Some basics of tactical warefare.

[yurch]

The bots certainly have to be more receptive to sounds, and they don't seem to consider 20mm much of a threat even if they know about it. If the 20mm isn't the only vehicle in the fight, that is.

20mm under 1500m in particular should be getting a very high destruction/facing priority.

[cool breeze]

Ide appreciate more info than the reference to Hammers Slammers. I imagine they are better claymores all around the tank? From what you have said about the book it sounds like a very reasonable and thorough description of future warfare which I imagine is probably close to exactly as a horrediously large number of wars currently rage around the universe. I dont want to play a thoroughly accurate future "first person" war game because for my taste real modernish and future war from "first person" is WAY to dull almost constantly then much to fast deadly and impersonal once fire is recieved. Its also too long range. The game overview stresses a game design focusing on fun while still being plausible. Now clearly plausible doesnt apply to fully clever weapons design because there are no super guided arty with decoys and submunitions ,and wide fire blinding lasers, and extremely fast turning turrets, and fly with a camara mega evasive stealth missle, and directed astroids and mega claymores around tanks which auto explode and five ionbeam super AA which toast all drops within los and on and on.

Thank goodness, all sound unfun.

soo, I got off track, I dont really know what you are refering to. The point I first planned on making is that; Because most people who have read Hammmers Slammers have already thought of the possibilities you mention it seems you are talking to the rest of us. If you are trying to give ideas to people who havent had them yet you must tell more than the name of what you are suggesting. Thanks for the suggestion, I hope to hear more about it. Thanks for being such an active member of the forum and sugesting and describing so many ideas Dark_au amoung others. (I normally type nicer to the others thats why im giving specific thanks this time)

[cool breeze]

Yeah 20mm should! (but it would be unneccessarilly awesome if instead of a flat range cut off it was based on atmo density)

Thanks.

[Dark_au]

Cool, In the hammers slammers books tanks are equipt with a strip of defencive "claymores" around the hull. If they are active then anthing that gets within a cirtain range activates them. Things like infantry popping up etc. Its computer controlled so it doesn't just blast bushes etc. Its lethat at 5m and dangerous further.

[dan/california]

They also have such good anti artillery point defense that they almost ignore the other sides artillery. Their automated guns, and every tank has one, knock it down without even blinking.

The strip around the sides of the tanks do make a ton of sense but only if the radar/fire control can sort out when to use it. However manual control when enemy infantry is too close is trivial and would put a stop to most of the really bad infantry moves currently being used. :cool:

C for danger close comes to mind.

[TankHunter]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

The reason the DT-verse puts static defensive units on high-speed treads is because the units the Space Vikings have to work with aren't theirs to design and have to be as flexible in deployment and use as possible. [/QB]

"The engine of the tank is a weapon just as the main-gun."

Heinz Guderian

[ClaytoniousRex]

Those strips in Hammer's Slammers were also used as point defense against incoming HEAT rounds (usually against "buzzbombs" which were David Drake's version of the RPG). This is exactly what we've been moving toward for ATGM defense in DropTeam (in addition to being able to pop smoke/chaff to help prevent a lock in the first place).

Their primary disadvantage is that they're consumed once used. Additional attacks from the same angle will eventually find an exhausted section where the strips have all been used up.

I think they make great sense for both roles in DropTeam.

[Dark_au]

Ok I'm going to take another swing at itterating a problem I can foresee... This is REALLY Important.

Firstly, I've read back through this thread several times and see a couple of people thought I was bieng insulting. If I insulted you I apologise, but it was not my intention. Believe me I'm not that subtle, if I was going to be insulting I would just do so. Maybe part of the problem is I'm intelligent and passionate and maybe its just because i've never been particularily good at writing things down. My brain tends to be 10x faster than my hands. I think if you'd have sat in a room with me and had this conversation you may have formed a very different impression of the situation. The only 2 parts that I can see which may have been taken out of context are the chess comment and the einstein comment. I'll deal with the latter first. What I was trying to say was that I felt the conversation was going down the "but why" path. I'm sure most have tried to expalin a concept to a child and for every answer you give the next question is "but why". That does not mean I think I'm einstein and you are all children but eventually the answer would become "just because OK".

Chess and checkers:- If you take the 2 best players of checkers and sit them down to play. If each player always takes the best move then white always wins. It is a finite solution. You could replace one of the players with a computer and the result is the same. It is an enevitable outcome.

Chess is (almost) infinately complex. If you took the 2 best chess players in the world and put them down to play they could play a 1000 games with different outcomes. You may see similarities but the complexity is always a factor. Chess is as much about reading the opponent as it is moving the pieces. It is a contest of will, personality and awareness. You can use subtleties like feints and the concepts of mobile warfare. Modern Mobile warfare makes chess look like checkers.

