SDN World 3 Commentary Thread II

[Siege]

Actually you know what? I don't think Ryan is arguing his point in the most effective or succinct manner possible, but he has a perfectly valid point. Unless I'm missing something his war with Wilkens is headed straight for the same adversarial bullshit that plagued the previous game. One player puts up an OOB with flaws that a regular military would have fixed, and instead of pointing out those flaws other players gleefully exploit the situation.

Now you can claim that these 'flaws' are part of the game and the fault of the player, but to that I would say that not all players are created equal, and the game should take into account that we're not all masters of military doctrine or the arcane art of composing the right order of battle, and the game should compensate for that, rather than penalizing it. Pointing out that there are plenty experts one could've asked questions is in my mind not a viable riposte; Ryan for example did ask questions, assumed the answers he got were accurate, and is now getting screwed because he did so. If one is not an expert, how the fuck is one supposed to know if the advice one gets is good or not? Divine it with a crystal ball?

And to add insult to injury, an adversarial combat system where one player can pitch his vast knowledge of minutiae against another's lack of such poisons the atmosphere of the game. Because players will feel they're getting unfairly shafted for not having extensively consulted the West Point Grand Library of Random Military Facts. We've seen the same damned thing happen several times in the previous game (does 'MESS-v-MkSheppard clusterfuck' ring a bell), we're seeing it happen right now, and so if people insist this is the best way to handle these things they're frigging idiots.

Taking the war between the Union and Germany/France as an example of how to do war right, Thanas and myself are constantly talking about how the war should go the next fighting day. He outlines his general plan, I point out flaws and come up with possible counters, he adjusts his strategy to account for them, and between moderator dice rolls and two to four PMs we synthesize an outcome that is agreeable to the both of us. We've done our fair share of verbal sparring over details to be sure, but the general course of the war was pretty damn clear from day 1. I knew where his armies were, he knew where my armies were, and we rolled with it. Contrast this with the way Wilkens and Ryan are conducting their fighting and I can't help but feel ours is the superior way of handling these situations.

And last but not least when last I checked this was supposed to be a game. I believe the general goal of a game is to have a bit of fun. For me personally, having to avail myself of god-damn "military experts" before the onset of the game runs pretty much directly contrary to that idea. Oh, I'm sure that I could, but I don't want to, and if that somehow massively penalizes me then either game balance is either grossly unfairly stacked in favour of said experts, or it's just not my game. The military isn't a hobby, or a former job, and I refuse to be screwed over just because I happen to like to do other things in my spare time than pour over Jane's Armies Of The Interbellum, or whatever. If that's how it's going to go down, the game is flawed on pretty god-damn fundamental level.

[Norade]

Siege, I should PM you about the Suriname situation so we can work that through quickly and the game can move into Q4.

[Ryan Thunder]

No Ryan, if you want to fight Jungle warfare, you do it with foot soldiers that specialise in Jungle warfare. How the fuck do you plan to drag huge guns through the jungle? Carry it in pieces? Feth, the Japanese achieved excellent Jungle mobility using Bicycles, and mostly light to medium artillery.

And artillery is only as useful as it is defended. If he decided to flank your artillery units, you do realise that you are quite fucked?

Fire and maneuver. One unit moves whilst another suppresses the enemy.

[Raj Ahten]

I think Seige has just touched on a huge issue in this game very eloquently. I also share the same concerns about players getting raped because they aren't experts in period military tactics. Isn't the whole point of using a point system and writing orbats and so forth to level the playing field? If players are penalized for lack of expertise in exotic knowledge if they've made a good faith effort to understand it this game is going to be dominated by the military history buffs. Then there would be no damn point in quantifying everything except to give the "experts" a relative advantage over the less knowledgeable.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I have a question, what becomes of that little Dutch enclave called Yogjarkarta? I haven't made any moves on it, but ... I find it rather odd to have it a German enclave now...

