"SA - Are you treating the Symptoms or curing the Disease?" Topic

Is Otto going for the record?

B

Dear Usc Cha,

Responding to your comment of the 30th of September which part I quote…

"I personaly am no lover of multi player games. Itl is very rare you get competent players. As to orders written or otherwise, it is my opinion that unless you have experts on a c o – operative mood they will ignore orders. Even when given orders March forward and die, we will cover you, the player advances very cautiously. What do you do, throw him out, call it "friction". Hence modelling sub generals whims to me is not within the scope of the possible. I did occasional play to the strengths and put caution generals where thy could be used to best effect.

I can understand this very readily. In this context of "experts" I would accept your definition and classify it not as a judgement or a put down of players but simply an acknowledgement of the many differences in levels of interest and expertise of players. But that's one of the problems with war gamews.

Further my own experience mirrors yours as indicated before. You have applied a deeper content of interest or necessity of a certain level of (gasp, shudder… feel) to the game than others., But having said so the provlem remains that in any game where you DO have multiple players and they are many, one must tangle with this disparity of what I call "the gaze." That is how and through what filters the player sees the game.

Dear Wolfhag

There is no offense taken. I understand what you are assaying about training and agree with your opinions largely.

Two approaches to the effect of training are afoot in war games. NOTE I said in war games. The first is that training makes better troops who can do more things and therefore can open up opportunities for success that untrained troops cannot do. The other side believes that training does none of that because that's not the way people think. This other side believes that training is vital because when disaster DOES NOT STRIKE- that is, we are having an ordinary day, training is forgotten but when disaster strikes training kicks in and allows soldiers to not be as "disasterized" as untrained troops and recover quicker if they are.

In either case the main problem is that in creating a table top battle we must make design choices and pick or privilege this aspect over the other. Each designer will do this differently and his aim, I always maintain must be to make a game that can be fun for all. This is what differentiates what McLaddie calls simulations or simulators from War Games. The former are for training, the latter are for fun.

There will always be debates and different arrangement of factors which will produce different games.

No offense taken.

Dear UshCha

But in your October I post I have to point out some things. You say…

"For low level games the SA is defined by the players brief. You tell him what he has and what he has to do and what he may expect to meet. The extent to which this models the actuality is entirely within the command of the writer of the brief. Thus it can be covered as far as I can see very well.
That is you tell him what forces he has.
You tell him what you want him to do and maybe show the rough position of forces opposing him (real or imaginary).
You tell him what you think the enemy will do (which may not be what the scenario writer is actually setting them to do).
Thus all bases are covered in a satisfactory manner."

Ok fair enough but most gamers will sit there irritably listening to you. They want to push lead and roll dice, and most importantly, most of the time they will feel absolutely irrelevant. If you've told them what you want them to do and how to do it, then they will come back with "why don't you just play the game yourself." You can do this with the best of intentions and to make it a good experience for them, but plain human cussedness will take over.

The other objection I have is that playing with excellent troops and competent commanders is IN REAL LIFE a consummation devoutly to be wished, and just as absent in real life when one HAS excellent troops and competent commanders. People and troops have off -days. You have to accept that. Time and again in history things get mired up.

Goodness no. The record I believe was 30 days back in the 06's or something like that.

I always maintain must be to make a game that can be fun for all. This is what differentiates what McLaddie calls simulations or simulators from War Games. The former are for training, the latter are for fun.

Otto, Welcome back:

I certainly agree that a game for commercial OR training purposes needs to be fun, if only because then it will be played.

I disagree that there is some dividing line between simulations and wargames for a variety of reasons.

1. It all depends on what the simulation game is primarily designed to do. However, from my experience it is very difficult to create a successful training simulation that isn't fun to play--however you define 'fun' and there are a lot of aspects to fun to be mined.

2. There are far too many simulations designed to be training platforms that have become successful, fun commercial wargames and simulation games [and vice versa] to believe there is some inherit difference between games and participatory simulations.

3. Simulation games and wargames of any ilk all use the same kind of mechanics and systems, so saying that one is different than another is very difficult to establish based on the content or systems themselves.