Ok so on to the problem I see. Military history is about hindsight. You can draw an analogy from the tank back to the war-elephant(with a few breaks where technology or the concept of war meant there is not an analogy ). To both the first post in this thread would be true. I could take one of hanibals battles and with only a few changes to allow for the changes in technology convert it to a sound tactical challenge for a modern battle scenario. I can do so because I can join the dots back from now to then and see the relationships and have the history to understand the changes. If you were to take hanibals most competent tactical general and ask him to design a tactically sound scenario for a modern era without access to the knowledge of the intevening evolution he would be unable to do so. Given a year or 2 to read books of the historically significant changes and how they effect the strategic concept of the battle field and he would be every bit as good as Stormin norman.

And here in lies the problem i have been trying to convey. As a scenario designer for DT I am hanibals general. The concensus is that the battle field has changed from the one i understand but the historical knowledge of the evolution to that point doesn't exist.

[adzling]

so i picked up a couple of hammer slammers books this weekend (i had only read a couple of drake's short stories previously).

without getting into a dissection of his writing skills and style i will say this:

his universe is a lot like drop team in that artillery and air units are mostly redundant as long as the units' point defence aad/aa is up an running.

however, like dropteam, those point defenses (calliopes/tribarrels) can be rolled back or even ignored and the units in question attacked with very different tactics than those used in our current day and age.

the tactics are different but they still consist of fire and movement to achieve the objective and the defenders that sit still under their aad/aa umbrella and don't react/ take the initiative end up hamburger.

which is pretty similar to the drop-team universe in that there are many counters to the aad/aa (especially now with the coax guns) and that a team simply sitting around in the base will eventually get winnowed out by attackers (that's my experience).

to successfully defend most maps (especially against decent players) requires an active defense with hunter/killer teams on the periphery of the map sneaking up and whacking the flanks of the attackers while they are focussed on the objective.

you might object to getting whacked by a unit sitting under aad/aa but you're still dead and they won that engagement.

if you had picked a better suited vehicle, attack angle or used your coax to bring down that aad/aa first you might have survived.

it's not a finite group of options a la checkers but more about realizing the tactics that work and successfully employing them rather than trying to engage the enemy with a ww2 armored warfare mindset.

more complexity will help drive up the number of options available to the players and hopefully mean tactical engagements will involve more than fighting over the aad/aa.

end of story

[Dark_au]

fine... you make the scenario's then

[Dark_au]

How the crimson sort of mentality makes this game checkers. Take the example as given in that post.

as the attacker you have 2 choices attack en-masse to maximize the fire-power against the objective (this was my chosen approach in this case) or spread out to maximise the angles.

If you group your forces en masse:-

if:-

Defender drops his galaxy in your flank at close range. you have to drop yours to defend against the 2 lots of fire. His galaxy is a ground target, yours is an air target and gets shot down. White wins.

Defender Drops his galaxy in flank at long range. You have to drop yours. Defender can roll back your aad from 2 directions whilst you have to split your fire between 2. WHite wins

You drop your galaxy first to protect you. Defender waits till it leaves calls his own and has a free reign. White wins.

Defender Drops galaxy to flank at either range. You emp them, they emp you. You are impobilised whilst one of the 2 defenders still hammers you. White wins

IF you spread your forces out:-

if:-

Defender drops galaxy to rear. You call galaxy to protect you. Defenders kill all the unprotected units. White wins

Defender drops galaxy anywhere. You emp them, they emp you. Stalemate

[yurch]

If the galaxy was a direct hard counter, yes, this would be true. Much of this doesn't have anything to do with the galaxy, just defender air defense superiority. (more flank options for them then for you)

Your close range situation is, sadly, remedied by a charge from the hermes. If you can get it within 1500m (same range as the galaxy) it often tailguns the galaxy on the ground. The galaxy is also vulnerable to the AA plasma turret, if you can be bothered to deploy dosens of the uselessly poor ranged things on your flanks.

The long range situation is quickly resolved by the ion carriers. 125 armor does not take long to burn through. The ion is actually a very useful unit if only for the psychological impact it has. Some more incentive to carry these things for players would really even things out.

Both situations require foresight on the attacker side to bring these vehicles along, however. Due to the AA superiority, defenders can get by with a far more fluid response to any threat. They can use the galaxy to stall while bringing hermes in for permanent anti-mortar solutions, bring ions in response to light units, dropping hurricanes on flanks, or simply reinforcing.

The galaxy just accentuates this due to it's instant calldown time. I'm pretty sure the problem will be there even without it.

