The Ground is Fertile ...

[Thomm]

Here I sit with the latest "PC Games" magazine. I find a whole load of WW2 related games:

These are coming-up RTS games related to WWII:

Codename: Panzers: Phase Two

War Leaders

Warfront

Rush for Berlin

Officers

1944: Winterschlacht in den Ardennen

Company of Heroes

These are coming-up FPS games related to WWII:

Call of Duty 2

Day of Defeat Source

Brothers in Arms - Add On

Commandos Strike Force

...

With the mainstream gamers being drawn into WW2 games like this a well-placed CMx2 demo should bring in a rich "harvest"!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Thomm]

... assuming that CMx2 will be related to WW2 in any way, I forgot to add!

Best regards,

Thomm

[GreenAsJade]

Seeing as how everyone here things the Cold War is the next great milieu, why are these other FPS/RTS companies getting it so wrong?

[Michael Emrys]

WW II is a market that never dies. It may wax and it may wane, but it's always there. Unless a company really screws up, it can count on enough sales to make at least a little money.

Michael

[JasonC]

RTS isn't S. FP isn't even the S in RTS, let alone real S. Personally I am underwhelmed by the offerings.

[Dave H]

Originally posted by JasonC:

RTS isn't S. FP isn't even the S in RTS, let alone real S. Personally I am underwhelmed by the offerings.

But but but ... don't you understand? They're NEW!! Every right-thinking consumer knows that NEW!! always means better, right?

[Ardem]

I am tired of historical WWII strategy,

don't get me wrong playing historical battles and I love realistic units and movement, what i mean is the grand strategy are always made to follow the same battles the same paths the same ideas.

I would like for once to see a world war 2 game which the strategic elements changed, not just the battle sides. Even something like HOI2 is designed in such a way that it suppose to be opened ended but the scripted events make you follow a similar path to history.

What I would like to see is world war 2 units and realism but with a grand strategy which doesn't replay the same battles over and over again. This might sound sick, but I tired of the beating up the germans and them losing.

If I seen another ardennes offensive I going to cry.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Ardem:

I am tired of historical WWII strategy,

don't get me wrong playing historical battles and I love realistic units and movement, what i mean is the grand strategy are always made to follow the same battles the same paths the same ideas.

I would like for once to see a world war 2 game which the strategic elements changed, not just the battle sides. Even something like HOI2 is designed in such a way that it suppose to be opened ended but the scripted events make you follow a similar path to history.

What I would like to see is world war 2 units and realism but with a grand strategy which doesn't replay the same battles over and over again. This might sound sick, but I tired of the beating up the germans and them losing.

If I seen another ardennes offensive I going to cry.

I hear you. I have often longed for a grand strategy game where I could take what was available and forge it into a different strategy just to see what it would do.

Unfortunately, designing such a game is for all practical purposes impossible. There are too many imponderables. If events start to go in a new direction, how would the historical participants have reacted? Nobody can say for sure. You can make guesses, but for me most of those guesses have not been convincing enough to make the games much fun to play. If they avoid the scripting you mention, they go off into directions where eventually I come to a halt and have to say, "I just don't think it could have ever gone this way."

The problem always seems to come down to not knowing how the pieces would have fit together in combinations other than the ones that actually occurred. That's why operational games have been more successful. Their scope, in time, in space, but most importantly in the numbers of men and equipment involved, were more limited. That sets bounds on how far chaos and randomness may take matters.

Michael

[JasonC]

What I want to see is a game set at the grand tactical scale with a focus on combined arms and the problems of divisional command. Nobody has ever done it well. You either get tactical with fire from hex to hex if not smaller (CM or ASL scale), or you get something with battalions or regiments that stack 3-4 to a hex, hitting adjacent hexes from 3 hexes at a time, which means in practice a single combat to resolve involves a division to a corps of men, sometimes beating up one battalion, sometimes about a regiment. And those ones always, always reward massive overstacking, and lack any meaningful combined arms effects (they just give some minor bonus for having everything, which everyone always gets).

