Foresight comes from Hindsight
This is Steven Petrick Posting.
One of the things about plans is that they can only go as far as things you have experienced. The mark of a truly great planner is the ability to go beyond that and anticipate the things that might happen, in some cases simply seeing the things that WILL happen and accounting for them.
An example was the game Jutland by Avalon Hill.
I devised a plan to trap the British Grand Fleet as it left its harbor at Scapa Flow, pinning the ships against "the edge of the world" more or less, and annihilating them before slipping back to Helgoland, evading interception by the other British squadrons.
The plan worked brilliantly . . . except that I did not take into account one small problem.
The problem was that by bringing the English ships to battle so far from Helgoland any of the German ships that were crippled (reduced to half speed) could not make it back to Helgoland before they ran out of coal.
This, of course, also "broke the game" since there were no rules for what happened when a ship ran out fuel, and no rules allowing for "towing" or various other options. And no rules for how a ship with "no fuel" would be handled in combat.
The result was that I had a "task force" of nine crippled German Dreadnoughts (and Battlecruisers) that was stopped (out of fuel) half way home. With no rules for "drifting" or anything else, these nine ships sat there, in a perfect formation of three columns of three ships each.
The British,having "chased" the rest of the German fleet back to its harbor now turned and hunted for the "lost column". Since I knew what they were doing, and where the column was, I massed all of my U-boats between the enemy and the column.
The results were humorous (at least in game terms).
The British found the "lost column" in the dead of night, when an engagement was going to take place at literally point blank range. The way the rules worked for the U-boats, they managed two attacks before the British reached the Column. The Crippled Derfflinger (I think that was the ship) with one operational turret left (where the power to operate it was coming from I do not know) cut loose at 3,000 yards, destroying a British battlecruiser with the first shot of the night engagement. It took the British ships more than an hour to sink the lost column, and the close range exchanges of fire allowed some of the crippled ships to give not quite as good as they got. But that "hour" allowed the U-boats to catch up and attack the British ships two more times before they could break clear and make for safe harbor.
While the "final outcome" of my "plan" was a clear German Victory (even with the loss of the nine ships in the Lost Column, the British edge in Capital ships had been eliminated and any future engagements would be at one-to-one odds, but if I had not had to sacrifice the "Lost Column" I would have had an edge in total battleships) I would never repeat it. I am not happy with "breaking the rules" (the designers had not, when they created the game, envisioned having rules explaining what happens when a ship runs out of coal or how to deal with it), and having been forcefully reminded of the problem with getting crippled ships home, I was simply not willing to conduct an operation that far from my home ports. The realization of the need to plan for crippled ships returning to port put a cap (reduced by 25%) on the maximum range at which I could conduct operations.
All of my operational plans for the Germans when playing Jutland after that particular game were made based on that factor. However, I really should have thought about the problem of crippled ships BEFORE it was something I had to face (and the game designers really should have written rules covering what to do if a ship ran out of coal). My foresight in planning for such circumstances came from the hindsight of the disaster of the "Lost Column".
One of the things about plans is that they can only go as far as things you have experienced. The mark of a truly great planner is the ability to go beyond that and anticipate the things that might happen, in some cases simply seeing the things that WILL happen and accounting for them.
An example was the game Jutland by Avalon Hill.
I devised a plan to trap the British Grand Fleet as it left its harbor at Scapa Flow, pinning the ships against "the edge of the world" more or less, and annihilating them before slipping back to Helgoland, evading interception by the other British squadrons.
The plan worked brilliantly . . . except that I did not take into account one small problem.
The problem was that by bringing the English ships to battle so far from Helgoland any of the German ships that were crippled (reduced to half speed) could not make it back to Helgoland before they ran out of coal.
This, of course, also "broke the game" since there were no rules for what happened when a ship ran out fuel, and no rules allowing for "towing" or various other options. And no rules for how a ship with "no fuel" would be handled in combat.
The result was that I had a "task force" of nine crippled German Dreadnoughts (and Battlecruisers) that was stopped (out of fuel) half way home. With no rules for "drifting" or anything else, these nine ships sat there, in a perfect formation of three columns of three ships each.
The British,having "chased" the rest of the German fleet back to its harbor now turned and hunted for the "lost column". Since I knew what they were doing, and where the column was, I massed all of my U-boats between the enemy and the column.
The results were humorous (at least in game terms).
The British found the "lost column" in the dead of night, when an engagement was going to take place at literally point blank range. The way the rules worked for the U-boats, they managed two attacks before the British reached the Column. The Crippled Derfflinger (I think that was the ship) with one operational turret left (where the power to operate it was coming from I do not know) cut loose at 3,000 yards, destroying a British battlecruiser with the first shot of the night engagement. It took the British ships more than an hour to sink the lost column, and the close range exchanges of fire allowed some of the crippled ships to give not quite as good as they got. But that "hour" allowed the U-boats to catch up and attack the British ships two more times before they could break clear and make for safe harbor.
While the "final outcome" of my "plan" was a clear German Victory (even with the loss of the nine ships in the Lost Column, the British edge in Capital ships had been eliminated and any future engagements would be at one-to-one odds, but if I had not had to sacrifice the "Lost Column" I would have had an edge in total battleships) I would never repeat it. I am not happy with "breaking the rules" (the designers had not, when they created the game, envisioned having rules explaining what happens when a ship runs out of coal or how to deal with it), and having been forcefully reminded of the problem with getting crippled ships home, I was simply not willing to conduct an operation that far from my home ports. The realization of the need to plan for crippled ships returning to port put a cap (reduced by 25%) on the maximum range at which I could conduct operations.
All of my operational plans for the Germans when playing Jutland after that particular game were made based on that factor. However, I really should have thought about the problem of crippled ships BEFORE it was something I had to face (and the game designers really should have written rules covering what to do if a ship ran out of coal). My foresight in planning for such circumstances came from the hindsight of the disaster of the "Lost Column".
posted by Federation Commander at 1:35 PM
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