The end result is that attackers have to be thinking well ahead of the defenders to even match them in a countering game. Since the galaxy is itself a 'counter' to many things, it's instant response nature is almost unacceptable when viewed in light of a team that cannot adapt as quickly.

[dan/california]

Their are two fundamental issues with Dropteam in terms of overall tactics.

First, the better organized team will win, always. This is as it should be but very harsh when the mismatch is large. As in Oh Bleep%^^%***%%^*&(^# we just got wasted and don't know why. Better post game stats andchat would help that more than a little.

Secondly the offense and defense usually have the same force level. And the defense gets to set up and organize first, and in peace. Furthermore, several thousand years of military theory says that the offense had better have more combat power than the defense. That is not the case and so if the defense is the more organized side, with the exception of one or two maps, the result for the attacking team is inevitable loss due to attrition and the difficulty of staying organized.

Much of the huddling behavior that drives Dark crazy is the result of the attacker desperately trying to get organized using the tools at his disposal on maps with no safe haven to start from.

The upcoming reinforcement zones will help some of this a lot.

Perhaps only the attacker should get orbital artillery if the defender starts with significant fixed point defenses. This would represent the the fact that the attacking sides liveship had achieved some level of orbital control. If there is a slim chance of winning why would a liveship hazard precious lives and resources. It/they would just keep looking for a better target. Pirates rarely engage in suicidal attacks.

[Dark_au]

Furthermore, several thousand years of military theory says that the offense had better have more combat power than the defense.

according to concensus several thousand years of military theory don't apply.

Yurch you missed the main point. The tactics as used have a very finite set of possibilities. This severly hampers its long term playability and the ability of people to make base strategic scenarios outside the rules I set down here:-

Here is the sum total of strategy as possible by this way of thinking.

1. If there is air defence fight over its possesion because it is all powerful.

2. If there is no fixed AAD then control the map with your own AAD

thats it, that is the sum total of tactics that a scenario designer can plan for, how much playability do you think this really has.

[yllamana]

You don't think that maybe "fight over its possession" and "control the map" are rather far from granular to gloss over?

[yurch]

Like I've said before, if you mean point defense, say point defense. The galaxy and ion towers are AAD but this does not constitute all AAD.

1. If there is air defence fight over its possesion because it is all powerful.

I and many others, do not accept this premise, as evidenced all over this thread and the AAD one. It is not 'all powerful', and there are plenty of attackers that have caused complete routs while fighting directly under the influence of such defenses. If certain weapons or methods can ignore a defense entirely, is it really all powerful?

If you want to tell people they've 'missed the point', you'd better make an actual point. We clearly do not accept your premises, and we have no reason to assume they are true. It isn't necessary for us to spell it out every time.

I can apply this faulty logic to a modern combat simulation as follows:

1. If there is artillery fight over its deployment potential because it is all powerful.

2. If there is no opposing artillery then control the map with your own.

The sum total of tactics and replayability is very low because everything revolves around artillery.

It shouldn't take long to poke a hole somewhere in that.

You're confusing high-level with low-level, strategy with tactics. You're also refusing to see AAD as circumstantial, and are not even considering things like coverage, rangings, or intelligence.

I chose artillery for the counterexample because the galaxy is very clearly a 'negative' artillery. It is still called in to a relatively small location based on battlefield intelligence of the enemy. The location has changed, and the role on the enemy is reversed.

[Dark_au]

I will refer to all of it as AAD as that is the heading it comes under. Automated Air Defence. PD is a facet of AAD. Just like anything which fires a projectile under ballistic principals at an aircraft is AAA.

Maybe the word powerful was wrong but the concept is true. It is all Important. If its not why do you always rush in to icefield quickly to kill the AAD tower?.

This conversation is again going pointless because of inane, pedantic arguments. Well done, not only am I through with this but this thread has lost potential customers I was trying to bring in. I showed this thread to people and they found it hilarious that you guys would argue with basic principals.

Clay please remove QF, tiler and any of my work from this site. I no longer wish to support or encourage this game.

[yllamana]

Maybe the word powerful was wrong but the concept is true. It is all Important. If its not why do you always rush in to icefield quickly to kill the AAD tower?.

I have seen a lot of games where the attacker wins that the tower is not brought down or captured. That right there demonstrates that the tower isn't "all-important" as people are managing to win without it.

In fact I would say the majority of attacker-wins games I've seen on Ice Fields the tower remains under the control of the defenders, simply because it takes so long to capture or destroy it that the attackers don't bother. If it was "all-important" then they'd have to. It's not.

[CrimsonDestiny]

Originally posted by Dark_au:

How the crimson sort of mentality makes this game checkers.

An official mentality! Named after me!

