flamingknives]

I'll agree that much of the recent (late '70s onwards) data will be unavailable, and so that period could not be covered.

As Kip stated, any war providing more modern equipment than WWII would inevitably be used to cover a fictional engagement between NATO and the WARPAC contries. Why not use that as a basis and farm out the more restricted equipment sets to smaller, historical engagements?

[c3k]

Gents,

Why would there be any inherent difficulty in modelling tactical nukes?

Overpressure is understood.

Radiation is understood.

Model the resistance to both into the units portrayed in the game. I'd think it'd be better to be in a tank than not. Etc.

Chemical warfare: ditto. If a unit is in their chemical defense ensemble, reduce their efficiency/fitness as appropriate. Then, increase their resistance to the chemical effect. Model the footprint similarly to smoke.

C'mon. Nothing too difficult there.

As for Starship Troopers and Bugs, I'm all for it. Just, for the love of God, keep it faithful to Heinlein's (sp?) book, not that horrible spoof of a film.

I'll leave the space lobster debate till later.

Thanks,

Ken

[junk2drive]

CMx1 was all I wanted in a 3D SPWW2/SPWAW

CMx2 could be SPMBT in 3D. SPMBT has plenty of historical scenarios post 1946.

[Panzer76]

I think some people here are completly missing the pictures when it comes to modern combat. It's not about modelling strat bombing or nuclear weapons, sheesh. Here is the problem:

How will the CM2 engine model the increasing reliance on air support? Clearly you can't have the same model as in CM1 when suddenly you get close support from Cobra helicopters?

With modern communication equipment, both arty and air support can be on call, and within the time frame of CM type battles. I am curious of how this will be resolved.

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by c3k:

Gents,

Why would there be any inherent difficulty in modelling tactical nukes?

Overpressure is understood.

Radiation is understood.

Model the resistance to both into the units portrayed in the game. I'd think it'd be better to be in a tank than not. Etc.

Chemical warfare: ditto. If a unit is in their chemical defense ensemble, reduce their efficiency/fitness as appropriate. Then, increase their resistance to the chemical effect. Model the footprint similarly to smoke.

C'mon. Nothing too difficult there.

[snips]

Except that much of the data on effect and resistance is still classified.

Oh, and if you drop one anywhere near the battle, the map vanishes.

[flamingknives]

Air support from fast movers could be dealt with like artillery, with on-map spotters. Helos would be tricky.

[junk2drive]

Helos in SPMBT work well. Limited ammo, wary of SAMs and AA fire. Supression effects are about like CMx1 arty. Hit and miss with a lot of miss.

[kipanderson]

Hi,

when it comes to a Cold War game being science fiction is all depends on what you mean by “science fiction”…i.e. who much “fiction” it takes in the content to condemn all as “science fiction”. As flamingknives as pointed out, 90% of WWII CM games are hypothetical.

Clearly a war between NATO and Warsaw Pact never happened. However… there is nothing fictional about much of the content such a setting for CM would have.

The armies were very real, on a scale near to WWII and lined up with potentially unfriendly intent. The detail of their organisation is known and available to all who wish to find such information. (As it happens I am looking at my copy of the US Army manual FM 100-2-3 Red Army 1991 as I type this. It has enough detail on organisation to keep even Steve happy .)

When it comes to data on weapon performance there is mountains of it out there. Even for 1980s equipment. The concern about whether or not it is classified is neither here nor there. In my view. The real arms race was always between arms manufacturers and they would leak information, leak the results of official tests like there was no tomorrow…and still do. Why… because if they did not they would not sell their equipment. Countries do not buy US/Soviet or British kit if they do not know, and have confirmed, much of the data on it performance. They, that is both the buyers and sellers, then leak the information to Janes and such. These leaked results can then be confirmed by running the equations used for the given piece of kit to see if it is credible, or wildly exaggerated. Remember the physics of all this is fully understood. Also, remember that the armour packages used today are not the same as in the ‘80s. The world is far more relaxed about ’80 armour packages data. Also, there is a lot of “dot-joining”, reliance on assumptions/equations in WWII simulations too.

When it comes to the 1970s, even late ‘70s, there is no practical problem at all… in my view.

Many may be surprised by just how open even the US is with such information, it you know where to look. One reason maybe that all the players who matter, know it all anyway because they understand what it possible and what is not. As the head of one Russian ATGM development team said at the launch of a new missile a few years a go.. “if you can read an equation… you know the performance of ATGMs”.

