[WarInEur] Optional strategic Suprise rule.

[Don Lazov]

Simulating Surprise or events. There are some other models that do a better job of this, for example:

In Third Reich (AH), you could get the double turn (based on if the opposing player had enough BRPs to purchase an offensive. In World War II (TSR) initiative was given to the player to decide who went first. More closely to home is the OCS series of games where units have two sides a Move Mode Side and a Combat Mode Side, only units in Combat Mode have a ZOC, and ZOC are not the "be all" they are in WIE (i.e., a silly artifical ZOC kills units, which is ahistoric especially on the East Front), in fact some posters have incorrect ideas of what ZOC actually represent and players (note the term players here instead of "historians") will line up the "unit's" to get "ZOC kills", when point in fact attrition had more to due with combat losses (I have charts that show the attritional percentages per nationality per year, not surprisingly the Russians and Japs have a high rate of attrition), anyway my main point is that if one wants to try other options there are other ways that bo!
 ard gam
es have traditionally handled this as per above, likewise with the advent of computers there is even more to try, however the realms change as we do so.

The nice thing that OCS games recreate is the fluidity of battle, with a lot of map space and not enough units on the map to cover everthing (in Enemy at the Gates for example there are 4 maps and 2280 counters!). The neat thing that OCS has is Reserves, where the other player that is not the current player can mark (during his player turn or during setup) units in Reserve status. These units can move during your friendly movement phase (possibly disrupting your own plans and killing your units in the process) and attack.

Of course some "game players" don't like this because it disrupts their "ideology" of game play (i.e., chess with WIE).

Will we ever get to that utopia? Probablly not, unless some combines the mechanics of War in Europe, Fire in the East/Scorched Earth and the OCS level of combat and map sizes so that you can command armies, corps and divisions and then per historical rules breakdown divisions, recombine put into modes and other sort of historical type of games.

Of course you'll always get some a-hole that bitches about such-and-such or how historically such-and-such happend so why are we even playing these games cause the outcome is already such-and-such. In those cases we just tell the a-hole to shut his pie-hole because what the f*ck are you bitching about? Historical analysis, what if' , ah, f*ck it.

--
Don Lazov 
~Best Regards

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: sgminfo <sgminfo at aol.com> 

> One of the features/problems(depending on your viewpoint with the 
> simulation) is the problem of surprise. 
> 
> One has to bear in mind with the cardstock game... 
> 
> No surprise was really possible in the original design. 
> It was chess using the numbers, 
> and the only surpises available were those offered on the chess board, 
> indirection, 
> and misdirection. 
> 
> 
> Now because of that there were problems in gaining a sudden attack 
> advantage. 
> 
> But the game itself, 
> with weekly turns 
> had to be strongly conservative. 
> Should the attacker achieve a strategic surprise, 
> the defender was too far behind the curve to catch up and recover, 
> to do so required an active defense, 
> which, with the strictures of the board game, counter mix, and the crt 
> were almost impossible to do. 
> 
> Combat resolution had to effectively do service for both sides' active 
> manoeuvring at the point of decision. 
> 
> Hence the crt really is a joint resolution device, substituting in both 
> these roles. 
> 
> With the computer game, FOW enables that holy grail of the concealed 
> surprise application of the mailed fist. 
> And the battle for freedom of manoeuvre. 
> 
> Where this desired edge breaks down, 
> is that at given odds resolutions, 
> The results of the battle are often wholly one sided, 
> where firepower and concentration are achieved in time and space. 
> at 10-12 to 1 odds, 
> the attacker only gets stronger, 
> and the defender usually gets wiped out. 
> 
> At lower odds, 
> below 6-1 on good crts 
> the inbuilt attrition causes the agressor to suffer greater challenges 
> and have his combat superiority erode away. 
> 
> But these assume, 
> good knowledge on both sides. 
> 
> With full fow and a low density of units, the agressor can achieve 
> concentration and deliver the critical odds to fight a battle of 
> annihilation 
> without the defender being able to react to counter in time 
> > 
> > 
> So with full fow, the game is ever more dependant on high unit density 
> on the board, to prevent the runaway equation crunching the defender... 
> 
> Attrition, as an option, was hoped to redress this element, the 
> advancing attacker, would wear away his success, using it, substituting 
> this brake for the one lost in FOW. By taking the balance of combat 
> advantage outside the straight mathematical model, a leve;l of manoeuvre 
> and comand planning, plays lip service once again. 
> 
> With perfect knowledge all that one could really do was apply the force 
> equations at the key points and wind the handle, to get the results the 
> authors intended. 
> Breakthroughs were only intended in exceptional circumstances, 
> and the strictures of oos and aex, were the coarse modifiers if you 
> (inevitably) exceeded your boundaries, to bring the rampaging agressor 
> back under control. 
> 
> 
> -|steve|- 
> 
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