For the sake of fueling the disucssion, here is my earlier post regarding upgrading the strategic system in AH's MA. I fully agree with Preon1 that goons and M3s have no business being able to rebuild strategic targets. They should only effect bases, and even then it should take more than one goon to completely rebuild a completely flattened field or base. Preon's point, if I may be so bold, is that the strat targets really aren't strategic...rather, they're superfluous. Some targets should be important enough to maintaining the offense that they are worth attacking and defending.
Note that none of what I have suggested would detract from those who play this sim simply for the air-to-air aspects. However, for the wargamers in the crowd it adds more possiblities for advancing the progress of your country's military campaign. It's all about move and counter-move.
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With the addition of roads and rail, it is now possible to add a more complex logistical model to the main arena than a simple rebuild time modifier. The strategic posture of a modern nation-state at war is a complicated system that has been likened to a human body. Factories and their supporting cities are the body's organs, processing raw materials and turning them into the essential building blocks to propel and repair the body. The road and rail system (and maritime transport where applicable) are the arteries and blood vessels that carry those building blocks to the rest of the body. One can choose to attack the body's functioning in different ways. You can attack the extremities directly, as in crippling a hand of a leg. Cut all the arteries and veins feeding that extremity, and that appendage sickens and eventually fails. Lastly, you can go after the organs themselves, paralyzing the entire body until it dies.
Right now, the strategic system in the MA only affects the rebuild times of things you damage. You could completely destroy all the factories, refineries, and other strategic targets (leaving the HQ out of the picture for the moment) of the enemy, and they can continue to pursue the war without pause. Likewise, killing convoys and trains has no affect on the situation at the front, except to delay (not prevent, just delay) rebuilding of destroyed facilities. So long as no damage is done to a base, destroying any strategic targets or logistic lines-of-communication (LOC - the convoys and trains) is a useless gesture. Conversely, when a base or factory is damaged, the arrival of a convoy, train, or supply drop causes a complete and immediate resurrection of the facility. This also is unrealistic (dare I use that word in connection with the MA?), and overly simplistic. Now that we have LOCs and strategic targets modeled, we have all the elements to more closely simulate full-scale warfare.
What am I talking about? Supplies! It should now be relatively easy to model all the effects of isolating a base, either by cutting its LOCs or by hitting the source of supplies. There are two ways a base's capabilities should be negatively impacted. First, the enemy can destroy stuff at the base. Second, consumables like fuel, ordnance, and troops can be used up. Either situation can be fixed by the timely arrival of fresh materials. The difference is, cutting off the supplies can render a base nearly useless without the need to strike the base itself. Destroy a convoy to a base, and that base should begin to run out of supplies. Kill the depot, and all bases in the area should run low on supplies. Destroy a country's oil refineries should affect all bases throughout the country.
Now before anyone panics at what I'm suggesting, let me go into a little more detail of what I'm proposing. Let's take the situation regarding fuel at a base (the system can be extended to cover other items like ordnance and troops). A base starts with fuel at 100%. So long as a convoy arrives on schedule, fuel remains at 100%, unless fuel tanks are destroyed by enemy action. Bases normally get a new convoy dispatched to them 5 minutes after the previous one either reached the base or was destroyed. What I'm suggesting is that every convoy that fails to arrive have an incrementaly detrimental effect on the availability of fuel. The first convoy that fails to reach the base causes fuel availability to drop to 75%. The second missed convoy in a row drops it to 50%. A third missed convoy in a row drops it to 25%. This is as low as it can go as a result of missed convoys or destroyed fuel tanks.