Anyway… of course, a lot of the equipment has done battle so there are lots of practical examples with which to verify the equations… exactly how WWII simulations are done.

In conclusion, the Cold War armies were real, their organisation fully recorded, and their weapons data there for the taking. But, it never happened.

Happily, and this is a very good thing in the real world, all the post-WWII conflicts have been too small scale, too third world, too reliant on light infantry “search and destroy” to make very interesting CM games. In my view, others will differ.

If the most mechanised and high-intensity post-WWII conflict were covered, i.e. Arab-Israeli ’73, inevitably many would wish to try the same kit crashing around in European terrain in a first world v first world environment.

If there are to be six plus games in the CMX2 series my full wish list would be the three big WWII settings cover by CMX1, plus Pacific WWII, Vietnam and Cold War/Arab-Israeli ’73. But not necessarily in that order. As stated above I think Cold War and Arab-Israeli ’73 go together because given the effort in producing either one it would be a terrible waste not to cover the other. If BFC cover the Cold War it would only take a smallish amount of work to cover Arab-Israeli ’73. Thus keeping all happy. Including the “anti-science fiction” crowd .

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

PS. Just to give an example, for data on the second generation, Soviet explosive reactive armour I can think of five quality sources off the top of my head. The armour used on T80s from ’85 onwards.

[flamingknives]

There's alot of speculation and vague stuff on modern systems, such that you need to have the thing in front of you and the equations to gauge a warhead, and sometimes not even then.

You get things like 'penetrates 600mm+ of RHAe' or 'Defeats NATO triple heavy targets at 2000m' which is somewhat less precise than CM is used to. For example, how much extra protection do the armour packs on the side of the Warrior give? I know that they can potentially stop a mid- RPG7 warhead, but that's even more vague.

Plus, manufacturers are often adept at weasel words, and neglect to mention cerain important aspects, such as the difference between a prototype and production model.

[Michael Emrys]

May I point out that even if we knew to perfection how each and every weapon system would operate, that would only say a little about how the armies would operate?

Secondly, and related, when I brought up tactical nukes and chemical weapons, it was not with the idea of how their use would be modelled in the game, but their organizational aftereffects. Nobody seems to have grasped that significant difference. Unfortunately—for the sake of game design, that is—nobody knows with any assurance what those effects would be, other than they are apt to shape the course of the battle in some huge way, since there is no historical precedent. That's why I call it science fiction. You can make guesses, but except for possibly eliminating some of the more extreme ones, there is no way to tell which one is better than any other.

So, you may enjoy playing such a game. I have no gripe with that. Just don't come telling me that it is "realistic". 'Cause it hasn't a prayer of that.

Some people are too narrowly focussed on the performance of weapon systems.

Michael

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Some people are too narrowly focussed on the performance of weapon systems.

And this is so very vastly different to CMX1 how, exactly?

We know how the armies were supposed to operate, in terms of OOBs, TsO&E, like we do for CMX1, but does CMX1 model how the armies were used? No. Not at all. Barely a jot of significance.

You can't force the player to operate as his historical counterpart would have done. No CM player will advance in file down a road with his command tanks in the lead, without infantry, as an early WWII Russian tank platoon commander would have done, or charge willy-nilly at German ATGs as the fox-hunting Yeomanry regiments did. The only realistic things are the equipment and organisations.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

The thing about simulations is that they tend, either gradually or catastrophically, to diverge from reality, no matter how careful your data collection and calculations are.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

The whole point of simulation modelling is to produce a simplifed representation of the system under study. Divergence from reality is essential to the fact of modelling. The trick is to do this while still enabling the user to suspend his disbelief. Care in data collection and calculations have very little to do with this, excpet insofar as number-worshippers tend more readily to suspend their disbelief when confronted with large piles of numbers.

I find it hard to see what could possibly be seen as objectionable about simulating hypothetical situations. A simulation that had no hypothetical aspects to it would be nothing more than a recounting of an historical event.

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

But if you have an actual historical record, you can check your simulation against it at many points and make corrections.

Well, no, for two reasons.

First, we generally do not know anything like enough about historical events to give a complete and accurate accounting of them. This is true in spades for the highly stressful business of direct-fire combat, which has the side effect of leaving all the surviving participants with buckets of cortico-steroid emissions sloshing around their bloodstreams and, among other effects, erasing their memories pretty well.

