Wreck

Rule modifications: </font> reintroduced combined arms force type; with the revision to aux force generation this is needed with larger battles.</font>removed engineers from defensive AT attachments.</font>revised the description of how to generate aux forces. The process is unchanged but I hope the description is clearer now.</font>changed the multiplier for German attacks to 1.5, from 2.0. Until now all your defenses were effectively "AI +100% forces". No wonder they were so hard!</font>changed German quality table slightly to generate less high quality and more low. This is aiming for "reality" - play green units for that in CM. High quality Germans tend to fight to the death in their holes too much for my taste. </font>updated the battle log. </font>

Some new rule additions. </font> You can now lose upgraded platoon status.</font> Added optional rule for commander instantiation.</font> Added air support rule. </font>

hobo - great job writing! I like seeing what people can do to imagineer the games into coherent narratives. I find I do that myself. Your story reminds me: early on I had thought about adding a rule placing you, the commander, on the battlefield: whenever the company HQ takes casualties, there was a chance that the campaign would end right then. Such a rule would probably make for more historic uses of the HQ unit in the sense of it not being a sort of super-platoon leader. On the other hand, I expect players would get ahistorically supercautious with it. I find as it is I am rather more cautious with the company HQ than I am in normal games because I want to keep its experience up. Hmm, I think I might add HQ instantiation as an optional rule. I think it is rather neat.

Olle raises two different issues with his recent suggestions. These are things I have considered and rejected, but worth discussion. First, he suggests that certain support units get experience for being close to the enemy. Experience for proximity itself is a fine idea; in fact that is the main reason for the extra award for the first prisoner taken. However, thus far I have avoided having anything in the rules that would require recordkeeping during play. I don't like having to stop the flow of play to jot notes, and I worry about forgetting to do so, but perhaps that is just me. I am not against such recordkeeping completely. I do think that it is better to avoid it if possible. So for example I have considered adding in more detailed awards for armor/vehicle kills during play; it is a much harder thing for a squad to kill a tank than a bazooka, though neither are at all easy. Furthermore all infantry units (other than mortars) are extremely unlikely to kill a vehicle that is not fully identified. So there is not much problem caused by tracking only known kills, and not distinguishing one sort of vehicle from another. For armor, killing other vehicles is relatively easy; and they often kill unidentified things. So if I do eventually add rules for armor attachments, then it will be likely that I will add some in-game tracking of experience for vehicle kills. What is important to me about any such system is that it track only a few events, which are obvious when they happen. Armor battles obviously fit these criteria. The second issue that Olle brings up is tracking stuff that can easily be seen at the endgame (so no problem there), but which are under the complete control of the player. The case in point is the proposal to give experience for ammo spent; perhaps there should be 2 experience for ending "low", for example. The problem I have with giving experience for things the player can control is that it creates a temptation to do so, and therefore grey areas. Olle sees this, so he specifies in his rule not just area fire. There are two problems with this. One is, that it may return us to the problem of in-game recordkeeping; but I have already discussed that. The other problem is that specifying what is and is not allowed always runs into grey areas that make such line-drawing difficult. Say your zook comes within 200m of an enemy squad in a building... does area firing there count? How about firing directly at the squad? What if the squad is closing fast? If infantry targets are not allowed, how about firing at a distant halftrack? Of course, some people may have no problem with such minor line-drawing. I find it annoying, and would prefer rules not make me do it. I am unlikely to add such rules unless there is a very clear need for them; and with the general experience rule and the intra-core replacement rule I think there are sufficient ways for support units to get experience. Nonetheless, a related question does remain. Is there information, available at the end-game, which would be useful for awarding either experience or favor, which we are not currently using? I think I have got most of it, but perhaps there is something I have not noticed or thought of. Suggestions are, as ever, welcome.

Rules updated. </font> tweaked weather ala Olle's suggestions </font> slightly increased battle size</font>changed auxiliary force generation quite a bit. Hopefully this will generate better aux forces.</font>added whole-force experience gain for battles</font>changed immediate attack and counterattack rules to preserve terrain and German force types. </font>

hobo - I like the idea to make immediate attacks likely to involve the same German force. Perhaps I should take Olle's suggestion and make it always the same... hmm. Also one thinks that they should likely involve the same terrain as well. Regarding experience gained for casualties generally, that is an idea I thought about but rejected because I worried about the problem of people just leaving zooks at the back and they gain experience. But on the other hand, you are right that there does need to be experience gain for the support weapons that rarely get any. (That's part of the motivation for the rule allowing riflemen to replace into support units.) I am thinking about this.

