Post by Whiterook on Jun 17, 2024 11:06:10 GMT -5
I came across this interesting ng quote recently, in reading about the pluses and minuses of the new retooled “World at War ‘85” vs the original “World at War” series, both by Lock ‘N Load Publishing. In describing the ‘crunchiness’ of the new system (basically, taking a roughly 17 page rulebook to nearly a hundred), the real brilliance of the discussion was summed in the following:
There are times when the simplicity of a statement speaks volumes! When designing your own games, keeping the above in the back of your mind will save you a lot of grief in under-simplifying mechanics (like movement and range) in a platoon-level game! Another way to view (pun intended, as you will shortly see) this is in a bird’s eye view: Imagine your games’ battlefield in general, from the vantage point view of a peregrine falcon… are you flying 75 feet (roughly, from the top of a five story building), or the tallest skyscraper in New York City, One World Trade Center, at 1776 feet? …the former is like looking down at squad-level operations in my mind, while the other is looking down at platoon-level. How do I factor this?
A typical hex representation in a platoon-level game is a 150 meters across, side to opposite side; that’s roughly 500 feet… that’s just shy of an American football field (360’). Doing some math, that’s platoon-level view is five times higher (football fields) than the width of the hex-combat-area.
Some may disagree with my height rationalization and think the view should maybe be double that. No matter really, as the point I’m making is, you as that magnificent falcon are looking down a lot farther at a platoon-level battle.
OK, let’s spin this back to the subject at hand: C3I.
At the platoon-level, the games designer factors distances across a wider expanse field that squad-level. At a wider expanse, things get harder for a commander/leader to control, harder to communicate to all your troops from your Command Post location, which in turns affects your overall command efficiency…
In a d\Design Note quote from West End Games’, “Eastern Front Tank Leader”:
For more in C3I see this article.
So, in context of WWII and Korean War warfare, where leaders commanded platoon-level strengths of 20-30 men, 2-5 tanks, trucks, or halftracks, and 3-5 tubes of artillery (represented in individual unit counters); each contained in an immediate space of a football field, yet in the greater context of an entire (game) battlefield where these multiple groupings of units can exist in clusters and individual units that spans 48 by 29 football fields… controlling and communication with your troops up to a maximum of 24,000 feet away in an example of Eastern Front Tank Leader, in turn play-time of about 60 minutes/turn, is a large undertaking to which your game mechanics must answer to.
By comparison, a squad-level game has a typical hex size of 50 meters (that’s a 1/3rd of the scale from platoon-level); the control area of a Lock ‘N Load Tactical game map being 700 feet by 400 feet (14 by 8 hexes)… so it is much easier to communicate with troops up to 700 feet away (two football fields) than 24,000 feet away (66-1/2 football fields away)!
“Platoon-level games are inherently different from squad-level games : At that scale, difference in command structure, doctrine, and other C3I factors become more essential components of the design than minute differences between types of AP ammo or fire-control systems.”
There are times when the simplicity of a statement speaks volumes! When designing your own games, keeping the above in the back of your mind will save you a lot of grief in under-simplifying mechanics (like movement and range) in a platoon-level game! Another way to view (pun intended, as you will shortly see) this is in a bird’s eye view: Imagine your games’ battlefield in general, from the vantage point view of a peregrine falcon… are you flying 75 feet (roughly, from the top of a five story building), or the tallest skyscraper in New York City, One World Trade Center, at 1776 feet? …the former is like looking down at squad-level operations in my mind, while the other is looking down at platoon-level. How do I factor this?
A typical hex representation in a platoon-level game is a 150 meters across, side to opposite side; that’s roughly 500 feet… that’s just shy of an American football field (360’). Doing some math, that’s platoon-level view is five times higher (football fields) than the width of the hex-combat-area.
Some may disagree with my height rationalization and think the view should maybe be double that. No matter really, as the point I’m making is, you as that magnificent falcon are looking down a lot farther at a platoon-level battle.
OK, let’s spin this back to the subject at hand: C3I.
At the platoon-level, the games designer factors distances across a wider expanse field that squad-level. At a wider expanse, things get harder for a commander/leader to control, harder to communicate to all your troops from your Command Post location, which in turns affects your overall command efficiency…
In a d\Design Note quote from West End Games’, “Eastern Front Tank Leader”:
C3, which stands for command, control, and communications, is the most decisive factor in play, as it determines when units can move and fire. A central thesis of Tank Leader is that troop quality, training, and communications equipment was far more important on the WWII battlefield than hardware — gunnery, armor, speed, and so on. The soviet T-34/76, in service in the Red Army from 1941 on, was far superior to any tank the Germans fielded until the Tiger and Panther, yet the Pz. III and IV companies consistently defeated numerically siuperior forces of T-34-76s.
The term “C3” was coined years after the period simulated [by Tank Leader], and has become an axiom of modern military science. [WWII] Eastern Front tactics, and particularly the German defensive genius exhibited post-Kursk, could only be explained by C3.
The term “C3” was coined years after the period simulated [by Tank Leader], and has become an axiom of modern military science. [WWII] Eastern Front tactics, and particularly the German defensive genius exhibited post-Kursk, could only be explained by C3.
For more in C3I see this article.
So, in context of WWII and Korean War warfare, where leaders commanded platoon-level strengths of 20-30 men, 2-5 tanks, trucks, or halftracks, and 3-5 tubes of artillery (represented in individual unit counters); each contained in an immediate space of a football field, yet in the greater context of an entire (game) battlefield where these multiple groupings of units can exist in clusters and individual units that spans 48 by 29 football fields… controlling and communication with your troops up to a maximum of 24,000 feet away in an example of Eastern Front Tank Leader, in turn play-time of about 60 minutes/turn, is a large undertaking to which your game mechanics must answer to.
By comparison, a squad-level game has a typical hex size of 50 meters (that’s a 1/3rd of the scale from platoon-level); the control area of a Lock ‘N Load Tactical game map being 700 feet by 400 feet (14 by 8 hexes)… so it is much easier to communicate with troops up to 700 feet away (two football fields) than 24,000 feet away (66-1/2 football fields away)!