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Tom
You take 20complainers and you’ll probably end up with 20 ‘must haves’, with everyone stating ‘Squad combat without feature X? The game is programmed by 1(one) person (Jo Bader) and I believe there is a 3d artist helping.
Why stop at WW1; might as well play Field of Gloryor Warcraft. Wait. be patient. Don’t play the game
Tom
Just to preface, I'm actually curious _exactly_ what you feel is missing. The realm of "off-table" indirect fire is quite broad. Perhaps, with some specifics, Jo could cater to your desires by providing what is truly necessary without the need to cover all possible desires. For example, are we talking about ...
... called fire from a static defensive position with preregistration by a dedicated battery FO/OP? without a spotting round?
... preliminary bombardment to support an attack on a known/pre-registered fixed position? with FO/OP able to check fire? or continue fire?
... called fire from a static defensive position requiring registration by a dedicated battery FO/OP? with additional batteries from the battalion/regiment/independent attachments (corps)?
... called fire from a defending force engaged in combat (outside danger close limits) requiring map fire and registration? (inside danger close limits)?
... called fire from an attacking force engaged in combat (outside danger close limits) requiring map fire and registration? (inside danger close limits)?
... called fire from a moving force requiring registration by a dedicated battery FO/OP? with additional batteries from the battalion/regiment/independent attachments (corps)?
There are many more scenarios, but these are just the common ones. In each case there is a variable amount of time needed to execute the various missions. I'm not even going to go into special missions (time on target for example), fuse types (air burst proximity, penetrating, ricochet), pattern type (dispersed, linear, concentrated), fire type (suppression, destruction) or any other details of a fire mission.
Before even one battery can FFE, the target and friendlies need to be identified and their locations identified by map coordinates or relative to an established reference point. The FO/OP needs to decide on the type of mission to be executed. All of that information needs to go to the command authority to give permission to fire, the battery needs to lay their weapons. Then, they might be able to fire.
Nationality (different organization), the era of the battle (global experience), the quality of the troops (local experience), the weather, the terrain, and dozens of other factors have a bearing on how fast and how well indirect fire is done. All of this needs to be considered if the player wants to do any and all options
This process is much more difficult and time consuming than most wargames model or wargamers understand. The simplest example of indirect fire would involve a company light mortar/mortars in direct contact with their section leader (usually a senior NCO) who voice (not radio) or hand signal contact with his battery. Even this example, with no coms gear issues, or permissions to fire still needs to have a barring and distance to target estimated and the weapon needs to be laid. If this takes around 2 minutes (good luck), the fire could be executed in the next turn for SF purposes and would probably not scatter more than one hex (40m). That's a best case scenario in terms of time.
If you are asking for a complete model, that is going to take a major effort to fulfil. If there is something specific, perhaps, _perhaps_, you could be accommodated. These decisions do not reside with me.
That could be debated. Lest we forget, some of have been on that end of the hobby.
6 minutes is a good average time for scenario 1 above, Probably +/- 1 minute depending on the conditions indicated above. Those times increase rapidly as the mission becomes more complicated.
I did systems modeling for the last 20 years of my engineering career. It may not be possible to provide a perfect system, but as a goal, wondrous things can happen.
Well kevinkin, that is a lot to unpack. I'm not going to try because the last time I did that Mad Russian got ... ahhh .... a bit mad at me. I don't really want to do that again, at least not so soon. Perhaps if I could get answers to a few serious questions, I might be able to understand things better.
It would be a lot of fun to be able to move my units twice as fast as my opponent (which would be silly).
Q: Why is a bit of realism in moving any different in the time it takes to do a complicated historic combat operation?
Back in the olden days ('70's) there was a big argument in the development community between design for process and design for effect. During the 90's, the effect folks became the dominant group. Over the decades since, process has somehow become the enemy.
Q: If the effect a game produces is obviously unrealistic, but the player feels that it is right, has the developer succeeded?
Wargames are indeed about making correct decisions, but what metric should be used to measure what is correct.
Q: Does a player who achieves victory by exploiting unrealistic elements in a historically based system deserve that victory as long as they had fun? and their opponent?
There are many fun games one can spend their free time on. Poker is a fun game. Formula D is fun. MyJongg is fun.
Q: What make a wargame fun? Complexity? Combat simulation? Killing Nazis/Commies/Capitalist Running Dogs?
Q: Is there a place in the wargame to actually learn about history or is it simply a game with the goal of being fun?
I'm not trying to be a smart ass with these questions. I am seriously trying to understand.