[Thanas]

You could always send an ambassador to Germany to enquire about getting the place peacefully...I am there is something we can trade for it in return. Maybe some sort of oil deal for my new (former dutch) bases.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

You could always send an ambassador to Germany to enquire about getting the place peacefully...I am there is something we can trade for it in return. Maybe some sort of oil deal for my new (former dutch) bases.

I guess that could be arranged.... when I get around to write it up.

[Lascaris]

Actually you know what? I don't think Ryan is arguing his point in the most effective or succinct manner possible, but he has a perfectly valid point. Unless I'm missing something his war with Wilkens is headed straight for the same adversarial bullshit that plagued the previous game. One player puts up an OOB with flaws that a regular military would have fixed, and instead of pointing out those flaws other players gleefully exploit the situation.

Now you can claim that these 'flaws' are part of the game and the fault of the player, but to that I would say that not all players are created equal, and the game should take into account that we're not all masters of military doctrine or the arcane art of composing the right order of battle, and the game should compensate for that, rather than penalizing it. Pointing out that there are plenty experts one could've asked questions is in my mind not a viable riposte; Ryan for example did ask questions, assumed the answers he got were accurate, and is now getting screwed because he did so. If one is not an expert, how the fuck is one supposed to know if the advice one gets is good or not? Divine it with a crystal ball?

I'm not quite certain I'm willing to agree.

Case in point the artillery situation here. Several of us me and Sea Skimmer included repeatedly pointed that the artillery brigades were corps not division level units. IMS I went as far as posting numbers/ types of guns for several divisions of the era. If post that you still go and put an artillery brigade per division what is the solution?

One is that the mods flat out shoot your OOB down. Why? because the 200 artillery brigades you so kindly provided yourself with come with a massive industrial cost to make them. If you had all these points to spend why others with your army and industry levels did not?

Now since the mods did not want to place upper limits to the numbers of artillery brigades allowed and despite warnings you go your own way different to every army that had existed why exactly you shouldn't pay for it?

[Lascaris]

I think Seige has just touched on a huge issue in this game very eloquently. I also share the same concerns about players getting raped because they aren't experts in period military tactics. Isn't the whole point of using a point system and writing orbats and so forth to level the playing field? If players are penalized for lack of expertise in exotic knowledge if they've made a good faith effort to understand it this game is going to be dominated by the military history buffs. Then there would be no damn point in quantifying everything except to give the "experts" a relative advantage over the less knowledgeable.

What exactly is the exotic knowledge? At the start of the game I knew nearly nothing of the available aircraft types for the mid 1920s. Took merely some googling and basic common sense not just to cover the gap but to be making custom fighter types too. Hence I'm rather unsympathetic to "but I didn't know and didn't care to learn" Particularly when always able to ask.

[Ryan Thunder]

What exactly is the exotic knowledge? At the start of the game I knew nearly nothing of the available aircraft types for the mid 1920s. Took merely some googling and basic common sense not just to cover the gap but to be making custom fighter types too. Hence I'm rather unsympathetic to "but I didn't know and didn't care to learn" Particularly when always able to ask.

Ask and be ignored/buried under a dozen unrelated posts, you mean? Not that I fault anybody for that; its not like they're obligated to help.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What exactly is the exotic knowledge? At the start of the game I knew nearly nothing of the available aircraft types for the mid 1920s. Took merely some googling and basic common sense not just to cover the gap but to be making custom fighter types too. Hence I'm rather unsympathetic to "but I didn't know and didn't care to learn" Particularly when always able to ask.

I guess you haven't really played the last couple of iterations.

During the last game, it really became one great dick waving fest where people were waving around their military knowledge left right center. Some of us just tagged along, but there was a great deal of weariness among those who have really better things to do than to indulge in arm races. The game isn't always about military fanwank, but about diplomacy etc. And the best part of all, almost no one wants to share that said knowledge because it was a game of upmanship.

Then of course us at CATO were getting fed up, then we decided to indulge in our own upmanship by creating super miniature nukes using Ultra Dense Deuterium, to the consternation of the opposition, and this based on my endless digging of scientific journals, which I happen to have access to, and nobody else in the game have.