kgsan - the 200 points for the "attached armor section" section should, currently, never be added to your force total since there are no rules which would ever attach an armor section to your company. Infantry AT units are definitely not armor. The square brackets indicate rule "stubs" - rules that are not done yet, but I am thinking about. In this case several folks have indicated an interest in longer-term attachments of armor to the core. I have not done anything about implementing rules for that. But I figured I would put that there so that people that want to make up their own special rules for such attachment would see the right place to calculate. BTW, the "perverse result" of not getting any auxiliaries of the selected force type seems to be a bit common with the rules as they are. I may slightly increase the battle sizes to deal with that.

ryddle - the system would be easy to adapt for use on humans, but only if one person or the other were willing to take on the role of the Germans, specifically not getting a core and not getting to "campaign" as such. You would only have to adapt the Battle Type/Multiplier chart so that it does not bias the points the Germans get. (A human getting, effectively, +50% forces in each battle should win almost every time.) Even in that sort of arrangement, there are "gameyness" problems that you would probably have to consider. For instance, it would be a very good tactic for a human playing the Germans to specifically target your core units and take losses to do so, to keep your company quality low. Or he might intentionally retreat into deeper cover whenever he thinks you have IDed his units well enough to be creditted kills against them. That sort of thing.

Sgt Kelly - it is possible, but unlikely, to end up on defense with no AT assets outside of your company zooks. I take it you got your roll on the auxiliary AT table but rolled a 6? If so, chalk it up to bad luck - sometime the Germans did attack with tanks and Americans got creamed. Though I expect that after you learn the AI better you can prevail even in this circumstance. If you have an older ruleset, then perhaps you have not noticed the auxiliary AT defenses table? Generally you will almost always be given *something* extra for defenses.

Hobo - unfortunately I am unable to determine exactly what your problem is. However, clearly these are solo rules so your making up a way out of your problem is, ultimately, the right solution. Perhaps you had the version of the rules I briefly had up where there is no remedy for being unable to buy enough arty? If so please look again - now if you cannot get enough arty (because arty is restricted even on "unrestricted"), you get less arty but you get more auxiliary forces to make up for it.

Jason, good point. I have revised the modifiers for german force type to make attacking infantry rarer. If one does get attacking infantry, it will probably be a turkey shoot. But as you mention, that did happen; I have read such accounts myself. So doling out a few easy ones to the players probably won't hurt 'em.

I like the new arty and defense rules. They make me feel very American when I play - always looking for ways to use the arty to spare the men, who always seem to be too few. Attacks used to be a russian feeling affair where you would swarm each position with 2 times the number. Now you have to go slower, softening positions up with arty before moving your few men, probably core, up to deal with the remainders. I made a typo yesterday, now fixed, for Oct shell supply. Also I have added a rule to use small maps for German attacks - the maps used are much to large for the American force concentration. I am afraid I may have given the American too much arty in defenses. I just got counterattacked twice in a row, ending up with very little infantry. But it did not matter much because the AI seems to like to form its attack into one or two specific lanes; if you hit the front of the lane with a bit of arty, it kills and slows them, and the rearmost ones continue to move forward into the beaten zone thereby creating amazingly dense targets. I did a game last night which was basically 2 155mm observers against 3000 points of German infantry. AT guns and 60mm mortars killed a bit of armor, mostly halftracks, but otherwise all the killing was artillery. The arty won a total victory when the German surrendered, after taking some 500 casualties, all before the Germans even made it to the edge of the American setup. Basically, defense with more than one module of heavy artillery seems to be a stupid AI trick. Not the point of the campaign. I am thinking of putting a 300 point limit on defensive artillery. But perhaps I shall jigger the table to make that happen usually, but not always. Thoughts? Any experiences similar to mine?

ciks - yes a unit that makes it offmap should be fully there. (You should check for casualties just as it leaves, of course, and any casualties will require replacements as normal.) I am tempted to apply a penalty for cowardice, though, and to discourage edge hugging. Hmm. Perhaps a -5 like the other cowardice penalties is in order. Yet another patch for the rules.

Marlow - a fascinating AAR there. That's exactly the sort of battle that I hope that the rules will generate; you made a hard choice but I am sure it was the right one. In a one-off QB, of course you would have charged the men into their deaths and won at huge cost. That's fun in its way but its not realistic/historical.

