Re: Re: [GZG] DSIII q

[John K Lerchey <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> > > enters that zone gets sucked in.  That would allow units to screen each other
> > > and make choke points important (since the first unit stopped at the point
> > > would suck everyone else in).
... (my crap deleted)
>    More of a "zone of attention" than a traditional zoc.  The idea would be
>  that while you're in a firefight, you're focused on the people you're
>  shooting at and are shooting at you.  Between that focus and the smoke and
>  dust of combat, you're much less likely to start firing on someone else
>  moving behind what you're firing at, unless they come close enough to the
>  existing unit.  I would allow units to try to force other units into the
>  combat, with better tech and better units increasing the chance.

Ah. Ok, that's actually in there to some exent.  It's not clearly spelled 
out enough yet, however.

So, let's say Unit A is attacking Enemy A.  They start slugging it out, 
and after a few TCRs (that's Tactical Combat Rounds boys, it's a technical 
term!) Unit A can now see (has LoS to) Enemy B.  Unless Enemy B JOINS the 
firefight, Unit A cannot initiate fire against them.  They are focussed on 
units involved in the firefight.  Now, that said, I've found it very hard 
to make that make sense in play in certain situations.  For example, if 
Enemy A is withdrawing and passes through Enemy B, and Enemy B is 
something like APCs, and Unit A is tanks, it seems unlikely to me that 
Unit A should not be able to light up the APCs while chasing Enemy A.

It needs work, but I certainly agree with you in concept. :)

> > >   How would recon work with a firefight?  Should the other guy shooting at
> > > your recon elements force them into combat?
> >
> > One example, which would have worked this way on the Friday Night game if
> > I hadn't, once again, screwed up...
>   Ah, that's what playtesting is for...   :-)
... (another of my long-winded rants deleted)

>    Hmm, I like the way you describe it, *but* (there's always a but :-) ) what
>  about forces like ours that had no smoke?  How about backgrounds where smoke
>  is immaterial (like OGRE or I would think Hammer's Slammers)?  I imagine that
>  I don't have the best grasp of modern combat, but is smoke really the only
>  way that recon units break contact?  If they are, I will henceforth keep
>  quiet on the subject.  :-)

Well, IMHO, units like the K'hiff and K'V would... not deign to use such a 
thing as smoke. ;)  There are other ways to break contact.  There is 
movement behind a Major Terrain Feature (e.g., a large object on the 
table) and there are Cover Tests (taking cover behind minor terrain - 
those folds in the ground that don't get shown on the table 'cause we live 
in "flat land" to some degree).

As far as smoke is concerned, I don't think that there is likely to be a 
time when smoke or something smoke-like will not be available.  If you 
have IR equipment as "standard", then you're going to devlop smoke with 
either a large heat signature or some kind of thermal dampening effect to 
block the IR.  In OGRE, the scale is off so far that smoke doesn't quite 
make sense.  OGRE is what, multiple kilometers per hex?  Those things are 
lobbing micronukes all over creation. :)  So, in any case, smoke or it's 
high-tech PSB'd equivalent will be available unless you design your units 
to not have it (like I did!).

>
... (hah!  some of Grant's long wind deleted!)
... (ok and from me too)

>    Yeah, I think get that.  How fast are those grav tanks moving in their
>  "big move" though?  The gap they were crossing was about 6 or 7 inches wide.
>  Some piece of me feels like they should have been able to blow across it
>  without being forced into an extended combat.

Part of it is speed (without using Travel or Road  bonuses - so over open 
fields, a unit travelling at 100mu is only going at about 40kmh.  Granted 
it's over much rougher terrain than most non-Pennsylvania highways, but 
it's not *that* fast) and part of it is distance.  A 7mu gap is 700 
meters.  Think of it as 7 football fields.  If you have a decent LOS I 
think you could engage medium speed aircraft over that much distance...

>    I don't know.  I'm not sure that I've seen enough to justify my "feeling"
>  for it.  I am starting to wonder though if the "time change" is too drastic.
>  It's like there should be an intermediate phase between "non-combat" and "all
>  out firefight".  Not sure about that though.  Hmmm....

I'm not sure what an intermediate phase would be for.

The current explanation is along these lines for how the game turn is 
broken down.

First, the designers kept the 15 minute Game Turn.
Ground scale and figure scale were also retained from DSII.

Looking at the speeds of units in DSII two things bubble up.

	1) Vehicles are SLOW. Flat out most can't achieve 15mph.
	2) Combat drags.  I've heard people at the ECC say, "What?!  You
	   *finished* a DSII game!?"  From playing, I found that you
	   spend a shitload of time dragging your armored snails
	   across the table, and that once you've fired in that FIFTEEN
	   MINUTE period, you're done.  You might achieve 1:1 kill
	   ratios in FIFTEEN MINUTES.  (yes, of course I know that
	   it's a game and that the 15 minute turn is largely
	   arbitrary, but if you're going to define it, it should
	   mean something in the game other than, "Shit, that don't
	   make sense!")

