Re: Points, was Re: grav

John Atkinson wrote:

 >>way in hell the BMP-3's payload can fit in a DS2 size 2 vehicle.
'Course,
 >>you could say that all Russian vehicles get one level of Stealth in
DS2
 >>terms...
 >
 >Could. I think stealth as applied to ground vehicles
 >has a lot to do with deliberately designing them to be
 >small.

I fully agree that it could represent this - but it pretty much requires

you to let go of the notion that the DS2 points value of a vehicle has 
anything whatever to do with the manufacturing cost of the vehicle.

Why?

In order to fit the 100mm low-pressure gun, the BMP-3 has to be size/4
or /5
(depending on how you model said gun), which means that it needs to have

2-3 levels of stealth to get a smaller signature than the "size/3"
Bradley. 
Even if you design the Bradley with Superior FCS for both missile and
gun 
and the BMP-3 with Basic for both in order to minimize the difference in

cost, the BMP-3 ends up costing ~260 pts if size/4 or ~430 if size/5
while 
the size/3 Bradley costs just over 100 pts.

If your "points cost represents purchase cost" theory were true for
today's 
real-world vehicles, the above points costs would indicate that a BMP-3 
costs some 2-4 times as much to build as a Bradley. It doesn't - in fact

every cost estimate I've seen for the two makes the Bradley the more 
expensive of the two even when you're considering factory-new vehicles.

If the points system were doing its job of rating the combat power of
the 
two vehicles (which I claim that it doesn't succeed in doing), the above

points costs would suggest that a BMP-3 can take on 2-4 Bradleys with a 
roughly even chance of winning. I don't have to be a US-military
chauvinist 
to know that that isn't true... <G>

 >>>And it's USA. USAR is United States Army Reserve.
 >>
 >>Interesting. Armor magazine (don't remember which
 >>issue though) seemed to use the USAR acronym to include US units
deployed
 >>in Europe as well? IIRC they did this because the acronym "USA" is
often
 >>used to refer to the United States of America - ie., what you
Americans
 >>simply refer to as "US".
 >
 >US troops in Europe are USAREUR--United States Army
 >Europe. The R is added because English-speakers have
 >no way to pronounce "AEU" comfortably. :)

The article used "USAR" as a collective term for both units in the CONUS
and
units in Europe, so USAREUR would have been incorrect. Ah well <shrug>

 >>>LAV: RFAC 1 (T) and what, 8 dismounts? Just a hair
 >>>over size 2.
 >>
 >>Take another look at its physical size. If that is size 2, it has -2
levels
 >>of Stealth slapped on to make its effective signature 4.
 >
 >Depends. . . I use GHQ LAV miniatures as my entire
 >size-2 Akritai force. No one seems to think they are
 >outsize.

I wasn't talking about your models. I'm talking about the real-life
vehicles.

 >As an Army guy I don't get much chance to
 >seem 'em in real life.

I have seen both a Bradley and several LAVs/Piranhas in real life.
They're 
quite big indeed... particularly when parked beside a BMP-3 :-/

 >>You didn't answer the question, though. Do you choose your points
system to
 >>reflect a) combat power or b) procurement/manufacturing cost?
 >
 >Ideally, b.

OK. How do you plan to account for the fact that appearently identical 
vehicles from different factories have different per-unit manufacturing 
costs? (Eg. Egyptian-assembled M1A1s vs entirely US-built ones, or 
Polish-built vs Russian-built T-72s.)

 >>Being X% more powerful should, in a working points
 >>system, mean that the vehicle costs X% more points - which is a bit
 >>difficult, since X in this case varies with the range! :-/ (Why the
square
 >
 >OK. . . But can you produce a points system that
 >doesn't require a science degree to use that reflects
 >this? I doubt it.

Let's put it this way: considering your previous writings, and the
points 
costs you've allocated to the various DS vehicles on your NRE pages*, I 
wouldn't be all that surprised if you consider the *current* GZG design 
systems (FB and DS2 both) to require science degrees to use already...
:-/

* Eg., the Basil I B. variants both cost 15 pts less than your page
claims 
- under the standard DS2 design rules they should cost 459 and 484 pts, 
respectively - while the Heraclius crams 16 capacity points of stuff
into a 
size/3 vehicle (size/4 gun in turret, Enhanced PDS and APFC).

