A difference between a game and reality
This is Steven Petrick Writing.
One of the things you can encounter with people who have no practical experience with what a game is presenting is that they tend to assume that the game is in fact how things work in "the real world". This can get you someone who has never in his life been in the military discussing how easy it would be to run an armored division through the Balkans, because he has done it in the game he played (I am not making that up). The actual difficulties of the logistics needed to do that is not something the speaker had any cognizance of. The game he played simply assumes the logistics for moving a division are there, it does not make allowance for the simple fact that the logistics themselves have to be moved up.
Further, a bridge that easily supported the 40 ton tanks of World War II will not support a modern 60 ton M1 Abrams tank. That means time lost trying to find a place you put up a floating bridge, and in a mountainous region like the Balkans that is a lot harder to do. The result was that when the U.S. Military did send an "armored division" into the Balkans, it was weeks, not days, to accomplish the task. Sites for military floating bridges had to be found, roads connecting those sites to the main road network had to be built, and banks along the river at the bridging site had to be heavily reinforced with gravel.
Moving a real military unit is simply not the same thing as pushing a cardboard counter or drawing a line of advance on your computer game terminal that you want the unit to advance along.
Games also often simply have rules that allow you to do something and assume that the game will largely follow history. Players will of course break those assumptions in very short order. I was dragged into a game of "War in Europe" in about 1940. The Soviets had decided to attack the Germans once they attacked France. The British had decided to directly invade Italy from Africa. You can imagine what a mess that made of things for the Germans, and it was not helped that the German "players" were not as familiar with the game system as the Allied "players". I came in, and after studying the "political rules" of the game, developed a counter-offensive for the Germans. The game system assumed that Iraq would revolt as it did historically (really doubtful they would have if the Germans and Italians were in the state they were in when I joined the game). The Allies were ignoring it as it had no direct "game effect". What it did have was "base" effect.
Under the rules of the game, the Germans could launch a two division amphibious assault anywhere in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. The Allies Invasions of Poland and Rumania and Italy had given the Germans a lot of "political points".
So I invaded Greece, and sent ten divisions to finish the conquest of Norway, and formed two reserve Panzer Armies, one near Turkey (ostensibly to prevent the Soviets from capturing Ploesti again), and one in the South of France.
Once Greece was overrun, my plan was to finish Norway (the last Norwegian division could only be destroyed by being forced to retreat into Finland or Sweden, and under the game rules it was going to take ten divisions to accomplish that, strange as it may seem, even though technically that division had no system of supply since all the rest of Norway was "occupied").
Then: German Airborne Troops would fly out of Iraq and seize the Suez Canal and Alexandria. More Airborne troops would fly out Greece and Crete and seize Tobruk and Malta. More Airborne troops would drop directly into London, and two German divisions would land by amphibious assault directly into Leningrad. The result of all this (coming down to a 33% chance of failure if the British Home Guard managed to retake London, i.e., if they rolled a 1 or a 2 at London, the plan would fail) would be that Turkey and Spain would join the war on the side of the Axis. One Panzer Army would then race down the Turkish Rail net and break into the Soviet major Oil areas in the Caucasus, while another Panzer Army Stormed down through Spain and took Gibraltar, cutting off all supply links for the British Armies in Italy. This was all possible due the huge deficit of Political Points the Allies had given the Axis by their actions, and none of it was something they were prepared to deal with.
The point of course is that anyone can see that this had nothing to do with "reality", but was it not a magnificent strategic plan for a game?
One of the things you can encounter with people who have no practical experience with what a game is presenting is that they tend to assume that the game is in fact how things work in "the real world". This can get you someone who has never in his life been in the military discussing how easy it would be to run an armored division through the Balkans, because he has done it in the game he played (I am not making that up). The actual difficulties of the logistics needed to do that is not something the speaker had any cognizance of. The game he played simply assumes the logistics for moving a division are there, it does not make allowance for the simple fact that the logistics themselves have to be moved up.
Further, a bridge that easily supported the 40 ton tanks of World War II will not support a modern 60 ton M1 Abrams tank. That means time lost trying to find a place you put up a floating bridge, and in a mountainous region like the Balkans that is a lot harder to do. The result was that when the U.S. Military did send an "armored division" into the Balkans, it was weeks, not days, to accomplish the task. Sites for military floating bridges had to be found, roads connecting those sites to the main road network had to be built, and banks along the river at the bridging site had to be heavily reinforced with gravel.
Moving a real military unit is simply not the same thing as pushing a cardboard counter or drawing a line of advance on your computer game terminal that you want the unit to advance along.
Games also often simply have rules that allow you to do something and assume that the game will largely follow history. Players will of course break those assumptions in very short order. I was dragged into a game of "War in Europe" in about 1940. The Soviets had decided to attack the Germans once they attacked France. The British had decided to directly invade Italy from Africa. You can imagine what a mess that made of things for the Germans, and it was not helped that the German "players" were not as familiar with the game system as the Allied "players". I came in, and after studying the "political rules" of the game, developed a counter-offensive for the Germans. The game system assumed that Iraq would revolt as it did historically (really doubtful they would have if the Germans and Italians were in the state they were in when I joined the game). The Allies were ignoring it as it had no direct "game effect". What it did have was "base" effect.
Under the rules of the game, the Germans could launch a two division amphibious assault anywhere in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. The Allies Invasions of Poland and Rumania and Italy had given the Germans a lot of "political points".
So I invaded Greece, and sent ten divisions to finish the conquest of Norway, and formed two reserve Panzer Armies, one near Turkey (ostensibly to prevent the Soviets from capturing Ploesti again), and one in the South of France.
Once Greece was overrun, my plan was to finish Norway (the last Norwegian division could only be destroyed by being forced to retreat into Finland or Sweden, and under the game rules it was going to take ten divisions to accomplish that, strange as it may seem, even though technically that division had no system of supply since all the rest of Norway was "occupied").
Then: German Airborne Troops would fly out of Iraq and seize the Suez Canal and Alexandria. More Airborne troops would fly out Greece and Crete and seize Tobruk and Malta. More Airborne troops would drop directly into London, and two German divisions would land by amphibious assault directly into Leningrad. The result of all this (coming down to a 33% chance of failure if the British Home Guard managed to retake London, i.e., if they rolled a 1 or a 2 at London, the plan would fail) would be that Turkey and Spain would join the war on the side of the Axis. One Panzer Army would then race down the Turkish Rail net and break into the Soviet major Oil areas in the Caucasus, while another Panzer Army Stormed down through Spain and took Gibraltar, cutting off all supply links for the British Armies in Italy. This was all possible due the huge deficit of Political Points the Allies had given the Axis by their actions, and none of it was something they were prepared to deal with.
The point of course is that anyone can see that this had nothing to do with "reality", but was it not a magnificent strategic plan for a game?
posted by Federation Commander at 2:30 PM
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