"State of War: It's not only about how big your gun is" Topic

Hi guys,

I've done a bit of thinking on the various factors that influence a battle from the point of view of a WW2 fan. Liddell Hart opened this up to me years ago and i just let the words flow.

Here is the link for the article:

link

The two major factors that i talk about is Tenacity and Tactical Skill. Bonus: funny pics and captions! :)

For the hard to convince to click, bellow the full article:

Being a wargamer is all about simulating battles. It doesn't really matter if you fancy Orcs versus Elves or Space Cowboys versus Space Bugs or if you actually prefer historical based armies and battles. We can all agree that the genre or period is irrelevant as long as there is a good fight to be had.

My personal inclination is towards WW2. It is the period that fascinates me the most (followed closely by ancient warfare) and on which I have read the most. It is also heavily represented in my collection of books (right next to Terry Pratchet) and I do like to refresh my knowledge from time to time by browsing through it. As a confession the first books in my collection were purchased by me 18 years ago (when I was 14) and Liddell Hart still is one of my favorite authors in style and substance. Through his "World War II" books (volumes 1 and 2) I discovered much more then numbers upon numbers but also considerations regarding the will to fight of the troops, the morale and the tactical advantage that gave the upper hand most of the time to one side.
It is easy to assume (and it is always the case with junior wargamers) that better equipment means a better "troop" or a better "unit". It is indeed very easy to fall into this trap. How many times, while having a beer, did the discussion run like this:

- Well, in my opinions the Germans could have beaten the Russians easily without the Allies interfering.
- How about their number advantage though? They outnumbered the Germans 4-5 times at least.
- Nonsense, look at the quality of the equipment that the Germans had! Even the basic Panzer IV could have held its own against the T-34 by the end of the war.
- But the Russians had superior artillery and by the end of the war total air supremacy!

I'm going to stop now because you can see where this is going. We mostly obsess about weapons and equipment and we compare that ruthlessly in deciding which unit is "better". Truth is, there are other factors that come into play in a fight, as demonstrated over and over by history. We don't use them often because those are not something that we know for sure and their interpretation often leads towards even more subjective analysis. It's easier to just say that archers using a Longbow will decimate Sling armed skirmishers, that Pikes will always win against Swords and that Light Cavalry is virtually invincible in front of melee Infantry.

However, let's talk a bit about TENACITY.

I define Tenacity as the will to fight displayed by a certain unit or army. I want to underline that for me Tenacity and Morale are not the same thing (at least not in this analysis). Morale handles how confident are your soldiers of winning the fight in front of them while I view Tenacity as a metaphorical energy bar which is depleted during the fight. It's not Stamina also, in case you rushed to yell at the screen in the hopes that I will stand corrected. That energy bar is not a physical attribute but more of a strength of will/mind factor. Maybe it will be easier for me to make you understand by throwing a few rankings out there:

Cautious: these guys will obey your orders and will charge or defend a position like the good soldiers that they are. However, as soon as enemy fire intensifies or casualties start to mount they will likely stop advancing or retreat from their positions. As an example I would probably say that this was most of the Allied Soldiers in 1945. The war was clearly over, the Germans were retreating, and there was no point in bravery or pushing your luck.

Determined: these guys have a job to do and they will do it. Whatever mission you give them they will strive to accomplish it regardless of losses or enemy presence. What they will not do is fight under impossible conditions when victory is clearly lost. When surrounded they will most likely put up a fight but will eventually surrender in a hopeless situation. I'd say this attitude was the dominant one among all soldiers from all armies during WW2.

Stubborn: the mission and the fight are above the individual for these guys. Charging an impregnable enemy position or defending against an outnumbering enemy does not impress them. When engaged in a fight these guys will fight start to end, either winning and driving the enemy back or buying time and enemy lives with their own lives. For WW2 I'd commend the British 1st Para at Arnhem (of course), Waffen SS troops most of the time (during Zitadelle, during the Battle for Berlin, etc) and to be completely fair I'd also nominate the Soviet divisions fighting at Stalingrad.

The second item that I'd want to bring to your attention is TACTICAL SKILL.

As troops fight and become more experienced they also learn how to use terrain or other factors to their advantage to gain a tactical edge over the enemy. Sure, you can easily say this is just the experience level of the soldiers however I feel that Tactical Skill really explains what I actually want to represent. You see, there's not much use to your thick sloped armor if you engage the enemy tanks on point blank range or worse, they are flanking you. There's countless examples where the Russian tanks surprise the German Panther's and quickly overrun them while we can all agree that in open field and with the Germans on the defense those T-34's would be toast pretty quick.

Conscript: only theoretical training has been given to these troops. Sure, they know that they should take cover and that flanking is good however they will easily fall into traps deployed by a clever enemy and they are slow to react to the ever-changing battlefield conditions.

Regular: some solid combat action has been had by these troops. Notions as covering fire or fire and maneuver are not unknown to them and they can identify dangerous situations when they see them. They will not enter an ambush area unprepared and they will expect the enemy to do its worst in all circumstances.

Veteran: there is simply no way that you can surprise these guys. Even when they are walking in an ambush they are actually baiting the enemy into a much more unfavorable situation that becomes clear as soon as the first bullets start flying. When they are attacking they do so utilizing full cover and flanking moves and when they defend there's generally not much that can be done to avoid huge loses against their positions. Lastly, they are able to always deal severe blows to the enemy even when fighting on equal terms and usually they can simply chip away at an attacking force through judicious tactical retreats.

And here it is my friends. The "unquantifiable factors" that actually do more (in my opinion) for simulating a conflict then the actual equipment that the troops were using. Next time we will actually take a look at various pairings between different types of units (with varying levels of Tenacity and Tactical Skill) and see how we can logically draw some conclusions on who would win.

