Balancing out commanders and the commanded

[aka_tom_w]

As historically accurate and fascinating as Tero's Treatise on Russian Military organizational strengths and weaknesses in WWII was, (as posted below), I sure do hope the first location of CMx2 is NOT the Eastern Front!

Please....

anything but the Eastern Front...

(sorry to complain like a North American... BUT nobody speaks English on the Eastern Front and because of that I felt like I missing something in CMBB IMO, but that is JUST me)

Great post by Tero though!

Thanks

-tom w

Originally posted by Tero:

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Indeed, CMx1 is inherently all about micromanagement because the element that makes or breaks a battle is the optimal and/or imaginative use of the lowest level units (i.e. Squads, Teams, and individual vehicles). Good Company or Battalion level planning doesn't mean a hill of beans if the lowest level units do the wrong thing or fail to do something ingenous. Therefore, the player's best interests lie in getting those little bits to do the right thing AS WELL as planning on when and where those bits engage in relation to all the other little bits.

Think of Soviet doctrine, especially in WWII. The lowest level elements were commanded by the least imaginative, flexible, and (very often) trained leaders in the Soviet Army. They were, depending on the period of the war and location, little more than cannon fodder. The real thinking took place at higher levels. Sometimes very brilliant plans were disasters because when it came time to execute everything went wrong. This is the single biggest reason the Soviets ALMOST lost the war in the beginning stages of Barbarossa. Brilliant strategic and operational planning were ALMOST not enough to compensate for the horrible state of the lowest levels of command.

I have always thought the fault in the Red Army was with the highest level of command. It was after all the highest ranks of officer corps which was decimated during the purges, not the lowest ones.

Even the early performance of the Red Army was a mixed bag. In Nomonhan and Lake Hasan the "unrevised" machine worked brilliantly enough to convince the Japanese not to try anything fancy later on. Poland was a no-contest situation. The failure during Winter War was due to faulty overall planning more than execution of the plans at low levels.

The reforms instigated by the experiences during Winter War had not yet taken effect when Barbarossa started. However, at no point did these reforms entail freedom for the small unit commanders beyond a very narrow margin at the very lowest tactical level. They were free to sacrifice their men while executing the plan.

High casualties were not detrimental to a junior officers career, failure to fulfill the mission was.

IMO the point is the low levels of the Red Army was never really revised from 1938 to 1945 beyond adobting new and improved small unit drills and procedures. They were restricted to executing them in strict accordance of the plans drawn up by the higher echelons of command. At no point were the small unit commanders even ALLOWED any latitude for deviation from the local master plan unless it was within the confines of the global master plan. And even then if anything they were allowed to finish their bit of the plan ahead of schedule.

Compared to other armies noted for their level of individual initiave at the low levels of command the entire Red Army structure was planned according to different criteria and different scale. The small parts of the structure were not expected to perform above and beyond the call of duty unless it was in order to make the master plan work.

How many of the Red Army operations failed because the plan was sound but the small parts of the machine failed to perform ? Off hand I can not think of any. Even such spectacular failures like the attack of Kharkov it was the plan which was inherently flawed (in addition to the fact the small units had no lattitude to deviate from it once things started to go sour), not the performance of the small units as such.

Even at the lowest ebb of the tide in the summer of 1941 it was the small parts of the machine performing their tasks mechanically while the higher echelons of the structure crumbled which saved the country.

[Battlefront.com]

I had mentioned time limits in the context of what is currently available in CMx1. If you want to play multi-player, and simulate the pressure and limiations of command decisions, then put the timer on. Not a perfect feature since it is very arbitrary, but it can give a flavor for how something like this (which a few people were talking about) might work.

