Hey it's nice to see some folks reading this stuff!
It would be interesting to see this battle played out a few times to get some metrics.
I don't know that I necessarily want to re-fight THIS battle, but I do want to fight a bunch more battles to increase the sample size. Battles like this will happen, we need to know how to handle them. In fact, as I think I mentioned, I'm not too concerned about how the actual battle fights, I'm far more concerned about determining the before and after, and how that interacts with TO. Not to say there aren't issues about how the battle works, but a lot of that comes out of starting conditions, and should be fairly easy to adjust.
...The way I see it there is a conflict between the way we play tactical level games (fight to the bitter end) and the way that operational and RL are frequently played (make sure casulties are minimized). Finding the balance is clearly going to be important. I think toning down the tactical battle player's first instinct to fight to the bitter end would be a good thing. We should be disengaging and withdrawing much more then we do. On the other hand what you just experienced regarding on turn one the Germans experience enough casualties to cause a withdrawal does not lead to a satisfactory experience. I'm am saying that guidelines should be in place for casualty limits... I have a question: earlier you said "Persistence is an optional mechanic that we are trying out" is that an actual ASL rule you are using?
This is really the heart of the matter right now, balancing our desire for realism in terms of tactics based around force preservation against our very real need to make a system that produces fun, challenging, meaningful tactical battles. Interestingly enough, I had a fellow on the GS ASL forum basically say that he would not consider trying a system that would not forecast which engagements would be good battles and which not. I take that with a grain of salt, there are lots of crappy unbalanced ASL scenarios out there, and even a few campaign games that are not well balanced, and are prone to the snowball effect. I think that it will be fairly easy to pick out battles that are worth it, and recognize those that are not. As to your question, persistence is a TO effect for which I blodged together some ASL rules. ASL does have a somewhat similar mechanic whereby a side's ELR can drop during play due to losses. I don't know anyone who uses it, and it doesn't really meet our goal of limiting losses.
BTW, because of the impetus system, the Germans were not required to give up after Turn 1. Even with the additional Turn 2 losses, I could still make a roll or two and continue the battle, and who knows, I could get into a good position and inflict a bunch of casualties on the Americans in ongoing turns, which, so long as I limited my own (a lot, mind you), I could win the battle. But I don't think that meets the commander's intent of keeping casualties light, so I will start my withdrawal in Turn 3. Now the battle is still not necessarily over at that point, the defender might decide to pursue, in which case I have 4 turns to get my forces off the map. If he does not, then the battle ends, but the attacker will not gain any ground in TO.
Honestly the more I think about it, Options 2 and 3 are VERY similar to each other. We have to be careful with Option 2 that we don't accidently give the attackers an artificial advantage by increasing thresholds. Both sides would benefit from the increase, however it may allow for the attacker to gain more territory as a result. It's just one of the things that need to be considered for balancing purposes.
I would increase the defender persistence as well though, by the same ratios. This would create longer lasting battles that are hopefully more interesting, i.e. don't end in the first 2 turns. I would compensate for this by adjusting the lazarus odds, basically. So battles last longer, and have more casualties, but more of these are recouped at the end. It should be possible to find a balance that allows for persistence to be meaningful, but not overly constricting, but then not lead to unrealistic attrition. As mentioned, the squad resolution of ASL casualties makes this really easy to justify.
I realize, however, that I am not at all dealing with you bringing territory into the equation. This is a good point, and one I need to think about. We haven't really talked too much about territory gain yet, although I seem to recall that you have had to normalize our tests so far to limit the amount of territory taken. I really don't like the concept of normalizing (that occurs outside of system transitioning), but more testing will iron out these issues, hopefully.
If you are suggesting that persistence be ignored when it comes to battle resolution, that is certainly an option. However if I were your CO who gave you specific orders to limit casualties and there was a blatant disregard for this order, I would probably take you out back and personally !!! So I would say that this option would be used cautiously for that reason among some other reasons.
And I agree. But players may not - persistence adds a layer of book-keeping that a large number of players may just not want to bother with. We may just have to accept that players will want to fight to the death. One thing that works in our favour in this is that my ASL engagements have no Victory Conditions other than cause casualties and take territory. This may hurt us in other ways, but it definitely helps us in avoiding last minute suicide charges.