Blue - Tourney Rd 1 - Against Rob C.

Dr Zaius

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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.
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.

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.
 

Scully

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Well Don, it sounds like you just made a great case for creating a long scenario! :laugh: I wonder what a 4 or 5 day DA scenario would be like. Is it even possible or is that too long?

One of these days I'll have to figure out how to create scenarios for DA and give it a try.

Take care,
Brian
 

Dr Zaius

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Scully said:
Well Don, it sounds like you just made a great case for creating a long scenario! :laugh: I wonder what a 4 or 5 day DA scenario would be like. Is it even possible or is that too long?
You can indeed create scenarios that are slightly longer -- I think 100 turns is the limit -- but at 2 hours/turn, who is going to want to play it? Such a scenario would be better if 4 or 6 hour turns were an option. That would move the system closer to the unit scale/time scale that other wargames use. On the flip side, DA plays different than most other operational level wargames. Although the units are indeed battalions and brigades, many of the tasks that the player performs for each unit are closer to what one would expect to see in a tactical level wargame -- in other words there is a lot of micromanagement. I think this is part of what makes DA unique and why people play it. From a purely operational perspective, DA is completely outclassed by a game like TOAW. TOAW does much more than DA can ever hope to do and offers a ton more options. But no other operational wargame, including TOAW, allows the player to choose the role for artillery, spot individual targets, assign warpoints, etc, etc. DA is an operational wargame that plays like a tactical wargame in many ways, and this either appeals to gamers or turns them off completely.
 

Ivan Rapkinov

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Scully said:
A few final thoughts:
-Attk Avn and Arty are almost useless against units in urban terrain.
I'll disagree with this - my atk aviation was a big killer for me :) - whilst in an active TAI, it managed to reduce his 3 Bde by 14% - which was a huge force multiplier at that point of the battle.

that was in Downtown Myskina. Artillery was also a big killer - not so much for how much damage it did per mission, but the massed effects of lotsa guns/rockets attritting away a Bde.

-Not sure my NAI's were placed properly and certainly didn't assist with my Attk Avn.
not to sound rude Brian :) - but were your TAIs/NAIs active when you sent the helos through? Rememberig it takes a turn or two for them to become so?

as for targets, my Cav helos annihilated one of John Bde HQs in a TAI - 96% damage. And that was just a Cav sqn, the Atk sqns savaged the enemy manuveur units. Also, I'd plot a path back to base, a la the UAVs.
 

Rob Carpenter

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Well I found that this scenario was just long enough that some of my units needed supply. But in general I agree, one way to do it is start the units off with less than 100% log.

I also thought there were too many log units in the scenario. I didn't care when I lost one. The next version with limited log convoy's will also be interesting...

Ahelos were a pain until I set them to "none" as the first target choice, then they attacked.

I tried to use terrain well in this game, and it certainly worked. In the north I halted at the restricted terrain, and when Brian attacked he got a bloody nose.

Doing frontal attacks in Urban terrain didn't work well for him, but when he got in a flank attack he really did some hurt, he almost won then. Plus I had beefed that Bn up to Bn++ :)

This was a good game to get back into a DA mindset, it reminded me why I generally don't play DA for fun, a couple of quirkey things and a lot of hard works that too much like real work... but then thats why I really love the game!

Cheers

Rob
 

Scully

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Ivan Rapkinov said:
I'll disagree with this - my atk aviation was a big killer for me :) - whilst in an active TAI, it managed to reduce his 3 Bde by 14% - which was a huge force multiplier at that point of the battle.

that was in Downtown Myskina. Artillery was also a big killer - not so much for how much damage it did per mission, but the massed effects of lotsa guns/rockets attritting away a Bde.
Well, I'm glad it worked for you Ivan. :laugh:



Ivan Rapkinov said:
not to sound rude Brian :) - but were your TAIs/NAIs active when you sent the helos through? Rememberig it takes a turn or two for them to become so?
He got to the objective pretty early in the game and I placed my TAIs before I was anywhere near attacking him. They were definitely there long enough, but even on flank shots, I was getting less than 1% results.


Ivan Rapkinov said:
as for targets, my Cav helos annihilated one of John Bde HQs in a TAI - 96% damage. And that was just a Cav sqn, the Atk sqns savaged the enemy manuveur units. Also, I'd plot a path back to base, a la the UAVs.
I may have to try something different next time around...we'll have to see how I'm feeling. :)
 

Scully

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Rob Carpenter said:
Well I found that this scenario was just long enough that some of my units needed supply. But in general I agree, one way to do it is start the units off with less than 100% log.

I also thought there were too many log units in the scenario. I didn't care when I lost one. The next version with limited log convoy's will also be interesting...
I agree with Rob here. I had absolutely no worries about losing log units.

Rob Carpenter said:
I tried to use terrain well in this game, and it certainly worked. In the north I halted at the restricted terrain, and when Brian attacked he got a bloody nose.
Rob did a nice job using terrain, but I think the bloody nose I took up north had a lot to do with a poor scouting effort on my part. I was hoping to get around his lead unit to attack the flanks and ran into the follow on BDE I didn't know was there...oops! :(

Take care,
Brian
 

Dr Zaius

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On the issue of logistics units, there are actually a lot more of them in real life! For every soldier sitting in a Bradley or an Apache, there are 10+ bringing in supplies and other support functions. Each brigade-sized command has a support unit attached in the form of an FSB (forward support battalion). Division has DISCOM and an MSB. The presence of these units allows a force to deply a lot deeper into enemy territory and more rapidly. Also, the give the force some redundancy if one log unit is damaged.

In reality, these units are not enough to supply a brigade during high intensity combat for extended periods. During both Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom the normal Army supply system was heavily augmented with civilian support organizations and specialized reserve units. There was also quite a bit of deviation from existing logistics plans during the early weeks of Iraqi Freedom. Entire supply bases were planned and set up that had not been part of the original vision. The logistics of a modern army at the corps+ level is massively complex and there are very few real experts on it because it is so rarely used.

As I said earlier, DA's scale doesn't really demonstrate how crushing the loss of a full FSB would be to a maneuver brigade. That brigade would very quickly be forced to its knees and crippled without fuel, ammo, parts, food, water, etc. But in DA the loss of an entire FSB is mostly a fleeting annoyance.
 
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