Instead it should be company units, that aren't stacked. With vehicle, weapon, squad step losses. Ranges only for indirect fire, and as a soft ZOC effect (try to move through without attacking, get shot). With a fire based CRT not odds - as in, defenders shoot up the attackers, remaining live attackers shoot back. With realistic variety of weapon effects on unit types. The scale of fights should put people in charge of fighting a division, deciding on battle groups and tasking, deciding where and when to intervene with their artillery, managing reliefs of blown men, etc. With typical scenarios lasting on the order of a few days - short ones can be one day of fighting.

Seriously, some of the most interesting relationships of the war occurred at this scale and it is hopelessly undermodeled by all existing games. The bigger scale ones create almost generic units simply by aggregating all arms. The smaller ones, truly tactical, do have the interest of real combined arms effects and so they succeed as strategy games - but they pack the question who has what, off into a pre-game force selection or a scenario design stage. Also, the way all the context is abstracted away in purely tactical games encourages bloody minded, the war is over this afternoon, annihilation fighting.

I'm dying to see a real set of wargame designers tackle this problem. Without wrecking it all with some attempt at real time clickfests or unplayable bean counting or flat, "no game play just eye candy", weak game design. Many of the necessary elements were created in past board wargames, like Battle for Stalingrad and To the Green Fields Beyond, but those were up one echelon in size and pushing playability limits without computer help. When grand tactical was done right for other genres, it revolutionized their popularity (Terrible Swift Sword e.g.).

Compared to going down to single men on the map, up two levels rather than down one, would be much more interesting to old wargamers for whom strategy always comes first.

[Yair Iny]

JC,

Have you tried Highway to the Reich? Seems to fulfill your requirements rather well.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Compared to going down to single men on the map, up two levels rather than down one, would be much more interesting to old wargamers for whom strategy always comes first.

Count me in. That's exactly what I've wanted to see as well. As you say, some board games have made a stab at something like this, GDW's Avalanche and SPI's Highway to the Reich come to mind. But both of those games suffered from "monsterism". They tried to depict corps or even army sized battles at the company level, and only the most dedicated players could handle that kind of work load. They also allowed stacking, which is something you say you don't want. I think they did do a pretty fair job of showing the interaction of various arms at this level though. I should also mention GDW's Velii Luki and Suez '73, although I was never a fan of their impulse system as given. There was also their Operation Crusader, which I regard as an excellent design, but again is on a much too broad a scale to be truly playable except by the most grimly determined.

Michael

[Yair Iny]

To be sure, I don't mean Highway to the Reich as in the boardgame, but rather the PC game by Panther. It does go down to company level, but its command system allows corps level battles to be played without overwhelming the player.

[PiggDogg]

Guys,

I think what Jason was looking for in the way of a good company level simulation is Victory Games' Panzer Command by Eric Lee Smith, circa 1984.

Here is a link to a short review by "Mircea Pauca" <mpauca@fx.ro> and a game review by Jerry Taylor

I go back to the dawn of modern board wargaming in 1958-60 when I was 10-12 years old. At that time I played the only wargames available on earth, Avalon Hills' Tactics II and their original rectangular unit version of Gettysburg.

In the 60s, I purchased every AH game published until I subscribed to S&T in 1969. I have nearly every S&T magazine game and SPI game released. I closely followed board wargaming until about 1995 when I went computer.

In short, I've seen about as much board wargaming as anyone. From a long, long wargamer view, Panzer Command along with Eric Smith's/Victory Games' American Civil War & S&T/AH's Frederick The Great are probably among the most historically correct feeling simulations and playable of board wargames to have ever been published. Among the hundreds of games that I have played, these three are the best gems balancing historical simulation correctness and playability.

Panzer Command puts one in the position of a German division commander or its Russian counterpart, set in Fall 42 to Spring 43 at the Chir River bend near Stalingrad. Among Panzer Command’s interesting elements is that the unit types had a proper feeling of relative strength. For example, a PzIII platoon was weaker than a T34 platoon in firepower, armor, and speed.

However, the weaker PzIIIs could prevail against the stronger T34s because the PzIIIs’ command structure, the German division, was better than its Russian counterpart. During any time period, the weaker and slower Germans units would perform more action than similar Russian units. The Germans were given more command chits to allow their units to perform more actions than the Russians.

