The Ground is Fertile ...

[JasonC]

Obj240 is completely wrong. He can't see the operational level I am discussing, confusing it with panzerblitz. And his battalion scale counters will not work - that scale will always mask almost all real combined arms complexity - because whole regiments often are total doses with a little o everything - and so reward ubermass thinking.

"main concern is getting in things like chaos, confusion, SNAFU, space, recon, C3, logistics, traffic"

Triple ugh, not the point at all. You aren't writing a thesis on the role of the radio in warfare, you are designing a strategy game. The point is emphatically *not* to pile up glue between the player's hands and the in-game forces he has to manipulate to accomplish his chosen tasks. It is to design a game - game, not sim, design, not engineer - that puts critical variables in players hands, so their matched wits can determine outcomes. Grand tactics has sufficient move&counter complexity for this, if and only if, real combined arms effects and their interaction with terrain are adequately shown. The rest is keep it simple and playable.

"Battles become huge."

Horsefeathers, you don't do the Russian front you do one battle, a division level engagement should be typical. Nothing huge about it.

"If infantry company is an individual unit, so then must mortar platoons"

Wrong, the line infantry companies include their organic heavy weapons platoon, and a battalion level heavy weapons company is another single counter. With HMG and 81mm mortar assets, typically. A battalion is 4 little units that can deploy to hit one hex or to cover 10 thinly. A typical real deployment might have company, space, company up front, with a reserve company and the heavy weapons in second line. The heavy weapons could support a few hexes with its 81s.

"Now imagine the number of individual units when you are in control of a division."

I don't have to imagine it, modeling division tasking decisions at the company level is exactly what I am advocating. I know how many counters it means a typical division has, the answer is around 50, with big ones with lots of attachments running more like 75. The higher figure is less than the typical command span in a CM battalion level fight. The lower one is a bit larger than a single company fight - two companies with vehicles and weapons say.

"Especially if you have to deal with logistics, calculating tonnage of supplies"

God no, a 2 hour turn, few day affair would certainly not have players calculating supply tonnage figures. They wouldn't control such things anyway, they are in the position of division and KG level commanders and operations officers. They'd have artillery rations and potentially low ammo states for other units when resupply is not readily available, that is all.

"Hexes would have to be something like 300-600 meters in width."

500m, yes exactly. A single company counting on its fire ZOCs could hold 1500m of front, but bunched up to attack a whole battalion might use that amount of space. Which is fine. If you want to use more than that on such frontage, you have to use it in sequence over several turns, employing depth.

"units like tanks must be able to fire over several hexes."

2-4 at most, just soft ZOC regions that trigger fire when the enemy tries to move through them too rapidly. Since the CRT is all fire based anyway, you are nearly there.

Artillery is going to fire over multiple hexes in any case. It is not like that can be avoided, not unless you go up to corps scale, where there is no variety to speak of among units.

"if you have that, you also need things like mortars firing smoke."

(1) Horsefeathers, it wasn't done, couldn't be kept up over 2 hour time scales anyway, there is no point in modeling it. (2) Arty fire is going to be indirect by the map any way you slice it. Arty ranges are 10 km. You want 10 km hexes? If you do, your maneuver counters need to be divisions and you have left grand tactical completely.

"model line-of-sight"

Whoopie do, they are 500m hexes, it is mostly abstract at that level. You never have to check more than 3-4 hexes. Anything but clear blocks LOS. Clear allows it. No problem. (If you want a special high hill terrain you can have it I suppose - it just overrides the previous and spots unless there is hill in the way).

"turns that represent something like 15-30 minutes."

There is no requirement for that whatever. 2 hours will work just fine. A lot can happen in a turn, that will take care of all the rest. E.g. everytime somebody leaves a ZOC, it gets shot.

"Battalions that contain swappable companies"

No no no, utterly missing the point. The entire point is to *preserve* the combined arms problem. If you let the players make little total dose packages of everything, everywhere, then there is again nothing left but massing.

The most that might be allowable is a vehicle unit and a leg unit in each hex.

[JasonC]

The combined arms problem is not equal to making little mixed packages of everything. Combined arms is a term that describes a set of paper scissors rock tactical relationships, not a one size fits all prescription for solving the problems those relationships create, mindlessly.