4. Nothing in the workings of a functional simulation suggests that it can't be a game, a wargame or fun. You find many, many game designers like Raph Koster, Jennie Kovak and Peter Perla using the words 'games', 'play' and 'simulating' and 'simulations' interchangeably.

As an example, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's book Rules of Play, Game Design Fundamentals write in their chapter "Games as the Play of Simulations:"**

There are many kinds of simulations that are not games. However, all games can be understood as simulations, even very abstract games or games that simulate phenomena not found in the real world.

What they mean is that all games create artificial environments to operate in, whether Chess or Chutes and Ladders, something all game designers talk about. Simulation games simply describe and mimic particular environments.

So, to insist that all simulations are for training and games are for fun ignores a great deal of what constitutes fun and how simulations do work.

**This book is used as a text at MIT. And just in case you think this book refers to computer simulations, it does not.
On the first page of the introduction, they write:

Although this is not a book about Pong, or about computer and video games, it is about game design. It is crucial for game designers to understand why people play games and why some games are so well-loved.

Why the book was written at all is explained in the Forward:

Remember that the authors of this book are not just academics looking at games from the outside; they are themselves active practitioners. Like many people working in this field, they are driven by the feeling that despite the breathtaking pace of recent technical and commerical advancement, games have remained creatively stunted.

One thing that creatively stunts wargame design is by creating false definitions of what works or how wargames can work. In saying that, there is no effort to say what games HAVE TO do or what gamers HAVE TO like playing.

It is a matter of picking goals for a wargame design and determining how those goals can be achieved with a game system.

My guidelines and goals for SA and what it generates in a 1:1 vehicle game is it must be believable for the player, playable, have some risk-reward decisions for the players and have variable/fog of war results.

The belief part is that the player can wrap his head around the results which are modeled after manuals, training, AAR's, etc. It is also the pre-game briefing and intel report of what to expect. Nothing is 100% guaranteed, SNAFU's do happen.

Playable with one die roll and easy access to play aids. Special rules and IF-THEN-ELSE exceptions start complicating the game.

The risk-reward decisions are the tactical placement choices of the payers (reflects overwatch), crew exposure, and trading accuracy for speed to shoot first (tactics). When engaged, vehicles are blind to their rear 270 degrees. That means engaging an enemy with one element to keep them busy can allow your maneuver element to flank and surprise them.

The variables are the worst-best case response time which is randomized. The fog of war is created because your opponent does not know the result of the randomized worst-best case result, the risk-reward decisions or the crew differentiations (reflects Decision Loop). He may only be aware of the weapon platform performance.

Using the one second turns as a timing mechanism gives the feel and results of split-second timing of events like a shootout between opponents. This can force players into making the wrong risk-reward decision or guessing wrong. I think in a 1:1 scenario the split-second timing is very important and what I'm attempting to model.

While SA is reaction based like many other games the timing aspect of the turns synchs everyone to the same turn.

Wolfhag

Otto, folk who "want to push lead and roll dice" are in the set of folk I only play once. It would be like playing any game where a player has no real interest in the game. To me personally an exercise in pointlessness.
You would not play players who turned up to a chess club or a golf club but had no interest in the game, why would you consider wargames any different.

As to what is fum most of our games have an element of a military exercise, that is what makes it fun, simple gambling has no interest to me or the folk I play

Dear Ush cha

I don't understand your post.

As to players turning up at a chess club but had no interest in the game I do not know exactly what you were talking about, but if they did and I was matched with them I would play them. If they turn up at the club by that very fact they have SOME interest in the game. So yes, I would play with them.

If for example chess players or golfers came down to the ballroom in the hotel I run the Weekend in and had never seen it before, and wanted to play and try it out, I would certainly find them a game to plan in or play in a game with them myself. So I don't understand your words here.

Further, when you say "pointlessness" all of war games is "pointless when you get down to it."

While you may look down on those who "want to push lead and roll die" that's what most of the gamers around want. They could care little about history or the game or command, it's simply the small-beer of a game. All games are pushing counters (lead)(tokens) and rolling dice. Most war gamers put no more store by a game than they do as eating an ice cream cone.

