Re: Tomb's Rating System

--- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> % quality Y/G/B/O/R (the way JohnA does)

Heh. . . 

> effect of quality on kit (ie veteran units often
> acquire unauthorized
> weapons)

Sometimes.  However, keeping unauthorized weapons fed
is a doozy.

> % leadership 3/2/1
> average actual strength as % of TO strength
> Relative quality of support units (ie are your
> engineers, MPs,
> pioneers better, worse, or same as rifle squad)
> Availability of support units
> Quality of combat vehicles (are you driving an M1 or
> PzkwIII)
> Availabililty of combat vehicles (do you have just
> the one M1, or 50
> MkIIIs)
> Are your electronics +1/+0/-1 compared to everyone
> else?
> Same for guidance
> Ditto ECM

Unfortunately, everyone has overinflated opinions of
their own favorite picks, and deprecatory opinions of
whatever faction they don't favor.  I argue
incessantly in favor of downgrading IFed, PAU, LLAR,
ESU for a variety of cultural, ideological,
historical, or doctrinal reasons.  What happens?  I
get accused of racism either outright or obliquely. 
If you can't say "This faction stinks on ice" then
rating them is pointless.  You're lost in a welter of
politically correct "everyone is equally worthwhile"
arguments.

My favorite is the (presumably rhetorical) question
"or are we just talking about Western-style
professional armies just like us?".

There's no such thing.	There are good armies and
there are bad armies.  Every good army is either
Western (rating Russians as Westerners, 'coz they damn
sure aren't Asians and havn't been since at least Tsar
Peter the Allegedly Great[1]) or was trained by
Westerners.  There is no such thing as some
semi-mystical "Eastern" style of warfare.  What people
usually mean by that is guerilla-style warfare.

Guerilla is a Spanish word.  Europeans have been using
it as an auxillary to regular warfare for millenia.

Or they mean a doctrine which accepts massive
casualties instead of using firepower to win your
fights.  This is supposedly more "manly" or something.
 It's a workaround to make up for lack of equipment or
the training to use that equipment effectively.  A
good army doesn't need to accept millions of
casualties.  Proof may be offered by an analysis of
the 1975 campaign in which the alleged premier user of
the "Eastern Way of War", the People's Army of Vietnam
defeated the ARVN using tactics and equipment that
would be far more familliar to General Zhukov than to
Mao Tse-tung.  Once they had the equipment and the
freedom to maneuver it without the USAF blowing it to
little pieces, they used it.

Armies are either overall good (US Army ca 1985
onwards), good in certain aspects which allows them to
win if they use their strengths and minimize their
disadvantages (Red Army in WWII comes to
mind--superlative operational planning, massive use of
fire support even if it wasn't terribly flexible or
responsive, and large number of well-designed tanks
making up for tactical incompetence, poorly trained
troops, etc), or just so damn big that they can
overwhelm their opponents at the cost of massive
casualties (PLA in certain situations, when they can
find an open flank or hit an unprepared enemy).  Or
they loose.  Even the raw numbers tactic fails in the
face of a determined prepared defense.	For which see:
Pusan Perimeter.  There is no Western/non-Western
dichotomy here.

John

[1]What a sonovabitch.	

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