There are places where pure infantry shines, nothing else can replace it, you flat *need* infantry. Or where it can take lots of guys with it, no matter what you have or try.

There are other places where armor can annihilate infantry without breaking a sweat. But guns stop them. But arty suppresses those guns. Etc.

*Not* abstracted, *not* all rolled into a combat factor or the attributes of a stack. Tightly interacting with terrain and offensive or defensive stance and with odds applied in the little local match up.

The actual combat, modeled - not the bean counting minutae that shades its outcomes around the edges. Anybody who thinks that is what division level command is about hasn't the slightest idea what it actually involved.

If a task force has a light tank company, an armored car + jeep cavalry company, a halftracked AA battery, and fire support from a battery of Priests, it is *not* one counter with some mixed capability. It is 4 distinct elements.

An infantry battalion set to defend a woods area doesn't need anything else to defend strongly. If there is also one AT battery to put with them one weakness - stand off harassing fire by armor the infantry can't hurt - can also be covered. Not by "stacking", but by putting the ATGs between two infantry companies, if the terrain allows perhaps a hex behind them.

Then one can imagine the former trying to deal with the latter, by first using the priests to suppress the ATGs, then using the light armor to hose from beyond the wood area. Without having any good way to dig all that infantry out of cover, though.

Take away the cover, put the infantry in the open, and the light armor just rocks 'em. Kills them easily over a few turns at most.

Give the defenders one StuG company, and the light armor runs or gets toasted.

Real combined arms.

[Michael Dorosh]

I actually did make a VASSAL interface for a divisional level game, complete with counters at the company level. The plan was to use the campaign to generate CM type battles, to be resolved in CM. May pick it up again when CMX2 comes out, but the point here is that JasonC has it pretty well dead on when talking about how many "counters" a division would take. I did them all by hand in Paint for some of the Canadian and German divisions on South Beveland in October 1944.

Here are the counters for the Second Canadian Infantry Division - just infanty battalions and divisional engineers. Divisional artillery, recce regiment, and MG battalion are not shown.

[Ales Dvorak]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Unless a company really screws up, it can count on enough sales to make at least a little money.

Hmmm..... I like it.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by JasonC:

"If infantry company is an individual unit, so then must mortar platoons"

Wrong, the line infantry companies include their organic heavy weapons platoon, and a battalion level heavy weapons company is another single counter. With HMG and 81mm mortar assets, typically. A battalion is 4 little units that can deploy to hit one hex or to cover 10 thinly. A typical real deployment might have company, space, company up front, with a reserve company and the heavy weapons in second line. The heavy weapons could support a few hexes with its 81s.

I'm curious. How do heavy weapons platoons deploy in real life? I wouldnt think all the MGs stay together in a company. So if I am correct, perhaps give a bonus to any line companies that are close enough to be supported by the Heavy Weapons Company MGs?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by David Chapuis:

I'm curious. How do heavy weapons platoons deploy in real life? I wouldnt think all the MGs stay together in a company. So if I am correct, perhaps give a bonus to any line companies that are close enough to be supported by the Heavy Weapons Company MGs?

I think this is where Cory and I feel the same - speaking for myself, I'd like to see a system that doesn't just treat heavy weapons as "factors" or "bonuses". The appeal of CM is that it pretends to be a nuts-and-bolts depiction of tactical combat, with real life factors determining outcome. Easier to do with armour penetration or rates of fire than human factors, but...

Which is the appeal of what Moon just alluded to yesterday, about an operational map being used to trigger tactical actions. CM1 is still not capable of realistically depicting anything more than a company battle, as JasonC and Cory both agree on (I think?). Am I right at thinking Cory thinks it should be?

If CMX2 manages to create realistic burdens on subunit commanders, in addition to all else that is promised, I think we shall have a winner.

I don't see the appeal in games like JasonC has pointed out; it is so much more rewarding to see things act out in 3-D rather than an abstract gameboard situation with counters and hexes. Not just through lack of imagination, but so much is simply either "factored in" through methods the player is oblivious to, or left to chance, through the whims of a die.

[Objekt 240]

Thanks everyone for your input, especially Jason.

I played with company-sized units a bit more and it does play better on paper than what I thought. Jason's model forces player to commit forces in depth and think about formations, simply because he can't have battalion's assets spread in a 1000 meter wide treeline.