Thus, during a time period, generally, despite PzIIIs being slower than T34s, they would move farther and could maneuver around the battlefield more than the T34s. Despite PzIIIs having less firepower than T34s, they could wear down the T34s by firing more frequently. Despite PzIIIs having weaker armor than T34s, they would recover from suppression and cohesion damage faster than T34s.

Most other games usually handled weaker Germans units defeating bigger and more powerful Russian units by making the German units into super units with greater firepower, protection, and speed than the Russians.

In Panzer Command, one sees that the weaker, slower, & outnumbered Germans did more with less. While the more powerful, technically faster, and numerically superior Russian force lumbered forward, the Germans bobbed, danced, and weaved.

Panzer command is not perfect. However, in my long time wargame opinion, Panzer Command is one of the best (if almost the only) division command board simulations ever made. Indeed, I wish that it could be ported to the computer in a Combat Mission playable and enjoyable style.

Panzer Command is a great wargame, one of the best ever made.

In fact, maybe, CMx2 is bringing Panzer Command to life on the computer. If CMx2 is not doing this, it should.

Cheers, Richard

[ May 30, 2005, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: PiggDogg ]

[JasonC]

Stacking 4 companies to a hex then attacking from 3 hexes results in regiment beats up battalion fights as a single die roll on some CRT. You will never get combined arms relationships right, that way. Also, as to the computer version, pausable real time is not strategy. Sorry, no room for compromise. It must have turns, whether simul-plotted or sequential. And the relevant tactical factors cannot be hidden from the players, as though they aren't supposed to worry about what is "under the hood" and only need to tell units "where to go" - that isn't strategy either, it is watching a bad movie somebody else wrote.

Combat factors in the Panzerblitz mold do not sound very promising. And "disruption" combat results are a recipe for soft peddling real attrition, which will result in an excess of maneuverism - the same fist of units can do whatever it likes forever, pausing occasionally to touch up the paint.

I seem to be the only one taken with the Battle for Stalingrad approach. The system is very simple in execution, but generates quite complex effects. The rule is, when a combat occurs, the defenders in the attacked location shoot on a firepower CRT, with big bonuses for their terrain and for combined arms relationships (ATGs vs armor for example). The combat result is a number of dead units - kaput, gone, never get a chance to fire, blown away.

Then the surviving attackers shoot back. Their firepower is reduced for defending terrain, helped by combined arms effects (pioneers reduce the fp reduction for heavy urban terrain e.g.). They shoot, score some result. If the attack is big enough, likely they go into overkill territory and wipe out the defenders. Of course, the defenders with their terrain boosted firepower may well have already taken their own number out already, making it just a trade.

Nobody will ever get the impression that a stack of units is an iron fist. More like soft wood against a buzz saw. A regiment can be detailed to kill absolutely any position imaginable, and it will. But there may only be rags left after 2-3 of those. If you don't pay attention to the multipliers created by terrain and combined arms relationships, you bleed to death. You kill the enemy you mass against, but die doing it, and run out before he does. Only cleverly efficient attacks make long lasting "economic" sense, in exchange terms. But the brutal kind are always available to bludgeon things out of your way - for a price.

The main thing missing was additional morale and cohesion fire effects, a tactical pin that keeps that unit from firing back in that battle, or an infantry unit that took losses halved until it "rallies" etc.

Soft zocs as fire triggered by moving by a unit. Less in the way of modifiers or not everyone firing, to make them less bloody than outright assaults.

Arty as callable anywhere in large ranges with quite high impact compared to the tactical units' own fire. But seriously reduced by terrain when it is present.

Serious defense dominance from big terrain advantages, first fire, fire as often as you like at men trying to move by - all before the attacker pulls one trigger.

But the attacker gets to gang up. In all operational games, the attacker gets to gang up -in too many of them, that is all he every has to do, and it automatically runs over all lesser things without lasting loss.

Now, that way you get real combined arms effects despite the scale. Infantry fire isn't going to take out some tanks at range. But it would be a waste to risk the tanks in a close assault, that would give the defending infantry "3x for infantry defending in woods" and allow them to effect armor. Just shelling the infantry with the tanks might slowly bleed them but could take forever and doesn't get much out of the tanks this turn, with the infantry's terrain reductions and occasional reinforcement to make good their losses and keep the position.

