Re: [GZG] Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi!

True to a certain extent.  And if we were discussing a WWII game, it
would be relevant.

But modern artillery needs only moments to prepare to fire.  The long
setup times to conduct indirect fire in WWII were required to
accurately survey the gun positions, something done by GPS positioning
nowdays.  And precision fires means something different than it did in
WWII, especially with smart projectiles and submunitions.  A "movement
to contact" or a "meeting engagement" will involve artillery, not
merely a set piece battle.  And believe me, the mobile defenses
envisioned by NATO doctrines of the 1970s and 1980s certainly included
a heavy dose of artillery as a major method of killing Soviets.

Flip side, nothing is perfect.	There are techniques to mitigate the
effectiveness of artillery.  In the future there will be more,
especially as it is now technologically possible to reliably shoot
down projectiles on a ballistic trajectory.  Radar also can now give
you the location of a hostile weapon system before the round
lands--and if the point of origin isn't in a city full of civilians
your ROE doesn't allow you to blow up, the counterbattery makes the
entire battery a one-shot weapon.

No one is quite sure what the deep battle would look like with two
technologically advanced armies.  If such questions could be answered
with any precision, there would be no need to fight wars.  Both sides
in a war believe their techniques will be effective, or they wouldn't
bother.  Speculation--especially with folks that aren't familiar with
the nuances of technique--rapidly devolves into "what if" scenarios
that are inherently unanswerable.

We already know that modern long-range fires (both aviation and
artillery) will destroy a less sophisticated army that comes out in
the open to engage it, and in combination with maneuver forces can be
devastatingly effective even in urban areas.  But the last time two
technologically equivalent armies fought was in 1945, unless you want
to extend a great deal more credit to the Arab armies of 1973 than I
would.	YMMV.  Even in 1944-5 'technologically equivalent' was only
rough, as US artillery and air support techniques were far more
advanced than the German ones, and the German army's technological
sophistication was greatly uneven.  An SS Panzer division was a
totally different beast from an Army infantry division as far as
equipment was concerned.

On 7/8/08, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> If artillery can accurately and quickly demolish  mobile armies then
you
> could easily end up with SCIFI ww1. Tanks would become extinct and it
would
> all be about large zones of no mans land patrolled by observer drones
> Traditionally artillery has lower mobility than tanks, takes longer to
set
> up and requires observation of the target to be effective. I am
thinking of
> WW2 mostly here
> If artillery has the same mobility and kill power as main tank rounds
and
> can do so indirectly then it will truely have come a long way towards
being
> the dominant life form.
> Another way to ensure that artillery is ballanced at low tech levels
is to
> have games that are not simply prepared battle. A lot of cold war
soviet
> doctrine focussed on the idea of an encounter battle where 2 divisions
> advanced to contact. Pretty much every general I read about from Haig
> onwards wanted to break past the defences and get into a war of
manouvre.
> I reckon wars of manourvre make for an interesting game, assault games
are
> interesting as well but should not be the only game type.

-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani

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