[WarInEur] Weather variability:

Sun Sep 7 15:07:58 EDT 2008

Reminds me of the old SPI game "Objective Moscow"

--- On Sat, 9/6/08, Kent & Sue Haunschild <kentsue at cox.net> wrote:

From: Kent & Sue Haunschild <kentsue at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [WarInEur] Weather variability:
To: "Wardall Clark" <baseballnut570 at hotmail.com>, warineur at mailman.halisp.net
Date: Saturday, September 6, 2008, 10:06 PM

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I agree with most of your post.  Especially about the need for the actual weather if we are going to conduct a historic simulation.  As I noted in my post, once you start using the Random weather option you have departed from the simulation and are into the game of what if's.

As it is currently constructed the Random weather table is flawed in my opinion for several reasons.  First and foremost is that it is completely random.

There is no chance of suddenly getting Clear weather with all it implies for mobility in the middle of winter.  Maybe a chinook comes along and the snow melts but that just gives you Mud.

Also, weather patterns tend to move from West to East so the Germans would be able to reasonably anticipate and forecast the weather.  The Soviets would lack this capability and for them it might be more sudden.  I like your idea of making the die rolls several weeks in advance and delivering a "weather forecast" to the players.  Maybe the Allies and Axis get a two week advance notice and the Soviets only one.

My secondary objection to the random weather table is that it doesn't build on past history.  For example, let's assume that the default weather is Clear.  If the setting is for 100% Snow then there is no chance of getting Clear weather, but if we change the settings to 95% Snow and 5% Mud we now have a slight chance that a period of warm weather will melt some of the snow, but not all and reduce trafficability accordingly.

However, mid-winter warm periods generally signal a milder winter and a quicker thaw in the Spring so the period of Clear weather should return sooner.  To simulate this we need to make the weather variable additive.  That is, we add the 5% chance of Mud to the previous value and now the odds for future cycles are 90% Snow and 10% Mud.  This accumulation would carry over so when we arrive at Mud turns we might a 5% Snow, 90% Mud, and 5% Clear for default values.  If we had rolled a previous Mud turn during Snow then the values would be 5% Snow, 85% Mud and 10% Clear If we rolled a Snow turn (indicative of a late hard freeze) then the values would become 10%S 85% Mud and 5% Clear but if we rolled a Clear turn then the values would become 0% Snow, 85% Mud and 15% Clear.

This "past history" would continue to influence the weather for succeeding turns and eventually you might find that permanent clear weather arrived on 3-5-41 (which was abnormally late), 1-5-41 (which was normal), or 3-4-41 (which would be early).  (Note the percentages used in the examples were just used for illustration purposes and do not reflect what I think the actual percentages should be.  Also I would probably clip the results so Clear weather couldn't arrive later to early or too late despite the results of the die rolls.  The best of all worlds would be one in which we could adjust percentages by year and turn so we could make the years more or less historical.

But my real ambition is to use climate maps and paint the Severe Weather area into four separate weather bands (10 degree increments) based on average winter temperatures.  These weather bands would then experience the onset of winter etc with a four week delay. So the area up around Finland would have a winter four weeks longer than the coast around the Black Sea.  Extending the campaigning season a couple of weeks longer in the south might make the Axis territorial gains in the south achievable, while shortening it in the north might make Leningrad a more difficult proposition.

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Wardall Clark 
To: warineur at mailman.halisp.net 
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2008 12:13 PM
Subject: [WarInEur] Weather variability:

WIE as a war GAME should not have variable weather.   The reason is fairly simple: The sucess of the initial invasion of the USSR is largely dependent on supply and movement rates and under current rules these are limited by the amount of clear weather turns in the invasion year.  Give me 4 to 6 extra extra weeks of unanticipated good weather and Leningrad is lost and probably Moscow as well. (i make no promises about the south as unless I have the right counter mix the "Quick step" defense will frustrate any fast advances past Kiev.) 

It seems to me quite unfair from a Game standpoint to have a perfectly effectiive Russian Defense fail because the Axis benefitted from an early thaw in the Spring and a late arrival of Mud in the Fall.

>From a SIMULATION stand point there are two sorts of improvements possible. First and foremost: the years besides 1941 could be given their historical weather rather than emulating 1941 over and over when 1941 was something of a freak year. If you are going to refight WWII it only makes sense that Historical weather should be used rather than repeating 1941 weather for 1944. 

The second improvement would be to take away the certainty of Long-term weather prediction which the game currently allows.  As things stand now the Players know exactly how many turns of CLEAR, SNOW, AND MUD remain for months in advance.  In actuallity, rain had to begin falling before MUD conditions became Imminant.  Snow had to fall and the temperatures had to drop to sub-Freezing before the Commanders were sure that SNOW condition would be upon them soon. 

My objection to the DG variable weather chart and to the one posted below is that the die needs to be rolled maybe two weeks in advance.  Unimproved roads do not typically turn into mud after an overnight storm (we are not talking about Monsoons or Hurricanes, after all)  Instead what happened was after it rained more days than not for two weeks, the roadways of eastern Europe turned to mush (aka MUD) until the temperature became cold enough to freeze them solid and increase mobility to SNOW conditions.  