But is it too artificial if player can't reinforce infantry companies with battalion machinegun and AT/IG gun assets? I think it is a bit unrealistic, but on the other hand I like it how you can't make so much use of guns unless terrain is really suitable and how it forces the player to make decisions.

A scenario: Two infantry companies are defending a 1000 meter wide treeline (two hexes) against expected enemy attack. If you can reinforce infantry companies with 1-2 support platoons, you could give those companies a HMG platoon and a AT-gun platoon. But if you can't reinforce infantry companies, you would put those infantry companies to secure flanks (or use them as reserve) and put Heavy Company and AT-company at the treeline. The first is more flexible, and perhaps more realistic, but the second model may offer more interesting gameplay. Opinions?

I haven't found a solution to the line-of-sight problem caused by company-sized units. The basic problem is that I have to figure out should guns of type X open fire at targets of type Y when range is R and angle is Z. This is a real problem with tanks and AT-guns, because I have to calculate penetration possibilities at different ranges and angles. Similar problem is figuring out how each different unit reacts when it comes under fire from various types of units. Should they withdraw, continue forward, stay and fight, call in mortar fire... Many questions like that. No easy answers, except if units fire automatically whenever they have even a slight possibility to hurt the target. Is it too simple? Perhaps give ambush command so unit fires only at point blank or when nearby units fire or receive fire? When unit comes under fire it always stops, so that you need to suppress defenders if you plan to bypass their positions?

Battalion-sized units would remove these problems. I do not think battalion-sized units would mean having everything everywhere. Battalion-sized units make the battle one step bigger, so battalion-level support assets become less powerful. One unit would have only a few AT-guns, no real artillery and no tanks. You would still get same paper-scissors-rock elements. The only unit type that is missing is Heavy Company, but it is supposed to support battalion's companies anyway and regimental gun assets replace Heavy Companies on the board. You get tanks and other assets in exchange, making the game more colorful.

But I can see that you lose some of the elements you get with company-sized units. Depth and formations are no longer as important. Less detailed terrain favors tanks and guns. Player can use massing of artillery fire to deal with remaining enemy pockets, instead of using infantry companies... There are some elements like these. The trend being the player has less problems to deal with. I don't like that.

The game might be better with company-sized units, but line-of-sight issues need to be solved. One another issue is writing AI for such a game, but I am not going there just yet.

I have no plans to design a game that will reward massing, even if I would use battalion-sized units. I want to get combined arms right, but combined arms is not everything there is to battles. I want to get rid of unrealistic hyper control and battlefield awareness. I want supply and command. I will make the game as simple and playable as possible, but the player will have to make decisions on how to move forces, keep them supplied and in command. Most strategy games ignore these problems. History tells us that these problems are more important than combat itself.

Yes, most of these problems do not really belong to a regiment level battle that lasts three days. Player shouldn't need to deal with supply states of individual companies. But these problems do belong to a division-corps level battle that lasts two weeks. That can be achieved by having at least battalion-sized units or by having cooperative multiplayer modes. With cooperative multiplayer both sides can be corps sized in strength, even if single player controls only a regiment or a division.

It seems most people here think players could control a division, which would be great if true. It would give me more room to get in command, supply and transportation. I am still not convinced, but perhaps I am wrong. I will test it further. The number of counters you are getting are different from the numbers I get, because I count in HQ units (I need them to get command and control elements right). I also divided Heavy Companies into platoons, so that infantry companies could be reinforced. Perhaps we don't need reinforced infantry companies, so the number of counters would be lower. Here's one example of how many counters you may get even with a single regiment. I admit it's not the most typical regiment, but it should give an idea.

Gross-Deutchland Infantry Regiment 1941

Regiment HQ

Artillery Battalion HQ

150mm Artillery Battery

105mm Artillery Battery

105mm Artillery Battery

First Battalion HQ

1st Company

2nd Company

3rd Company

Machinegun Company HQ

Machinegun platoon

Machinegun platoon

Machinegun platoon

Mortar platoon

Heavy Company HQ

Light Anti-Tank platoon

Medium Anti-Tank platoon

FlaK platoon

Motorized Pioneer platoon

Second Battalion (same as 1st)

Third Battalion (same as 1st)

Fourth Battalion HQ

Light Infantry Gun Company HQ

Light Infantry Gun platoon

Light Infantry Gun platoon

Light Infantry Gun platoon

Panzerjäger Company HQ

Anti-Tank platoon

Anti-Tank platoon

Anti-Tank platoon

Heavy Infantry Gun Company HQ

Heavy Infantry Gun platoon

Heavy Infantry Gun platoon

Assault Gun Company HQ

StuG platoon

StuG platoon

StuG platoon

Fifth Battalion HQ

Reconnaissance Company HQ

Armoured Car platoon

Motorcycle platoon

Mortar section

Machinegun section

Motorized Pioneer Company

FlaK Company HQ

FlaK platoon

FlaK platoon

FlaK platoon

That is 74 counters, not including supply columns, transportation or signals. 42 counters if no companies are divided into platoons. Perhaps companies of 4th and 5th battalion should be divided in any case, because those companies are a bit of an overkill if they occupy only a single hex.

A more typical infantry regiment has less counters, but it seems clear to me that a division can easily contain over 100 counters, even if you don't divide heavy weapons platoons.

The number of counters isn't necessarily such a problem. There is no reason why player couldn't choose how many regiments he wishes to control. I just need to have an idea of what kind of battles a typical player would prefer.

[Michael Emrys]

BTW, player workload is not strictly proportional to the number of units a player has to control. It's more like (n•c)^2 where n = number of counters and c = complexity or number of decisions a player may have to make regarding each counter. Since their product is squared, workload rises rather precipitously with an increase of either complexity of rules or number of counters.

Conversely, you can have an easy playing game with lots of counters if the rules are simple and straightforward so that the number of things a player has to consider for each counter are few. Alternately, you can have a game with very complex rules and very few counters and it will still play quickly.

So the thing that mostly determines how easy a game is to play (which in turn has a lot to do with how much fun it is—except for masochists) is the total number of decisions a player has to make each turn. The reason they tend to increase at geometric rate or better is that each decision has to be weighed in making every other decision.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

So, when I said that I had been comfortable playing games with 200 counters or more, it should be understood that these were games with fairly simple rules and straightforward mechanics. Other games having more complex rulesets and mechanics were a different matter. When playing a game like Squad Leader, for instance, I seldom enjoyed a game where I had more than 20-25 counters I had to control.

Michael

[JasonC]

Don't make separate platoons, the platoon level version of such things already exists. It is called the panzergrenadier series from Avalanche.

"I'm curious. How do heavy weapons platoons deploy in real life? I wouldnt think all the MGs stay together in a company."

Weapons platoons and weapons companies are not the same thing. Line companies have organic weapons platoons, and those should be reflected in the fighting ability of the line companies themselves. But -battalions- also have weapons -companies-. The most important element of them is usually the -battalion mortars-. They most certainly do deploy separately, not spread out with the line companies. They also have MG platoons, which typically have defensive deployments.

At 500m per hex, a realistic deployment puts the heavy weapons company a hex behind the front line ones, sometimes more. In rare cases to stretch the line, it might be upfront - I can cite many cases where US weapons companies were so deployed (from the Bulge e.g.). An HMG unit would realistically be able to provide some fire at range 2, and the mortars would provide fire out to more like range 5. They'd thus be able to support a line without stacking, and the mortars would be able to support any part of even a widely spread battalion line from a center rear location.

As for stacking, it can't be rewarded and I'd prefer to see none at all, or maximum one vehicle and one leg type. But the pzpdr system's way of handling this sort of thing is simply to let (most) fire effect everyone in the hex, so if you stack you get hit harder in direct proportion. The only exception in that system is AT fire, which hits only the unit targeted.

As for battalion, no it is not remotely the same, and having similar units types can't make it so. Actual battle tasking was done at the company level. Individual tank companies worked with individual infantry companies. Operating something like a recon battalion involves actual decisions about where to put its 5 components, how tightly to deploy, etc. If you roll them all into one counter you pretend the unit has only one deployment and you effectively make the regimental team the unit of real analysis. At that level, forces were practically homogeneous and combined arms is already gone.

Remember, no player it going to be restricted to using one unit to do anything. He has multiple hexes, even if he can't stack in each one. Is his little grouping ever going to vary from a standard "total dose" mix? If it isn't, you might as well reward massing, it is the only thing left.

