"Is "Scale" Dead?" Topic

conrad,

Those are major highways. Not relevant to the discussion since Brian had referenced three stroy buildings and an urban environment.

Since a lot of gamers set their games in urban terrain such as WWII French towns and places such as Fallujah I think a reasonable benchmark is a road with enough space for two cars. We're talking fire teams and squads fighting their way across an urban street. Those photos don't reflect that situation at all.

One way to handle the fast-vehicles/slow-infantry problem is, don't let the vehicles stop on a dime (and make them stop before they can fire).

conrad,

Those are major highways. Not relevant to the discussion since Brian had referenced three stroy buildings and an urban environment.

It's 'Connard', and you haven't read the first line of my post (or much of the rest, it seems)

Road net widths are always off in wargames, no matter what rules are considered.

I was actually agreeing with you. The roads I referenced were meant to illustrate exactly what you're saying – that a 30m+ highway certainly isn't a urban road. Do please try to keep up, rather than rush to open another argument.

30m+ wide road in an urban area? Yeah, I live right next to one, in Tokyo. Highway 318, in Edogawa. Just about 4 lanes each direction, plus a small median strip to separate traffic.

Off you go with your old Newtonian reality. The objective reality is relative as well as both time and distance are relative. And what is time and distance in a game? Scale. Thus there is no problem with proportionality.

Eh eh :-) I wrote it very ridiculously, for fun, but what I mean is: When we organize a game, we consider historical terrain and time of the historical battle to be true. But we want players to be happy with what they feel of distance and time in the game. So we don't want proportional scale because it would not be playable. As everyone else said.

Actually, I don't know what you mean by not wanting a 'proportional scale'. It seems to go against the definition of scale.

Scale: a. A proportion used in determining the dimensional relationship of a representation to that which it represents.

Again what is wanted for a simulation. in MG we recognise that a building on the ground scale is actually more than one. In effect covers both the building and its surrounding out houses, gardens garages etc. For that reason we do not demand folk enter a house in a particular spot, it is just an artistic block. We are well aware that the roads are wider than is typical in narrow urban areas. We have where it really matters chosen to model wider roads. The desigh objective of MG was to force the approximate tactics.

It is perfectly possible to resolve urban fighting simply treating the built up area as an amorphous mass. However there is then no way to use vehicle weapons to cover long stright roads as this is beyond the reslution where the urban area is treated as a single block. Basically urbam areas are just resolved proabalistically troop fighting power would be assessed on some basis and the range of probable outcomes and time defined. However there would be no tactics involved and it would be difficult to bring in key parameters like building height. Again in engineering modelling it is acceptable to simplify geometry and still get a usefull result.

As far as MG is concerned we (on our opinion of course ;-) ) have hit on a compromise that is acceptable. In an urban area we have allowed at least some measure of tactics and allowed built up areas to be constructed such that a tactical analysis of the road layout can indicate key section of built up areas that provide a tactical ojectives to be set an contested based on approximate real world layouts. Is it perfect model of reality of course mot. We spend literally millions on simulation at work and its still not perfect.

There are things that MG in its pure form does not model in the urban area. That is the use of vehicles to mousehole walls. It is a limitation but not one we feel sufficiently stongly about to introduce the relatively complex logitical and technical issued aessociated with this. Drop the scale to 1 to 5m. and it may be possible to do more in the modeling. 4 man teams would start to operate as 2 two man teams which is more typical at least for UK forces. Again that level of resolution is too fine for waht we wanted. Again its a choice of what shoud be achievable.

Again it comes down to the specification of what is wanted. If really you want to put artillery models on table, than you are going to have to make drastic compomises on time and ground scale to get in weapons several kilonmeters from the point of action in most cases.

Ps. if there are modellers (warfare modelling not kits) that want to get into interesting issues of target area densities in wargames I am happy to discuss but it would need another thread.

I like playing games. The levels of 'realism/believablity' of said games versus 'emjoyability' are just two axis on a graph. Where the indicateor rests (x y axis wise) on that imaginary graph is a matter of personal preference, I guess.

I played a game of Save Doctor Lucky the other day but I wasn't overly bothered about it being a detailed replication of an ocean liner holed below the waterline and the timescales of the water flooding the ship as I was just enjoying the game

Sure, ground scale is important. Timescales are important. But fun is rather more important, me thinks.

Or why are we bothering?

John T

I've always found the argument that fun is somehow contrary to realism to be lacking in evidence. There are fun realistic games and realistic bad games and unrealistic bad games and unrealistic good games.

And the other thing is that ground and time scale is actually a bit separate from fun OR realism, as well.

You can have a well defined time and ground scale and get extremely unrealistic results (this is actually pretty frequent, because the time and ground scale enforce weird conventions to try to make the game flow properly, anyway, that often take away realism) or have NO defined time and ground scale and have very realistic results- its all relative (Ambush Alley and Two Hour Wargames are often said to give fairly realistic results, if you're using good tactics, but don't have either scale defined, as what is important is how the people and weapons interact, not the exact timing and distances).

So…

When is the funeral?

Should I wear a Tux, or is this an informal memorial service?

I got a lot more fun out of this hobby when I took Major General Tremorden Redderings advice and stopped worrying about scale.

Didn't the SS adopt an ammonia household cleaner late in the war because of the three lane roads?

Fun is good. But without scale miniatures is just playing with dollies. Fun as it may be.

So…

When is the funeral?

Should I wear a Tux, or is this an informal memorial service?

If there is ever a question of 'should I wear a suit,' the safe answer is "yes."

I think Scale is not only a derivative of various rule sets,
but also of the physical space you have to game in.