Re: Missiles and campaigns and stuff

Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

>>So because you find it a hassle, you frown on anyone drawing the
>>logical conclusion of your 1) finding fixed edges "patently absurd"
>>and 2) playing on too small a table or at least setting the fleets up
too
>>close together.
> 
>I'm sorry I don't understand. You had, falsely, come to the conclusion
>that I used hard edges, which I simply corrected with my reasoning for
>the choice.

That conclusion came from your habit of expressing rather emphatic
dislike of floating edges, without saying that you actually use them
occasionally :-/

>And excuse me for being a lazy git, but YES, I do find moving *scores*
>of miniatures, keeping their relative alignments and positions intact,
a
>bloody hassle. I find it inconvenient even with a hex map, let alone a
>nondiscrete table.

YMMV. It seems that your battles are about the same as mine; I don't
find the floating edges a hassle. Could be because of my slightly
bigger table, though (effectively bigger; physically it is of course
much smaller); I have some extra mu in each direction before I need to
float the table.
 
>And this is assuming no one starts thinking about pincer maneuvers...

At least very wide pincers, yes. Again the few extra mu width of my
table may be significant; I've quite often used on-table pincer attacks
to good effect.
 
>>If any weapon (except SV stingers <g>) can shoot almost from the
>>edge of one deployment zone to the edge of the other, the fleets are
>>definitely set up too close together...
> 
>Ahem, I don't follow you quite here. I seem to recall the old (albeit
>optional) sensor rules had detection range of 54MU. Perhaps I'm just
>dead wrong assuming setting up about 60MU apart is just fine. 

According to FT2 p.21, 54mu is the range at which you can do *active*
sensor scans. Beyond that range you only detect the enemy ships as
bogies, but you are perfectly able to determine their location, speed,
course and general size (though the last can be modified if the enemy
uses decoy drones and/or weasel boats).

I don't know about you, but if I saw a huge number of escort-sized
bogeys approaching at relatively high speeds I'd make damn certain not
to barge straight in when I hit active sensor range :-/

>>If they launched too early believing that you'd
>>keep advancing, all they achieved was to waste their missiles for
>>nothing and you won the battle on walk-over.
>
>Well, I guess we'll just have to disagree on this, but I consider a
>"nil - nil" score a DRAW if neither side had a special objective to
>attack/defend.

In a campaign where replacement missiles aren't completely free, a
"nil-nil" score where missiles were expended are a loss (or at best a
losing draw) for the missile player.

In one-off battles, at least my opponents rapidly tired of bringing
missile boat fleets which they knew were unable to hurt me, and started
using mixed fleets instead - problem solved :-)
 
>(And for the record, the missile fleet does work better (i.e. faster
>results) combined with regular units which force the enemy to engage -

Of course. MTMs in fleet battles are IMO best used to herd the enemy
into the best fire arcs of your combat units; but if your enemy has
enough regular units to threaten your fleet after his MTMs have missed

>- but using it all-out is not such a bad choice for a raiding force)

As long as the target is reasonably immobile, yes.

>Analogies? Let's try strategic bombing. You want to take Bagdad NOW,
>you send in the troops. If you can afford the wait to wear it down,
your
>bombers go in night after night after night. You don't expect to
destroy
>it any one night, but you can drop bombs faster than he can rebuild.

The Germans tried this during the Battle of Britain, with very little
success.

The Allies tried this during all of WW2, with very little success.
Massive civilian casualties of course, but very little effect on the
German war effort.

The US tried this in Vietnam, again with very little success.

The Allies tried this during Desert Storm, with marginal success - the
tactical bombings worked reasonably OK, but the strategic attacks (the
hunt for the Scud ramps, bomb raids against government buildings etc)
didn't. Ten years later Saddam is still top dog in Bagdad.

AFAIK, the Kosovo War last year was the first time strategic bombing
against civilian infrastructure actually won the war... but ironically
enough these bombings weren't really supposed to occur since the Allies
didn't want any "collateral" (ie., civilian) casualties. Most of the
air effort in Kosovo went into tactical bombing, which was quite
spectacularly unsuccessful :-/

>Subs. Launch torps, get the hell outta Dodge. Heck, even artillery is
>meant to hurt the other guy from where he can't hurt you. There are
>numerous real-world examples where being able to hit from out of
>harm's way has taken precedence over per-shot effectiveness.

IMO the important word here is *hit*. If you - like the unsupported MTM
boats against a mobile target, the artillery during much of WW1, or the
Allied bombers during much of WW2 or the recent Kosovo war - *don't*
hit your targets, you're simply wasting (usually huge amounts of)
money... not that your generals and politicians are very likely to
admit that, of course, but they tend to have serious problems
afterwards when the public finds out just how much the inefficient
fireworks actually cost.

>>years. Unfortunately you didn't give any entry parameters in your
>>scenario set-up apart from "Start the battle in the normal way.",
which
>>is about as unspecific as you can get.
> 
>I'm sorry, I should have been more specific. By "normal way" I meant
>something like what is to be found in the example scenarios in the
>rulebook. Which have initial velocity around 10 or so. 