In the V for Victory series, the units on the map were battalions. The actual force one typically coordinated to do anything (other than stand there like a speed bump and get run over by a concentrated fist) was a division. You stacked 2-4 battalions in 3-4 hexes. Really clever play sometimes put one high quality infantry type battalion in each hex, and then added armor and specials on top like cherries - this let the infantry take the losses and maximized that system's outsized bonuses. But it meant the typical single combat resolution, on the thinnest deployments anyone would actually use to attack, involved a reinforced regiment of attackers, never less.

In TOAW, it was more like a division (battalion smallest) to a corps (regiment smallest unit scale). When single abstracted combat results are between entire divisions and corps, there is no room whatever for grand tactical anything. You've abstracted past the level where variety of weapons, arms, ranges, terrain etc made any real difference. You just get bags of uniform combat power.

Then you can count beans until the cows get tired, but strategy has left the building. And no, history does not tell us beans are more important than battle - on the contrary. People who don't know very much about battle know how to count beans, and computers love to count things. All the real complexity that makes human decisions matter, happen at the scale where A beats B outright but only exchanges off against C - number of beans be damned. Logical complexity is a tree-d out mess of nested either-ors, not a statistical description of a particle in a heat bath. Which is why chess and Go are strategy games, and bean counting isn't.

[Objekt 240]

Bean counting vs strategy. I agree.

I tested company-sized game further.

500 meters is a lot of space and two hours is a lot of time. It is enough to contain a whole battle between two battalions or have mobile units move over 50 hexes. Two hours is too long to be a natural reaction time for company-sized units. 500 meters is too much space to never contain anything but a company of infantry.

I think companies should be able to have 1-2 support platoons that cause stacking penalties. I think a turn should be 30-60 minutes, with rally and changes in formation taking at least a turn.

1-2 support platoons per company is not bean counting and it doesn't mean having everything everywhere. Even GD battalion has only two AT-platoons (one with three 3.7cm PaKs, one with three 5cm PaKs). On regiment level I have three more 5cm PaK platoons. If I commit these three additional AT-platoons to infantry companies, so that each infantry company has AT-gun platoon, I have committed all my AT assets. My infantry companies have lost much of their mobility, I will lose AT-guns unnecessarily for enemy indirect and infantry fire and have no AT strongpoint, reserve or depth. It is wiser to concentrate AT-platoons in depth on area that is likely to face armored enemy forces. These are decisions left for player to make, not something for me to dictate.

I have thought about a less conventional idea about hexes and units. I have thought about it mostly with battalion-sized units, but it could work with company-sized units as well. I am thinking about a model in which a single unit-of-command can occupy multiple hexes of space. Infantry company could spread, in defence, across several hexes (1-5 in width, 1-3 in depth), but it would still be commanded as one unit. Spreading the company would cause certain calculated penalties in performance. Company would still move as one hex. Support companies would work in the same way. I could have Heavy Company 1-2 hexes behind the defending infantry company, but have its HMG platoons spread forwards to support the infantry company (and perhaps some other nearby unit in other direction). Mortar platoon would remain further back. Spreading the company would again cause certain penalties for performance. It is a bit like zones-of-control but there are differences.

With battalion-sized units I have used this model to bring in tactical elements and to make fronts more flexible and spread. With company-sized units it could be used to make the use of support weapons more realistic.

I might have to make hexes smaller, around 300 meters in width.

I am still not convinced that batallion-sized units automatically lead to gameplay that has no room for tactics and rewards massing. It is true that battalion-sized units lead easily into every unit has everything problem. This problem can be countered by things like rewarding the concentration of support units (AT-guns), by having single unit-of-command occupying multiple hexes and by having a number of different states. The big problem comes from strategy games where you can stack battalions and units are in neat lines with almost no fog of war elements. It is very hard to concentrate attack against a single battalion if I can't stack battalions and single battalion can occupy multiple hexes. It would be hard to know where the real battalion "core" is located in the first place. In such game thoughtless play leads either to slow advance that makes defending indirect fire very deadly or to narrow penetrations with mobile forces that are vulnerable to AT assets laid in depth. Strategy games out there are just unimaginative in design.