Dr Zaius
Chief Defender of the Faith
- Joined
- May 1, 2001
- Messages
- 8,902
- Reaction score
- 408
- Location
- The Forbidden Zone
- First name
- Don
- Country
Here is where DA is very strange beast indeed. DA is most certainly not a tactical level wargame, it is division level (or higher), with the primary unit being the battalion or brigade. There is no other wargame anywhere that I am aware of the simulates combat at this level, yet does it within scenarios that only depict 12-48 hr battles. Every other wargame at this scale would sport scenarios ranging from 5 days to several months.Scully said:I've always been one to attack the support services, but I'm not sure I've ever really got the payoff I've wanted within the scenario. I chose to attack the manuever units in this scenario, because I didn't think there was anyway to eliminate the support units in a meaningful way.
What am I driving at?
Unlike a tactical level wargame, destroying combat support and combat service support units should have a dramatic effect in an operational level game. In a tactical wargame it is usually best to destroy the most potent units and weapons systems as the scenarios aren't generally long enough for the loss of support units to really impact either side. But DA, being a operational level game with really short battles, falls into the cracks in this regard. The battles are far too short for either side to really be impacted by the loss of important logistics units and HQ. Oh there is some impact, of course, but it isn't nearly as serious as it would be if the scenarios covered a week or two. In these longer battles the loss of key logistics units would cripple the division's ability to move efficiently, and the loss of HQ units would be troublesome for a variety of reasons as well.
In short, I agree that hitting support units is always a primary goal -- at least it should be! -- in any operational level wargame. It's just that DA's weird time/unit scale tends to skew the results and make hitting maneuver units more attractive.