Re: [GZG] Re: Points systems

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hugh Fisher wrote:

> Nobody with more than half a brain believes that a points
> system in itself prevents unscrupulous players from coming
> up with min-maxed unrealistic designs.  There are too many
> cultural, economic, political, logistical, etc factors
> that affect real armed forces composition for any points
> system to handle.

Very much so. To elaborate on this:

ALL realistic designs are min-maxed - as in "designed to give the maximum 
possible amount of bang per buck spent". That's why all tanks today have a 
single more or less centrally-placed turret and a single main gun (now that 
the S-tanks have finally been scrapped, except for a few museum exhibits), 
for example: the rivalling multi-turret/sponson, multi-gun designs simply 
weren't as good a use of the money, men and industrial resources as the 
single-turret, single-main gun tanks proved to be.

Thing is, real-world designs measure both "bang" and "buck" differently 
than a tactical game like Full Thrust does. In Full Thrust, the only thing 
that matters is tactical combat power and the only cost that balances the 
combat power is the one-time NPV or CPV cost paid for the ship. In the real 
world OTOH strategical and operational factors like 
transportability/strategic range, reliability, operational range, 
maintainability given existing infrastructure etc. etc. matter at least as 
much as the tactical combat power, and the costs include development, 
procurement and operational costs (all of which may include a large amount 
of pocket greasing) to name just a few. As a result, the weapons and 
vehicles that give the most real-world bang per real-world buck for nation 
A might not be cost-effective at all for nation B (if they're able to 
operate it at all)!

Unfortunately, the only way to reflect all these strategical and 
operational factors in Full Thrust *tactical* games and thus get the 
players to "voluntarily" design "realistic" weapons and vehicles is to play 
a campaign with very detailed rules for the campaign economics... or, like 
Hugh said, use army/fleet lists. 'Course, even with army lists you'll still 
get players who only field SS divisions (because there were battles with 
only SS divisions involved, so the lists have to allow for forces like that 
too) :-(

[The only other comment I had to Hugh's post was the same one John A. 
already made, so I don't have to :-) ]

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

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

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