Most of us veterans who have played the game remember the upmanship part quite clearly, and some of us really have better things to do than to indulge in endless minutiae. I have piles of research papers and books to read, and I certainly have better things to do than to read military stuff all the time just to come up with that perfect OOB. I was one of the last to trot out the OOB, in part because I am dead exhausted after a day of musing and thinking over my said experiment, and I have really better things to do than to indulge in other things that sap my already tired brain.

[Raj Ahten]

I think Seige has just touched on a huge issue in this game very eloquently. I also share the same concerns about players getting raped because they aren't experts in period military tactics. Isn't the whole point of using a point system and writing orbats and so forth to level the playing field? If players are penalized for lack of expertise in exotic knowledge if they've made a good faith effort to understand it this game is going to be dominated by the military history buffs. Then there would be no damn point in quantifying everything except to give the "experts" a relative advantage over the less knowledgeable.

What exactly is the exotic knowledge? At the start of the game I knew nearly nothing of the available aircraft types for the mid 1920s. Took merely some googling and basic common sense not just to cover the gap but to be making custom fighter types too. Hence I'm rather unsympathetic to "but I didn't know and didn't care to learn" Particularly when always able to ask.

How about 1920's era coastal Defenses and where to put them in nations you've never been to and have no idea where the strategic beaches are? How about 1920's era fleet tactics and deployment doctrine? There's a lot of stuff like that which isn't nearly as obvious as a google search. Figuring out what the hardware is is the easy part, figuring out how and where it should be used is harder.

[Steve]

Alright, have slept, not nearly so cranky.

Ryan, I am all for a player's army being considered as more "knowledgeable" than the player himself. Lascaris points out that realistically you should not have such excessive artillery at division level anyway, but I will give you benefit of the doubt and presume that Colombia's Army conceived of a defensive doctrine centered around plastering enemy attacks with massive artillery barrages before an enemy's larger infantry per division would be decisive.

But I don't see Wilkens proclaiming that this means his army is superior and will always win. I see him offering it as an IC reason for their swift border victory given his high roll; that the Mexican Army, enjoying greatly-superior numbers at the point of attack, outflanked the Colombian forces and forced them into a battle where their artillery didn't enjoy entrenched spotters and well-planned pre-ranged tables for artillery direction.

If he rolls low/you roll high in an engagement in your defensive line, the exact opposite can be presumed; that the Colombian Army's excessive numbers of artillery permitted it to literally pummel a Mexican force to death with a shower of artillery shells.

Now, honestly, I'm not entirely happy with your industry-heavy approach to army, but I'm prepared to accept the "2 infantry brigade 1 artillery brigade" division if your divisional artillery is heavily weighted toward light pieces like 105mm, which actually works with your need to move them through jungle terrain. That said, you might want to have Colombia's post-war report indicate the need to diversify your divisions better, perhaps a Corps that has one such "2 infantry/1 artillery" arrangement and then two divisions with the more common "3 infantry" arrangement, with said Corps also having its own more traditional artillery brigade weighted toward heavier pieces. Because if anyone manages to outflank you or otherwise prevail against your army, forcing it into maneuver, that artillery-heavy force starts becoming a flaw, not an advantage.

And this goes into something I was grumbling last night. We are starting to get too wrapped up in miltech. Look at our damned ship design thread for Christ's sake. This game should not be about who has better access to materials on fighting in the era or the patience to engage in pain-staking research into such. As it is I'm giving up on scouring Wiki for good aircraft and just going with "Fighter 1924" for designs and stuff.

Now that we have the principle of rolling for military success as part of the game, this should benefit those of us who are not miltech or milorg experts. We don't need to know all this to prevail; our forces' general competence is presumed and it's the dice that says who wins and who loses. If you go to war with Shep you don't need to know the ballistics resistance capability of 1920s battleship armor steel or the precise range of a 1924 light tank; you just need to decide where to put your troops and to get good rolls, representing your army has exploited opportunities given by fickle Fortune to give him a licking.

[Steve]

In light of the timing of the Anglo-Dutch War *mutters incomprehensibly* I am forced to retcon the process that led to the entry in Darwin.