If you can handle normal multiplication and addition without a science 
degree, you probably would be able to manage a working descriptive
points 
system. It'd look something like this:

Vehicle points value = (Armour factor)*(Signature factor)*[(Weapons 
cost*FCS factor) + cost of rest of payload]*(Mobility factor)

where

Armour factor = (1 + 0.15*(Armour level)) (*1.1 if Reactive/Ablative
armour 
is used)

FCS factor for guns: BAS = 1, ENH = 1.2, SUP = 1.33 (this includes the 
longer range bands as well as the Close one)

FCS factor for GMS: BAS = 1, ENH = 1.3, SUP = 1.5

Signature factor: D4 = 1, D6 = 1.125, D8 = 1.25, D10 = 1.375, D12 = 1.5

...etc. In such a system, the vehicle's Signature and Armour rating
could 
be completely independent of how much stuff it carries (ie., its nominal

"size"). PDS and ECM really should be included in the "Signature" factor

though, and of course the Mobility factors and payload/weapon costs need
to 
be re-evaluated too - which is why it is taking me so long to revise the
DS 
design system :-(

 >>>>Which would have contributed more - the Stealth you used, or the
20-30%
 >>>>extra vehicles you could've had if you hadn't used Stealth?
 >>>
 >>>If I had 20% more points,
 >>
 >>You don't get 20% more points overall; you only get
 >>another 20-30% of the points you spent on those stealthed vehicles.
 >
 >Which is most of my combat vehicles.

But not your support vehicles like ADS, artillery etc., none of which
are 
exactly free.

 >>Stealth does make them more survivable, certainly.
 >>opposite in direction, to the discrepancies between
 >>the cost and power of Superior FCSs at close range.
 >
 >OK, so now you're saying my vehicles are pointed
 >about right since they use stealth and sup FCS. :P

*At close range*, yes. At longer ranges, your FCS advantage would be
even 
more pronounced against any non-HEL users while your Stealth
disadvantage 
would be essentially unchanged.

But I'm not just saying this *now* - if you re-read my post prior to the

one you replied to above, you'll find that I wrote:

"In which case your use of a more points-efficient FCS almost certainly 
negated your use of *less* points-efficient Stealth.. If you restricted 
yourself to level-1 Stealth, your FCS advantage probably even outweighed

the Stealth deficiency all on its own - and then you put superior
armament 
and tactics on top of that."

- in other words, all I did in my last post was to show that the above 
section wasn't just "almost certain" but an actual fact.

 >>As you can see above Stealth isn't cost-effective,
 >>period. If you cut the cost of Stealth in half (to
 >>10*Level*Size) you get it roughly correct for
 >>Grav tanks with Superior everything, but it is still
 >>overpriced for pretty much everything else.
 >
 >So. . . do you have a good way to point this out
 >without requiring algebra from our prospective tank
 >designers? I mean, I can do algebra but I won't do it
 >for fun.

I don't have any good way to patch all the problem areas in the current
DS2 
design system, no. It is easier to create a new design system from
scratch 
- see eg. the sketched design system above.

Stealth is fairly easy to patch in the current system:

"Stealth increases the points value of the vehicle by (Level*10)%".
Apply 
this factor after adding up all other costs of the vehicle. (In a pure 
direct-fire shootout it is worth somewhat more than this - (Level*12.5)%
- 
but Stealth doesn't protect against GMSs and Artillery so gets a slight 
rebate. Besides, 10% is easier for the mathematically challenged to use 
than 12.5% ;-) )

Armour could be handled in a similar way - instead of applying the
armour 
points cost to the BPV, it increases the value of the vehicle by 
~(Level*15)% (multiplied by the Stealth factor, not added to it). This
is a 
bigger change to the DS2 design system than the Stealth patch above,
though.

FCSs are more difficult. For a purely gun-armed tank the FCS cost could
be 
handled just like the Stealth and Armour patches above - ie., as a 
multiplier to the "rest of the cost of the vehicle" - but this runs into

problems with vehicles which combine guns with other payloads (missiles,

grunts, whatever)... and it gets very difficult to apply such a patch
onto 
the DS2 design system without doing a complete re-write.
Modifying the current FCS costs in DS2 doesn't work very well either -
eg., 
for the NRE grav tanks the following FCS costs are roughly accurate:

Basic FCS:	 2*(Size of largest weapon)
Enhanced FCS: 11-12*(Size of largest weapon)
Superior FCS:	18-20*(Size of largest weapon)

- but these FCS costs don't really work for lower-tech forces; eg. the
New 
Tiblisi forces "should" only pay 7-8*(Size of largest weapon) for their 
Enhanced FCSs and ~13*(Size of largest weapon) for any Superior FCSs
they 
manage to buy/steal from the NRE. Even so, that's quite a bit more than 
what the DS2 system currently charges them!

 >>This is your impression. How do you *know* that it is
 >>your Stealth which causes him to miss more often than
 >>you do, as opposed to your Superior FCSs which causes
 >>*you* to *hit* more often than he does?
 >
 >Unlike the Germans, I refuse to tinker with a good
 >thing. If it works, I ain't changing it.

In other words, you don't know which design factors have had what
effects 
and you have no intention to find out. A valid and respectable position
as 
long as you're playing scenarios in a pre-defined background, but it
does 
have certain unfortunate drawbacks when it comes to evaluating the
points 
system :-(

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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