[WarInEur] Artillery

Thu Aug 16 21:55:35 EDT 2007

Steve, you don't need to takle my word for it, you can hear it from the horse's mouth. 

A description of how they (Dunnigan and team) got to these values, or at least most of them, (which originated in the work done on the "Stalingrad II" project between 1969 and 1974 when it was published as War in the East) can be found, in particular, the following S&Ts:

S&T 23 ("T34" issue organisation of Soviet ground forces)

S&T 25 ('Centvrion" issue)  orgamisation of german ground forces

S&T 30 ("Combat command" issue) orgainsation of US ground forces

S&Ts of that 1970-72 period usually or at least often came with a "numerical modeling " of the units they were talking about in the articles, IE they put in a chart of how the units look from time to time as divisions/corps etc as game counters using there then current Kursk or Normandy systems. They did this as a regular feature in S&Ts of this era. Called "SUF" or standard unit factors or something similar. The provenance of the WiE numbers is obvious when you look through them.

Having said that I do agree that there is a little more than just numbers going on. I do not think it is any coincidence that an SS panzer division is exactly the right number to over run a Soviet tank corps BG.

The question however was about Soviet artillery, and the key point is that this is not some sort of semi tactical ranged fire thing, its a depiction of how the Red Army organised things differently to everybody else.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: sgminfo 
  To: WarInEur at mailman.halisp.net 
  Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:24 PM
  Subject: Re: [WarInEur] Artillery

  Ian Raine wrote: 
    I don't think the artillery usage is meant to represent some sort of psuedo-tactical model...

  I have thought about this, as your post brings up several very valid points. 

  I disagree, not because you are in anyway wrong in what you say, but more because I think we ascribe too much of the Scientific, nuts and bolts, approach, to the actual process of Game design by SPI.

  We have the luxury of the bottom up approach, the project is already finished, and we fiddle with the minutiae. so detailed back reference to the real world, is the benchmark, indeed the only mark of accuracy. SPI surely went the top down approach, broad brush with incremental refinements backwards until it was where they wanted the sim to be.

  Thus the 6-5 and the 8-10 were arrived at, in all likelihood, by a sort of esoteric rule of thumb, leavened with flashes of "gut feeling".
  i.e. The 6-5 vs the 1-4 seemed about right for performance in 1941 in the east, and once these were fixed down all else had to be hammered in around this assumption. The French 3-4 was modelled in the same way, and the 8-10 was crafted in later.

   The 8-10 was a subjective assumption about performance in 1944, not whether there was any organic artillery, but that underpins the performance itrw, and hence is part, unconsciously , of the subjective assessment.

  With Artillery units I think the design criteria were more mundane, and rough and ready.

  All the commentaries repeatedly harp on about the massed  artillery smothering any German position under attack, so...we must have some sort of a nod towards artillery as a clear unit to deploy. Soviet counters are biased towards a representational model of the 1941-42 combat structure, which is hopelessly inadequate to represent the same units in the later war years, so we need a force multiplier, so the artillery counter is added in. It is a supremely neat way of magnifying combat effectiveness, whilst at the same time rationing that capability to prevent an overwhelming result, whilst at the same time keeping the existing cardboard counters down to a manageable limit (cost wise). Changing unit strengths would be the only other way to go with huge increases in exchangeable counters, and a resulting price that puts it out in the junk yard.

  At the same time it drives home to the student the change in overall capability in the Soviet army, the vast increase in capability of assaulting troops in a way that gives an easily identifieable handle on thechanges, whilst the device of the crt takes care of doctrine and other OB influences. The artillery movement rules compel a restricted offensive doctrine, that forces the soviet attacker to advertise his intention to offensive operations in a sector, with the timely arrival of the artillery concentrations.

  But primarily, first and foremost, it is a cheap way to mod the beast, with a nod towards history, in a way that players could accept dressed up as history.

  SPI, being commercial, above all needed a product that worked. How accurate it might be in detail was not so important as getting a result that approximated to the war. As long as the lines on the map tended to follow history, then that was good enough to go to market, in time (if possible), and somewhere near budget.
   Other monster efforts, were a salutary lesson, and my guess was that discipline on accuracy was quite draconian when it came up against budgetary deadlines and timetables.

  When you have a vast spectrum of players, in terms of age and ability, you want a game that is easily grasped, so that at the ground floor level it is easy to gain basic competence, so that the less experienced do not find themselves out of their depth and unable to square up to the more qualified, over the game table.It was history, but it was also a game, and to be a commercial success, it had to be big and impressive, but more importantly, enjoyable, and easy to understand..

  The pseudo tactical type of influence should not be dismissed too readily, for it serves to give a sort of bogus, but effective, backing to the way the games feels in play.

  SPI were not above sleight of hand to achieve the desired result, production numbers and the CRT show how they could skew the game influences to achieve what was intended.

  As Jerry repeatedly says, it is only a game.....but SPIs genius was that they could persuade you to part with good cash, for a product that was well beyond the normal price spectrum of the parlour evening game, with a far greater demand on time and resources, quite a remarkable feat.

  DNO showed the other side of the coin, how far you could try and push towards technical accuracy, without falling under a mountain of unpaid vills, and broken deadlines.

  -|steve|-

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