I also found this:
Jim Lunsford said:
Remember, you play a division or corps commander in the game. You make critical decisions that affect your overall plan at a fairly high level...
If you insist on managing minute details, create a "HQ" by building a "shell" maneuver unit and assigning it 1-2 RCP (ex: Mech Bde with a RCP of 1). Next, build subordinate units (in this example: mech and armor battalions). Then attach the subordinate units to the higher unit to create a proper task organized unit.
I understand what Jim is saying here, however, let me also make an additional point. At the CGSC students are in a true "multiplayer" environment where they can
a) develop a plan,
b) assume the roles of command at different echelons,
c) execise command and make decisions at the appropriate level. Part of what students are being taught is "how to think" about battlefield problems and challenges, but they are also being taught
not to micromanage subordinate commands. Commanders have to develop a reasonable plan, then brief their subordinates and allow them to function with as much freedom as the situation allows. This is a very difficult lesson to teach and a very hard lesson for any student to learn and take to heart. Using different methods, I taught the same thing to NCO's. Teaching
not to micromanage is difficult because it is human nature to want to do so, especially when the price of failure is so high. Thus Jim's warning about respecting the scope of the simulation.
Having said that, I can think of two additional points that need to be made.
First, DA wargamers are not exactly in the same situation as CGSC students. The vast majority of the battles will probably take place against the AI, or perhaps against a human opponent via PBEM. Thus the wargamer is assuming the role for all the major commanders. There is no multiplayer "team" to work within, thus the wargamer will likely have cause to micromanage a bit more as he has no teammates to work with.
Second, there are some functions within the DA engine that work best with more detailed OOB's. The first one that jumps to mind mind is
air assault operations. As we have already discussed in other threads, aviation units can only lift units of equal size or less. Since units can't really be broken down, this means that artificial brigade-sized lift elements need to be created in order to air assault infantry brigades. Instead of doing this, we could simply build very detailed OOB's and task organize them into BCT's. This would allow players to "break the unit down" for it to be lifted in battalion-sized elements by realistic aviation assets. During most situations, BCT's composed of task organized battalions will remain as a brigade througout the duration of the fight. Thus the entire brigade appears as one unit on the map and doesn't really add much in the way of micromanagement.
If one were to create an entire corps using this model for task-organized BCT's, the map really wouldn't be that crowded. You would probably end up with around 200 total units(only about 1/4 of these would be on the screen). Since each BCT contains 4-6 subordinate commands, there wouldn't be any more units on-screen then there are in the larger scenarios that shipped with DA. This would still leave 100 "slots" for convoys, which I would think is more than enough.
