Re: [GZG] ground combat campaigns

John makes some good points, although they are harder to justify in FT
with no real 'crew quality' or 'morale' than in SG or DS.

The reality of even battles that were not planned thus:

Side A had intel and decided they had, at the outset of planning,
enough available resources to accomplish their mission objectives
despite side B.

Meanwhile, things changed. In mid op-planning phase, extra objectives
were added due to new intel arriving. Meanwhile, Side A hadn't got a
complete intel picture of side B.

Side B had also been moving in reinforcements that side A didn't find
out about.

So, side A commits thinking 'okay, we've got a few more objectives,
but we've still got force majeur'. Then they discover that B has
reserves in place that can quickly respond to the battle (an A
side-operation to block these reserves never got off the ground due to
a confusion about timing).

So A shows up to fight and B turns out to be more evenly matched. A
could pull out, but the objectives are linked to further exploitation
planning that would be ruined. Better they push on and see if they can
break B. B, for their part, are stuck in because they are in a
defensive role.

So the more even fight occurs.

The interesting thing about how we plan battles today vs. FT period:

1) Today, we have lots of ELINT, IMINT, and sometimes HUMINT that tell
us what is where and when. Some of it is real-time. Thus we launch ops
knowing a lot about the opposition. Even with this, we sometimes screw
up.

In the FTverse, if you posit some kind of jump-point system that can
be defended or a non jump-point system where jumps can be picked up at
long range on scans, real detailed intel about enemy forces that could
be hiding in the gas giant, hiding behind a moon, running silent in
space, sitting on an ocean bottom, lurking inside a spacedock so you
can't tell how many/what ship classes are there, etc. means that you
might just not be able to get very good intel.

It might be like Age of Sail admirals trying to figure out where the
enemy was and planning accordingly. 80% of their planning would be
from estimates of their own power and 20% from their best vague guess
about enemy strength and intentions because even if they could get
good data, it wouldn't be real-time data.

That helps to justify more even odds battles. Both sides just don't
know enough about the other side to make a highly reliable assessment.

There are tactical ways to ameliorate the risk to your main battle
fleet: Tentative engagement with scouts, trying to draw out enemy
numbers and figure out what he really has, but still parts of his
fleet might be sitting blacked out waiting for the attacker to commit.

2) In the real world, factors play into the game like:
- RoE
- Objectives that change mid-operation
- Forces that get committed (by an enemy unexpectedly) or detached in
mid-operation (sometimes your op just ends up not being as important
as initially thought as an enemy thrust may need countered nearby)
- You over/under estimate enemy strength, supply, morale or troop
quality
- You over/under estimate the challenges posed by terrain, obstacles,
etc.
- Anything you miss
- Enemy counterattacks or your own deeper attacks which serve to
impede enemy reinforcements or deny you expected reinforcements (or
which change the timing of arrival)
- Dictates as to what sorts of losses can be accepted before a side
has to concede the battlefield

Most of the times even fights have occured, somebody has missed
something or the other side has pulled a surprise out. Intel missed
the movement of a Panzer division, the enemy had a hidden minefield on
the one passable road to bring 1/3rd of your forces around his flank,
etc. There is also the 'we weren't really planning on pitched battle,
but it kinda snowballed'. Two probes meet, a meeting engagement
happens, one side decides to commit more, then the other side does,
soon so much is committed that it is an all out battle on a wider
front without a really deep long term plan except not to let the enemy
breakthrough (complete with attacks and counterattacks and
reinforcements flowing in and wounded flowing out).

I have no problem with disproportionate battles. My observation in
point systems like FT and DS (and with rough ideas from SG) are that a
10% advantage in forces is really a 10% improvement to your odds of
victory, but a 20% force increase is a 40% advantage, a 30% force
ehancement might be a 90% increase in odds of victory, etc. The
numbers are fictional, but the idea is that when you perturb away from
an even fight, the further the disparity, the (greatly) more
significant the impact on the outcome. 5-10% change might be 'a slight
advantage', a 25% advantage might give you a very high odds of
victory, and a 40% advantage can be crushing. You can use this sort of
understanding to come up with some reasonable victory conditions for
uneven fights.... and then evaluate results against those
expectations.

I prefer uneven battles, or at least battles that aren't just meeting
engagements but have objectives. It's possible in some of them that
neither side will meet their objectives or both will because they
might not actually have objectives that are only 'blow up the other
guy'. Maybe side A has 'secure a river crossing' and side B has 'score
at least 50% attrition on side A'. Both can conceivably satisfy their
victory conditions.

T.
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