8 :-)

>I, perhaps wrongly, assumed that is close enough to what most people
>are using.

The difference between the initial speed (8) of the "very simple, quick
scenario designed to allow players to familiarise themselves with the
basic mechanics..." and the maximum speed you stated later (10+max
thrust) isn't very large, but in this scenario it can be quite
important. It would be the difference between my having to float the
table and not having to float the table, for example.

>>As Roger pointed out, your resupply rules seem to have been
>>extremely generous.
> 
>Not really. First of all, it was a commerce raiding campaign (i.e.
>attacking main bases was not really an option). Second, there was only
>about 2 or 3 reloads needed.

So? For a pure missile force, that's still a quite significant value.

>Let's consider a real-life analogy: A sub captain has to carefully
>manage his torpedo supply while on patrol. But when he gets back to
>base, there's no question about not affording a full reload (unless
>things are *really* bad for his side).

Which they may well be, if the systems were considered "too expensive"
prior to the campaign so  you don't have large enough stockpiles. Again
I wish to point to the Kosovo War, where the US and their allies
basically ran out of cruise missiles and smart bombs and were forced to
resort to rather more primitive weapons as a result.

I don't know any examples where subs were unable to refill their
torpedo magazines completely due to low stocks at their bases, but
there are quite a few examples where carriers were unable to replenish
their "magazines" (ie., their flight groups) with "ammunition"
(aircraft) when they needed to simply because there weren't any
replacements available at their home base at the time.

>Another analogy for realism: Let's say you went to Pentagon and said
>you have a weapon technology that's slightly less powerful,
pound-for->pound, than what they currently have, but it never needs to
be reloaded. >Would they go for it, or would they go for it? Hmmm...
what was the >reason they went for M-16? Did it just happen to have
something to do >with logistics?
 
IIRC it was - though given the early problems with the M-16, the AK-47
(with *very* easy logistics, but lower prestanda) must've seemed quite
attractive <g>

But that's exactly my point. The Pentagon in this case is equivalent to
whoever set the campaign up and determined the resources available to
the players. If missile reloads are free there won't be any shortage of
them; if they cost something they will eat into the resources
available, reducing the number of ships available etc.

>The availability of infinite-shot weapons tech would kill off
>ammo-using weapons except in some niche areas where the infinite->shot
tech just can't do the job.
>Ammo-using weapons, as they are, are (presumably) balanced for a
>one-off where everyone starts with a full load. Right?
>In a campaign the ammo-users are already disadvantaged by the need >to
make reload trips (as there are no rules for other aspects of warship
>endurance) and the possibility of being caught when ammo is low or
>gone.

There are rules for freighters. What is to stop you from using
reasonably fast fleet colliers which can resupply your missile boats
almost immediately (ie, without a round trip to the nearest supply base
somewhere in your own territory)? Suddenly this "disadvantage" has
almost evaporated. There is a small possibility that the enemy finds
you while you're reloading in which case you have to run away, but
that's it.

Starfire campaigns uses maintenance just like you suggest. However,
missile reloads still cost extra, simply because missiles allow you to
stand off and pound a shorter-ranged foe to dust without risking any
damage. Originally missile reloads were free, and for some strange
reason missile-armed ships were more dominant in campaigns than they
were in one-off battles. They dominated the one-off battles as well,
but not to the same extent as they did in campaigns - in spite of the
fact that there are more WP assaults in Starfire campaigns than there
are in one-off battles, and that the ammo-less weapons are considerably
better in WP battles than anywhere else.

In FT you run out of missiles sooner than you do in Starfire, but the
fundamental relationship between long-range expendables and
shorter-ranged ammo-less weapons is still the same. I really don't
think you can balance missiles in a campaign, be it operational or
grand strategic, if you allow them to get their reloads for free.

>A word on building ships during campaigns.
> 
>I guess my view differs from the norm here. What most people seem to
>regard as campaigning, I view as fighting out the whole war.

Most people are crippled by too much MOO/Space Empires/Starfire etc <g>
 
>What I find most interesting in campaigning is playing the admiral of
>a task force. You get assigned a task force to do a job. You may beg
for
>more, but what you get depends on your success rate, luck and how
>things are going on the other fronts. I.e. the acquisition process is
>not under your total control, you can not suddenly put on a
>presidential or ship designer hat and pour all resources into your pet
>project. In addition, the fortunes of war might even call some of your
>forces off to another front.

Field modifications, replacements of modules... the way wet-navy
warships are designed today, it'll be possible to reconfigure them from
one role to another in a matter of days as long as you have a large
enough crane and the appropriate payload modules available.
 
>This makes for a great balancing tool: If you're doing too well, the
>higher-ups start thinking maybe you could make do with less...

Sure. For example, "Commodore, it seems that your expected shipment of
missile reloads has been intercepted and destroyed by enemy raiders.
It'll take us another two months to send you new ones." <G>

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry