Wargaming rules suggestion, CNRP2

[The Zigur]

Right now wargaming in CNRP2 is extremely sketchy, with assets magically appearing out of nowhere and battles never taking rigid form. In the Japan-China conflict anti-AWACS missiles magically didnt take effect, and alot of very loose wargaming occurred without much to back it up.

 

I used to do a little wargaming in the Army, and the simple solution is for a wargaming mod(s) to help define battles. Instead of having random multi-battle threads, every conflict would result in a major battle that would be separately roleplayed from the political threads. The process for wargaming would work as follows.

 

1. One (or more) players are the offense, and One (or more) players play defense.

 

2. If conflict cannot be resolved by diplomacy, the offensive team would declare war and a mission objective (town, city, region, etc)

 

3. Both offense and defense would submit a private battle plan to the wargaming mod with fixed, defined forces deployed. The more details and organization the better, but at minimum troop and ship counts should be provided.

 

4. The Wargaming mod would post a thread with the deployed forces and assets of both teams now visible, and the objectives of the offensive team described. The defending team would decide whether to engage or withdraw and surrender the territory under attack and can initially do so without condition. The offensive team can decide to engage or abort, but aborting the attack would result the deployed offensive force becoming unavailable for use elsewhere for a period of time (i.e. one week). This provides a penalty against trivial attacks and poorly planned attacks.

 

5. If both sides decide to fight, the wargaming would commence with ONLY the forces deployed for combat. At this point, both sides would essentially provide arguments why they should win, while roleplaying combat activity.

 

6. Wargaming would continue until all enemy forces are destroyed or withdrawn. It is possible for a battle to stalemate and stretch out for long periods of time. If the offensive decides to abort the attack later, the same time penalty would occur, however, Defense can withdraw at any time without penalty, pending a viable exit plan. As an option, after X amount of time (which can be agreed upon by both sides in the OP), both sides would be allowed to reinforce if desired.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Tywin Lannister

[Aggressivenutmeg]

Why is this necessary?

[Yerushalayim]

Reinforcement times should vary. For example, it's a lot easier for me to reinforce positions within my own nation than it would be for someone else to reinforce their attacking forces in my nation. Otherwise this looks fine, though I'd give defenders a peak at some of the attacker's numbers (from early reports of the incoming attack force) before they array their defense.

[The Zigur]

Reinforcement times should vary. For example, it's a lot easier for me to reinforce positions within my own nation than it would be for someone else to reinforce their attacking forces in my nation. Otherwise this looks fine, though I'd give defenders a peak at some of the attacker's numbers (from early reports of the incoming attack force) before they array their defense.

 

Well, both sides can reach an agreement regarding reinforcements before the engagement begins. If both sides agree, reinforcement can even happen at any time after RP begins, however, if no agreement is ever reached, reinforcement should not happen and both sides must work with what they have deployed in the area. This keeps the wargame stable and contained, and means there are consequences to deployment strategies.

[The Zigur]

Why is this necessary?

 

Because the current wargaming is shit

[Captain Enema]

that's part of the problem, nobody wants to concede an advantage to the otherside, because it is a game where one wins and one loses. 

 

Hence, they disagree to everything, hoping to deny all advantages to their enemies. 

[Markus Wilding]

This seems overly complicated.

 

I like Tidy's idea on this that he's spouted out on IRC and before in character RP battles: you say what you have where. Battle starts. Anything you didn't mention isn't there.

[Aggressivenutmeg]

 

Because the current wargaming is !@#$

 

We aren't wargaming though. We are RPing. There is a big difference. If you want to play wargames there are places on the internet to do so.

[Yerushalayim]

This seems overly complicated.

 

I like Tidy's idea on this that he's spouted out on IRC and before in character RP battles: you say what you have where. Battle starts. Anything you didn't mention isn't there.

 

This is basically how I'd do it. If you have anything sneaky you want to do, be sure to PM it to a GM before the battle starts, so you can whip it out later without being just pulling something outta your ass.

[Captain Enema]

This seems overly complicated.

 

I like Tidy's idea on this that he's spouted out on IRC and before in character RP battles: you say what you have where. Battle starts. Anything you didn't mention isn't there.

 

T1 para combat. 

 

Actually, I haven't done any of that in ages. Yeru and I were talking about how much fun that used to be. I probably am terribru at it now.

 

Would be fun to have a skirmish.

 

Private Baraby to battle once again?

[Yerushalayim]

T1 combat lends itself pretty well to this style of RP. With minimal oversight from GMs only when one side or the other requests it.

[The Zigur]

If people don't actually want to take risks and possibly lose, than just admit you are roleplaying by yourself, and essentially facebooking other nations rather than interacting with them in a consequential manner.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Tywin Lannister

[Yerushalayim]

No one's said anything about losses, or avoiding them.

[Mr Director]

One thing that might help here is a fixed ratio of IC time to real time.

[The Zigur]

http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?/topic/122287-hipacom-wargame-simulation/

 

Here is the IC simulation thread I am running, feel free to comment in this thread.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Tywin Lannister

[The Zigur]

One thing that might help here is a fixed ratio of IC time to real time.