Any sort of artificial time constraint like this in CMx2 will be user defined, just as things like in CMx1. We'll at least have some sort of timer for multi-player games since the main purpose is to keep the game moving instead of one player falling asleep while the other one ponders the meaning of life ;D

Although WWII Soviet doctrine, and Barbarossa in particular, are big passions of mine... I can't afford the time to get sucked into a conversation about it right now. Just to clarify for Tero, the operational plan to defeat a German invasion was brilliant and it eventually worked. However, they needed several more years to get the plan ready and therefore the plan nearly failed because the attack happened sooner than hoped. And that was my earlier point... if you have a good plan, but it can not be carried out competently by the lower elements, then the plan is in effect not good. (i.e. it won't work).

Check out books on the subject by Glanz and Fugate. One of the most interesting aspects of WWII IMHO.

Steve

[Tero]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Just to clarify for Tero, the operational plan to defeat a German invasion was brilliant and it eventually worked.

Trading space for time was/is the time hounoured Russian defensive strategy. As such it was however a strategic plan, not an operational one.

I do admit Stalin had a plan going when he was getting the buffer zone outside the Soviet borders in 1939-40. But by the same token he also killed off most (all ?) of the higher commanders who were able to competently wage the war as envisioned in their pre-war strategic/operational plans. What is more, the modern style armoured formations were disbanded and the doctrine of mobile warfare was shoved aside. All these combined spell out (to me at least) the operational genius was in a state of flux from 1938 to ~1942. IMO Stalin was left with no other options but to trade space for time when he had rendered his own army inoperable with his own actions. And the army was inoperable from the neck up. The small units did what they could as well as they could.

What you describe is not IMO a genious operational plan, it is a desperate last ditch effort to save what can be saved. Moving the production facilities beyond the Urals was part of this genious operational plan.

Unless of course it is to believed the victories at Nomonhan and Lake Hasan and the failure during Winter War were all parts of the same ingenious operational master plan to lure the Germans (who had worked with the Soviets to develop the basics of mobile armoured warfare) into attacking prematurely.

However, they needed several more years to get the plan ready and therefore the plan nearly failed because the attack happened sooner than hoped. And that was my earlier point... if you have a good plan, but it can not be carried out competently by the lower elements, then the plan is in effect not good. (i.e. it won't work).

True. But you did not make it clear that by lower elements you meant everything below Stalin, including STAVKA.

Stalin came up with some pretty disingenious plans in his time, like the attack to take Kharkov in 1942. And when it went sour he refused to deviate from the plan and this lead to a serious of set backs and disasters which did culminate in the success at Stalingrad.

Check out books on the subject by Glanz and Fugate. One of the most interesting aspects of WWII IMHO.

Any specific work(s) ?

[Tero]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

I can't afford the time to get sucked into a conversation about it right now. ....And that was my earlier point... if you have a good plan, but it can not be carried out competently by the lower elements, then the plan is in effect not good. (i.e. it won't work).

Getting off the side track and back to the CMX (or "zen and game designing" in general ):

How does the 1:1 modelling in CM2 tie in with the already existing CM1 competence features like morale and experience ?

How can a player in CM2 plan differently for the same tactical situations when playing with troops of different levels of competence ? If 1:1 control is essentially out then how does one cajole the less competent troops into acting the way one wants them to act ?

Also, will the player in CM2 actually KNOW the level of competence of the troops he purchaces ? Going by your statement above I would assume the player/commander should be wary about the level of competence of the purchased troops since if RL commanders could really not know how competent the troops would be. How do you plan on getting the mix between training and actual competence woven into the game ?

[kipanderson]

Tero, hi,

sorry, do not mean to interfer... but Before Stalingrad... by David M Glantz is his latest Barbarossa book.

In March he has a big item book out, 800 + pages, on the Red Army from 41 to 43... Colossus Reborn.

All good fun,

all the best,

Kip.

[Treeburst155]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

I had mentioned time limits in the context of what is currently available in CMx1. If you want to play multi-player, and simulate the pressure and limiations of command decisions, then put the timer on. Not a perfect feature since it is very arbitrary, but it can give a flavor for how something like this (which a few people were talking about) might work.

