<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The issue of ethics in gaming
is a tough one, maybe a little easier in a wargame, but still
present. For a "normal" one-on-one game, the answer
of course it to not play with the person who cheats. With tourney
games though, things get more difficult.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">During the breakout from Normandy,
the British spent tanks like water to hold down German forces,
often charging into death traps just to distract attention from
the combined allied breakout. The trick of it was that the crews
often survived the destruction of their vehicles, and were soon
back into new tanks. Some of this can be simulated as follows-</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The loss of a tanks is a blow
to your victory points, but if you can retreat a crew off board,
you get some of those points back. In a campaign game vehicle
crews would be harder to replace than tanks, especially for the
allies.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Forward observers should always
have a small chance of unexpected artillery. More so with the
American artillery system, but their is always a chance that soem
coppuld be freed up for all sides.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Create some way in the game to
handle casualty and prisoner evacuation. Although in a 40 minute
game this is not a huge issue, members of units that had been
chopped apart would often be assigned to these sorts of duties.
Also, as a unit takes casualties, more units will stop to render
aid (less so for veterans who have good medics behind them). That
way sending little units to their doom will cause other units
to drop out to handle casualties.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Create "scout" units.
Oral histories of the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division) talk
about people in platoons assigned to scout duties despite it not
being an official organic duty of the unit. The need to charge
bazooka and crew teams about the board would be less if platoons
could calve scouts, or scouts were available in the form of recon
troops.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The big issue of course is that
in one-on-one play things are unrealistic to some extent. When
I was getting my master's degree was had a Steel Panther's league
that tried to campaign, with interesting results. Sometimes, in
different tactical situations, a player would just say "to
hell" with attacking. The objective was not important enough
and the defensive situation way too tough. The player just decided
to save his strength, probed the defenses, used up his artillery,
and withdrew to a defensive position. Now of course, this makes
for a boring contest, but a realistic one. World War One bogged
down in part because local commanders started parking their troops
rather than take huge casualties.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">If you know each crew and each
half chewed up squad can be rebuilt for the next game, you may
have more incentive to save them rather than winning the battle
and loosing the war.</FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Finally, hacks could be handled
by a set of checksum bits that look at unit statistics in the
binary files. If the checksum does not add up for each category,
then the game has been hacked, and the game could be designed
to say. "This game has been modified from the original".
I am, of course, not talking about what color your Hetzer is,
but if you have a Stuart with a 90mm gun, some number is changed
somewhere and it wont add up. </FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman"></FONT></P>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Steve Jackson</FONT>