Nor can MUD conditions unexpectedly terminate SNOW conditions.  The thaw can take place over a single week, but everybody knows when that week is coming (at least they did the previous week since such warm fronts would have been duely reported by G-2.) 

This does make for some interesting restraints on Campaign planning. The problem with launching a mobility-based attack on the first availble clear turn, as that the weather for that week wasn't known until the week before and the weather for next week is only now being known.  With a realistic variable weather system, the first clear week (of two weeks predicted good weather)might be needed to get to jumping off positions, with the attack coming on the second clear week or possibly not until the next time the weather turns CLEAR.  With F.O.W. this would be really neat to try to pull off. 

The DG variable weather rule has twin drawbacks which are nicely detailed in a previous post 

>The campaigning season will get shortened an average of 1.8 Clear turns per year with the Random Weather Option. Since the 
>default weather of 41 used in the design was abnormal this loss of Clear turns amounts to double indemnity. I like varity and the >unexpected in the game so everything doesn't become too set in stone and the game become boring. But as it is, the Axis player would >be foolish to agree to using the option.
> 
> Something along the lines of the numbers below is more representative of the "average" weather. 
> 
> Cycle 1 100S
> Cycle 2 100S
> Cycle 3 75S/25M
> Cycle 4 25S/50M/25C
> Cycle 5 75C/25M
> Cycle 6 100C
> Cycle 7 100C
> Cycle 8 100C
> Cycle 9 100C
> Cycle 10 100C
> Cycle 11 25C/75M
> Cycle 12 25M/75S
> Cycle 13 100S
> 
> Once you start using options you have already started down the road to the land of "what if" so you might as well go whole hog and have a random weather table that represents the average climate not the extreme. Maybe when using the option history will repeat itself and there will be extra Mud in the fifth cycle. But then again, maybe the not.
> 
A big problem with the table above is that the range of possibilities is too great: There could be 4 SNOW turns on cycle 3 and 4 CLEAR turns on cycle 4.    Ditto for the transition from CLEAR to SNOW in the late Fall. 
> 
The table does suggest a very reasonable way to transition the Weather. 
A)  Create three prevailing conditions:  Mild, rainy, freezing.  These have nothing to due with movement or combat but rather are the harbingers of changes in Weather. 
Two straight weeks of Rainy conditions converts SNOW to MUD and converts CLEAR to MUD
Two straight Weeks of Freezing converts MUD to SNOW
One week of Mild converts SNOW to MUD
Three weeks of Mild converts MUD to CLEAR
       In each case the change takes place only the weather had been in effect for the indicated number of weeks. Thus providing the Commanders with a minimum of 1 weeks notice of the change. 
B) Take the chart above,  slide all the rolls forward by three weeks and substitute MIld for CLEAR, Rainty for MUD and Frozen for SNOW and the freakish weather of 1941, becomes possible, but not especially likely for any given year of WWII; 

Given the many different rules introduced to WIE to make it more likely that the USSR will survive a May assault, it seems only fair that maybe the USSR will not receive the fortunate weather it received from October 1941 to June 42.  Of course,  with this system a German commander who jumps off in early May of 1940, 1941, or 1942 might find that late spring rainy weeks reconvert the roadways to MUD conditions and leave his forces temporarily immobilized while the Soviet Rail Systems operates at full effectiveness. 

Bob in Louisville 

>  kentsue at cox.net writes:
> I then read, unfortunately a late thaw and the Balkans campaign delayed the start until June. What really struck me is that the game designers used 41, which was an abnormal year as the weather pattern for the war. The random weather option is supposed to provide some variation but it actually reduces the number of clear turns on average. I'd like to see the Random weather table modified to reflect better weather on average rather than worse.
> 
> 
> Yes the weather was anomalous...
> 
> The question is...is it atypical for the war period?
> 
> Do we then model the typical weather for a normalised period, or do we recreate the weather as it bore down on the forces?
> 
> 
> Remember 1941 was an abnormally severe winter in eastern europe.
> 
> The Germans were not amateurs, they had extensive experience of winters in Russia, from WW1. They knew what to expect.
> 
> Which makes the breakdown in planning in 1941 seem all the less explicable. Plan 'B' simply wasn't in place.
> 
> If you interpret the weather as completely off the expected scale in 1941, that explains much of the desaster that befell the Germans, multiplied by short termism and expediency, coupled with rose tinted spectacles that the campaign would be over before it hit.
> 
> For the rest of the war period in the east, the Germans had so much on their plates, maximising the campaigning season simply was not on the agenda of realistic possibilities, there were too many other issues preventing early 'jump offs' in the east.
> 
> It is only in the the game that such a question arises...
> 
> s Kent knws, after using the attritional option in the East, both he and Don were scraping the barrel for forces for the next campaigning season, let alone having the forces to finance great advances and battles at the frontiers of Europe in succeeding years in the east.
> 
> 
> -|steve|-
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