Any sort of artificial time constraint like this in CMx2 will be user defined, just as things like in CMx1. We'll at least have some sort of timer for multi-player games since the main purpose is to keep the game moving instead of one player falling asleep while the other one ponders the meaning of life ;D

Steve

Thanks for the clarification. It all sounds great to me.

Treeburst155 out.

[aka_tom_w]

bump

[aka_tom_w]

bump

[Midnight Warrior]

I just reread some of this post and had some more thoughts to toss out.

I agree that AI is not the way to fix the C2 problem. Having had some professional experience in developing AI I agree with Steve that the problem is in coding time and not run time. In general, it takes a very very long time to develop good AI but if well designed it can run amazingly fast. Also, AI takes away some of the players control and thus has the potential of lower the fun level and it is this need to preserve the fun level that is one of the things that makes a wargame so different than a real combat simulation.

In a game there are two things modeled, the physics and the human element. The physics can be modeled with some reasonable expectation of being somewhat realistic. On the other hand the human element can only either be abstracted or provided by the human players. Having the human player provide the human factor could lead to the option of introducing massive multiplayer to make that part more realistic. However, as a player that likes to play solitare (for various and sundry reasons) this option does not much appeal that much to me. Also, it may not really fix all of the the problems.

This brings leaves either abstracting the human element or ignoring it. Now how might one abstract it. This could be done bay either limiting information to a player or limiting his control. Limiting information (like Steve said in some post) is a good approach and I personaly applaud and look forward to what seems to be a new game feature in CMX2 where a player can only see the units that the selected unit can could see on the battlefield. This will IMHO go a long way in improving the modeling of the human element (not to mention enhancing the look and feel and drama of the gaming experience). The other option of limiting the players actions can also be used to abstract the human element but there may be better and worse ways of doing this. Limiting human action can be doen by either restricting certain behaviors or forcing others. Currently the game does this by modeling unit status such as broken, etc and by command delays. Perhaps some subtle enhancements of these can greatly increase the effect of the human element without affetcing either the fun level or the current look and feel of the game.

Back in the heydays of Sqaud leader AH tried another apporach to small unit combat in the game, Up Front, that made heavy use of playing cards. While the game perhaps had many flaws it also had many innovations that could perhaps be incorporated into modern computer based games to bring in more of the human element. Now computers may in some ways eliminate the whole idea of using cards in that the computer can directly model things that the cards did in a more clumsy fashion. But perhaps the notion of playing cards can still be useful to help us get our minds around some of the problems that could be modeled in software without the use of cards. The idea of a card is to introduce either random elements that affect play or the effects of commands from higher levels. For example in the venerable game, Monopoly, whenever you draw a card it either made you do something (Go to Jail, Take a ride on the Reading RR, etc) or gave you new powers (Get out of jail free card). Perhaps it might be of some interest to see how this might apply (in theory) to a game such as CMX2..

Example one. Getting Lost. Let's imagine a rule where a platoon moving in a woods has the chance of drawing a "card" that says YOU ARE LOST. YOU CAN ONLY VIEW THIS PLATOON AT LEVEL 1; PAST MOVEMENT ORDERS ARE CANCELED. NEW ORDERS THAT MOVE YOU MORE THAN A TOTAL OF 20M ADD 60 SEC DELAY. Now suppose that Platoon has it it's "hand" a card that it drew earlier when it wasn't moving "JUST LOOKED AT MAP: USE THIS CARD TO DISCARD YOU ARE LOST CARD. Now this is type of stuff is what most computer software does automatically buried somewhere in its logic. The only idea here is to formalize some of this logic and express it in a more human assessable form such as the notion of cards. And with computers one doesn't require the human to handle the actual mechanics of the cards but one can bury the mechanics under the user interface where the user may have some indication of what is happening but does not by his actions have to implement the actions. For example when the platoon drew the YOU ARE LOST CARD the human player could have been alerted to this by say a .WAVE file saying "where in the heck are we?" If the platoon had a JUST LOOKED AT THE MAP CARD it might then trigger a .wave file that says "It says onthe map we are right here!" The user interface might also even provide the user to look at some are all of the Virtual Cards by cliking on an icon that would inform him of the situation. These virtual cards could just be a dialog box are could be a rendition of a traditional playing card with cool graphics as eye candy (at the risk of changing the look and feel of the game).

Now the above may be a bit of a hoaky example but the idea here is not to go and design how all this would work but to toss out the idea (which in fact perhaps this idea should be "tossed out"). The idea here is that the human element can be introduced without the use of AI. It would could largely be transparant to the user but would have an affect on play. If done rightly it could enhance the gaming experience and the drama of the game. It could require quite a bit of programming but not nearly so much as AI. Also it could be phased in gradually. Perhaps a game version could start with only a few "cards" and then others could be added in subsequent updates. If implemented on a modular fashion new "cards" could be added as expansion modules which could be used to increase the game companies revinues (for I for one would pay for new cool game cards).

Example 2. Sit Tight Order. Perhaps another example might be a good way to end this. In this example the card may not be a random event but an order. Let's say a platoon receives a SIT TIGHT CARD from his company comander. This card might have the restrictions: CANCEL ALL MOVEMENT ORDERS FOR PLATOON. NEW MOVEMENT ORDERS CAN ONLY TOTAL 30M FROM PLATOON HQ UNLESS MOVING CLOSER TO HQ.

Now the Platoon leader may have a type of "Get out of jail free card" that is IGNORE ORDER: THIS CARD CAN BE DISCARDED ALONG WITH ANY ORDERS CARD (or it could be specific and only allow discarding orders from the company comander but not the Bn commander). Or maybe one can have a BEND ORDER card that would say PLAY THIS CARD AND DOUBLE ANY MOVEMENT RESTRICTIONS thus if one played the BEND ORDER to counter the SIT TIGHT ORDER then the 20 M movement limit could be doubled to 40 M for one turn. Or perhaps one could have a IGNORE ORDERS FOR ONE TURN card.

The idea here is that one can only disobey orders so many times without getting in big trouble. Now certain platoon leaders may be lacky's and seldom if ever "draw" and IGNORE ORDERS card. Other more platoon leaders with more pluck may be able to draw them more often.

BTW. Now one might say that the platoon leader would have no use of an IGNORE ORDER card since the same human palyer is playing both the company commander and the platoon comander and he can just have the company commander rescend the order rather than ignore it. However, this might require more lags in that there may be a bigger delay for the comapnay commander to issue the rescend order of the comapnay comander may be out of communicayion or have a limited number of orders he can give or he may have gotten a card "YOU CANNOT ISSUE ORDERS" that he needs to get rid of before he can cancel it.

Once again the idea is not to design how to implemnt this but merely to illustrate the concept. This would add a new dimension in the game play but would not affect the current game mechanics of single player control but would only add some minor variations that would occur beneath the surface.In affect it could add a game within the game in that the outer game would model two side shooting at each other while the inner game would model a seperate but related battle to getting other people to do what you want them to or keeping from having to do so yourself when others try to make you do what you don't want to do (like get killed).

Thus the idea is that even though the human player has both a borg like knowledge of what is going on and has one mind the card in affect simulate a lack of knowledge or a difference in wills among the commanders on the field. The idea here is not to make the game more realistic (for that may be next to impossible)but to make it more representative of those human factors that affect combat so as to include the look and feel of those factors even if it is through abstractions. And just as in a game like Monopoly the drawing of cards makes the game more fun and more unpredictable so might a game like CMX2 be made more fun and more unpredictable by using a similar artifact (though in a different way).

[ August 19, 2005, 10:29 PM: Message edited by: Midnight Warrior ]

[aka_tom_w]

very interesting post Midnight warrior..

That last post could probably have its own new thread because

at the bottom of this thread it might get missed by most folks.

Maybe I will make a new thread for it tomorrow?

-tom w