The way you look at it involves a gradation of gaming. Years ago Dick Bryant or Dick Sossi or someone coined the phrase "In the life." That means in wargaming terms, they buy the figures, paint them, learn the rules, put on games, design scenarios, bring the munchies crack open the beer, write up the reports, make all the work, live, eat, sleep, and breathe war games. They have a huge involvement in games and a huge love of the hobby. For other people their level of interest is much less. For example, I do all the above with my group, run a convention, publish a newsletter, am thinking of putting out a SECOND one, run a campaign, and write articles for gaming magazines. I rather think I'm in the life but they type of game you are partial to is not at all what I want to do. This is especially true when you do burlesquish Imagi-Nations. My games aren't just pushing lead and rolling die, but with all this I have no doubt that you consider me a non-serious war gamer who has no interest in the game. I rather I think I do. But that is of no matter. The point is that many people desire no more involvement than pushing lead and rolling die. They live ENTIRELY in the moment.

Once when I was putting out an after-Action Report for one of my "Weekend Conventions" I asked a gamer who was playing in one game at the con to write me a short blurb on what happened in the game as I had a few pictures of it, but no firm records of what was going on. I asked this ONE WEEK after the convention had taken place. The gamer begged off saying he couldn't remember ANYTHING that happened in the game, though he had great fun. He didn't even remember what war it is in. He's entirely interested in the hobby and comes every year. But he just doesn't remember because that's not what he's there for.

Dear McLaddie

Now you are tending back to our old argument on Simulation versus game which we have thrashed over time and again and must agree to disagree upon.

Otto

Now you are tending back to our old argument on Simulation versus game which we have thrashed over time and again and must agree to disagree upon.

Otto:
Well, you brought it up! Obviously, the 'argument' is still fresh in some folks minds.

I just don't see how simulation games [ne Training platforms] can't possibly be fun OR wargames when so many are played AND sold for just that reason… I'm not talking about why you or I like playing, but rather what is--I would think--demonstrably possible--which you seem to believe is impossible.

McLaddie

Because it is a question of basic definitions.

My definition of "simulation games [ne Training platforms]" are bought BY someone to train someone else. The others may derive pleasure from it as is their wont but that does not make it a game. Nor does it make it fun. The second part is of course "sold to whom?" A simulation game sold to a government, business, or institution is bought for some purpose and fun has nothing to do with it.

To me "game" inevitably falls under the area of a thing which is voluntarily engaged in for no other reason than it is pleasurable to do so and one voluntarily wishes to do it. Let us take as an archetypical example the physical construct of the well known game "Diplomacy."

If my company, my country, my wife, my government or my God says to me "I want you to play Diplomacy." That is a simulation, ESPECIALLY if I am not allowed to say "No I do not want to play" and company, country, wife, government, or God says "No, you must play otherwise you shall not have a job, life, sex, or have freedom" That is a simulation. In real life a recruit cannot become a soldier unless he undergoes basic training and advanced training, much of which involve activities which are simulations.

If I take EXACTLY the same game that the government uses, and I say to my friends "Let's play Diplomacy" and they all agree, then that is a game.

This is why in our former discussions I have told you about the many "simulations" I have been in service and industry where I broke the simulation. Because it was NOT engendered as a game certainly, for it was mandated, and second the simulation was not an open simulation but entirely contrived to produce a certain conclusion pre-determined, as all simulations are, for a certain course of action as desired by the perpetrator of the game. That is the boss, the general, my wife, or God is always right.

In fact, in the latter case one can look at all of creation as a simulation by God but that does not in the least make it any less coercive or contingent, and hence life is not a game. Games are a departure from life and from the stringencies of God.

Thus the difference McLaddie you are arguing from the standpoint of the object itself (the procedures and rules and physical instrumentation of a game used as a simulation) and I am arguing from the standpoint of volition and purpose.

In a way the Italian for game "gioco" which calls to mind the similarity to the English "Joke" is as relevant. Which is why my games always have a lot of humor in them. We are playing a joke on God with them.

Thus the "Barbie Game" is fun. Empire III is an ordeal as it approaches simulation.

So you see, in this aspect we have our little joke on "Our Father Above" and very much assert with "Our Father Below" that "it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven."

