Red Factories miscellaneous stuff

[Magpie]

If you read through the various accounts of the assaults on the buildings the recurring theme is the heavy toll that the Russian defenders' fire took on the assault troops.

As I said in my earlier comment a proper defence is about well-sighted units that can lay down heavy fire from a protected position on the attackers.
The "issue" with the urban fighting probably come back more to the setup.

Free from the need to move into position and set up, the defenders can do nothing to stop the fire support units for the assault getting into a direct fire position.
Framing your scenario in such a way as to require the units to move will help, but it will make for a longer game if we start playing all the opening manoeuvring for position. (Which TBH, although boring, that's what IMT are all about)

Another solution is to look at the reality of a "deathstar" - up to 30 men crowed into a room with MMGs is highly unrealistic, perhaps dropping stacking limits in building locations might be useful?

Dropping the German MG FP to a more realistic level might be useful too.

 

[Magpie]

"Russians and Germans honeycombed on different levels of the same building for weeks and months. "

True but they weren't fighting at the time. Yes you can game guys hiding at the bottom of the trench or squirrelled away in the toilet but the premise of ASL is those few minutes at the height of a battle where all the action is taking place, the time for hiding is over.

The ability to hide in your opponents shooting phase and then pop up to shoot in your own would make the game fairly pointless.

 

[mi80j]

And my distrusting TPP is just my experience. It was a HoB scenario where I just drove off the board on GT1 with no problem. Now other here seem to be vouching for some TPP, and I have heard good things about Bounding Fire; so perhaps I may try one of theirs.

Since you have mentioned, several times, your distrust of TPP, and mentioned some TPP by name, I am curious: what is your opinion of Critical Hit?

 

[jrv]

Another solution is to look at the reality of a "deathstar" - up to 30 men crowed into a room with MMGs is highly unrealistic, perhaps dropping stacking limits in building locations might be useful?

This "room" is forty meters across. That's 1385.64 square meters, 46.19 square meters per man for thirty men, or a square with sides of roughly 6.8 meters, 22.31 feet, per man. It's hard to call that crowded. Of course not all of that is usable space, but even in a straight line that's 40m, roughly 120 feet, of straight-line frontage.

JR

 

[Gordon]

But how much of that frontage represents openings?

 

[Magpie]

This "room" is forty meters across. That's 1385.64 square meters, 46.19 square meters per man for thirty men, or a square with sides of roughly 6.8 meters, 22.31 feet, per man. It's hard to call that crowded. Of course not all of that is usable space, but even in a straight line that's 40m, roughly 120 feet, of straight-line frontage.

JR

"120 feet, of straight-line frontage." = 4 feet for each of 30 men standing in the open, that's crowed.
Area of a hexagon 40m across is 1039 sqm btw, so yes about 5m x 5m per man. Guys at the back won't be doing much shooting and a fair few of them will be standing in the open on most ASL boards.

However 40m is across the hex vertex to vertex, the hex side is your "fire frontage", that's only 20m

You're in a building so the frontage is a solid wall with some windows.
If it's a 1 m window every say 2 meters that's about 7 windows .

An SFMG will take up a whole window and 3 blokes. So your down to 4 windows for 21 blokes plus the leader.
That's about 5 guys shooting out of every window and the leader poking his head out somewhere too.

Not only is that crowded, that many windows means you're standing in a glass house

 

[jrv]

But how much of that frontage represents openings?

How many of the men are literally at the window, and how many are back getting ammo, or moving about, or filling out requisitions for more grenades, or having a SMOKE? How micro-managey do you want to be?

And among other game-vs-reality issues, let's talk about time. A RB CG day might go to eight turns. Let's assume that a "turn" in ASL is not the two minutes it's claimed to be. Let's assume that the fighting went on for eight hours usually. One turn represents about an hour's worth of fighting.

JR

 

[Magpie]

How many of the men are literally at the window, and how many are back getting ammo, or moving about, or filling out requisitions for more grenades, or having a SMOKE? How micro-managey do you want to be?

And among other game-vs-reality issues, let's talk about time. A RB CG day might go to eight turns. Let's assume that a "turn" in ASL is not the two minutes it's claimed to be. Let's assume that the fighting went on for eight hours usually. One turn represents about an hour's worth of fighting.

JR

So you're saying firepower should be reduced in buildings? I think that's not a bad idea. Or even just reduce the staking capacity.