Cheers,

Eugen

Even with that, you can't necessarily predict performance.

I think most people would agree that the 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats, were down to Cautious Veterans by the time they hit the beaches of Normandy, but they still managed to beat their opponents.

Some of the things I wonder about game design:

When evaluating historical units – were they really as good as we think they were, or did they just "roll high" a couple of times? Conversely, were they really a bad unit, or did they just roll "snake eyes?"

This one is kind of hard to describe.
Let's say someone believes country "X" should have super stats because they won a lot of battles. Well maybe the reason they won all the time is that the generals put them in a position to win. So perhaps the troops should be just "ordinary" and it is up to the player to make good decisions and deploy them in a way that they are victorious.

As an example, were the Roman Legions at Zama any better than the ones at Cannae? Probably not. It was how the army was constituted that made the difference (i.e. Scipio spent his "points" more wisely). Things the player should be responsible for.

Another factor that muddies in the water in all this is that most miniatures games are focused on the tactical aspect, but my general sense is that most successful WWII campaigns were won on the operational level. Basically, if you're successful at the operational art of war the tactical battles end up being stacked heavily in your favor.

It's easy to look at, for example, the early German campaigns of the war and say 'wow, they really were supermen, look at how well they did on the battlefield'! But if you take your view up a level you find that most of the German tactical successes were due to better operational activity before the bullets even started flying, rather than straight-up tactical superiority.

-Will

What Will said.
(particularly as far as WWII (or most orthodox 20century conflicts) are concerned.
Not saying any more..

Dear Baycee

Tenacity and Tactical skill are abstract values ascribed by opinion or convention and alike with debates over 88mm or 85mm or this or that. They are usually expressed in arithmetic terms which have NO guarantee whatsoever that these values correspond to what we see in war in a proper way, or that they exist at all.

I am an unredeemed and unapologetic Clauswitzian in that I believe with him, and with the Elder Von Moltke, that war is the area of human activity most governed by mere chance and chaos, and that is completely chaotic. Study any war, any action, and good comparative history and you will see this to be the case. Commanders do things in war and order things in war under an idea of what the enemy is doing or wishes to do, and in most cases that is not what the enemy wishes to do at all. The enemy is doing something for quite different reasons, most of which are ordered with an idea to what YOU are doing and you are likewise not doing it at all, but are, as we said, doing something else.

Like Von Moltke said, "no plan last longer than 15 minutes after contact with the main force of the enemy" and even more important "Strategy is a system of expedients."

what this means is things like training, tactical skill, tenacity, discipline, order, etc., all come into play AFTER chaos and chance have reared their ugly heads and allow the person who possesses them to either recover from the calamity of chaos and chance, or take advantage of an opportunity created by chaos and chance. But in all things it is important to remember that the chaos and chance happen FIRST and then comes either the opportunity or the recovery.

The idea of tenacity or tactical skill is not then something that can be depended upon. No one except a madman contrives of putting his troops into a situation here they must be under tremendous pressure such that super-human as it were, reserves of tenacity and tactical skill are needed. Most generals if they can --plan walk-overs to maximize casualties to the enemy, minimize casualties to their own. Unless absolutely desperate they eschew action where they cannot accrue all advantages to themselves.

This of course is completely foreign to games where we set them up with more or less equality simply because being in a situation where the enemy comes across 7 to 1 against you with general equality of moral factors, is not a game that most will play. Few want to be on the receiving end of such walk-overs, so we include all sorts of rationalizing and mitigating factors to even it up. But with each such "evening" we are driving the game further and further away from real war where generals seek to accrue enormous advantages against the enemy. Time and again you see this go wrong (again chaos and chance) when the one side launches an attack on the other and finds out that their planning was deficient, that they are NOT 7 to 1 against the enemy, but only a measly ole 3 or 2 to 1 in which case a disaster quickly ensues, unless something extraordinary happens-- due tot he tenacity or tactical skill of certain units in the thick of it, but far more likely because THEY have been given a situation by chaos and chance that, locally, accures an advantage to them. In this case far more impregnable positions have been taken when things like units were switching places in line, or the blow was delivered on a weak "joint" between two enemy divisions that the assailant did not know about, or the enemy armored division only had a few tanks and was a burned out hulk from another sector. Again, all chance and chaos.

Now-- I'm not arguing against using these values. We have to use SOME values SOMEWHERE and they are probably as good as any other. However they are no more predictive OR controllable by the commanders of troops that have them to be counted on to give them success.

There are hundreds of cases of units as green as this morning's grass standing and fighting like lions while veterans have run like scared rabbits. In the former case the green troops often did not know they were in a bad way and thought it "was always like this" and the vets had been hit at a moment when they were relaxed or knew all too well they were in a bad way.

But again, as a GAME we have to ascribe some differentiation between units, and in the end your idea of Tactical Skill and Tenacity are as good as any.

Good replies all around. I have now a full set of additional questions in my mind, including the "did these units roll high that day/battle?" which is after all extremely plausible yet ignored in 99% of the battle analysis.
And yes, most of the battles were won first operationally (but the tactical side more glorious and appealing).

OSchmidt: I thank you for the educated answer. It is indeed easy to forget how things are actually set up from the beginning. My musings are the result of a "i will make my own set of rules" fever i got a while ago (didn't we all at one point?) and i felt the game mechanics would be more accurate using these 2 factors and not only paper stats (where a Panther beats a T-34 9/10 times). I feel that we're never going to have an accurate model (in the way that there will always be an angle that can attacked in it).