Second, there is nothing intrinsically more "correct" about the recorded course of history other than the mere fact that it happened. None but the most dogged determinist would claim that it could not have happened differently. Since the question of simulating nukes has been raised in this thread, I shall bore you all agin with the apocryphal story of the USAF General and the RAND PhD OR analyst who were having an argument about the effects of a global nuclear exchange. Neither would agree with the other's view, and eventually the General said "It's no good, we'll just have to start a nuclear war and see what happens, that should settle the matter". "No good", said the PhD, "You'd only get one run of the model".

The simulation lab at RMCS (run by Jonathan Searle) once participated in a project to "validate" a combat model by using it to re-run the battle of Medenine. The results appeared to bear out the historical record, in that Monty won eight times out of ten (or however many it was). However, one aspect of the action simply could not be accounted for using the topography and operations orders given. The explanation for this, it was finally decided, was that the war diary of one unit recorded them as being in one place, whereas, in fact, due to a navigational misunderstanding, they were somewhere else.

So, the historical record didn't find any errors in the model, but the model found an error in the historical record.

All the best,

John.

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by kipanderson:

Many may be surprised by just how open even the US is with such information, it you know where to look.

Information that is openly available isn't necessarily accurate. It is very possible that info given out by governments or even arms manufacturer leaks is completely or partially false.

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by Panzer76:

With modern communication equipment, both arty and air support can be on call, and within the time frame of CM type battles. I am curious of how this will be resolved.

Yep... modern comm equipment... that's another huge problem with modern warfare. Added all new possibilities and also added a slew of new problems. In 1986 I was up near the DMZ in Korea and got to see just how effective North Korean EW can be. Modern armies rely on radio communication far more than WW2 armies did... kinda sucks when all the radios in your battalion cease to work

[flamingknives]

But then there's the huge problem of the lack of comms equipment in WWII. I guess that it kinda sucks when your battalion doesn't have any radios at all. The lack of this being modelled didn't seem to detract massively from CMX1.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

The thing about simulations is that they tend, either gradually or catastrophically, to diverge from reality, no matter how careful your data collection and calculations are.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

The whole point of simulation modelling is to produce a simplifed representation of the system under study. Divergence from reality is essential to the fact of modelling. The trick is to do this while still enabling the user to suspend his disbelief. Care in data collection and calculations have very little to do with this, excpet insofar as number-worshippers tend more readily to suspend their disbelief when confronted with large piles of numbers.

I find it hard to see what could possibly be seen as objectionable about simulating hypothetical situations. A simulation that had no hypothetical aspects to it would be nothing more than a recounting of an historical event.</font>

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Some people are too narrowly focussed on the performance of weapon systems.

And this is so very vastly different to CMX1 how, exactly?

We know how the armies were supposed to operate, in terms of OOBs, TsO&E, like we do for CMX1, but does CMX1 model how the armies were used? No. Not at all. Barely a jot of significance.

You can't force the player to operate as his historical counterpart would have done. No CM player will advance in file down a road with his command tanks in the lead, without infantry, as an early WWII Russian tank platoon commander would have done, or charge willy-nilly at German ATGs as the fox-hunting Yeomanry regiments did. The only realistic things are the equipment and organisations. </font>

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

But then there's the huge problem of the lack of comms equipment in WWII. I guess that it kinda sucks when your battalion doesn't have any radios at all. The lack of this being modelled didn't seem to detract massively from CMX1.

But what you you fail to see is that WW II armies were not so dependent on comms. A lot, yes, but not so completely.

Michael

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

But what you you fail to see is that WW II armies were not so dependent on comms. A lot, yes, but not so completely.

Indeed. When sittin' in place for any length of time, we'd run wire lines, but on the move, you are almost completely dependent on radio communication. We didn't have dedicated units to act as messengers. Also, in WW2, they didn't face the kind of EW & ECW capabilities as exist in modern armies. They didn't face the possibility of the enemy jamming their communications, and also, they didn't have to worry, on the battlefield, about signal intercept or triangulation.

[Hortlund]

It would seem that the people who oppose the idea to have a cold war variant of CMX2 are having trouble finding good arguments for their cause, and thus find themselves forced to use somewhat peculiar arguments.