In a simulation we are not free. In a game we are free, for a little time.

You see McLaddie, this is why so many people despise Imagi-Nations. They are subversive. They make of their historical counterparts a joke. Thus The Kingdom of Bad Zu Wurst with Faustus the Grump, a military genius and his brother Humberto (Frederick and Prince Henry). Or that of Gulagia or of the Sultanate of Ikea with Shah Na-Na, The Nattering Nabob of Negativism. They are in fact, doubly subversive, being a game and thus subversive by nature, but with the broad burlesque they are doubly so. All those simulations I broke was subversive as well. I saw through them to the basic line "your boss (general, etc) wishes to think himself a God and you should worship him as one." To give his creation a hotfoot or slip a whoopee cushion under his pompous butt destroys this image.

The wargamer these Imagi-Nations are the mock of the very idols he wishes to have. Yet… they preserve all the freedom of the game. Empire III for example wants everything to be super serious, if you don't think that way and go along with it, then you see the complete ridiculousness of the whole thing.

Otto, we are as usual at odds. A simulation is desiged to operate within a defined battlespace. Deciding that this battlespace is not the one you want to operate in and deliberately going out of it is not clever it is stupid.

A trainee race driver is told to keep the revs of his engine to say 5000 rpm even though it can go faster. He is then told to go as fast as he can. He achieves the fastest time but gowes over the rev limit. He is fired, he went out of the battlespace, he is a hopless waste of time.

This is no diffrent as far as I am concerned. The simulation has a battlespace about which I wanty toi learn. Going outside ruins the fun od the game.

I do feel you would be better in RPG which is where less rigid behaviour required and even considerd an assest.

You see McLaddie, this is why so many people despise Imagi-Nations.

Otto:

Do they?--whoever they are. I certainly don't and don't see them as particularly subversive. I am not even clear about what is being 'subverted.'

They are in fact, doubly subversive, being a game and thus subversive by nature, but with the broad burlesque they are doubly so. All those simulations I broke was subversive as well. I saw through them to the basic line "your boss (general, etc) wishes to think himself a God and you should worship him as one." To give his creation a hotfoot or slip a whoopee cushion under his pompous butt destroys this image.

What I find telling here is how much of the 'simulation' aspect you have to keep to feel you are being subversive and how dependent that subversion, if it is such, is on the game as a simulation.

Humor can be subversive when it exposes hidden truth, but it also dependent on existing truth to be humorous at all.

So, "To give his creation a hotfoot or slip a whoopee cushion under his pompous butt destroys this image" may indeed destroy that image of the general as a 'god'[small g], but I am not sure how that says anything about simulations as a technical product. Painting clown faces on a Maserati Bora may deflate any pride the driver had in parading around in a 'chick magnet', but it doesn't change a thing about how the car functions.

My definition of "simulation games [ne Training platforms]" are bought BY someone to train someone else.

The others may derive pleasure from it as is their wont but that does not make it a game. Nor does it make it fun. The second part is of course "sold to whom?" A simulation game sold to a government, business, or institution is bought for some purpose and fun has nothing to do with it.

Otto:
I understand why you make that distinction, I am simply pointing out that a definition is only useful if it has some correlation to reality.

Certainly there are training platforms that are neither simulations nor fun. There certainly are training simulations that are not fun. That isn't the definition of a training simulation = not fun.

The idea that training simulations are designed without any consideration of 'fun' simply isn't the case.

Training simulation games can be all three, are often all three. From my experience are not only a very effective way of training, making it a game, but if it isn't fun, no one will actually use the training or not use it to the extent it needs to be used.

If I take EXACTLY the same game that the government uses, and I say to my friends "Let's play Diplomacy" and they all agree, then that is a game.

A hammer doesn't stop being a hammer simply because it is used to break glass instead of driving a nail. A game is simply a tool. How it is used doesn't change how it was made, only why folks are using it. It can be just as much fun in both venues… or not.

Once again McLaddie you refuse to understand the definition.

the difference is not when a hammer breaks glass or drives a nail, it is when someone tells me to use the hammer to lay on spackle because he thinks its better and wants me to. That's a simulation.