Jason - thank you very much for the detail. This mostly matches what I knew, as you can see by looking at the artillery tables I put up last night. Assuming you are fast enough - based on what I didn't know, I have revised the artillery tables a bit, and I am uploading it when I am done with this. I had not known how little the mortars actually contributed. This is not something one would ever discover in wargames, since the small arty always tends to be overused because it is less variable. With my revisions, it is now more likely that the player will get either one or two modules of 105mm or 155mm. He can certainly get allocations that probably are unhistoric, especially if he uses favor. I also revised it to give defenses more arty. I hope the system deals with it correctly. I shall have to test this. The issue is simply can all that arty be bought in the QB generator without going over the line? I think so but I shall have to check. This forum is a great resource. Imagine getting a mini-essay about an abstruse subject just by asking! Thanks again Jason.

"TOE" stands for Table of Organization and Equipment. It's an army's official written idea of the what men and equipment make up each unit in the army, from the squad all the way up to divisions. The American supply and replacement organization was excellent at getting new equipment and men into the front lines, so that usually American units were at their TOE. (Often after time in the rear they would be above it!) German units were not as fortunately, often fighting as more or less paper units with only a fraction of their men and weapons.

I made a bunch of changes to the rules, to add things asked for here. </font> added artillery rules. Americans should now seem much more like Americans. </font> added defensive AT attachments </font> completely overhauled rules for computing size of battle. It's now more complicated (boo!) but much more general. </font> added rule allowing your own riflemen to serve as replacements for support weapons </font> increased cost of experienced HQ replacements to 2 favor </font> removed +5 experience for first casualty - seems unnecessary and encourages silly behavior. </font> added more detailed battle worksheet. </font>

Jason, regarding artillery support. You are the best expert I know of on this, so let me ask: what percentage of the time in battle do you think that an average American company in WWII had arty support, and of what caliber? I know of many incidents where a company would command amazing amounts of fire; these I am not interested in. Rather, grinding forward in the bocage on a daily basis, what did a company normally get? Would a company always have at least some fire on call? Would this be different in attack/probes/MEs/defenses? Was 105mm support really more common than 81mm?

Jason - interesting. You are worried about the campaign being too hard. I am worried about it being too easy! In fact I have some tentative rules thought up to make it harder, lol. As follows: the player should remove from the aux force the first one (or two) platoons of infantry generated. Last night I played an attack into heavy woods, using that rule (removing two platoons). I still got a total victory, but I did take more casualties in my core than I had in the previous few fights (all total victories thus far). The enemy was a regular infantry force. I don't see that crack enemies would be that much worse or better. Yes they are nasty individually but they are fewer. Thus far, at least for me, the diluting effect of replacements has not nearly overcome the effect of experience gain. The squads gain experience very rapidly; HQs less so, and support weapons almost not at all. The average experience is up to 33, though right now we are about to immediate attack. If I took replacements right now, the experience average experience would drop to 24. I do plan to do something to make the fights much more artillery-centric and less infantry heavy. You are now the second person wanting more significant attached forces. Yes, it would be nice to carry a couple tanks along. I would think it more likely that a company might get hold of some halftracks (M4A1s are terrors in CM). My main problem with this is that it makes everything bigger, as I mentioned above, and that it requires more serious work to calculate proper aux force size if one wants balance (which I do). I shall think on it.

