Forum > Theater of Operations: World at War
Counterattack at Belle Fontaine
A Canadian Cat:
--- Quote from: choppinlt on June 21, 2017, 06:01:55 PM ---Hopefully I don't sound like I am way out there on this explanation...I hope I am providing some clarity on the overall concept... Or am I missing the point?! :eek My bottom line is that I am leaving up to the players to use their own preferences on battle resolution and transitioning, but I want to give them some solid mechanisms/guidance to use if they choose to. So CK is going all his great work with ASL, while we are doing more with CM to provide the mechanisms and guidance.
--- End quote ---
No that sounds reasonable. I am glad you are considering how this will play out. Sounds like people will be able to go hard core and play with other like minded gamers and learn to fight more realistically or all the way the other way where an operational layer can be used to generate battles for a variety of people with differing skills and interests and everyone still has some fun. Sounds good to me.
choppinlt:
EXACTLY! ;D and well said! I feel like this is a core issue with what I am trying to accomplish with the game. And I want to opt for flexibility to appeal to as many people as we can.
Christian Knudsen:
Okay - I shall revive this thread and finish what I started far too long ago.
My apologies, first, to Choppinit and the rest who have been so kind as to follow along. I am in the military, and found myself deployed quite suddenly for a little over 2 months right as I was about to wrap the battle up. I did have some internet access while I was away, and I promised Choppinit that I would get it finished, but I just wasn't able to get it done until I got back.
So on to the (anticlimactic) denouement, the German withdrawal and post-engagement phase.
Having taken well more casualties than planned, I decided to declare an attacker withdrawal (to start lines). At this point the defender has the operation of either letting the attacker go and thus ending the battle, or declaring a tactical pursuit/counterattack and continuing the battle, trying to inflict more casualties and chase the attacker off the board, perhaps with a view to conducting an attack in the next TO orders phase. However, I convinced my oppo not to do so, so we will move directly to the post-engagement phase.
A bunch of things now happen that I will not get into here, but which will be familiar to anyone who has played an Historical ASL Campaign game. These include conclusion of melee, placement of HIP units and marker removal, rally of broken units, perimeter determination and resolution of isolated units, and clearing the map. Note in this case that there is no perimeter resolution due to the attacker withdrawal - the Germans have fled back to their lines!
With all this out of the way, we move to casualty reporting. The Americans took no(!) casualties - all they had was a broken HS, so no rolls on the casualty reporting table are made, and 0 casualties are reported to TO.
The Germans lost 2.5 squads (out of 16.5 at start). This was in the form of 1 full, and 3 Half squads. Each of these now gets a survival roll. There are several modifiers to this, but the only ones that apply are the bonus for the units being Elite. With this bonus, a dr of 4-6 (one one die) will be enough to save them. Starting with the squad, the drs are 6,2,4,6 - good rolls for the Germans! Only one HS is fully lost and will be reported as casualties. This represents guys who are walking wounded, who go to ground and straggle in late, etc. The same for the Americans - they may have taken casualties, but none are serious enough to warrant being evacuated.
The vehicles are a different story. One StuG III (L) and one StuH 42 (L) were lost to artillery fire. While neither burn, none of the crew survive (or they are wounded badly enough, etc), and the wrecks now sit in American territory and are un-recoverable. The 2 crews are added to the casualty total (at 5 men apiece), and we are now ready to report to TO that the Germans have lost 15 casualties and 2 AFV.
Because the Germans have withdrawn to their own lines, an advance of 0 meters is reported to TO.
Next - the AAR AAR.
Asid:
Hi Christian
Real life gets in the way all to often. I appreciate your continuing efforts.
Regards
Christian Knudsen:
Okay, points to consider based on all this. I'll start with the small and proceed to the big.
Casualty reporting - As discussed above, there is a dialectic to be worked out between ASL, TO, and casualty reporting. But I think the "Lazarus roll" is a solid way of dealing with it, we just have to fine-tune the sliders, as it were. One point is with splitting casualties between units. I don't think dividing equally is too big a deal, most will not want to track individual unit casualties, and so long as we force equal division people won't be able to take all their casualties from crappy units, and none from the elites. One thing is I had not thought about how TO tracks crew casualties for Armoured units. I have lumped all the crew and infantry casualties together, but it is easy on my side to separate them.
Perimeter and advance - Didn't really come into play here, unfortunately. The perimeter determination rules as they stand now are much tested, and I'm not worried about those. And I am reasonably confident that the mechanism I have chosen for translating that into TO terms is fine - Basically I measure the average advance in hexes across the width of the map, do a bit of math, and report that to TO. The fact that a terrain generation is randomized for each generated engagement make this a fairly easy design-for-effect solution.
Persistence and casualties - Much discussion above, so I won't repeat it here. I think that we will have to adopt some sort of normalization in terms of both casualties and advance to end up with meaningful battles that don't end too quickly, as this one did. But the more we normalize, the less effect that playing the engagement out has, so why play the engagement, etc... This is the biggest issue we have right now, and I think we are going to have to work out different options in terms of selecting a "normalization level" and let players choose.
Artillery - Much of the discussion above related to how to incorporate artillery without making it totally unbalancing. So I tried a mechanic to reduce the amount of OBA on the board. Even so, the arty was overpowering for the defenders, although it must be admitted that my opponent was quite lucky, and I quite stupid to give him a target. But still, artillery is VERY powerful in ASL, and the number of modules on board is, although historically consistent, currently far too high. It is kind of a rule of thumb in ASL campaign games that no more than 2 OBA modules may be used per side per day, and I am thinking about adopting this. But then how do we align this with the high amounts available in this TO operation, especially to the Americans? I am open to suggestions here, frankly, but am currently thinking that for each TO battery available for support, a roll will be made to see if it translates into the battle, with bonuses for lighter calibres, which must roll first. Once 2 modules are "received", then that's all the side gets. Another way to do it is to allow all the modules, but vastly change the ASL chit system for battery access to make actually getting a fire mission quite a bit less likely. I am loath to do this, however, as it involves changing core ASL rules.
Anyways, this is why we test, of course. Suggestions are welcome!
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