Sick. :cool:

Defender drops galaxy anywhere. You emp them, they emp you. Stalemate

Replace "EMP" with "Fire Mission", attacker loses his Galaxy, you land yours just outside of his ion tower range, set a base of fire, flank with infantry, black wins.

[aittam]

solutions are born where they are required

if you have to drop under enemy aa you make sure that who ever gets on the ground dispose of aa first, than you create a bridge head and manouver from there, now reinforcement area would work exactly as bridge head on a landing; here with dropping there's the possibility to palce them everywhere tactically sane or partially sane if you are willing to take heavy losses in the proceedings

[Netherby]

I'm not even sure what all the fuss over the PD on the resupply drop ship is..?

In my experience it's quite easy to destroy the thing.. It has trouble dealing with low trajectory projectiles and is easily overwhelmed, even the stationary towers are not 100% effective at stopping low trajectory rounds like AP..

[adzling]

aww now we've upset him so much by not agreeing that darky quit and took his toys home....maybe a little juice-box and some quiet time will help?

it's a pity i really enjoyed hearing him whine while i sat under my AAD and shot his butt off cause he couldnt figure out how to switch to his coax and overwhelm it......

I joke, I joke!

really, sorry to hear you won't let the game evolve 'cause i think as it gains complexity you'll feel a lot happier.

[dan/california]

You can debate the details , but I have to give Clay this, THE BETTER ORGANIZED TEAM ALWAYS WINS.

[Junglist]

The game is fun, pure and simple.

Oh yeah, being nice is fun too, pure and simple.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Now that 1.1.3 is finally finished, I wanted to take a few precious minutes to return to this thread.

I want to point out a few things about Dark that the rest of the community might not have taken into account. He's a very talented guy with lots of simulation and wargaming experience. He has a passion for seeing things in this genre "done right" and, like many people with a lot of talent, he has a clear vision of exactly what he wants to see. Because of this passion he doesn't take much time to sugar coat things or to package them in a friendly way - he just lobbies for what he sees as "the right thing" and has a hot reaction to things that seem "wrong". I think his reaction is to those things and not the people who mention them; I honestly believe him when he says he had no intention of offending anyone. If he gets a little heated about things then it's like the conductor of a symphony screaming at a violinist - he doesn't dislike the violinist (or like the violinist either) - he just wants the music to be played "just so" and *hates* it when anyone in the symphony plays the music differently.

As it happens, we at TBG and Battlefront have a very long, rich, resume of simulation and wargaming experience ourselves, often even predating computer simulation, spanning many genres including modern mechanized warfare based on more than just the basic principles outlined above. If anyone were going to be offended by "being talked down to" by Dark then it would be us, but we take no offense at all because we understand he is coming from a passionate point of view and doesn't mean to personally insult anyone. It's inevitable that visions of a tactical and fun simulation set in the future will clash from time to time. Debating these competing ideas for what would be best for the game is part of the fun of developing and playing a game like this in the first place!

In this particular case, the core problem is that Dark simply does not like point defense - it forces him outside of the tactical envelope that he *likes* to play in. It offends his modern and historical grognard sensibilities. As pointed out in numerous posts above, these point defenses are not at all "game breakers" in the sense that they're too powerful. In fact, they're trivially easy to bypass or destroy. But Dark, and there will be other players like him, do not want to be bothered having to bypass or destroy them. They don't like that facet of the current tactical scenario. There's nothing wrong with this, and as I stated above we believe that a scenario author should have the freedom to create scenarios without these devices in them which is exactly what we've done in 1.1.3.

This means that scenario authors are now perfectly welcome to create scenarios without any point defense in them, and even without air defense in general if they like. This will necessitate some other changes along the way (which are already in your power to do as a scenario author) if you want to have a balanced game but that's part of the fun.

Think the game is better without that stuff in it? Go ahead and change your scenario to not have them in it and let's play. I'll bet that everyone enjoys it more in some ways and less in others, but the nice thing is that we all get to try it various ways and just trying it out is fun. Some players will strongly prefer the game this way and will want to exclusively play those scenarios. Others won't. We've bent over backwards to make this thing flexible and open, because this is our golden rule:

We think we're really good game designers. But we also know that some other people out there are good designers, too, and we want to see their visions realized just as much as we want to see our own.

One thing will never change. When you propose or implement a new idea, not everyone will like it. You should hear half of the cruel spirited junk we've had to hear about DropTeam itself (this thread is nothing in comparison). This doesn't mean they're stupid or haven't read enough history - it simply means they don't like it. There's nothing wrong with that, either. If they don't like your scenario or Mod, they don't have to play it. There's no need to tell each other what morons you are.

So in summary, what I would like to see is "Dark_au's More Conventional Tactics" scenario pack, rather than seeing Dark, or anyone else, walk away due to hurt feelings.