Q1 we are not talking about moving
Q2 yes, if they buy and enjoy and buy and enjoy follow-ons
Q3 There is no perfectly historically based hex/turn system in war gaming at the tactical level and SF is not one of them. Its an approachable game. Period. Players will exploit whatever the developer or head to head player gives them. It's competition on a level playing field. That's why we balance scenarios against history for goodness sake. How historical is that? All the developer can do is produce results players are comfortable with. For those who went to War College and those that are high school drop outs.
Q4. I suggest look at sales as a metric.
Q5. Both are equally important. But to attract sales, fun is more important. Look at the massive multiplayer enterprises.
All players want is indirect fire. Or an explanation why there is reluctance to provide it. There can't be a technical reason. Or a historical one. We can debate every little thing in a game like SF. But IF is not a little thing. It's a big missing element.
A bit off topic but to clarify, I was never mad at you. We were just at the point of agreeing to disagree and move on.
Now, to current business, maybe we could find the shortest and longest response times and then model those along with an intermediate response time. I know that's 3 different times and that could be some heavy hauling with coding but it should work for most of our tactical situations.
When I think of all the different calls for fire, which I did for my board game series, it didn't take long for me to do some simple abstracting. Unlike you Daffy I'm not a civil engineer. My Combat Engineer training rarely helps unless we want to blow things up. Which would not be a good idea with Jo's code.
Good Hunting.
Who said anything about off board. I’d be happy with what is available on map. Although it would be good too. But not necessary.
This is way off topic, but thought you'd enjoy this...
I recently had a brief foray into the wonderful world of professional military wargaming. When they play a game, they pile a bunch folks into a massive SCIF for a week or so and hash out how to handle a hypothetical future situation. I never got the opportunity to do this, but some of the folks I was working with did.
For this project, NATO was calling for proposals to improve their gaming environment by expanding their models into some of the more important emerging 21st century domains (cyber, cognitive, space, etc.). Since it was just a proposal situation, none of it was classified, but I really can't discuss any details. However, kevkinkin's statement about player's comfort got me thinking about the "professional" gamers and the level of sophistication in their games again.
The actual game the US Army uses is not particularly complicated, probably something significantly easier to deal with than MMP/Gamers OCS system but much more detailed than AH Blitzkried. On top of that, the details of the actual game play are handled by consultants who act as game masters and the mass of army players are making decisions that the master executes within the system. So many of the games we play are not only significantly more complicated than the military uses, but most of us have done (the physical attributes at least) what the game master does. There is a big people management job that the GM also has to deal with. That disqualifies me (many of us?) from even thinking about doing that job though.
1) How much fiddly crap would players put up with before they stopped playing?
2) Do players use, or have any interest, in these games for anything other than competition (assessing capabilities, methods, tactics, hardware, doctrine, history etc.)?
The idea was to give Jo the option to do part of this effort rather than doing the whole universal world of indirect fire.
The reason I provided all of those scenarios is to get at the fiddly factor. There is a substantial increase in how fiddly (number of steps/decision points, timing, accuracy and precision) the process would be when going down the list.
For example, for the company mortar situation, that could be done by allowing a mortar (all of them in one hex) could put fire on a hex that was visible to an adjacent leader unit. The firer and target would identified in turn 'X' fire and movement phase and (if neither the leader or mortars move, fire or break), the attack would be executed in turn 'X+1' The beaten zone would be one hex with or without scatter. Pretty simple really.
The preregistered defensive barrages and pre-planned offensive bombardments would also be relatively fiddle free with the only additional problem to deal with would be variable begin and end points. Rolling barrages would be similar to this but would involve scatter as the as the center of the barrage moves forward and would need to be incorporated in the regular turns since the idea is to advance on the edge of the beaten zone.
Beyond these on-tablet/preregistered fire cases, especially when registration needs to be done on the fly (during the game) the fiddle factor really goes through the roof.
The second question was to get at the variability of the characteristics of the 3C issues and doctrine differences. No need to deal with that now.
But in indirect fire, lets not over think it.
For off map, I think you could balance it fairly easily by having a very limited amount available, have its accuracy be questionable, and have its arrival time be unpredictable. So it could still be a force multiplier, but not something you can use to snipe a position or anything.
The problem with such additions is that the base game scenarios were made without such things in mind, so rebalancing would be required. I think they'd improve the game and improve reviews, but it wouldn't be a small amount of work.
That said my #1 wish remains multiplayer, and my #2 the ability to flag multiple hexes for LOS at the same time.