Olle - hmm, lot to reply to here. Certainly, human referees can do much better. If these rules are helpful in that end, great. At the least it would be nice to enter a battle against unknown German forces truly blind. However the main problem with other people is that they only play on their schedule. Refereeing seems like enough work that I would either want to do it full-bore (and not need any steenkin' rules), or not at all. I didn't put in assaults simply because I don't think they are appreciably different than attacks, especially against the AI. I stand ready to be corrected on that. In the aux force, yes I am going to put in more artillery. The vehicles I think there are enough of; armor is already there in 5 of 6 attacks. I used the US merely because it was simple. The exact same rules would work for other Allies, certainly. The Brits might have slightly different modifiers for December, mainly, since they weren't much in the Bulge. I don't know much of anything about Polish troops in the west in WWII so I can't comment on that. For time of day, we don't need "random" - that's what die-rolling gets us. Of course it would not hurt to add that, but it adds complexity. The weather ideas are good. Did it really snow at all in Oct? For now I am leaving off the +1 for Oct. Regarding marching off map... yes I noticed the morale problem (finally). I had thought that units off the map should be neutral, but I guess I am wrong. I might change that rule to leave them on. This has its own problem, namely, that the extra units bolster morale artificially. And they are possible targets, which we don't want. I don't think there is any perfect solution here. I need to figure out how these units leaving affects morale, but it seems like the best solution will be to require that half of them leave, or something like that. Then your force's morale will start a bit lower but be more resistant to decrease, which is fair. The first battle modifier is intentionally -3, to make there be a chance that you skip June entirely. I had thought about tracking wounded from your unit, as a fraction of casualties - KIA. But this seems more trouble than it is worth. Experienced replacements seem to do about the same thing. On scrounging: the reason for adding various quality levels is just variety. "Cause we can". It doesn't really add or remove much. I don't see these "extras" as particularly attached to a platoon, other than, of course, the glider upgrade. Finally, your ideas on adding attached units are interesting. However, adding more than a modest increase in strength of the core unit will require reworking the battle-size table. Recall that it is calculated with the assumption that your core is about 600 points or so. Adding on, say, a platoon of TDs would make your core 1000+ points. I am sure I could work out a generalization of that table. Actually, the main reason I resist adding too much to the core is that the resulting battles would get very large, and large battles are not my cup of tea. But I am sure some people would love that. "Small" scenarios as 2000 points, larger ones at 3000 and 5000. (I shudder to think it.)

Marlow: both of your ideas are in sync with what I have been thinking on. You are right; on defense you probably would get some battalion level AT assets normally, and less likely some dribs and drabs of other units. And definitely, I want to bring arty into it. Playing Americans should feel American... blowing the crap out of places and then waltzing in. As it is, playing the campaign feels German. Shells are too precious so you never get support; instead you use men. I shall have a patch for both of these things shortly. I want to have at least 81mm support in almost every fight, and frequently 105 or 155mm support. But this will require reducing the other auxiliaries you get.

I just added rules for German counterattacks, and detailed the rules for immediate replacements. I have also detailed a few of the things people asked for here, and added a full example at the end. DougieB - doing this with Germans should be pretty straightforward, yes. You would have to think about and jigger the size of auxiliary forces, though. That table is rigged to generate American auxiliary forces, not German. Other than that I think everything would translate pretty well. You'd also want to jigger scrounging a little bit, but that should be obvious enough. Doing the campaign as Germans would likely be much harder, since you would be being attacked all the time by combined arms and you might or might not get decent AT in any particular battle. I think it much more likely that you would get unlucky and get creamed in a battle (though currently I think the campaign is too easy... so...) Juju - yes I find using the printout I can do all the replacement stuff in 10 minutes. A small price to pay.

ciks: correct, experience below zero is fine. You got some sad sacks there. I had originally had a "conscript" experience level starting at -10, but then I realize that Americans never get conscripts so it was rather moot. It makes me really wish that the game lumped green/normal together instead of conscript/green and normal/vet. Until you get your company up to normal, there is no unit variety outside of scrounged stuff and the effects of immediate attacks. Incidentally, I round all experience off to the nearest whole number. And when it's x.5, I always round up.

Questions in order.. Ari, yes I got your titans setup. I have been lazy about that. I never play monster battles because the setup is such a bear. Lah - it is designed to be somewhat complex; in fact if there were any benefit in more complexity I would probably do it! The point here is the geekiness of tracking your individual squads and weapons. After you do a few battles, and using the cheat sheet, it becomes fairly quick to do experience/replacements. But surely if you think it's too complicated, that's a valid criticism. I just don't see how to make it simpler without destroying one of the things I want, which is that tracking of individual units. Ciks - I am aware that examples *always* are necessary to understand rules. Just have not made the time to create one. Regarding the turns (and also map size), I just leave those at the default - 30 turns and medium. I realize most everything else is specifically set, so probably the rules should mention that. Marlow - right about the Volkssturm. As you can tell I had not given that much thought. Also having a German "armor" attack with fallschirmjagers doesn't make much sense, so maybe I will rule those out. As for randomizing the German force, usually the player will know what the force is, so that won't work. And the rules randomize the force just fine. On the other hand, setting it that way in generation may save a die rolls. I am not sure what else it really gains but I will have to look at the process. Thanks to all for your comments and criticisms! I am thinking about expanding the system so that a few in-game events are scored. In particular armor is fairly scarce and so tracking armor kills would not be too onerous.

I created a set of rules to be used to run a solo "campaign". Sure, it's just quickbattles. Sure, it's just the AI. But it's fun to keep track of your guys.