Forum > Theater of Operations: World at War
Counterattack at Belle Fontaine
choppinlt:
I have not posted about this yet in the main thread, but at 1030 a company of Fallschirm in reserve with a newly arrived company of Stugs will engage a US infantry battalion that is recovering and preparing the next attack. Christian Knudsen and his opponent have volunteered to fight this battle out using Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). More details about the engagement will be shared, plus an after action report will be included in this thread.
I am still waiting to see if we have any volunteers to fight Tactical Wargamer in one of the other engagements using Combat Mission. Please speak up if interested! You can reply here or PM me.
-choppinlt
Asid:
This is great news. I really enjoy reading these posts :book
thanks for taking the time to make them :thumbsup
Christian Knudsen:
In the next day or two I should be finished generating the 2 OBs in ASL - I've been working on it a few days, but the process has highlighted a few inconsistencies and problems in the ruleset I generated, so there has been some revision there.
The big issue has been artillery. Players of ASL will know that OBA can be pretty powerful and decisive. ASL tends use "modules" of OBA that represent the fire of an offboard artillery battery. But in this battle, the Americans, for instance, have access to 8 batteries of various calibre firing in support. This is historical, but I feel it might be pretty unmanageable for ASL (and maybe CM too!) So I am going to try a system where having access to more than a given number of batteries increases the effectiveness (ammunition level, in ASL terms) of each module. So the Amis will go from 8 modules to 4, but these will have more ammo and therefore be more effective and easier to use.
I am a little conflicted here; I really feel that 8 batteries will be too much to handle, but on the other hand I might be wrong. On the other other hand, the Americans in this operation can get a LOT of artillery on call, certainly with potential for more than 8 batteries in an engagement, so my feeling is that some sort of translation will have to be done. This is why we playtest!
Anyhoo, I hope to have the OBs done and the ruleset adjusted by tomorrow evening, and then we will start getting into setup. The ASL AAR will be nowhere near as detailed as last time - turn summaries instead of an exhaustive blow by blow account. We want to have fun playing, but my main goal is to test-drive the major places that TO interfaces with ASL - pre-enagement, engagement resolution (in particular how the engagement ends), and post-engagement results. Of particular interest is seeing how closely the results dovetail with what Matt's resolution algorithms come up with!
choppinlt:
Thanks CK, for doing this and your efforts! :) Using ASL as yet another tactical system perfectly illustrates what I am trying to do when I say "you can use any tactical system you want to resolve combat." While Combat Mission has been my primary focus, any tactical system will work...and I want people to try them. One area we havn't seen are miniatures. If there are any microarmor or 15mm (like Flames of War)...or any others out there, feel free to speak up and join in.
Building off your comments, it will be interesting to see how this type of scenario works. Specifically I mean the fact that this engagement is merely a spoiling attack to throw the Amis off balance and disrupt the flow. In other words this isn't about seizing objectives, it is about being a pain in the butt without risking many casualties.
CORRECTION on the amount of arty available for the Amis. I may have misinformed you CK, but they have 5 batteries at their disposal (up to 7 were likely to respond). They have 2-105's, 2-4.2-inch mortars, and a battery of 155's. This builds in to my point below...
Arty is a tricky thing to balance. So I am always trying to tweak how arty works within ToO. This scenario is a good example. The US Inf Bn being attacked has a bn of 105's, a co of 4.2-in (i.e. 3 batteries), and a battery of 155's that are in "dedicated" support. The current concept is that dedicated arty only responds to fire missions from the unit they are supporting in the attack or defense. Due to the situation (cohesion loss, etc) the infantry only received 5 batteries. It turns out that is all the arty the US needs to beat back the attack, BUT if the Germans had attacked with a much stronger force the US infantry would have been eligible to receive arty from direct and general support too. So the question I need to evaluate is whether or not this concept represents reality, or does it require some tweaks? :-\ Anyone, feel free to comment...
Christian Knudsen:
Matt and I have been firing emails back and forth in the last 24 hours or so, and he asked me to re-create the discussion we have been having here on the forum, I assume to hopefully generate further discussion. So here we go!
Hey Matt
I was wondering how you intend to handle artillery preregistration. I see this being an issue in any system (CM, ASL) that has this capability or something like it.
I have a mechanism for giving the defenders pre-registered hexes, they will just buy them with fortification points, much like CM. Alternatively, we could award them on a per posture level - none for exposed or hasty, one for prepared, two for fortified.
For the attacker they are slightly more problematic, as the attacker will not receive fortification points, and for CM will likely not get points to purchase TRPs. Is there some mechanism in TO whereby one can task a battery to pre-registration in a given area? Is this historical? Part of the deal is that you need pre-registered hexes in order to lay barrages in ASL. I can change that, make it so that laying a barrage occupies a module for the length of the engagement, but this would involve some additional house-ruling.
What do you think?
As an aside, I have the OBs (less OBA) generated, and once we resolve the OBA issue I will start posting that stuff and carrying on.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page