All the preparations - the fleet departing, the army moving up - started upon the beginning of hostilities. The third day of the war was when my PC was shot and his daughter critically wounded. As a result, the Vice President, temporarily in control as the President was treated for his wound and watched his daughter's survival hang by a thread, secured the permission of Congress to enter Darwin in the same session where the new laws banning the Communist Party from electoral participation happened. As a result, Cascadian forces entered Darwin on Day 4 to the same effect; the demoralized Navy not resisting and accepting internment and the garrison shooting Colonel Huytz when he and his hardcore supporters attempted to start shooting deserters and provoke resistance to the overwhelming odds.

Honestly, I would've gone with the above in story posts had I known you two would go for such a short war.

[Thanas]

In light of the timing of the Anglo-Dutch War *mutters incomprehensibly* I am forced to retcon the process that led to the entry in Darwin.

Anglo - Dutch war?

Honestly, I would've gone with the above in story posts had I known you two would go for such a short war.

Well, we weren't exactly aiming for such a short war - none of the war was pre-agreed on. In fact, we did a few things that defied some mod rolls that would have gone for a shorter war, like for example originally I would have had crossed the bridges at Zwolle until Siege convinced me that the results of the Mod Roll were way too unrealistic.

Also - any thoughts upon the PMs I sent you?

[Steve]

BAH. Dutch-German War! I think looking up the wiki on Maarten Tromp slipped that term into my subconscious.

[RogueIce]

How about 1920's era coastal Defenses and where to put them in nations you've never been to and have no idea where the strategic beaches are? How about 1920's era fleet tactics and deployment doctrine? There's a lot of stuff like that which isn't nearly as obvious as a google search. Figuring out what the hardware is is the easy part, figuring out how and where it should be used is harder.

Allow me to say, I do agree with the 'you should help, rather than screw over' each other thing. That said, the above lets me bring up a point of my own.

In short, we're all over the freaking world here. And it's really not feasible for people to go poring over the world to help you out. So a bit of give and take is needed here. And that is, if you want help, you have to be rather specific in asking.

To take one of Ryan's examples, asking if his monitors are 'good' is not enough. It's not very realistic to assume whoever is willing to help will also go look at the map, see where you are, see who your neighbors are, figure out who among them are your most likely opponents, go look up that (or those if it's multiple) OOB(s), and then figure out if your given design is all that great. Instead, what you'll likely get is a generic answer, similar to that given Ryan: yes they are, against xyz forces in abc situation. On the artillery thing, if you're just looking at it, it's not realistic for them to devine your defensive plans, or again go look on a map on their own to see where you are and judge there. Instead, odds are you'd get, "Well that's a lot of arty and it could do quite a bit of damage indeed," while probably not qualifying that statement for all the variations of terrain, tactics, force displacements, etc.

If you're going to ask for help, you should try and be as detailed as you can. You should generally know the layout of your own country; if not I suggest you look it up. That way you can ask questions, like: "OK, I have a lot of desert/plains/forest/jungle. Is a force of infantry/artillery/cavalry/whatever a good thing, or will it hurt me?" It's not realistic for our non-military of the 1920s experts to go look up information, yes. But don't expect those who do know to go and crack open an atlas for you, either.

Ideally yes, what Siege and Thanas have done is ideal. Help each other out a bit. If you see a weakness, don't just exploit it. Let the other guy know ahead of time. That said, we're (the mods) not just going to let people change OOBs willy-nilly, either. Best bet now is to ask questions, give as much detail as you can so those who are trying to help you can do so fully, and then try and plug any holes you can. Best bet, ask the mods for how you might do so, once you have an idea on what you'd like to do. Don't expect us to wave our Mod Wands and fix the problem for you, but I think I can speak for Steve and Timothy in that, if you come to us with a level head and ask nicely, we'll do what we can to help you out. If you demand we solve some problem for you...don't expect us to be nice about our replies. Basic human nature there.

