% of front shots - was RE: Well, too interesting to drop all of the posts in this thread...

NOw the high percentage of front shots - is this just an artifact of
small game board so that it's easy to keep the enemy to the front?  i.e.
on a 40x80 board it would be difficult if not impossible for an opponent
to get a significant amount of his force behind you or to even surround
you?

If the rules allowed for flanking or surrounding maneuver before set-up,
would the numbers change?

Most of the dramatic defeats(victories) have been when one antagonist
successfuly flanked or surrounded the opponent, exposing the weak points
and expoiting them.

My understanding from most of the AAR's is that scenarios are generally
balanced, both unit-wise and terrain wise, with little or no ability to
flank or surround an opponet (for instance most games have player A
starting from one side, and player B starting from an opposite side)

If scenarios were designed with unequal terrain (player A is the remnant
of thrust and is surrounded on three sides by player B) or allow
"floating" maps so that units cannot take advantage of the edge to
defend their flank.

In my experience of modern re-enactment of medieval battles, it's rarely
the guy in front of yo who kills you, it's the guy to the side or
attacking from behind who usually gets you.  Uncertainty should play a
larger role on the battlefield, there are no guarantees such as a hard
board edge where you KNOW no enemy units are or you KNOW that the
opponent has no reinforcements coming.

One method is to assign points for re-inforcements, flank maneuvers, or
air/artillery strikes on non-front line assets.

For instance, you might be able to purchase drop troops that can land
near the opponent's off-board artillery unit and take it out and then
move on-board from behind the enemy.  Or call in airstrikes or off-baord
artillery to eliminate enemy Artillery, AA batteries or reinforcements. 
Another example might be spending extra points to maneuver your grav
tanks to the flank - the game mechanic would be to force the opponent to
set up in the center of the board, then your tanks set up on either
flank.

Some ideas,
--Binhan

-----Original Message-----
From: Oerjan Ohlson [mailto:oerjan.ohlson@telia.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 3:15 AM
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Well, too interesting to drop all of the posts in this
thread...

Indy wrote:

>Oerjan did a study (maybe is still doing a study in his copious spare
time;

"Copious" being the key word here :-/

>The idea of the study was to support a proposition to be able to
re-armor 
>vehicles to be more reflective of reality

More to serve as the basis for determining the points costs of 
differently-armoured sides; but of course allowing differently-armoured 
sides is an aspect of allowing DS2 to be more reflective of reality.

>In any event, in the DS2 games I ran and kept records for since then, I

>found that well over 70% of the shots fired at targets were directed at

>the fronts of targets, not the sides or rear (about 30% were aimed at
the 
>sides of targets; less than 1% at target rears).

Beth Fulton and David Stuckey also kept similar records, and got very 
similar results. Interestingly enough these values are also quite
similar 
to those from real-world studies made after WW2 and onwards, on which
the 
design of today's real-world MBT armours are based... that's another
thing 
DS2 gets right about combat in the 1980s ;-)

>Now, Oerjan was also collecting data on weapon types, sizes, and ranges
at 
>the same time, so he had larger fish to examine than just the 
>front/side/rear aspect of it all.

Very much so, yes.