"Logistics Do you consider them" Topic

Its the new year and time for fundamentals.

Do you play miniature games(s) or connected games that span more that say 12 hours. If you do how much attention do you put on logistics.

Even in the horse and musket period horses do not run fast for any great length of time and even in WW1 the vet visited a large percentage of the animals each day for re-shoeing each day.

As you move into more modern periods the tyranny of logistics becomes more noticeable. How do you deal with it?

By playing skirmish games.

I don't mind a bit of logistics in a game as long as its simple and easy to do. Something along the lines of if your with in range of being resupplied then your good to go. If your units are outside the range of being resupplied then they take a negative modifier.

There is an old saying which goes, 'Amateurs talk strategy, whereas professionals talk logistics'.

In the real world the best strategy is worthless without the logistics to support it. But in the gaming world I like games which focus on strategy because it is more fun to think about than logistics. Counting the 'beans and bullets' and figuring out how to distribute them is certainly an important staff function, but I'd rather play the role of strategist and commander and 'fairy dust' all the rest.

I had a semantic disagreement with USAFpilot before in that I believe that the very essence of strategy IS logistics. How else does one get there firstest with the mostest unless you understand the risks and decisions that logistics requirements demand. Only with logistics can I risk the attrition and march faster than my trains, or play it safe and risk getting to the objective after my opponent. Did the terrain benefit of being there first justify the attrition? can a wily forced march cut off the opponent from his own supply source?

I love logistics in games.

A little bit of logistics is good in a game.

More than a little makes a dreary drudge-filled game for my tastes.

Much more entertaining to play a cavalry corps commander than a quartermaster corps commander!

Depends on the unit or counter level. Less important on low level, skirmish since castings start the battle with enough ammo, water etc to last the battle.
The higher the level the more important logistics is.

I'm with RudyNelson.

In skirmish level games I like to have reinforcements perform a "logistics check" based on the level of supply at the start of a game. Strategically, they are in a Planned Assault, Hasty Assault, Meeting Engagement, Fighting Withdraw, Planned Defense, Hasty Defense, Mobile Defense. Better planning = better chance of arriving with a full ammo load.

I like board games with logistics so I can better simulate friction and offensive action.

Wolfhag

When I was young, I played board games which usually had a logistics element. As a miniatures gamer, I'm generally dealing with a force so small I can see it, and no more than half a day or a day of battle, so it's my quartermaster's job to see that I've got fuel and ammo. The only exception is that, especially in moderns, there's usually a restriction on off-board artillery.

I know it's important, but it's not fun. Training the troops is important, too, but I've yet to see a game in which I have to check to make sure the AT team knows how to fire the bazooka. That also is someone else's job.

Interesting that most of you do not seem to link games or extend the time period to where logistics becomes significant assuming you are adequately supplied at the start of a game series.

I do a bit of skirmish gaming and have handled some logistic issues for some games. However, I "frontload" the logistics stuff. Usually leave small arms alone but grenades, bazooka/panzerschrek, support weapons may have a limited number of ammo. Also, perhaps an infantryman or two is missing, as in a casualty that has not yet been replaced. Just approach it from a different angle.

Logistics should be handled as a limit on what your forces can do. Beyond that for any miniatures game I have played is overkill. The longest battle time in a miniatures game I have played was one day – in a game or two of Blucher. Other games the maximum time was a few hours (Command Decision) and in that game the logistics is built in to the unit stats with ammo loads or out of ammo rules (in last edition of the game)

I always have some sort of logistic effect in the game.

When I was just a beardless callow youth back in the 70's, Paragon made up its WWII skirmish rules. A big part of which was ammo restrictions on tanks. We allowed each armoured vehicle 10% of it's real life ammo stowage. So (failing memory here) a Stu III got 4 shots in the entire game!! (Don't ask about T35's) You could try to resupply your armour in mid game. But it never ended well.

Likewise, never try to fight a battle where your army is heavy on archers and your camp, with all the resupply arrows and the men to make them, was burned down the night before. You soon shoot out what you're carrying then and then it's all down hill.

I usually run skirmish games. As with Narratio and Dynaman8789, logistics usually appears as a limitation on what the forces can do.

For example, I ran a game set in the Traveller universe in which a small unit of Imperial Marines had already been fighting the Zhodani for days and had run out of Gauss rifle ammunition, so they were limited to making close assaults or firing their few fusion guns (which had a limited number of shots left, as I recall).

I sometimes give the players objectives related to logistics. For example, the mission may involve cargo that one side is trying to load and get off-world, while the other side's job is to destroy or capture the cargo.

Likewise, in space battles, I have run commerce-raiding scenarios, which involve logistics as an objective.

I don't find logistics per se interesting to game. It's too much like planning a long trip. That's what we have a travel agents for.

