[Consim-l] Fatigue (was At All Hazards... part 2)

[Bruce Probst]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:03:29 +0200, "Mircea Pauca" <mircea.pauca at gmail.com>
wrote:

>    Are there other games too with Fatigue or a similar concept
>recorded at a higher time scale ? Say days for weeks-long
>operations, not like here, hours for days-long battles...

Well, there are lots of games that incorporate "supply" in one form or
another.  Relatively few make you *track* it, of course, most merely define
various ways in which you're either in supply or you're not ....

Perhaps the "ultimate" supply-based game would be the old SPI "Campaign for
North Africa", where (I believe) managing supply was a full-time occupation
for at least one player on each side.

On a more manageable note, "World in Flames" shows "fatigue" in a
straight-forward manner, in that units that have performed activities in a
turn are flipped over, and being flipped restricts them in numerous ways.
Generally they are flipped back to their normal side in each new turn provided
that they are in supply.  (There are other ways of flipping them back to
normal during a turn, although I'm not sure of the actual mechanics.)

SPI's old Central Front system (hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West
Germany in 1980's) used a fatigue system called "Friction Points".  Basically
every action a unit performed during a turn caused FPs to accumulate.  An
individual unit could accumulate no more than 5 FP before being eliminated.  A
unit had to rest for a turn (while in supply) to lose any FP.  The "flow" of
the games was that the Soviets would attack like mad while fresh, but that
could only last for a few turns (a couple of days) before those units had to
pause and rest, while the reserves and second waves carry on the fight
(unfortunately, they're almost as tired, just by virtue of having to keep up
with the front line).  This gave NATO units the opportunity to make small
counter-attacks at choice points.  At first glance the Soviets seem like an
unstoppable juggernaut, but after a few turns there's a lot of puffing and
wheezing coming from the eastern side of the board <g>.

I never played the games enough to know if they were "realistic" -- I have a
suspicion that the defensive strength of the NATO units was set too high,
perhaps for game balance reasons.  Nevertheless, I found them to be fun games
and didn't find the "book-keeping" very onerous at all.

Much later, when 3W owned S&T, they published another couple of games in the
series but radically revised the rules, doing away with the FPs altogether.  I
haven't played those but it seems to me that it made the system a heck of a
lot less interesting.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Probst              bprobst at netspace.net.au
Melbourne, Australia      MSTie #72759
"The scientists go to lay their eggs in the sand."
ASL FAQ              http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mantis/ASLFAQ