Nukes? First the question whether or not they would have been used is so massively hypothetical, its really pointless to argue the question. It is easy enough to say "we dont believe any tac nukes would have been used" and thats that. And even so, even if nukes were used, they would be about as relevant to a CMX2 battle as teh Dam busters raids are to CMX1.

Chemical weapons? They were there in ww2 too you know...no one used them though. Simple enough to just say "no chemical weapons are in the game, and thats that."

Now we get complains about classified specs for various weapon systems. One might ask what is better, to have several conflicting test reports for the same weapon, or to have none at all. I mean we all know what the forum has looked like when it comes to the armor penetration for various weapons, where the "evidence" presented was often reduced to some very shaky anecdotal evidence... "Here, look in the war-diary of unit X, they report to have knocked out 3 T-34s at 500 m" etc. Or why not when the results of the test reports are explained away with stuff like "oh, well, they must have been testing against a flawed armor plate" followed by a long discussion about German steel-welding techniques in the 1930s...There is no real difference from CMX1, the physics are understood, enough information is open source.

Communications? Phu-leeze. Like someone said, that has never seemed to bother people in CMX1, where sometimes the entire on-map force would be without radios or field phones...still Ive heard no complaints that the player can order some isolated, radioless T-26 platoon on the other side of the map at all when in reality that platoon would have been completely impossible to influence for the combat leader.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

You ****ers just don't understand.

On the contrary, I have a piece of paper attesting to the fact that this is the subject I understand best.

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

What I am saying is that simulations tend to diverge from realistic outcomes unless there is some corrective supplied by the historical record.

Yes, I know that's what you're saying. I'm merely pointing out that you are wrong. The idea of "realistic outcomes" is not one it is possible to give any formal and non-circular meaning to. "Realism" a term that properly belongs to literary criticism.

I've already pointed out a case where the historical record was corrected as a result of a simulation exercise.

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

That is, it can say that a+b=c when that couldn't happen in reality, only we don't know that if there is no reality to serve as a check. And that is a bad thing because it gives a false impression that a+b=c when it does not. Can't you see that?

No, I can't. It is of the essence of simulation modelling that things occur in simulations differently from reality. It must therefore follow from your position that simulation modelling is a bad thing, which I don't accept.

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

A simulation is only useful if it gives you an idea of what the reality is going to be, or at least what the bounds of possible outcomes are.

I don't think that is the only way in which a simulation can be useful, but even if we accept it for the sake of argument, your objection seems to be only that the "bounds of possible outcomes" being explored lie in some hypothetical past, not in the future (which is inevitably hypothetical).

I recommend the dialogue "Contrafactus" in Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" to put you in a better mood to accept the usefulness of hypothetical reasoning.

All the best,

John.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

There are so many possible wild cards in the NATO/WARPAC environment that trying to predict how combat would go is virtually impossible. Consider the effect of tactical nukes and nuclear demolitions, for instance. Just how do you factor that into a CM-type game? What is the air/ground interaction going to look like in a Central Front environment? How about comms disruption? Theater ammunition exhaustion and the necessity for resupply?

So you leave all these variables open to the scenario designer, and you get an ideal toolkit for asking, and answering, these sorts of questions.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by c3k:

Gents,

Why would there be any inherent difficulty in modelling tactical nukes?

Overpressure is understood.

Radiation is understood.

Model the resistance to both into the units portrayed in the game. I'd think it'd be better to be in a tank than not. Etc.

It can be modelled, but can it be gamed in a useful (and fun) way at the CM scale?

I like Major H's comment somewhere in the TacOps documentation, when he explained why he left nukes and chemical weapons out of the game. It was something like "If one side has them, they win. If both sides have them, flip a coin".

[Soddball]

OOh, tactical nukes in a company level strategy game. Hold me back. Any chance we could also model boot wear and reduced officer morale due to shortage of trouser presses?

You can see why BFC think grogs should be tied up in a room somewhere and fed on scraps.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

Ive heard no complaints that the player can order some isolated, radioless T-26 platoon on the other side of the map at all when in reality that platoon would have been completely impossible to influence for the combat leader.

Since when was anyone still labouring under the delusion that the player in CM is supposed to be identified with the highest ranking local "combat leader"? It's been thoroughly demonstrated in this forum that the player takes on a variety of roles when issuing commands. In particular, in the case of vehicles, he is often issuing orders at the level of the vehicle commander and even the driver. Similarly the orders given to squads are often at the level of the squad leader, not anything coming from the company or battalion commander.