CMx2: Command Doctrine vs. Technology

[c3k]

Gents (and anyone else),

I've decided to start this thread to try to examine the differences in force responsiveness as enabled by doctrine or technology.

In CMx1, we're quite familiar with the use of accumulating delay to replicate the difficulty of transmitting complex commands. In various, highly appreciated, bones, Steve has hinted at a system in CMx2 of simulating radio networks.

What of the differences in unit doctrine? The obvious example would be a comparison of the decision loop of a German infantry company versus a Soviet infantry company. The German was trained to take action; to show initiative, not try to devise a 'perfect' plan, but to act on a 'good enough' plan. The Soviet commander would be expected to stick to the pre-planned, err, plan. (At least until late '44. Even then, Soviet flexibility was more at the Operational level, not the tactical.) (The U.S. model, based on British tenets, was to train leadership to find the 'perfect' solution.)

Now, having carried that paragraph a bit too far, here's my question: given the same level of technology available to both Soviet and German infantry company commanders, how will CMx2 simulate the difference in command flexibility?

[Battlefront.com]

The trick is to model the aspects of C&C that are important first, then to model the differences between various nations, timeframes, force types, etc. Remember, this is a lot bigger than just "Germans did it this way and Soviets did it that way". There are differences in how armor operates differently than infantry, infantry under fire vs sitting around in reserve, etc., etc.

It is pretty tough to do in general simply because these things mean restricting the player's ability to get things done as he sees fit, instead of getting done within realistic parameters of that particular force in that particular situation. Obviously CMx1 has all sorts of restrictions (which makes it fun, IMHO) and CMx2 will see more (with options for some).

Steve

[Midnight Warrior]

It seems to me (at he risk of being a bit ponderous and wordy) that the problem of comamnd delay is a indeed a mixture of technology (i.e. hardware) and the "liveware". This shows up to a larget degree in training, doctrine, and proceedures. These restrict how people act such that even though from a technical standpoint they could do certain things they may not ever do them due to non technical factors such as training, proceedures, doctrine, personality factors, or even national charatcter.

For example technically you can send an EMAIL to your company president, or to the FBI, or to a Spam solitiror... but how often does one do that and the reason you don't are not due to a technical factor. The reason one doesn't is part based on doctrine (or protocol) and part due to risk. Thuis risk factor further complicate the issue for no matter how much doctrine and training is pounded into certain people they will either due to their own pluck and self initiative or the desprateness of their situation through all that doctrine out the window and do what makes sense.

The glue that makes this all work in real life but is so hard to put into a simulation is this personal personal risk factor. For instance there is a risk factor drawing "outside the lines" and not following the part line. If you look at a lot of successful people (in any area but lets limit it to the military realm) the successuful people are often those that knew how and when to draw outside the lines and were either good enough or lucky enough to get away with it.

Generally in an organization you have the generally competitent (with higher and lower levels), the lackies (ambitious and non ambitious), and the entrepreneurs (the sensible and the flamboyant flavors). The generally competent know their jobs well but in general dosn't stray too far from the party line unless provoked by dire circumstances (and then only as little as possible to get the job done). The timid lackies even won't do so when provoked by dire circumstances won't (e.g. Capt Quegs (?) in the Cain Mutiny).

The ambitious lackeys will follow the party line and bring disaster becuase they don't know what they are doing but think that since they are falling the party line they will either succeed because they naively believe the party line always works or they even more naively believe that falling the party line will excuse them from accountability of enusing disasters that come from frelig=uosly following it. The entreprenuers will do dare devil things as more of a norm. The sensible entrepeneurs (e.g the U.S. Grants) will do these daring things only as the circumstances demands. The flamoyant entrepeneur (the McAuthurs) may do daring just for the sake of daring (the ego factor).

Now in a war game trying to simulate C2 one has to conssider all these factors, the technical (radios and such), doctriine, training, proceedures, as well as the human element. The game usually tries to let the human player bring into the game the human element but the human player can be representative of the participant only do so up to a point (unless he goes into role playing which lets not go there in this discussion). For in real life the deicisions one makes have real consequences while they don't have real consequences to the human player.

For example in real life when one deviates too far from the party line they either give you a medal (if it works out good) or a courmarshal if it works out bad) and rightly so in that it takes courage in life to what is right but take prudence not to do something stupid. However, the human player in the game does not face these factors. The only cost he risks is a blow to his ego if he does something stupid 9and when playing merely against the AI even this isn't that much of a factor). He doesn't face courtmarshal, shame, disgrace, death or dissmeberment fro making rash decisions. Thus game players take all sorts of chances that real life human will seldom if ever take (e.g. how many times do you kill yourself flying a flight simulator vs driving your car?). Thus any attempt at modeling these command delays that merely look at the technology will fail. And to put artificial delays in the game to "simulate" this command gut check factor will likly fail too!

Now this shows up at the tactical level in just how agressively a commander puts his mean at risk or how timid he is about completing his mission. This shows up at all levels of the command from private (who cammands only himmslef) to the battalion comamnder who commands the whole show (but is still accountable to his superiors too. Now the human player in CM plays not just the battalion commander but issues commands at a number of command levels and this produces interesting effects.

He not only has lots more information than his real life commander (the God information factor) but he also has another God factor (impunity from judgement of his superiors). Thus if the human player makes a risky decision as he plays a platoon leader he knows that he faces no risk from his company commander chewing him out since he is playing him too. Limited information I think will help slow things down (as per the discussion in other threads).

Limiting what a commander could do due to doctrine and trainning etc is an entirely another matter because these are not pysical limits but intelelctual and moral limits and these are going to be really hard to model. Some games try to model this so that if you a player gets killed the game ends. However this acts more as a anoyance factor rather than a good simulation of the consequence of decisions. To put into a game a model of the consequnce of making decision would require some sort of pyschological model that looks at a commanders character, personallity, ect.

While that may be a worthy undertaking for somebody to go explore it is not something I would expect to see in a CM in our liftime. The only thing that I thought might come near to help mimicking this effect is what I put in some other post (I don't remember which one) where I sugested that evey action the player makes (from chaning fileds of view to looking at how much ammo his subordinates have) cost him in command points and that each leader that he is acting in behalf of only has so many command points to make decisions and that each command point used also adds a tiny winne bit of execuation delay). Thus there is a cost in making decisions albeit not in getting courtmarshaled, killed, or relieved of cammand, but rather the loss of freedom to make other command actions for the rest of the turn. This adds one more thing for the player to worry with. If we get a critical mass of things to worry about the tempo of ops might slow down.

Whether this is a good way or not is not the issue (for it probably isn't ...but it ain't my worry anyway.. that's BTS's worry). Rather, this just illustrates one of the possible ways of trying to skin this cat. However, the bottom line is that wargames (due to many factors the fun factor being the biggest) will always be fought more agressively than in real life no matter how much everyone wants to make it more realistic in that area.

However, I don't think that this means that it ain't worth trying to come up with clever ways of getting closer to the ideal. However, to do so will require more than just thinking about radios. At the same time thinking about radios might be a great place to start and I'm all for it if that's the way BTS should decide to go! Peace!

[edit: added some much needed paragraphs]

[ March 05, 2005, 04:42 PM: Message edited by: Midnight Warrior ]

[JonS]

paragraphs are your friend.

[Midnight Warrior]

Excellent point!