Re: (TFT) WWII

[Joel BoardgameRpger <joel.siragher@gmail.com>]

Have you looked at VBAM?

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com> wrote:

> So I had budgeted a couple of sawbucks toward getting the Sid Meier
> Pirates! remake sometime around now but the best part of that got sank
> in two GURP supps that claim to deal with issues I've been messing
> with for quite some time now.
> As I'd already riled the little people with the mass combat stuff I
> went ahead and got the city stats supp when they woke me a bit after 4
> in the morning.
> The mass combat stuff is really not so very far from my own approach
> and I was hoping for something similar from the city stats stuff at
> the least but this one started in stupendously poor fashion.
> In the intro there's this.
>
> ''This isn't a design system for cities, like that for planets in
> GURPS Space. That would take a much longer supplement! Rather, City
> Stats provides a checklist for making up metropolitan locales, a list
> of questions that need to be answered in creating an urban setting.''
>
> So City Stats doesn't provide a design system for cities but rather
> gives a check list for making up cities?
> Ooooookayyy...
> Then they show us an example, Lhasa (1850) noting the city as being
> under Chinese control.
> I thought at first that this was just a typo with the date at 1950 but
> setting the population at 55k and talking about the Dalai Lama's
> martial forces suggests otherwise.
> I wonder if they knew that China started a 14 year long civil war that
> killed something like twenty million souls.
> Chalk that hot mess up to Yrth I suppose.
>
> Then we get ''A city's population is its single most important
> stastic...'' followed shortly by ''The most important effect of
> population on game mechanics is as a modifier to search rolls.''
>
> That slobber-knocker is followed by a table and description that makes
> the whole fiasco significantly worse.
>
> First the modifier chart is just rotten in its scope.
> On the population side it runs from city populations of less than 100
> to 100,000+.
> I live in a b cityb  of well less than 5,000 people and am only
> considered part of that population via the postal service.
> Sunset Beach can't be considered a b cityb  because it lacks a post
> office but the population easily exceeds 100.
> In England grading seems to involve the presence of a church to become
> a village and a market to be marked as a town with cathedrals in a
> city (and a Charter) as a loose rule of thumb.
> And 100,000+ as a upper limit?
> As far back as Rome at least there have been cities that top 100k by
> an order of magnitude.
> The modifiers range of -3 to +3 rings alarm bells in the same manner
> that the fella complaining to me that a d6 system was too simple
> compared to a d20 system set off the alarm.
> But that pales against the fact that the search roll seems to be used
> to find if or not a given type of establishment is present in a
> b cityb .
> