Wreck

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Surely it makes no tactical difference to him whether the Tac AI fires 35 rounds at empty space and hits one tank with the next 5, or fires 40 to hit one tank. If those two cases don't make any difference to you, then I have to conclude we have to agree to disagree here as continuing this discussion would be pointless to the extreme. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Tactical difference. I see no tactical difference, do you? 40 shots fired, one kill. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Note that I'm not demanding that CM tanks should fire at non-existing targets. While being arguably more realistic, it would be a mistake from playability viewpoint. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> If the effect is really as great as some here seem to suggest, then leaving it out of CM is a mistake. If most of what tanks historically did shoot at was bushes, then they should do so in CM. This is not that hard to do. Just make the tac AI target "unidentified vehicle" markers, and then change the engine to generate lots of fake ones. To get a 19/20 ratio of shots fired at empty space, I would suggest about 10 fake targets per real enemy tank would be about right, assuming it takes two shots per fake to eliminate. Fake targets would come into existence in scattered trees, brush, and near buildings, and would only be dispersable by fire or better observation. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> However, arguing that those rounds that would have been wasted in a real combat should be factored in by lowering general accuracy, would be in my opinion quite strange. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Strange, yes. The effect is not exactly like what I propose above. However, the effect does fairly closely model the assumed reality, namely, that tanks need to carry a lot of "extra" ammo to fire at bushes, in order to have a sufficient amount for their one or two shot kills on the real vehicles. If you fail to model the fact that 95% of rounds are being shot into the ether, then you make tanks into something they were not. You make them able to kill 40 times their number, when in reality they would only be likely to be able to kill 2. Multiplying tank lethality by 20 is an effect that is bound to strongly degrade the accuracy of the simulation. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Where lo, they will perform the exact same tactical role as misses, because misses by any other name is what they are. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Actually the effect is not the same; in order to shoot bushes the tank needs to point its gun at them. This may well lead to flank shots from the real enemy targets that would not otherwise happen. Be that as it is, though, the effect is pretty similar. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Do you think that CM should artificially lower the accuracy of targeted shots so that the average ratio of shots/kill is close to whole-war average? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> No of course not, but that is because CM does not need or try to model accurately all of the combat that happened. CM models reasonably even fights, at fairly close range, with fairly good visibility. It does not need to model accurately things like a platoon of Tigers on a hill that happen to see a platoon of Shermans on an open road below at 2000m, and open fire killing them all. It also does not model night combats well, the sort where 95% shooting at bushes might be believable. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> My viewpoint is that in tactical combat it is more important to get the accuracy of correctly targeted shots correct. Your mileage may vary. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> All this tells me is that in your heart, you don't think that the amount of bush-shooting that went on in tactical combat was all that large. Neither do I.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Now, what is the moral of this post? By choosing the parameters in a suitable way, you can get get out any value you want for R. This is why I think that the whole reasoning process is flawed. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It is true that by choosing the parameters suitably, you can get out any result you want. For instance, if I take your latter set of numbers, but use the assumption that actually more like 80 shells were fired at bushes and barns per one fired at an enemy tank (rather than your rather generous assessment of 1:20), then we find out that every shell fired at an enemy tank by the German 88s actually killed two enemy tanks! Seriously. Yes, you can get any result, but only by picking numbers that may well be absurd, and which can be criticized. In your case, even by picking rather extreme numbers in your second example, you still end up with 2.3 shots fired per kill. Well, that is still an average that lets us know something. And it is a worst-case lower bound, and in fact, not credible. As for your formula, well, consider the following way of looking at the terms. Most of the factors are ways that shells might not get to the individual tank or gun at the front that is supposed to fire them. These are D, S, T, and C. We can therefore multiply them together to find the proportion of shells produced that reached a weapon at the front: D * S * T * C = 0.1139 So, of the 400 shells produced per gun, your assumptions are equivalent to the assertion that only 45 shells reached each weapon. But 45 shells, is about the average taken into a single combat by a Tiger or 88mm AT. (A bit more, IIRC, but close). So we can show, even without knowing precisely which one of the variables is set wrong, that in toto they are wrong. This is how using numbers is, in fact, clarifying and helpful. And in your case, even by stretching the bounds of credibility in your assumptions you still came out with a kill-ratio of 2.3 kills per AT round fired at a tank... obviously the average for long ranged fire, being less accurate than short, will be worse.

Jason, great post. This particular sermon I have the feeling you have preached before... it is sort of the Lord's Prayer of the WWII econ grog. But well worth repeating. I agree with your thesis that "the scale of differences actually present between WW II armor fleets did not have any significant strategic impact". However, I think it is also clear that it is possible to have technical superiority so great as to affect the strategic level of a war -- case in point, the gulf war. So one of the interesting things here is, why do people believe there is such a large technical gap between various WWII tanks? I think the answer to that lies in the confusion of the technical for the tactical. Technically, if we imagine a Panther up against a Sherman at 1000m on a one-dimensional battlefield, we find that the the Panther always kills the Sherman within N shots. This *is* a technical gap so large as to place the two tanks into different categories. People then make the mistake of translating that technical difference into tactical one. But a real 3D battlefield is not a one dimensional face-off. Even on the CM level, the Panther has weak flanks that can be penetrated from afar. It can also be penetrated from the front, using a variety of weapons, if they are close enough. So it is no longer in a different class than other tanks. If there was a tank with armor so thick or offenses so powerful that it could not be killed by any enemy weapon fielded that could get in range... then you might have a case for technical superiority so great that it would translate into tactical or strategic superiority. But there are no such cases in WWII. Even the mighty French char Bs could be killed by stukas, demo charges, very lucky large-caliber arty hits, and 88s.

Another game on the lines of what you are talking about is Jason Cawley's Operatonal CM game. It has been very interesting so far; however, I am one of the few players that has full-bore involvement For a bit more on it, including Jason's recent recap of the first day's action, see this thread. The organization of it was mostly on this page. Also, ScoutPL is running a larger scale operational CM game. I don't know the status of that one, not being in it. I still have the idea in mind to run a "mass" operational CM campaign, any month now. This would allow an artitrary number of players on two teams to face off, playing tournaments essentially within the two sides, using battles generated "by hand", the way Jason is doing, from operational level moves.

Regarding info blackout: I vote for it. As JPS says, even knowing the median score is likely to be of advantage to those who play late. For instance if I go into a scenario knowing the median score for the German defender of 10 games played is 20, I am going to play my defense a lot more cautiously than I would play if I knew the median was 50. Playing scenarios like this totally blind is, IMO, probably the coolest part about this tourney! Regarding the playoffs -- three is an unwieldy number... I might suggest that you make it four by throwing in a wildcard. Then a straight single-elimination playoff would require two scenarios. The wildcard should be the highest scoring player of the second-place players. Alternatively, have everyone play everyone else, twice. Again it requires two scenarios. This way has the advantage of getting more games played, 8 instead of 3, but the disadvantage of having to use a scoring system of some sort to pick the winner.

Guys, from Jason: "I'm a bit under the weather at the moment, so my level of output isn't at its best. But I hope to get back on the work for this by late tomorrow at the latest." I hope we can get the new operational turn done in time for folks to play Sunday, but we shall see.

tacpub: in operations you get foxholes in the setup and morning turns. Other daytime turns, no foxholes.

I like the system. I note that is similar to the system I proposed to do a tournament based on an operational level campaign; the difference is that mine just used total score achieved to rate players, but kept the players in two separate groups (German and American). This allows comparability, but only within the two groups. You end up with two "champions". The BUBTS system (ugh -- awful acronym -- let's think of something nicer please) has the nice property of allowing all players to be one group. This allows a single champion to be named, and also allows players to play any side for any given battle. As for the point awards, I rather agree with tacpub. What we really want to do is seek out players (player pairs, really) that are not average, and reward/penalize them for it. Most CM attack scenarios, I would guess, will be single modal, though a well designed scenario should be bimodal, which is a bit of a problem, for any scheme assuming a single mode. Treeburst's for instance. I am not sure what to do with this, but let me give an example so you see what I am talking about. Consider a scenario where it so happens that an early tank duel is going to snowball into a clean win or loss for whoever wins the duel. 24 people play, and the scores come out with 6 defense wins, say 75-25 with small variation around that, and 6 offense wins, say, 25-75 again with small variance around that. This is a bimodal distribution. In Treeburst's system, the average score being 50, all players would be assigned either -4 or +4 points. This is not wrong per se, but it does have a strong effect on player rankings based on what, at bottom, may have been a roll of the virtual dice in that initial tank/tank confrontation. Anyway, we might just assume we will get single moded results (i.e., bell curves), and fit a point system to that. In which case Treeburst's is fine.

I agree with Jason. If you want firepower, buy LMGs in squads, not separately. LMG teams are slow, have little ammo, and are incredibly brittle. They die almost incidentally. They are so weak, I have seen 81mm mortars kill 'em. What are they good for? Well, one reason is to get observation. Especially on a larger board, it is often important to simply have a single unit off somewhere, so you can find out if the enemy is manuevering there. LMGs, being the cheapest German unit, can be useful in this role. Their main use, though, is as Jason says: deception. Especially on defense. Take one squad from a platoon that you can spare, split it, add an LMG, and put them out somewhere that has good forward vision, and cover behind to flee into. And where you don't mind being shelled -- not near your own guns. It is often desirable to put a leader there; I often use a 'junk' platoon leader (no combat or morale bonus); then the other two squads from the platoon get attached to a good company commander somewhere important. So together the 4 units (platoon HQ, 2 half squads, LMG) make a sort of ersatz platoon. Their mission is to look like a real platoon, to draw arty fire and/or to induce the enemy to manuever as if they were real. So open up early with all the units, so the enemy sees 3 or 4 "infantry?" markers. After the LMG fires a minimal amount (i.e., you are sure it was seen), don't fire any more -- too much firing and the enemy will see "crew?", not "squad?" as you would wish. Instead, bug out with the LMG as soon as it makes itself seen. The squad and HQ should wait until the enemy fires arty (if he does), and be prepared to use "withdraw". [ 09-26-2001: Message edited by: Wreck ]

Don't forget that it is impossible in CM to see the true price of any infantry squad, because you must always buy it as part of a platoon. Instead you see the discounted (and then rounded) price. This explains why you are not getting exact numbers for the regular squads. It also explains how you found that K98s and MP40s are not the same price. Different squads cost different amounts, and when in formations will thus sometime round off differently.

I think the best way to do security would be to create the scenario, then load the game hotseat, set a password for the attacker, and save from setup. Then send the saved game file to the defender (only). He has to host the first turn. The attacker is sent only the password that was previously set.

B3: After Action Report Expecting a tank battle, the Germans dug in and placed their heavy tank assets into places where they had long lines of sight. The plan was to show only one tank early on, hopefully getting a kill or two but not scaring off the enemy until he had committed his tanks to some line of advance. Unfortunately, partisans had tipped off the American commander to the exact size and composition of the German defense, though, fortunately our positions were not compromised. Our infantry, ordered to ambush American infantry, saw none. Five American tanks, clustered in a difficult-to-see location, shelled and knocked over several buildings in the villiage, including the historical old post office that was the German command post. Finally the German commander, fairly confident that no more than a platoon of tanks was likely to be attacking, advanced in his tank to contact. The Shermans, seeing his Panther, all fired their smoke mortars. Which may have been lucky for him, since even though hunting forward, he could unexpectedly see all five of them. At this point, light American follow-on forces appeared on the road. (Their commander apparently had not gotten the word that the attack was off.) Three panthers opened fire, knocking out a Stuart and an M3A1 scout car, and burning a greyhound. They quickly scooted behind a smokescreen helpfully laid by the main force's mortars, then exited the battlefield. Meanwhile the American tank platoon also withdrew. After a bit more shelling on both sides, a cease fire was agreed to. Americans: 3 vehicles KOed, 5 casualties, 1 KIA. Germans: 3 casualties, 1 KIA

If you want historically accurate forces, buy vanilla rifle platoons. These were by far the majority squad of all nationalities. If you want superior price/performance, buy the most SMGs you can. SMGs cost the same as rifles, but drastically outperform them. MP44s cost 1/2 point more, but are still a good deal. LMGs cost quite a bit; I think their price is fair. Some people like two LMGs per squad. This is probably a wash or a good idea for mostly rifle squads. But if you are losing an SMG to man an MG you are not getting your money's worth. Some people like larger squads. I prefer them smaller. It means you have to buy more, of course, but you can do that. You end up with more maneuverable units, which means you are less vulnerable. Of course you must concentrate forces to get a 2-1 to smash an enemy platoon. But you have to do that anyway.

His placement on the hill should not affect your HMG fire. If he is not taking much damage from it, it just means he is in good cover. What cover% does the game report? Regarding the StuGs, it might be better to move them someplace where they cannot see the vickers. The problem is you have to be careful with an ambush set that the enemy come at you from outside of the ambush zone and get a free shot.

Artillery cost effectiveness. Go see my earlier post.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> A possible explanation of the "bigger is better" observation is the larger blast radius of the larger guns, meaning that you can hit more targets per shell. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, yes. But it is not about hitting more targets per shell, per se. The increased effectiveness would work even against a single target. The point is simply that you pay proportionate to total blast. But that effects are *not* proportionate to blast, but rather, blast^2. Probably. Certainly not linear in blast, though, which the prices are pretty much. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> So if you have an arty round that has four times the blast value and 1.5 times the blast radius (about twice the area of effect) of another shell, you'd need only one eighth the number of shells to get the same killing effect on densely packed troops. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I have the suspicion that blast value and blast radius are proportional, so that twice the blast value means twice the blast radius. Thus I don't think it would be possible to have a 4x blast value with only a 1.5x radius. That is something worth testing, though. As for dense packing, the arrangement and density of the targets has no effect on lethality. (That is assuming that all targets are in the beaten zone; adding troops outside clearly helps them survive.) Target density does affect variances in trials, though.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> [suppression] I don't always look to my arty to do much of my killing for me, but just to keep the enemy's heads down and maybe erode their morale a little until my infantry gets close enough to do the job. Because you get a lot more shots with the 81mm, it is more useful for this kind of work. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Um, suppression is also an effect of blast. So the same thing holds true. If you want suppression, bigger is better. Having more shells does help in the sense of more uniform coverage, though. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I expect that you can also buy more smoke per buck with the smaller calibers too, though I have not tested this. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Agreed. I would always want a 81mm module for an attack for this reason. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> BTW, it would have been interesting if you had been able to include the 105mm and 150mm in your test, as well as the artillery of other nationalities. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The point was to demonstrate the effect. Testing other nations and calibers would add little. I agree it would be interesting, but so are things one can do with one's time other than running CM tests.

By simple calculation using the QB price of arty, with its number of shells and their blast, one can determine that for the most part the total blast one buys every sort of arty module, is roughly the same price. That is, is more or less constant, for most arty. Exceptions are rockets, which are about 1.5x higher, and VT arty, which is about 0.75 as high as other arty. CM players with more than a few quickbattles under their belt, know that big arty is good, and often more effective than smaller arty. A single 240mm shell, if lucky, can kill practically an entire platoon. (I have had this done to me.) Similarly, everyone who plays much CM will know that 81mm mortars are not very effective; even if the targets are in trees, 81mm tend to do little damage without prolonged shelling. How can we account for these empirical observations, other than by suspecting that the "blast/buck" figures do not accurately reflect arty power? I decided to try to test whether or not "blast/buck" reflects arty power. The testbed target range had three identical targets. Each consisted of 3x3 rubble squares, with the middle one raised into a little peak (elevation 9) to make aiming very easy. Into the 3x3 rubble I placed 20 American squads (240 men), each elite with 50% fanaticism. I used 6 company commanders to control them, +2 in all stats. (I did not want them moving and screwing up the tests.) The pattern of squads was symmetrical in both left/right and front/back terms. 6 were placed on the outer edges of the rubble. Another 4 placed down the "center line" of the rubble. The remaining 10 were placed about halfway from the midline to the edge. The firing batteries were 5 81mm spotters, 3 120mm spotters, and a single 240mm spotter. The prices of these units are 71, 102, and 310 respectively. So firing all of them except for about 50% of one 81 module is the same expense in "bucks" -- QB price. That was the first test I ran. Here are the casualty figures for the 240 American targets: It is quite obvious from looking at these results, that blast/buck does not capture artillery performance. Note that the 240mm was killing almost every American in the test area (there were 240 total, recall). This made me suspect that the performance results were being skewed by firing so many shells; after all if you are hitting dead men you get no more kills. Therefore I ran a second set of tests calibrated to the 120mm: I fired an entire module of it, 1.5 modules of 81mm, and 6 (of 18) shots from one 240mm observer. This is exactly 1/3 of the shots fired in the original set of tests. Here's the results: The results are much as expected. The edge to the larger calibers increases in terms of kills/buck. Note, though, that the variance is higher, too, especially for the 240mm firing only 6 shots, of which one (or maybe two?) is a spotting round. Lessons? Well, bigger is better for quickbattles, but only if all other things are equal. But we know they are not equal; in particular, the time to get fire varies considerably for various arty. This is why the larger mortars are so favored in quickbattles. But Americans, especially, with their speedy arriving big arty should seriously consider the largest calibers. My speculation at this point is that actual shell effectiveness will be found proportionate to its blast squared. Using using blast^2*#shells/price yields a decent fit to the data at hand. Blast^2 also makes sense from the point of view of simple implementations of arty blasts. If the implementation is that effect on a given unit of a given shell is proportionate to blast divided by distance, then blast^2 for the apriori effect is correct.

It seems to me that if we allow multiple commander pairs per battle (taking the median result, or rolling a die, or some such, to determine the "official" operational result), then we don't need to stop accepting people. We can take on new pairs as we go. All we need at this point is to get the operational leadership in place. (And even that might be changed as we go; all we really need now is the commitment if needed to go the distance from the operational guys.) I suspect that if we generate AARs and post them here, and the battles seem interesting, we will get new people to join as we go. And in fact I have every intent to produce at least some AARs and I hope the other folks do to. One of the things I am really hoping to see generated "naturally" from this tourney is defensive holding actions, i.e., you have a platoon and a 57 mm gun, some bazookas, and 100 points of mines... and a company with tanks attacks.

I am happy to do whatever is needed, operational or tactical. Also I can help bulletproof rules, though it seems that you are going to attempt to prevent rule lawyering by refereeing. This is all to the good outside of the demand on your time. I would prefer both command levels, of course, but that depends on how you run it. BTW I sent mail so your program can automagically do whatever it is you bade it do.

Assume the Germans have 2000 points in an op square, and the Americans attack with 2500, what happens? It seems reasonable that German should have predesignated which forces are in which sectors. If not, then is his force split 50/50 between right and left? 40/40/20 right/left/back? What about the American? Does he also designate forces, or just get 1250 per attack? Now assume the same excepting that the American attacks with just 1500, not 2500. Does it split between the right and left? If so, can the American split off a minimal amount and retreat it? If not, then does the 1500 meet only 1000 in one sector, or does the German get to reorganize so as to meet it with the full 1500 he is capable of?

I think once people can email you, you will get some responses. You might also try asking proselytizing those who signed up for WineCape's latest. Of course I am assuming you like the idea of going with an idea like mine above, to involve many people. This has several advantage, IMO, not the least of which is simplicity -- for some of the players. A team's operational level management may be done by only one person, a small group, or the whole team; but whatever is done, these people have to understand at least some of the rules for the operation level. I think you will find a lot of people willing to sign up for the tactical level, in part because it is competitive. Some will be interested in operational level, some not, and probably most not sure (because of the need to understand rules); but in any case you need only a min of 2 people for the op level... and since I volunteer, really only one more. But it seems a shame to me to put in a lot of work genning maps and resolving operational stuff, without sharing the results as widely as possible.

By the way, I just tried to mail you via the mail icon in the thread, and this does not work. I suspect this means you have "Keep your email address viewable to others when you post notes?" off in your profile.

Sounds interesting. Needs a bump. I assume you saw the discussion leading up to ScoutPL's campaign. In it I posted the following as an idea to allow a lot of people to play the campaign together: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Here is one way you might do CMMC-lite while involving as many players as you like. The operational campaign, as you describe it, is used to generate specific battles. Those battles are then played simultaneously by as many pairs of players as you have signed up. After the battle, the referee would then pick one of the outcomes (or maybe an average) to determine the "official" outcome to be used at the operational level. Players would all be playing the exact same battle simultaneously, and would therefore have a lot to discuss afterwards. You could score them based on how they did relative to the others on their side. Regarding the choice of outcomes, you would have to use a fair process of some sort if part of the interest of the game was the duel between operational commands. If not, then you pick outcomes arbitrarily. I think the most interesting way to run it, would be to have two teams (German and Allied), and a fair outcome determination process. A good one would be, to have all the players report the numerical scores for a battle, then take the median score as the official outcome. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

WineCape (and/or WB, Treeburst): I got the note regarding the tourney. Being eager to start, I had a question... <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> We expect this tourney to kick-off as soon (probably middle Sept. as soon as Wild Bill have all scenarios polished) as you receive the word from Treeburst, the tourney manager. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I guess I am a bit unclear on how we are actually going to play. Is there some reason why all the scenarios have to be polished before we can start? Can WB just finish one of them, and we can get busy? [ 09-04-2001: Message edited by: Wreck ]