Horse and musket battles: some sort of semi random ammunition consumption and reserve which calms down shooting and gives even one more realistic decisions worry, with a simple link to a supply "base/ train", a couple of carts on the edge. It gives the right problems and feeling.
No more shooting 12lb 1200m away at skirmishers…

Ww2/ modern Command decision type games should also have such a thing. Even company games where such vehicles or special weapons are known to have few rounds, not to be shooting Brummbär on houses for 2 hours!
Not easy and very hard to be remotely realistic. Usually I compromise with a sort of random consumption again, with possible reserve if linked to first tier supply dump. Supply line shown ( when discovered) with a few trucks.
Only if long battles.
No way we can do as well as computer games on this.

A spot of logistics is interesting and can add without sucking the life out of a game.
The computer can do the dull stuff for you in a computer game so you can have more and retain the fun.

It's like payroll. Everyone wants paying but they don't do the sums on paper.

I run 3-game semi-campaigns in Napoleonics. Logistics
are important, especially in the second and third games
in the linked series.

Most of these deal with one force fighting to get astride
the MSR of their enemy (battle one), a reinforcing force
for the defenders arriving (second battle) and the fight
to dislodge the enemy from the MSR (any or some of these
might involve a town/built-up area or just normal
terrain with a good road/road net).

I'll also carry-forward casualties and moral results,
both good and bad.

Engaged figures usually number 900 to 2000 (total both
sides).

Logistics makes sense even in skirmish games. Many a game scenario was about grabbing the pigs.

Scarcity of ammunition and the need to resupply are big flavourings. Zulus are bearing down and the quartermaster sgt is making the runners queue up….while the firing line is running out. Exciting stuff!

Logistical considerations add historical perspective to tabletop decision making, but in order to facilitate gameplay they need to be kept strictly to the level of command that the players occupy.

In the same way that a tactical game system bogs down if the player is a general officer but is constantly having to apply himself to issues normally handled by lieutenants and captains, a logistical game system bogs down if the player is required to count rounds of ammo and loads of fodder, which should be handled by clerks and quartermasters. Modelling the effects of logistics without doing the actual bean-counting is not that hard, and it often changed the course of campaigns and individual battles.

"Interesting that most of you do not seem to link games or extend the time period to where logistics becomes significant"

That's because I'm a tabletop miniature wargamer, UshCha. It's a hobby. When people want me to sit in committee meetings, "liaise" or maintain records, I expect to be paid.

One does not need to "bean count" to model Logistics in their games. Best done by the scenario designer incorporating the EFFECTS of logistics on the "to be played" scenario. The effects of shortages, overages, time, distance and burocracy can be imposed upon units, commands and scenario objectives.

I always find it disturbing why some folks insist on realistic looking troops, Orders of battle, yet care little about the scenery, historical limitations or well thought out gaming scenarios. All, when taken together, suspends disbelief (that we are only playing a game of toy soldiers or role playing a historical person, dealing with what that person had to deal with).

Some of us would like more than "roll a 6 and he's dead, Jim" kind of hobby.

I did an article in MWAN once detailing how fuel and ammo could be grafted onto any WWII or Modern set of rules to capture the "effect" of logistics. It allowed the gamer to have his Mad Minute and shoot off his ammo or move more in one turn, but also feel the effects of not having any more until he could figure out how to get resupplied on the table. It was surprising how usually fliverous players quickly turned into meek commanders!

v/r
Tom

Right Dye4minis.
I'd love to read that article.
Got some resisting chummies to convert😋

I'll see if I still have it in digits, JC.

v/r
Tom

Dyr4Minis has it. Counting rifle bullets etc is not neccessary. We simply put a time limit on how long a unit can be effective. This is typicaly a bit longer than a single game so it only comes in in connected long games. The "calculation" is minimal, is done no lower generally than plkatoon and merely states what bound the unit has untill its our of supply. Photographic records of the battlefield is all it needs to have the equivalent of maybe 10 isolated games with vastly more of an interesting challenge. Minimal bookeeping but lots more to think and plan.

Logistics and artillery is infinitely better than the daft random rolls of some games.

Within the game we onl;y count weapons that would be daft without them, Artillery (simlified) and some ATGW's/RPG's.

Logistics is always important in my scenarios, but whether or not there is an implemented dynamic in the game depends on the scope of the scenario, mostly (but not solely) in the time dimension.

assuming you are adequately supplied at the start of a game series.

Most scenarios I run do not assume this. Initial conditions for a scenario are driven by the storyline (which may be a campaign level logistics function).

Lots of combat is about logistics. Little Crow's War is pretty much completely about log. Sure, there are human social and political drivers and undertones but essentially it's about some people who got ripped off, didn't have food and started raiding other people who were outfitted for hunting and wild animal protection for food and arms until The Government committed military resources.