 

Thats not necessary, if everyone follows the same wargaming rules, offensive fleets and armies (red force) will all be tied up for X amount of days by the cooldown requirement (regardless of engaging or not), which actually means battles would occur very infrequently... it is risky to weaken your forces elsewhere by engaging too heavily against a single objective.

 

It lends a significant advantage to the defender who can initially withdraw from the scenario without penalty. There is currently no strategic advantage to the defender with the current setup, and as a result strategic warfare is lacking.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Tywin Lannister

[Vedran]

This seems a little overly structured to me. Personally, I favor more of a prose-like style of writing, war or otherwise, but I can see where you're coming from with people pulling things out of nowhere.

 

I can play out a fair level of losses, myself. It's just that when neither side in a conflict wants to do this that it becomes problematic, in which case, I suppose, some sort of ground rules are needed to ensure folks don't get carried away.

[The Zigur]

If the defender is inactive or does not participate, it's possible to mandate an automatic withdrawal of his forces from the area, and the red force deployment cooldown would immediately begin upon occupation of the seized territory. A seven day deployment cooldown would slow the attacker's progression and give the inactive defender time to prepare.

 

The attacker still has to be careful not to be ambushed. The attacker is liable to be counterattacked by a larger force while the deployment cooldown takes place. He may be forced to reinforce with more forces than he is comfortable with to prevent destruction of his deployment. This may leave his defense at home vulnerable to attack.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Tywin Lannister

[Hereno]

This seems a little overly structured to me. Personally, I favor more of a prose-like style of writing, war or otherwise, but I can see where you're coming from with people pulling things out of nowhere.
 
I can play out a fair level of losses, myself. It's just that when neither side in a conflict wants to do this that it becomes problematic, in which case, I suppose, some sort of ground rules are needed to ensure folks don't get carried away.

 
I agree with this post more than the others. What happens, at least in my experience, is that I'll see my opponent lowball their losses to the point of absurdity and start giving their generals god-mode psychic abilities. And then I have one of two options: either play dirty in return, or let them cheat. Nine times out of 10, what do you think people are going to do? So what ends up happening has nothing to do with strategy or skill at anything other than getting away with the most bullshitting, until someone decides to complain and grab a GM. And this community seems to love grabbing GMs for just about anything. But RP isn't a just world... if you try to play reasonably against someone who isn't, you lose.

 

That said, I don't think any of the solutions given ITT are really viable. For example, me forgetting to include X piece of military hardware to counter Y situation when I PM the GMs wouldn't mean that, realistically, it wouldn't be there. It's just that everything we do is based on a single person having to remember and plan out everything and so lots of mistakes happen, which just leads to more of those situations where being gamey about tech and having hours to research specific modern military tactics allows people to beat insurmountable odds. And of course, everything I've just said gets exacerbated when, inevitably, someone gets OOC pissed off about it or takes someone's hard-line diplomacy as a personal attack. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that our RP will always be as good as our RPers.

[Uberstein]

This is overly complicated. It is perfectly possible to have a reasonable war with the way things are, you don't need a complicated rule set.

I maintain that good bookkeeping, like TBM's proposition, and the occasional GM moderation, is all that is necessary.

Just play the game folks. Don't try to cheat, or you'll get slapped. If there isn't previous RP for something that isn't common sense (common sense, i.e your fighters use the missiles they have on the wiki page that are in your tech level, stuff like that.) Then I'm not likely to rule in favor of it.

That being said, CNRP2 should not require professional education on military matters for a nation to be successful. I believe that is one of the major sentiments that led to this rp being formed.

[The Zigur]

I know not everyone knows alot about military strategy and technology, if youre one of those people I highly recommend simply borrowing doctrine from real life military forces. Even I do this extensively when it comes to stuff like Brigade Combat Teams.

Whether you chose to borrow soviet, US or other doctrines, about 30 minutes of research should give you a basic understanding of how it works. If you roleplay that you nation deploys X number of soviet style divisions, or Y number of US brigade combat teams, that will be plenty of information to go on. I like to micromanage my tactical dispositions but you dont have to to be successful... more important is a grasp of basic defensive strategies like ambushing, scorched earth defense, trading land for time etc.

The burden is on the aggressor to prove they have the ability to dislodge the defenders.

[Uberstein]

I agree with you there; we don't need a new rule set to enforce that though.

[The Zigur]

Obviously we do with the Japan China fiasco. Implementing structured wargaming is simple and has the following effects:

-Discourages trivial wars and makes diplomacy important
-Penalizes the aggressor by requiring a deployment cooldown (so forces dont just teleport all over the place)
-Gives every war its own separate and organized thread that is easier to monitor
-Results in strategy, even if godmodding takes place, deployed forces are off the table elsewhere.
-Strong defensive advantage even for inactive players
-Burden of proof lies with the attacker

[The Zigur]

One other note about these rules is that Joint Task Forces could take place in which capable generals assist less capable leaders through the use of deployed advisors. For example, if a friend of Hawaii is invaded, Hawaii could deploy advisory officers to lead the defense.

[Hereno]

Given the blocs and nuclear deterrents, do we really want to be significantly discouraging offensive warfare?