Digging them out the right way might mean infantry and a big fire mission - because the fire mission alone would be reduced as "bombardment against entrenched", x0.25 but if infantry lives it is "assault against entrenched" x0.5 - but then the defending infantry gets its full FP at a soft target with its terrain edge, before the remaining attackers and their arty "fire back". Ergo, the attackers bring up infantry and trade off the defenders, arty doing the killing and infantry making it effective.

No easy, attrition free way to dig them out without loss would exist. Any attack that will be resolved as a close assault, allows them their terrain amplified firepower. Piling up tons more would make the result more certain but not reduce the losses taken. (In fact, if there are density fp modifiers it might actually increase them). The alternative is to ignore the position, or to shell it so heavily they bleed dry there, despite "bombardment" reductions in effect for terrain, entrenchment, etc.

See what I mean about real combined arms effects? The thing I can't stand is just piled up a big stack of everything and it runs over whatever - mindless and unhistorical. No thought. No reason for a division to consist of a half dozen different unit types each good at specific tasks. Therefore, nothing to really coordinate.

You might have to allow stacking 2 high. If you want more than that, attack from two hexes. If the two are a vehicle and a leg unit, no target penalties - if they are two infantry, fp effects up a column for density or whatever it is.

Compared to the described scenario in the link, here is what should happen when Pz IV shorts and Pz IIIs drive up to a reserve slope held by T-34s. T-34s fire, Panzers step reduced, Panzers fire back, do little or nothing. It is an FP based CRT but for armor fighting it should be absolute factors unit by unit with an appropriate chance of doing something - not a differential that lets 2 platoons of Pz IIIs fire as well as 1 platoon of Pz IV longs.

Anyway, it has not yet been done right, but it is perfectly doable.

[Ardem]

I just got Battles in Italy by matrix games, and your talking about hex based beat ups, and I totally agree with you it annonies me that the computer jumps 7-8 units against any point in the line where you have to hold 2 or 3 units.

So I went in and edited the number of units you could have on each hex limited to two battalion and changes the odds on which the computer AI would fight instead of 8 to 1 they would allow to try and battle at 4-1 odds. The tactics of the computer where then much more realistic and still put up a stiff challenge allowing me to play a more historic combined arms game.

And the computer really tried hard for encirclements and other strategies and I was allowed to create a line which I could defend with knowing everytime the computer picked a point it would be a breakthrough and then deteration of a line.

[Michael Emrys]

Jason: Sounds good. FWIW, I agree.

Michael

[Objekt 240]

I am designing a computer strategy game and have given a lot of thought to the issues raised here by Jason and others. I can't stand stacking and how units are neatly connected in lines. My main concern is getting in things like chaos, confusion, SNAFU, space, recon, C3, logistics, traffic and advanced multiplayer modes, but I have also thought a lot about the scale of units and how it should be managed.

There are two basic problems with having individual company sized units:

1) Battles become huge. If infantry company is an individual unit, so then must mortar platoons, heavy machinegun sections and other units of that level. Now imagine the number of individual units when you are in control of a division. Most players would simply give up. Especially if you have to deal with logistics, calculating tonnage of supplies and traffic jams.

2) Hexes would have to be something like 300-600 meters in width. That means that units like tanks must be able to fire over several hexes. And if you have that, you also need things like mortars firing smoke. You need to model line-of-sight and have turns that represent something like 15-30 minutes. You end up having a game that is like Combat Mission but with higher abstraction. Making such a game takes years. You also end up commanding a division in 15-30 minute turns, making the battles too slow and long.

Problem number one can be dealt with, but I haven't yet figured a simple answer to the problem number two. Battalions that contain swappable companies is one compromise that would make the problem number two less glaring, but it would not solve it.

[aka_tom_w]

FOG OF WAR!!!

No one is Talking about FOG of WAR!!

IN all the board games and Computer type SIMULATIONS of Board games I have ever seen all you have to do is use the ubiquitous "Min Max" strategy. (As mentioned by Jason C)

Simply stack as many units for as much fire power as posisble against the oppenents weakest stack and roll the dice.

AND and get this you can KNOW with %100 clairvoyant certianty EXACTLY the defense strength of what you are attacking EVERY time.

