"ULTIMATE QUESTIONS BATTLE OUTCOMES" Topic

Wargame rules ultimately reflect a bias to achieve desired (stylised) play and results.
Trimming things down, what ultimately decides the outcome of a tabletop battle? What methods would you include to achieve those outcomes?

As a starting point link
Now the army list is important, but in this case it has been set.
To me, deployment is important, would have some method of having deployment, atavantage a side or be neutral, according to the circumstance…

The survival of one leader, may be important, so rules about their command zone of control – to keep them with the army, and the need to test if the leader is killed….

What are your thoughts?

I'm not sure what you are aiming for here.

Setting the objectives for a historical scenario?

or

The mechanisms by which the toys wander around the table trying to achieve the objectives?

The former requires some imagination (alhtough there are plenty of published Zama scenarios to draw on). The latter is just modelling and maths.

Setup, troop ratings, army composition, the bias towards particular options in the rules and the players ability to recognize and work with said bias, random factors, general chaos factor, tactical skill, mechanical understanding and the whims of an uncaring universe.

Player decisions.

You should design your scenario so that player strategy and tactics determine the outcome of the scenario. Otherwise, it's not a game.

The outcome of an actual battle is usually determined when one side realises that it has lost and/or cannot achieve its objectives.

The same should therefore be true of a wargame.

In DBA (I know lots of people don't like it) every player decision counts, and every die roll counts.

Even terrain setup (the equivalent of choosing a battlefield that matches the ability of your force) can have a major impact (lots of bad going when enemy is mostly mounted for example)

As other people have said, scenario objectives override everything else

John

I think that all wargame designers need a clear view of what they want a game to reflect. A lot of valid points have been made.

In our game the vision was clear, the paramount aim of the system was to produce as good a model of the behaviour of the battlefield systems when in the hands of generally capable and motivated troops. The accent being on combined arms and command and control. We do not put great emphasis on morale. It has an impact but tank crews will generally behave as they were trained. Panic attacks may happen to crews in the real world but it was not considered a usefull parameter in our simulation.

I have met folk who judge a game entirely on its morale system. There is no one answer.

You must have your vision and then create a system that fullfills your vision. Too many folk start by writing rules without checking thet are the ones that fullfill there vision.

The outcome of an actual battle is usually determined when one side realises that it has lost and/or cannot achieve its objectives. The same should therefore be true of a war-game.

Maybe. But lots of games aren't attempting to show a whole battle. If you're playing a skirmish game then you're just zooming in for a little snapshot of a few minutes. The big decisions are being made over your head.

I played a WW1 naval game once, in which the game master wanted to recreate the whole thing, starting with the fleets first sighting each other. It took two hours just to get into effective range and by that time everybody was tired. I'm a firm believer in getting right to the action. It's fine with me if you compress the beginning and the end of the battle, so that we can play the decisive, action-y bits in the middle.

But lots of games aren't attempting to show a whole battle. If you're playing a skirmish game then you're just zooming in for a little snapshot of a few minutes.

Maybe. But the same principles still apply, don't they?

I played a WW1 naval game once, in which the game master wanted to recreate the whole thing, starting with the fleets first sighting each other. It took two hours just to get into effective range and by that time everybody was tired.

The rules you were using clearly did not scale. There are ways of doing it, but you need to be ruthless with the level of abstraction.
However, this is off the point of this thread.

In many games, it is a clash of arms, and so results reflect dice rolls.
Not really a good tabletop game.
People are arguing if they can get the +1 for charging.
Sometimes, it's a line break: threatened flanks – often ignoring a second /reserve line – so in my opinion should not be a game breaker.
I do like baggage/camp looted- which is seldom a cause for losing a battle.
I often wonder about seizing and holding terrain, especially the high ground.

In games when the two sides are similar, what decisions/qualities of the general should make/allow a better player defeat another player?

Ok.

In an Ancient battle like Zama, the general can do precisely two things.

1. Plan the initial deployment
2. Inspire the people around him

And (optionally) if really, really skilled, organised and lucky, might get to direct the commitment of a reserve. This may well involve (2) above e.g. Alexander.

But basically the thing runs on autopilot once the armies are deployed. Lost Battles does a decent job of simulating both these things in an interesting way.

I like to wrong foot an opponent: outflanking, stacking one side of the table.
However, opponents get to freely redeploy flanks, which annoys me, as opposed to the opponent that aggressively applies pressure on my weaker flank, which I feel is more of a "game", will my skirmhers delay long enough..?