Because of the way movement was handled (1 unit activates at a time and
it moves s-l-o-w-l-y across the table), tactics were pretty much, "Do I
fire now or save the unit and fire later?"  There was no way to do things
like out-flank the enemy, or suprise them with anything.  Everything was 
seen moving (again) slowly into action, allowing for the enemy to ALWAYS 
react however they deemed fit.  This isn't even reasonable for WWII 
combat.

So with a problem defined, there were a number of things that were viewed 
as "fixes".

1) Increase speed.  Tanks NOW can move at 60mph on roads.
Let's see them able to do it in the game.

2) Cohesion.  No one (except maybe the French in WWII) sends in one 
platoon at a time.  Even in WWII the commander would gather his forces at 
a "Jumping Off Point" and then launch them into an attack.  Sending out a 
platoon at a time at 3.5mph is not *quite* a launch.  Thus, it is 
imperative that players be able to send in attacks with multiple platoons 
simultaneously.

3) When the actual combat does occur, *that* is where you want to spend 
your time and attention.  Also, you want to have some mechanism to allow a 
platoon to kill or be killed at a greater than 1:1 ratio inside of a 15 
minute window.  OA can speak much more coherently about this than I can, 
but it does make sense.  Rates of fire (including laying in the target) 
are generally a *bit* higher than 1 target in 15 minutes. :)  This lead to 
the firefight concept.


The flow is,

Activate one or more units.
Move a long, long way fast to find/engage the enemy.
Blow the crap out of each other.
Other guy gets to activate.
Repeat til everyone is dead or broken.
:)

I've seen other games (Empires 3 Napoleonic Rules by Scotty Bowden come to 
mind) that tried to do this in a less flexible manner (in E3 when contact 
as made you rolled and got from 2-5 tactical combat rounds, but nothing 
outside of the tactical fight could join under ANY circumstances), but 
I've never been impressed with the overall effect.  In E3 the tactical 
combat was usually pretty indecisive.  I once hit a brigade of austrians 
with a whole division of french and watched the austrians stop the french 
divion in it's tracks by forcing them to deal with one freakin' battalion 
at a time.  In reality, the individual battalions would have been ground 
into dust.  In DS3, from the dozen or so games I've played in the last 
year, it usually both works and feels right.  There are quirks that come 
up, but I've also seen it do some really neat things.

In one game, the defender was badly outnumbered (tends to be a theme in my 
games!), but had units dug in and hidden.  Single platoons of tanks were 
able to tie up companies of enemy tanks due to firing from hidden 
positions (suprise!) and being in GOOD positions.  The attacker needed 
those 3:1 odds to beat them.  It felt like doctrine in action. :)

Sorry for rambling... I had the need to explain stuff. ;)

>   Cool.  It would be a real shame if oversized vehicles aren't well integrated
> into the new rules.
>   Off the top of my head, I am thinking that massive firepower (like an Ogre)
> would tend to short circuit a firefight.  Of course, that may be right...  :-)

Yeah.  I'm thinking (not having tried it  yet) that OGREs are gonna rock, 
or be totally lame.  The biggest problem is that a game like OGRE just 
dosn't translate well into a different frame of reference.  In OGRE, the 
OGREs can usually move farther in 1 move than max weapons range of the 
enemy (give or take).  Time slices are done in standard "turns".  Ganging 
up (adding attackers to improve attack odds) counts (in DS, other than 
counting on BOOM chits, it really doesn't matter how many RFAC/1s you 
have, you aren't getting through 7 points of armor).  The OGREs treads are 
a real threat and they take tons of damage.  The list goes on.

In DS, the OGREs, and other units, can't move through weapons ranges (for 
large weapons) without someone getting to shoot (assuming LoS, etc.). 
IMHO it's too much trouble to track 45 or 60 individual tread hits. 
Finally, when the OGREs guns are destroyed, it becomes a mostly 
ineffective fighting unit.

So, what are my expectations for when I try this out?

First, I'm going to armor the crap out of the OGREs.  In DS3 terms, the 
lowest armor is likely to be around 8, and could easily go as high as 12. 
I'm also likely to bump the OGREs armor die up to a D10.  OGREs will have 
either 2 or 4 tread units, and kills will seriously degrade performance. 
:)

Now, the scary part is that the OGRE is going to be able to fire 
everything it has during each TCR.  Just like a tank platoon on huge 
steriods.  A Mk III will have a DFFG/7 (or 8, I don't remember what I put 
on it), 4 MDC/5s, 2 missiles and a pile of Light (class/0 anti-soft 
target) weapons, and superior fire control, and will be either an Orange 
or Red unit.  If the OGRE is swarmed (hit by a company) it could suffer 
badly.  OTOH, if it gets to initiate, it's going to pick out an enemy 
platoon and vaporize it.

I really have no idea of how well (or badly) this will work, but my next 
DS3 game is likely to be a sigle Mk III going after a command post 
defended by crunchies and squishies (normal tanks and infantry).  I'm 
betting that it'll be ugly, but fun ugly.

:)

John
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