Re: DSII - Air Defence Levels.

Remember that in the DSII battle field, the command hierarchy has been
flattened to nearly non-existent. The hierarchy only exists for
historical
and unit morale reasons. Check out the DSII rule book, page 6, Command,
Control and Communications.

John M. Atkinson <john.m.atkinson@erols.com> wrote:
>> >And no reason the two can't coexist.
>>     But you may be looking for something that doesn't really exist.
>???  From a battalion commander's perspective, either his air support
>arrives, or not.
    The battalion commander being in the on-table command post, is that
right?

>If not, there are two reasons--either it's got a
>higher priority mission,
    Which means that the task force commander, the DSII player, has
given it
another mission to do or hasn't got it in the first place.

>or it's been shot down.
    No or ineffective escorting aerospace fighters purchased by the DSII
player or effective enemy AA or enemy interceptors purchased by the
opposing
DSII player.

>If it's shot down by
>patrolling interceptors,
    These aerospace interceptors could be fielded by the enemy task
force
commander or DSII player.

>that's completely beyond his scope--he cannot
>influence it in the slightest.
    Yes, I agree. But that's only the battlefield commander I believe.
Not
the Task Force commander which is effectively the DSII player. The DSII
player, or Task Force commander, can influence it in lots of ways from
the
force design stage, where elements are being designed and units are
being
purchased, right through to the deploying of aerospace and ZAD/ADS or
TADS
assets.

>So it's an influence on the battlefield,
>but indirectly.  Hence can be abstracted out with no loss in game play.
    We can model it directly and have a more effective game, where the
player Task Force commander has to consider air power and air defence
together with artillery, infantry and tanks.
    Of course, you could always say that both sides have no air power
and no
air defence with no loss of game play. This would allow more points to
spend
on ground forces. This would also be realistic, for example the ground
assault by coalition forces into Iraq, where there was no effective
enemy
air presence and the friendly air presence wasn't needed.

>> Modelling a Theatre Range Air Defence with a physical device like my
TADS
is
>> realistic and gives you a general air defence rating,
>
>Nonsense--chopping a single THAAD down to a battalion commander is no
>more realistic than chopping a MIRVed ICBM down to a BN Cdr.  A general
>"Air Defence Environment" is more flexible, allowing for an entire
>theatre of air warfare to be off-stage, rather than an artificial "OK,
>here's your battalion with it's organic strategic SAMs".
    But the TF commander, that is the DSII player, has access to these.
It
isn't the on-table commander in his command post vehicle. The on-table
commander hasn't got them. The entire on-table force benefits from the
off-board TADS, purchased by the task force commander, that reduces
enemy
air power directly by attacking aerospace elements as they come on the
table.

>I'm not talking about the enemy on-table commander, but the friendly
>one. An armoured battalion has no more business expecting to have a
>Patriot assigned to it than it does having a battleship assigned to it.
    In my Steel Panthers III games, I usually have a complete "ring" of
6
Patriot launchers surrounding an ammo dump. I find that it's reasonably
effective against enemy air power for the first 4-5 strikes. The
Patriots
aren't assigned to an armoured company or brigade, they're just in my
SPIII
Task Force.
    A US Marines formation some years ago would have had battleship
strikes
assigned to it, hopefully on enemy formations! :-). This can be modelled
in
DSII as Very Heavy Artillery or Full Thrust orbital artillery. I've
designed
a FT:FB frigate sized 20 MASS planetary bombardment monitor. It's only
66
FT:FB points. If we use the 1 FT point = 100 DSII points ratio, that
works
out as about 6,600 DSII points, which is only about twice the price of a
nine gun Heavy Artillery battery, but doesn't run out of ammunition, is
immune to most counter-battery	artillery and has a large area of
effect.
    Sure the planetary bombardment monitor can be countered by
anti-space
defences, just use some aerospace fighters and play a FT:FB space battle
over the DSII table. But there's no need to buy points for a generic
anti-space craft defences unless they're planetary based, just have some
space assets. To counter this, just specify that neither side has space
assets.

>And besides, those things come in batteries--6 Patriot launchers and
one
>control centre, for instance.	Now we've gone to 24,000 points. Plus
>the control vehicle.
    Well, I believe that 6 Patriot launchers and one control centre is
actually one system. I've even got a rule on my site for distributing
big
systems over several vehicles. So I believe a DSII Patriot equivalent is
only about 4000 DSII points. Your version may differ depending on how
accurate and deadly you believe Patriot to be.

If you just want a generic air defence level, the TADS cost of 4000
points
is an ideal starting point in working out what it could be. This is
because
this is the cost of a device to implement a generic air defence level
across
the DSII table top.

Hope this helps!

Andrew Martin
Shared email: Al.Bri@xtra.co.nz ICQ: 26227169
Blind See-Saw, DSII, DSII FAQ, GZG-L email FAQ, FUDGE, UY, MSH & WBG:
    http://members.xoom.com/AndrewMartin/