As for you UshCha, are you saying all people who do not have your idea of play should leave the hobby?

it is when someone tells me to use the hammer to lay on spackle because he thinks its better and wants me to. That's a simulation.

So, if I told you its better to play Diplomacy and I want you to, that makes it a simulation???

Who is doing that? Who is telling you to do something or wants you to do something? No me. Never have.

No one is asking you to use a tool [a game system] incorrectly or to create something you don't want. This isn't about wanting you to do anything regarding games and your fun.

For me, it has simply been whether simulation games are possible and whether they can be fun. They are and came be.
That doesn't ask anything of you--except maybe consider the possibility…nothing else.

You can play whatever you want to, anyway you want to. A simulation game is simply a game designed to mimic particular aspects of reality and/or history. There is no 'has to'. It all depends on what you want to do with the game system.

The suggestion is that if you want to recreate history in some fashion, using simulation methodologies is a far more effective avenue. If you wanted to design a functional airplane, you probably would want to employ aerodynamics to increase your chances of success, but some folks have succeeded in ignorance…

This isn't about telling ANYONE what to do, play or what is better enjoyment. It is a technical issue of how to successfully accomplish certain goals with a game system, including fun.

Otto,
The distinction you draw between "simulation" and "game" seems to rest upon highly selective and restrictive definitions of the respective terms, i.e. – that a simulation is a vehicle that sacrifices any and all degree of enjoyment in pursuit of verisimilitude and, as such, requires the dragooning of unwilling participants, while a game is oriented toward delivering an enjoyable experience to willing and enthusiastic participants.

I do not see simulation-oriented games and enjoyment-games as mutually exclusive entities; they are both games in the most elemental sense of the term and differ only in their flavors – red wine versus white, documentary film versus comedy. As such, they appeal to a wide range of different consumer palates. Verisimilitude and enjoyment are both laudable goals in game design. If one were to plot games like calculus, where the x and y axes correspond to verisimilitude and enjoyment, the best games would arguably plot in the upper right-hand quadrant of the graph.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B

So how does a video game flight simulator fit into the definition?

Game or simulation but evidently fun as they have sold millions of copies.

Wolfhag

Otto, I merley suggestthat if you want to spend so much times dislikeing wargames, which for good or ill often say they are simulations), then you may fined RPG fits better with your requirments for a game. Simulations only give there exquisite best when the players accept the battlespsce they define and play within it. RPG's generally have a less well defined battlespace and so may be more to your likeing. I am not saying you should leave wargameing, merely suggesting that for you there may be other alternatives that may be better suited.

So how does a video game flight simulator fit into the definition?

Game or simulation but evidently fun as they have sold millions of copies.

Commercial Flight simulators like Microsoft's series of plane, combat and helicopter simulators started off as training platforms for airlines and the military. They were translated into commercial games almost unchanged with an added point system to determine the level of a 'win' in performance.

The belief part is that the player can wrap his head around the results which are modeled after manuals, training, AAR's, etc. It is also the pre-game briefing and intel report of what to expect. Nothing is 100% guaranteed, SNAFU's do happen.

To get back to the Situational Awareness thread and Wolfhag's post on this, 'belief' or the details of reality that help a player get into 'acting as if' the game is real is important.

Having thought about this and working to get it into my game design, Situational Awareness appears to have three
aspects to it, all relating to the commander's/player's decision-making efforts:

1. What the commander knows for sure
2. What he knows in part, but not all
3. What he doesn't know.

The first SA issue is what the commander knows about his enemy going into a battle. It shapes what he looks for. As an example related to me, an intelligence officer involved in a 1980s army wargame covering a imagined Russian invasion of central Europe, the officer realized that the Russians didn't have enough trucks to supply their tank forces with fuel. They had to lay pipe to get the gas to the front lines. He realized that he could identify the major points of attack and what were diversions by finding out where the pipe-laying units were committed.

Situational awareness before the battle started includes knowing how the enemy operates and their limitations. This can include knowledge of the terrain and other factors including the psychology of the commander himself.