A turn is 2 minutes. An ASL game, even a CG "day" represents the crescendo of the day's activities.

 

[jrv]

Area of a hexagon 40m across is 1039 sqm btw,

If 40m is side to side, then it is 1385.46m². If the measurement is point-to-point then it is 1039m². I have always taken the measurement as side-to-side, but the ASLRB does not actually say which it is. Since the range is based on the 40m size of the hexes [A2.1] I am guessing that 40m is side-to-side, not point-to-point.

JR

 

[Magpie]

Just checked the geometry and yes you're correct it's side to side, that makes the centre to centre of the hexes 40m , so a touch more room for the lads evenly spaced but not enough to change the fundamentals of my post.

 

[Gordon]

How many of the men are literally at the window, and how many are back getting ammo, or moving about, or filling out requisitions for more grenades, or having a SMOKE? How micro-managey do you want to be?

And among other game-vs-reality issues, let's talk about time. A RB CG day might go to eight turns. Let's assume that a "turn" in ASL is not the two minutes it's claimed to be. Let's assume that the fighting went on for eight hours usually. One turn represents about an hour's worth of fighting.

JR

I'm not trying to be a micro-manager, I can barely macro-manage my cardboard soldiers. I was just coming at a previous question I had regarding fortified buildings. If you further reduce the number/size of openings in a structure (as well as beefing up the structure) it should be harder for incoming small arms fire to hit anyone and it should have some effect on outgoing inherent firepower (obviously an MG can still put out high rates of fire through a very small opening al be it with a restricted arc of fire).

 

[mi80j]

Three dudes show up - all at the same time - all offering criticisms of ASL, in "concern troll" mode-on-steroids, one playing "good cop" to the two others' "bad cop"; does no one else see anything, er, interesting in this pattern?

 

[Gordon]

Three dudes show up - all at the same time - all offering criticisms of ASL, in "concern troll" mode-on-steroids, one playing "good cop" to the two others' "bad cop"; does no one else see anything, er, interesting in this pattern?

Hey, just to be clear, I was here before the current ruckus.

 

[Joelist]

Since you have mentioned, several times, your distrust of TPP, and mentioned some TPP by name, I am curious: what is your opinion of Critical Hit?

Zero. I like a lot of ASL players dislike CH on several levels.

 

[Joelist]

Three dudes show up - all at the same time - all offering criticisms of ASL, in "concern troll" mode-on-steroids, one playing "good cop" to the two others' "bad cop"; does no one else see anything, er, interesting in this pattern?

So any criticism of ASL is trolling? And sorry I showed up by myself - believe it or not on a message board people can and do gravitate to topics.

 

[mi80j]

The mongoose...
post-strike, relaxes with some good bread and wine...

 

[mi80j]

So any criticism of ASL is trolling? And sorry I showed up by myself - believe it or not on a message board people can and do gravitate to topics.

I knew you'd see it my way!
Good lad.

 

[mi80j]

Zero. I like a lot of ASL players dislike CH on several levels.

Curious, it is...
such venom for well-established and respected TPPs coming from you...
yet - coming from you - not a peep regarding that most, and for good reason, reviled of ALL TPPs...
curious, indeed...
Toodles!

 

[Eagle4ty]

How many of the men are literally at the window, and how many are back getting ammo, or moving about, or filling out requisitions for more grenades, or having a SMOKE? How micro-managey do you want to be?

And among other game-vs-reality issues, let's talk about time. A RB CG day might go to eight turns. Let's assume that a "turn" in ASL is not the two minutes it's claimed to be. Let's assume that the fighting went on for eight hours usually. One turn represents about an hour's worth of fighting.

JR

I believe JR has hit on the salient fact about the time representation here. No way does a RB CG Day equate to 16+/- minutes of action or a turn equate to 2 min. of expended time. Expand and contract that time frame within a turn for individual units and it may represent a period of hours or just a few seconds dependent upon the situation. A heavy modified leader directing fire is probably a game mechanic to denote a rather good leader re-positioning/directing weapons to fire into a location to achieve maximum effect over a prolonged time frame but condensed into a workable approach for "quick" game play.

 

[Magpie]

"A heavy modified leader directing fire is probably a game mechanic to denote a rather good leader re-positioning/directing weapons to fire into a location to achieve maximum effect over a prolonged time frame but condensed into a workable approach for "quick" game play. "

Sorry but that's just plain silly.