Nothing would make me happier then to get completely away from the CRAPPY old Stack the most and attack the least "Min Max" strategy in a war game! That is why CMBO was SO successful to break the mold! there are "some" Fog of War and there was NO stacking and the simple Min Max Strategy was NOT foolproof because you never knew EXACTLY what you where facing all the time.

Any wargame like what Jason C is talking about MUST have a decent level of Fog of War AND Must NOT ever reward Massive stacking of units or the obvious and simple Min Max strategy mind set.

NOW bring on CMx2!!!1

-tom w

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Objekt 240:

1) Battles become huge. If infantry company is an individual unit, so then must mortar platoons, heavy machinegun sections and other units of that level. Now imagine the number of individual units when you are in control of a division.

I don't think it's that bad. I know that when I played boardgames solitaire, I was comfortable with up to 100 counters for each side, for a total of 200. With a bit more effort, I could handle twice that many, and sometimes more. Other players were evidently comfortable with many, many more as long as the game was an interesting presentation of an interesting subject. Look at the continued popularity of the Europa series, which has already outlasted three decades.

Most players would simply give up. Especially if you have to deal with logistics, calculating tonnage of supplies and traffic jams.

But those are tasks the computer is meant to handle. That is to say, if a player gives an order that would result in putting units out of supply or would create a traffic jam, the computer acting as a staff officer would give a warning of that fact. If the order is not withdrawn or altered, the computer does indeed create the situation it predicted.

2) Hexes would have to be something like 300-600 meters in width. That means that units like tanks must be able to fire over several hexes. And if you have that, you also need things like mortars firing smoke. You need to model line-of-sight and have turns that represent something like 15-30 minutes. You end up having a game that is like Combat Mission but with higher abstraction. Making such a game takes years.

Very likely. Which is why quality wargame design is a labor of love. People who enter the market thinking it will be an easy way to make a comfortable living (and I am not saying that you are), are making a huge mistake. Viewed over the whole field, most game designers are lucky to break even financially. Don't quit your day job.

You also end up commanding a division in 15-30 minute turns, making the battles too slow and long.

Depends. If a particular scenario only covers one or two days of combat, that's not beyond what players have shown many times that they are willing and able to cope with. BTW, once the system is in place, it should be possible to design scenarios where time and number of units are both limited. For instance, a single supported regiment/brigade or two in a one day fight should not be unusually difficult if the game system is properly designed.

Michael

[Objekt 240]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

FOG OF WAR!!!

No one is Talking about FOG of WAR!!

I am talking about fog of war. I share the passion of your hate for clinical sterility of strategy games. I want to go further than just getting rid of stupid stacking. I want to bring in the chaos, confusion and blindness. I want to bring in worries about supplies and communication. I want to bring in active recon, patrolling and things like that. My head is full of ideas and my notebook filled with obscure markings and coffee stains.

And to be frank, I think that fog of war is one of the things that would suffer with individual companies. If you are in control of a division you don't know where companies are. You hardly know exact locations of battalions. You might know that 1st battalion of regiment A is rolling enemy lines north of hill H towards village V. 2nd battalion is resting at village V2, waiting reinforcements and resupply. 3rd battalion is somewhere west of village V, connections to 3rd battalion have been lost for 12 hours already. Sounds of heavy artillery barrage have been heard from that direction and aerial recon spotted mechanized enemy formation 5 kilometers northwest of village V, heading south.

Advanced multiplayer options change the situation dramatically, but then were aren't talking about being in control of an entire division, but rather each player controlling a regiment.

[Objekt 240]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

I don't think it's that bad. I know that when I played boardgames solitaire, I was comfortable with up to 100 counters for each side, for a total of 200. With a bit more effort, I could handle twice that many, and sometimes more. Other players were evidently comfortable with many, many more as long as the game was an interesting presentation of an interesting subject. Look at the continued popularity of the Europa series, which has already outlasted three decades.

Perhaps you are right, and I don't think this is such a problem as the problem number two, but 100 counters may not be enough.

But those are tasks the computer is meant to handle. That is to say, if a player gives an order that would result in putting units out of supply or would create a traffic jam, the computer acting as a staff officer would give a warning of that fact. If the order is not withdrawn or altered, the computer does indeed create the situation it predicted.