Second, of course is what the commander can be provided information during the battle from his own units and reconnaissance. That could be the CinC of a Napoleonic army or what a commander can see from his tank or hear on his radio.

Often this kind of knowledge is piece-meal and incomplete, and comes in to him at different rates.

Third, is inference from what the commander knows. There are any number of examples of commanders 'guessing' where the enemy is and what he is doing based on the first two sets of information. I see this as more of the situational awareness skills of the commander and his command.

How to provide the player with this kind of experience requires controlling the amount of information the player has to work with in making his decisions and the tools the game system provides for him to increase his 'situational awareness' and act on it.

Mc Laddie, your last post proves very informative.

It brouht to mind some games we had the privalidge of playing with a retired Platoon commnder. One of the skills he had was that despite never knowing the rules, based purely on his expertise he predicted regularly about 80 or 90% where I would be deployed. This is on a table where there was a set of terrain more representative of the real world and hence the possible positions outweighed the positions that could be occupied by proably 3 to 1. Thus simply on the basis of his brief, an approximate estimate of the enemy strength and the nature of defence he was able to idntify many of the enemy positions.

so he was "Creating" his SA from the available facts. It may be that even at higher levels this is possible. The key is always logistics. Routes that cannot be used to supply the designated force and only use lesser forces or be used for a very limited time. This alrady eliminates large tracts of ground as being tactically usefull.

In reality we are approaching a section of the game that is really outside the normal remit of "The Rules" directly. It is more about the ability of the individual to use other life skill to assess the situation and act accordingly.

In reality we are approaching a section of the game that is really outside the normal remit of "The Rules" directly.

UshCha:
Well, yes and no. "Situational Awareness" is something people do, as you say, something they create. In a wargame, they do it with and through the rules. The player SA and the game dynamics are interrelated.

The wargame has to supply the game dynamics that players will be 'aware' of. This including terrain rules. I imagine that your retired Platoon commander would have been surprised if the game rules didn't simulate terrain in enough validity that you didn't deploy as anticipated because of some wonky mechanics…

The skill with which a player operates in a game is different than the rules and game mechanics. The life skills can only apply if the rules work as a simulation in some fashion.

So the question as it was in post 1.

Yes as designers we provide various levels of situational awareness clues depending on the target audience. No so good players we may have to provide markers in relatively small numbers assist him in deciding where the enemy is. Some are real some are not. We may tell him exactly what he is facing and what he needs to do.
Playing my co-author he may get something like its roughly a platoon probably deployed about here. You know this becuase the supply trucks for about a platoon are seen to stop around here and go back. The terrain will likely indicate what it is protecting. After that he (or me) is on his own and some variation in the truth is acceptable provided the changes do not take it out of the set of interesting games.

so to me I see no real way of simulating this sort of information within "The Rules" Die throwing is not a credible option in this case.

So in effect do game designers account for this. Answer only in part. The remainder can only be simulated within a campaign context or within a scenario where the SA is part of the brief.

So in effect do game designers account for this. Answer only in part.

That is always going to be the answer, regardless of the level or sophistication of the wargame or simulation, campaign or not.

The question isn't how to get full information to the players [the rules and 200 foot general provide that], but how to provide partial and no information.

Situational Awareness is only meaningful in an environment where not everything is known. Your Veteran Platoon Leader didn't see your troops, but sussed out where they would be without that information.

we may have to provide markers in relatively small numbers assist him in deciding where the enemy is. Some are real some are not. We may tell him exactly what he is facing and what he needs to do.
Playing my co-author he may get something like its roughly a platoon probably deployed about here. You know this becuase the supply trucks for about a platoon are seen to stop around here and go back. The terrain will likely indicate what it is protecting. After that he (or me) is on his own and some variation in the truth is acceptable provided the changes do not take it out of the set of interesting games.

so to me I see no real way of simulating this sort of information within "The Rules" Die throwing is not a credible option in this case.

I would say that die throwing can be credible depending on what the throw represents and how closely the 'odds' are to the real world 'odds.'

So, to really make situational awareness meaningful in a wargame, you have to:

1. Have a good portion of the game information hidden or only partially revealed.

2. Provide the player with tools to reveal some of that hidden information.

Obviously, the easiest method is a game master controlling what is seen and hidden. The major problem I have with game masters is that players [using situational awareness] tend to play the game master rather than the system, depending on the GM.