Damage to fueling facilities at a base destroys the fuel storage capacity; killing half the fuel tanks will reduce the capacity to store fuel by 50%. Thus you may have a fuel storage capacity at a base of 50%, but only have 25% fuel available due to 3 missed convoys in a row. A convoy's safe arrival has two affects. First, it repairs 25% of the remaining damage to the storage tanks. Second, it completely resupplies the available storage tanks (including any just repaired). Going back to our example, a convoy arrives, repairing enough fuel storage tanks to store 75% of full capacity (remember, we were down to 50% storage capacity due to damage, but 25% fuel available due missed convoys). The convoy also fills all the available fuel tanks; i.e. fuel availability is now at 75%, or 100% of the non-damaged fuel storage capacity. Supply drops would have a simlar effect as the safe arrival of a convoy, though it should require more than one C-47 to completely resupply all items on a base.
Ordnance could be handled in a similar fashion, by dividing up the classes of weapons in the following fashion:
Ammo at 100% - all vehicle and aircraft ordnance available
Ammo at 75% - all aircraft and vehicle ammo available, plus rockets and bombs smaller than 500 lbs
Ammo at 50% - all aircraft and vehicle gun ammo available, plus rockets and bombs 100 lbs and smaller
Ammo at 25% - all aircraft and vehicle gun ammo 40-mm and smaller available
Troops would either be available or not available, based on damage and convoy status. Barracks destroyed or three missed convoys would disable troops at a base. Only a convoy could rebuild and/or resupply barracks; resupply missions would have no effect on troop availability.
Strategic Targets:
I haven't quite figured out yet how trains affect the current MA, except that they affect rebuild times of strategic targets (which ones, I'm not sure of). However, here's how I'd handle them. Generally, production facilities are place in a location near the source of their raw materials (oil refineries are near the oil fields, generally; steal mills are near ore deposits, factories are near population centers). So the flow of finished goods is generally via rail roads, between the production facilities and the population centers. These population centers (cities) also act as distribution centers, funneling the goods out to the areas that need them. Trains would move between the finished goods from where they're produced towards the city. Because depots can be captured, the movement of goods from city to depot would have to be handled in the abstract. Convoys would of course radiate outward from depots to bases.
The terrains in the MA should thus be laid out as follows: Each country would have one or two cities (regional capitols, we'll call them). A refinery, barracks complex, and an ordnance factory complex (collectively known as production centers) would be scattered around the regional capitol, connected to that capitol via a railroad. Trains would spawn at the capitol, in a major rail marshalling yard (a large train station, in other words) and head towards the production centers. Ideally, it should be the other way around, with trains spawning at the production centers and moving to the cities; however, you can only have so many stations in a terrain. Besides, I want the marshalling yards (stations) to be part of the regional capitol. The depots would in turn be connected to the bases via the road/convoy system.
We've already talked about what happens to bases when their supply line to the depot is cut. Now for the strategic part of the equation. Damage to the regional capitol would simply affect rebuild time of the production facilities and the city's marshalling yard, just as it has in the past. This reflects the city's role as a labor pool to repair and operate production centers. Damage to a particular type of production center will cause shortages of the product produced at that production center at all depots in the region. This in turn would restrict that product at bases fed by that depot, just as if the convoy had failed to arrive (but only for that specific product; other products would still be available). The percent damage done to the production center would dictate the reduction at the base. Resupply drops would still have the same effect as they do when missed convoys cause the reduction (this represents a redistribution of supplies at the front, rather than an infustion of new supplies). Damage to the marshalling yard in the city (a separate target, but co-located with the capitol) would prevent trains from spawning. Likewise, hitting the train from the production center to the capitol would also cause shortages, but for shorter time than damage to the production center or the rail yard.
Again, the idea is to recreate more completely the myriad of ways to affect an enemy's ability to make war, at the tactical level (hitting the bases and convoys), the operational level (hitting the depots and trains), and the strategic level (cities and production centers). Because hitting an area target like a factory would now have a more immediate impact on the war effort, you'ld likely find more bombers plying the skyways with a system like this. It will also give Jabo's more jobs to do, jobs they traditionally performed. What do you think?
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[ 11-12-2001: Message edited by: Rojo ]