Now, to be fair to Wilkens, his success is less based on knowledge that 'arty brigades suck in the jungle' and more on the fact he just had really good dice rolls for the most part. He didn't even bring that up until now, and for the rolls and plans I've seen it was never even mentioned. Similar thing with the war between Siege and Thanas, honestly. Personally (I don't know about Steve and Timothy), when it came to weighting a given battle, I was less concerned with the quality of the forces, as opposed to the quantity of same. And I don't think it takes extensive knowledge of military history to know that, in some respects, more is better. But the short version of the paragraph is this: we do try to be as equal about our rolls as we can. And we have been known to cut a break here or there, even if it kinda stretches reality (like how we smuggled Brandon Michaels out of the ULC because of Karmic's real life circumstances).

TL;DR version: If you're going to do battle with someone, or see them as a potential enemy one day, don't be a dick. If you see a weakness in their OOB, don't just think about how you'd exploit it; send them a PM or give a heads up in OOC that they have a problem. If you're worried that you don't know a lot about this stuff and might be the victim of said weaknesses, speak up and ask for some help. Don't expect the mods and/or those with better knowledge to go all over each country's OOBs, looking for flaws. Needless to say, that is a rather unrealistic expectation. And when you do ask, try and provide what detail you can, so the answers will be as helpful as possible. Try to give some light on your situation, rather than assume whoever is answering is already going to know it.

That's my two cents on the matter, anyway.

[Ryan Thunder]

Ryan, I am all for a player's army being considered as more "knowledgeable" than the player himself. Lascaris points out that realistically you should not have such excessive artillery at division level anyway, but I will give you benefit of the doubt and presume that Colombia's Army conceived of a defensive doctrine centered around plastering enemy attacks with massive artillery barrages before an enemy's larger infantry per division would be decisive.

That is basically what my doctrine is and has been since I set up my ORBAT, in fact.

But I don't see Wilkens proclaiming that this means his army is superior and will always win.

True enough. I don't think I asserted that was the case though, and if I did it was a mistake. My issue was his assertion that because my army is heavy on artillery they suck at fighting in the jungle, even though that was one of the reasons I gave them so much artillery in the first place, the idea being that they could avoid the limitations of direct-fire weaponry by shooting over shit instead.

I see him offering it as an IC reason for their swift border victory given his high roll; that the Mexican Army, enjoying greatly-superior numbers at the point of attack, outflanked the Colombian forces and forced them into a battle where their artillery didn't enjoy entrenched spotters and well-planned pre-ranged tables for artillery direction.

I understand. You have to take into consideration how difficult that would be to do, though. I'll roll with it in this case and assume that some of my commanders fucked up and that ended up breaking the whole line they'd have tried to settle into.

Actually, I'll assume that's the general explanation for something like this; A series of fuck-ups resulting in a single point (or a few points) of failure triggered by a few more fuck-ups that in the end results in a massive enemy advantage, even more so than they would've had otherwise due to sheer numbers.

Cool?

If he rolls low/you roll high in an engagement in your defensive line, the exact opposite can be presumed; that the Colombian Army's excessive numbers of artillery permitted it to literally pummel a Mexican force to death with a shower of artillery shells.

Now, honestly, I'm not entirely happy with your industry-heavy approach to army, but I'm prepared to accept the "2 infantry brigade 1 artillery brigade" division if your divisional artillery is heavily weighted toward light pieces like 105mm, which actually works with your need to move them through jungle terrain.

That makes sense. I'll modify the Wiki in a bit.

That said, you might want to have Colombia's post-war report indicate the need to diversify your divisions better, perhaps a Corps that has one such "2 infantry/1 artillery" arrangement and then two divisions with the more common "3 infantry" arrangement, with said Corps also having its own more traditional artillery brigade weighted toward heavier pieces. Because if anyone manages to outflank you or otherwise prevail against your army, forcing it into maneuver, that artillery-heavy force starts becoming a flaw, not an advantage.

True. I was considering moving to a square division with three infantry and one light artillery, with one division per corps getting heavier guns after the war. How's that sound to you?

And this goes into something I was grumbling last night. We are starting to get too wrapped up in miltech. Look at our damned ship design thread for Christ's sake. This game should not be about who has better access to materials on fighting in the era or the patience to engage in pain-staking research into such. As it is I'm giving up on scouring Wiki for good aircraft and just going with "Fighter 1924" for designs and stuff.

Now that we have the principle of rolling for military success as part of the game, this should benefit those of us who are not miltech or milorg experts. We don't need to know all this to prevail; our forces' general competence is presumed and it's the dice that says who wins and who loses. If you go to war with Shep you don't need to know the ballistics resistance capability of 1920s battleship armor steel or the precise range of a 1924 light tank; you just need to decide where to put your troops and to get good rolls, representing your army has exploited opportunities given by fickle Fortune to give him a licking.

Well, I think you should know enough not to, say, send cruisers against battlecruisers as a cover for a submarine cruiser attack.

But if a player seems to be doing something obviously stupid to somebody in the know (like the above), that somebody should warn them and then the player should confirm that they really want to do that.

---

And I'm sorry for going thermonuclear on Wilkens and calling him a worthless sack of shit, given that, after re-reading the post, it looks like he was just trying to give me a friendly tip.

That's what I get for working until goddamn 3:30 AM.

---

Now, to be fair to Wilkens, his success is less based on knowledge that 'arty brigades suck in the jungle' and more on the fact he just had really good dice rolls for the most part.

That's true. For the record, I was attempting to head off any attempt to use that against me because it would've been just cripplingly lame for more than half of my entire army to be based, trained, and operating in the jungle and yet suck at actually fighting there.

[Norseman]

Might want to include the Congo, or, since that might be sort of an NPC soon, me in those chats about Kenya.

[Thanas]

I already sent a PM to setzer.

[Setzer]

Yeah, I think I'll officially withdraw from the game. I start college classes pretty soon, and I just won't have the time. The Mods can deal with my country however they like.

[Thanas]

Just so you know, I am not going to swallow all of Belgium and the Netherlands. Baerne and I are working on a division.

[Thanas]

Might want to include the Congo, or, since that might be sort of an NPC soon, me in those chats about Kenya.

Well, I basically just wanted to know whether the Congolese are going to continue the occupation or not.

[Norseman]

Might want to include the Congo, or, since that might be sort of an NPC soon, me in those chats about Kenya.

Well, I basically just wanted to know whether the Congolese are going to continue the occupation or not.

The way I see it their legal argument is as follows:

1. Kenya was a mandate area allotted to the Union of the Low Countries.
2. When the Union of the Low Countries was unable to fulfill their obligation to the mandate area the Congolese government placed the area under protective occupation untill such a time as the Union of the Low Countries could resume their obligations.
3. Seeing as how the Union of the Low Countries is dissolved, except for the various elements of the exile government, the Netherlands have no claim to said mandate area. Neither does the exile government as they are not able to fulfill their obligations in the mandate area.
4. Thus the mandate must be said to have dissolved and Kenya should resume its rightful place among the independent nations of the world. A vote should be held, on the basis of universal suffrage, to decide whether Kenya becomes an independent country or decides to accept the protection of another nation.

[Thanas]

The way I see it their legal argument is as follows:

1. Kenya was a mandate area allotted to the Union of the Low Countries.
2. When the Union of the Low Countries was unable to fulfill their obligation to the mandate area the Congolese government placed the area under protective occupation untill such a time as the Union of the Low Countries could resume their obligations.
3. Seeing as how the Union of the Low Countries is dissolved, except for the various elements of the exile government, the Netherlands have no claim to said mandate area. Neither does the exile government as they are not able to fulfill their obligations in the mandate area.
4. Thus the mandate must be said to have dissolved and Kenya should resume its rightful place among the independent nations of the world. A vote should be held, on the basis of universal suffrage, to decide whether Kenya becomes an independent country or decides to accept the protection of another nation.

3 is where you are wrong. For all intents and purposes, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Belgium are successor states. Which means that as long as the dutch government does exist there - and it still does, it is now territory of said Kingdoms, which are part of the German Empire.