Don Maddox
19 Aug 02, 15:08
Bob Cross -- I’ve discussed this subject on another board and I thought it might be fun to rehash it here.
TOAW combat results were never scaled for turn duration. Without adjustment, each combat round will be equally bloody regardless of turn length. And six-hour turn scenarios can have 280 combat rounds per week while whole-week turn scenarios can have no more than 10 per week. Therefore, without an adjustment, scenarios designed with six-hour turns will tend to be much bloodier than ones designed with whole-week turns. The attrition divider was made available to allow designers to address this, after enough designers complained. But it did not come with instructions. The default is 10 regardless. It is up to designers to figure how to use it.
When it first became available, I made an initial assumption that the default (10) was probably appropriate for whole-week turns. From that I worked backwards to conclude that half-week turns needed a value of 20, one-day turns needed 70, half-day turns needed 140, and six-hour turns needed 280.
Since CFNA had half-week turns, I reworked it with a divider setting of 20. It didn't work too badly, until I came to the El Alamein setup. Test results forced me to repeatedly reduce the divider, until I reached a value of 7, before that setup had a chance of working historically. I decided that that battle must have been particularly bloody.
But when I got to "France 1944", I again had to dramatically reduce the divider from the above values, or the Allies couldn't break out. I finally settled on a value of 4, which worked well. I've concluded that my initial assumption was wrong.
So I went back and changed the divider setting in several old scenarios as per the new value and they seemed to work much better. "The Next War" then gave the Warsaw Pact a respectable chance against NATO. And the need for shock effects was much reduced in all the CFNA setups. The value in "Cambrai 1917" had never been near my estimate of 70 for one-day turns and had always been around the 14 value my tests suggested. Same for "Killer Angels 1863". “Waterloo 1815”, using 6-hour turns, worked best with a value of 40 (only 9 of 12 turns were useable).
Therefore, I'm about convinced that the "correct" value (if there is such a thing) for half-week turns must be near 4. If so, whole-week turns would need a value of 2, one-day turns a value of 14, half-day turns a value of 28, and six-hour turns a value of 56. When I discussed this on the other board, one other designer related that he had found that a value of 3 worked well for a whole-week turn scenario of his. This correlated well with my results.
There would be exceptions, of course, and those figures have more precision than justified. Hex and unit scales will have effects that will need to be figured in to the design decision. The attrition divider setting needs to be based upon careful correlation of playtest rates of advance/casualties vs. historical rates.
My point is that it needs to be investigated in each design. I'm just wondering if anyone else has mucked about with the divider settings and has any results to add.
Stauffenberg -- Interesting topic, and one of those TOAW features that has all sorts of implications, requiring huge amounts of playtesting and discussion to get a handle on.
I rather suspect that, while turn lengths obviously create a base integer one might start with (you suggest >4< for half-week turns), it ends up being more complicated than that, more situation specific.
As an example I would mention my DnO project, set at 10 km hex/half-week turns. The latest version has replacement integers based upon a number of playtests up through turns 40+. Earlier versions played very well indeed up to this turn plateau, and then the Soviets just bottomed out from losses generated by combat. Ah ha, I thought, about 7 months ago, an obvious situation to apply the attrition divider. I'll just try out >20< and the Soviets should have a chance in the long haul.
It didn't work out, this conclusion came from numerous playtests, and I am now back at 10. Why? Consider for a moment the main method of killing units in most TOAW scenarios: surround and destroy. Cutting losses with the divider has some impact on that, but it was minimal: units take a certain level of losses, are forced to retreat, can't, and they die. What I was doing in actual fact, was cutting German losses in half, while marginally affecting Soviet losses. My solution lay in adjusting Soviet replacement levels, along with another item I will mention.
This is not to say that your figure of >4< may not be generally correct for half week turns; it is to suggest that there are exceptions, and they may be numerous. Factors to consider:
--unit density and map scale
--historical ferocity of the fighting
--length of the entire scenario where cummulative losses become the overriding issue. I suspect shorter scenarios, less intense than DnO, may more effectively be rung in at >4<.
What I did in DnO finally, was model history based on the fact that the Germans were, historically, forced to pause now and then while they built up supplies passed along a precarious supply tail, before they lunged forward again. I put in periodic and variable "supply disorganisation" turns @ 80% shock to slow up the German killing machine and give the Soviets the breathers they received. The problem with TOAW in this regard is with the rather generic handling of command control and supply levels, but this is another topic. Basically, losses are often higher than they should be in TOAW because units can unhistorically continue banging away, even with 2% onhand supply. Periodic 80% shock worked beautifully, not just in blunting the German sword now and then, but in causing some 30+ divisions per affected turn to fail prof checks and go into disorganised status.