I am not planning to make it that easy for the player. To me logistics are as important as battle and tactics. The player will have to make many decisions on how to handle logistics. If you don't have fuel, or roads are full, you won't drive anywhere. If you don't have ammo you won't shoot anything. If you don't have food you will wither away. Not just today, but tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. You will have traffic jams and you will run out of fuel, ammo and food. It's up to you, enemy actions and your skills permitting, to decide where and when you will run out of them.

Very likely. Which is why quality wargame design is a labor of love. People who enter the market thinking it will be an easy way to make a comfortable living (and I am not saying that you are), are making a huge mistake. Viewed over the whole field, most game designers are lucky to break even financially. Don't quit your day job.

I am not trying to make money. I am trying to make a strategy game that would fix some of the most glaring errors of most strategy games. I am doing it because I really enjoy doing it.

I don't do this for living so I can't really spend three years making Combat Mission engine if it's not really necessary. I am not convinced that it would be necessary. I am not convinced that Combat Mission style game play is optimal for division scale strategy game. Can you convince me that it is?

Depends. If a particular scenario only covers one or two days of combat, that's not beyond what players have shown many times that they are willing and able to cope with.

Perhaps. I will have to think more about this, but at the moment I am of the opinion that two days is not enough.

BTW, once the system is in place, it should be possible to design scenarios where time and number of units are both limited. For instance, a single supported regiment/brigade or two in a one day fight should not be unusually difficult if the game system is properly designed.

Yes it will be possible. But the basic game mechanics have to be such that the game remains playable and enjoyable. If you are controlling a division you are facing a bit different questions and challenges than when you are controlling a regiment.

Thank you for your input. I will think more about the number of units and the length of battles.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Objekt 240:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

I don't think it's that bad. I know that when I played boardgames solitaire, I was comfortable with up to 100 counters for each side, for a total of 200. With a bit more effort, I could handle twice that many, and sometimes more. Other players were evidently comfortable with many, many more as long as the game was an interesting presentation of an interesting subject. Look at the continued popularity of the Europa series, which has already outlasted three decades.

Perhaps you are right, and I don't think this is such a problem as the problem number two, but 100 counters may not be enough.</font>

[Objekt 240]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

That's okay. I did say that I was controlling 200 counters easily and more with additional effort. And that many players were willing to regularly deal with far more. I am not a typical player in this regard, I don't think.

I will have to try it out on paper. That is how I do it. When I just think about it in my head I often overlook issues. I have never tried making it division level so I might get surprising results.

My fear is that my extra elements act as a force multiplier making it far too demanding for a player to control. There is more to read on the table than just pure combat units. I have had my hands full in my test games with single regiments.

Yes, yes, yes. I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean that the decisions in this regard should be taken out of the player's hands, only the calculations. The player should not have to sit down with paper and pencil every turn and work all this out. It should appear on the screen when he tries to give orders. You can even work some of your chaos and indefiniteness into the calculations. Division staffs were not always accurate in the real world, and there's no reason to improve on their performance here.

Player won't have to use paper and pencil, but he will have to decide how much of what goes where and how and when it gets there. If he is planning to attack with a battalion, he is going to stock up supplies for the battalion a number of turns beforehands. If he is planning to exploit the anticipated breakthru with a mobile battalion he will have to make sure beforehands that the mobile battalion will have fuel and roadspace when it will begin to advance. He will have to make compromises with who gets those supplies and roadspace. I will make it as userfriendly as possible and include only elements that really add something. But the player will still have to command supply and transporations units. Player won't be giving commands only to battle units.

Yes there will be chaos. Perhaps divisional or corps HQ needs the supplies for some other regiment and you won't get any new supplies for a day or two. Perhaps the lorries drove from your regimental supply depot to wrong place in error. Perhaps they got stuck in mud. Perhaps a Sturmovik shot them up. Perhaps someone just screwed up and somehow just lost track of 20 tons of artillery ammunition. Perhaps horses run out of fodder and now 50% of wagons have stopped where they happened to be and you have to somehow get them where they are supposed to be. Of course at the same time the stupid reinforcements are blocking the road at crucial crossroads. And it doesn't exactly help that your men are near starvation, morale has fallen and the transporters themselves steal and sell the goods they are supposed to transport. You get the picture.