Hidden movement, cards, randomizing information--if that based on actual random events following real norms for that randomizing--and actual game mechanics for recon or game paraphernalia that hide information.

In designing my rules, [Corps Level Napoleonics] some of the things that can be 'hidden' are:

The actual locations and/or effects of different terrain until scouted.

The goals of the enemy. The enemy objectives--victory conditions--aren't known.

How commanders get information and whether they can influence actions they can't personally see. [The figure representing them.]

Hidden movement based on the distance to the target

Cards that can influence reinforcements, changes in orders, actions on the flanks in formal battles,

The size of the forces you are facing aren't known.

That isn't an exhaustive list, even for my rules, but that's the idea.

Campaigns can only do this if movement, logistics and/or forces are hidden from the opponent. Terrain can also be hidden… Give each player a hand-drawn map with some terrain and distances, maybe a few incorrect, and you have what Napoleonic generals often had to contend with.

Its interesting I agree with most of this. Hiddem movement is possible at least on the defender side in our big games and mostly for the attacker out of LOS, so we have never seen this as an issue. Being modern players we can also hide reconisance assests behind enemy lines but the data is often very sketchy. For exampel it can say not enough trucks have passed a point to support a unit greater than say a platoon.

In general terrain is not as unknown (although we could have patches that are say, soft going that are suspected but not proven.

Random re-enforecments. Tony Bath wrote many games with such things. Many such games ended up un-realistic or took the game out of the set of interesting games. This really is I think a personal preference thing. I could imagine that with a LOT of work, scenario specific pseudo random events could work. To me tha gains would not outweigh the disadvantages.

However I would conceed that our bigger games are between only two players who understand the rules and "play fair" so we gan do more to hide stuff than perhaps less able or goal oriented players.

To be honest our games are already right on the edge of what I can juggle in my head, so adding more is likeley to make the games worse as I would make too many mistakes or poor judgements to make it interesting for my opponent. Dissapontingly my opponet does not seem to have the same limits ;-).

I'd have to say the largest variable in SA at the 1:1 skirmish level is hidden units. I normally use a pre-game recon segment that gives the attacker a chance to detect hidden enemy emplacements.

A meeting engagement gives almost no chance. A hasty attack a small chance and a prepared attack a bigger chance. If the defender is in a hasty defense a smaller chance of being detected. If the defender is in a prepared defense a much harder chance to be detected. If one side has air superiority they get air recon increasing the chances of detecting the enemy. Prepared defenses can have fake locations.

I don't use traditional spotting check rules. When a unit is within minimum spotting range an SA Check is made and detection may be right away or with a delay.

Mobile recon units normally come into play when an attacker is moving in a column. When they spot something or are fired at the column deploys. Players can have recon units advance with a platoon of guns in overwatch ready to respond. Now the hidden units like AT guns need to wait for the recon unit to pass by or give away their location by taking him out and getting nailed by the overwatch.

I try to keep recon by fire limited or players will take the entire game pumping HE into every building and woods location.

Wolfhag

Wolfhah,
For us every game is given a time limit. That way, if the player takes too long in recon he has by definition failed, as he has not achieved his objective. However recon by fire too us is not normaly allowed. Decent troops are generally sensible enough to stay silent and it is one of those things that even a die throw does not work as it will allways give itself away eventually.
We do allow suppressive fire against a target but the damage,if any,is conceled at the time.

If you have just broken through there wil;l be no significant recon findings pror to the game start. Again its secnatio based and hopefu;;y nearly always different.

All,

Forgive my long unexcused absence from this SA discussion again. I am sure that all of you have had to cope with the untimely and often simultaneous demands of: Work, Home, Spouse, Family and Friends now and then.

For now, I want to let you know that I'm going to follow up on this message in a day or so with some numbers (i.e. battlefield metrics) that should help me establish what the physical, size and shape of what SA looks like on the actual battlefield.

Once armed with that information, I think we'll all be pointed in a direction that should challenge many of the established wargame beliefs and paradigms.