So, my conclusion is to bear in mind that the attrition divider settings can be very much situation specific. Only playtesting will sort it out.
TOAW combat results were never scaled for turn duration. Without adjustment, each combat round will be equally bloody regardless of turn length. And six-hour turn scenarios can have 280 combat rounds per week while whole-week turn scenarios can have no more than 10 per week. Therefore, without an adjustment, scenarios designed with six-hour turns will tend to be much bloodier than ones designed with whole-week turns. The attrition divider was made available to allow designers to address this, after enough designers complained. But it did not come with instructions. The default is 10 regardless. It is up to designers to figure how to use it.
When it first became available, I made an initial assumption that the default (10) was probably appropriate for whole-week turns. From that I worked backwards to conclude that half-week turns needed a value of 20, one-day turns needed 70, half-day turns needed 140, and six-hour turns needed 280.
Since CFNA had half-week turns, I reworked it with a divider setting of 20. It didn't work too badly, until I came to the El Alamein setup. Test results forced me to repeatedly reduce the divider, until I reached a value of 7, before that setup had a chance of working historically. I decided that that battle must have been particularly bloody.
But when I got to "France 1944", I again had to dramatically reduce the divider from the above values, or the Allies couldn't break out. I finally settled on a value of 4, which worked well. I've concluded that my initial assumption was wrong.
So I went back and changed the divider setting in several old scenarios as per the new value and they seemed to work much better. "The Next War" then gave the Warsaw Pact a respectable chance against NATO. And the need for shock effects was much reduced in all the CFNA setups. The value in "Cambrai 1917" had never been near my estimate of 70 for one-day turns and had always been around the 14 value my tests suggested. Same for "Killer Angels 1863". “Waterloo 1815”, using 6-hour turns, worked best with a value of 40 (only 9 of 12 turns were useable).
Therefore, I'm about convinced that the "correct" value (if there is such a thing) for half-week turns must be near 4. If so, whole-week turns would need a value of 2, one-day turns a value of 14, half-day turns a value of 28, and six-hour turns a value of 56. When I discussed this on the other board, one other designer related that he had found that a value of 3 worked well for a whole-week turn scenario of his. This correlated well with my results.
There would be exceptions, of course, and those figures have more precision than justified. Hex and unit scales will have effects that will need to be figured in to the design decision. The attrition divider setting needs to be based upon careful correlation of playtest rates of advance/casualties vs. historical rates.
My point is that it needs to be investigated in each design. I'm just wondering if anyone else has mucked about with the divider settings and has any results to add.
Stauffenberg -- Interesting topic, and one of those TOAW features that has all sorts of implications, requiring huge amounts of playtesting and discussion to get a handle on.
I rather suspect that, while turn lengths obviously create a base integer one might start with (you suggest >4< for half-week turns), it ends up being more complicated than that, more situation specific.
As an example I would mention my DnO project, set at 10 km hex/half-week turns. The latest version has replacement integers based upon a number of playtests up through turns 40+. Earlier versions played very well indeed up to this turn plateau, and then the Soviets just bottomed out from losses generated by combat. Ah ha, I thought, about 7 months ago, an obvious situation to apply the attrition divider. I'll just try out >20< and the Soviets should have a chance in the long haul.
It didn't work out, this conclusion came from numerous playtests, and I am now back at 10. Why? Consider for a moment the main method of killing units in most TOAW scenarios: surround and destroy. Cutting losses with the divider has some impact on that, but it was minimal: units take a certain level of losses, are forced to retreat, can't, and they die. What I was doing in actual fact, was cutting German losses in half, while marginally affecting Soviet losses. My solution lay in adjusting Soviet replacement levels, along with another item I will mention.
This is not to say that your figure of >4< may not be generally correct for half week turns; it is to suggest that there are exceptions, and they may be numerous. Factors to consider:
--unit density and map scale
--historical ferocity of the fighting
--length of the entire scenario where cummulative losses become the overriding issue. I suspect shorter scenarios, less intense than DnO, may more effectively be rung in at >4<.
What I did in DnO finally, was model history based on the fact that the Germans were, historically, forced to pause now and then while they built up supplies passed along a precarious supply tail, before they lunged forward again. I put in periodic and variable "supply disorganisation" turns @ 80% shock to slow up the German killing machine and give the Soviets the breathers they received. The problem with TOAW in this regard is with the rather generic handling of command control and supply levels, but this is another topic. Basically, losses are often higher than they should be in TOAW because units can unhistorically continue banging away, even with 2% onhand supply. Periodic 80% shock worked beautifully, not just in blunting the German sword now and then, but in causing some 30+ divisions per affected turn to fail prof checks and go into disorganised status.
So, my conclusion is to bear in mind that the attrition divider settings can be very much situation specific. Only playtesting will sort it out.