I'm not trying to, since I personally share your views. My own preference for scale depicting division or corps-sized engagements would be battalion-sized units.

But Jason's point is that you can't get into the nitty-gritty of combined arms tactics at that scale, and he's got a point. I'm just trying to make a case that such a game is a reasonably attainable goal.

My preference is with battalion-sized units as well. I think you can have advanced combined arms tactics with battalion-sized units as well. You can achieve it by being able to toy with the companies the battalions contain. For example to depict what Russians faced in Grozny in 1990ies, you could have in your rifle battalion combat engineer platoon (to make urban fighting more efficient) and a signals platoon (Russians had serious problems with communication in the urban area). Their opponents might include snipers and RPG company into their battalions. You can do the same with vehicles. It's up to having enough different types of subunits and enough different tactical commands that decide how the battalion tries to do combat. Making such a system natural, playable, fun and realistic is hard. But I think it can be done.

Again, it depends on what you are trying to represent. If you want to show the entire American sector in the battle for Normandy, i.e., a complete army for 7+ weeks, yes, I'd regard that as out of the question. Even if you fought it as a campaign broken up into one or two day battles of individual divisions, I think that would prove tedious for any except the most fanatical gamer. I know it would for me.

I think Jason (he can correct me if I'm wrong) has far more limited actions in mind though. He wants to show in detail the interaction of all arms. And for that, a maximum of from one regiment equivalent (if defending) or one division equivalent (if attacking) shown over one or two days combat might be about right.

Personally, I think both kinds of games could be interesting. I also think I would get more play value out of a game or series of games depicting corps-sized engagements using battalion-sized units with three or four turns per day as the scale.

I have more limited actions in mind as well. There simply is no way I could even find all the data needed to make a large historical scenario. On the other hand the elements I want in, like logistics, don't really come to play until you have at least a division.

Basicly I am with Jason on this, but I want to do more than just get rid of stacking and I am not at all convinced that company-sized units is the way to go. But I am willing to get my opinion changed.

Huge engagements are not out of question, but I have left those for advanced multiplayer modes. Think about 4-20 players playing the same battle, each player controlling a division (some might just represent Corps HQ, airforces or Corps artillery). Each player experiences the fog of war as the circumstances dictate. All communication between players will have to go thru the game engine. It all is recorderd so the other side can check after the game from AAR if you have fooled (used other means of communication and made moves that makes no sense). You could lose all contact to the higher HQ and other divisions of your side. That's when the fun begins when you find that the enemy has breached the front and half of your division is getting cut out and you are rapidly running out of supplies. What do you do? Do you try to break out, will you dig in trusting the higher HQ (player) that he is up to the situation and will come to rescue (does he even have forces to do it?) or will you continue following the orders you were giving?

I am seriously considering making the game freeware so campaigns and scenarios are very open for anyone to create.

[ June 06, 2005, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: Objekt 240 ]

[Objekt 240]

I experimented with company-sized counters. I can get regiments down to 60-70 counters if I ignore transportation. Divisions down to 200-400 counters. Support units are nearly worthless because I can't stack units. It would not be playable. I need to have battalion-sized counters if player controls entire division.

[flamingknives]

Nine infantry counters?

People can handle a battalion + at CM level (i.e. squad/team)

For the British ORBAT ( I forget the correct term) I count:

21 units per Brigade (US Regt. equivalent) for 3 Bn.s with organic support units.

Over and above that you have;

3 artillery batteries (=1 fd. Regt, RA),

1 MG Coy (though this would be split into platoon groups, I would imagine, so 3 units) and 1 heavy mortar unit,

3 Divisional ATk units,

3 LAA (Though these could be ignored for late war)

a recce unit (4 units)

1 Coy RA

---------

39 Company - sized units

Times 3 for the whole division:

117 units.

Add some for remainders and hangers-on:

150 units. (although that's not counting transport)

In CM, with a CW Bn. on map, I've got at least 100 units without looking at the myriad PIATs, 2" mortars and Sharpshooters I get, and that's before any form of armoured support larger than a Bren Carrier. or transport.

There are some fruitloops out there that play with multi-Bn. battles.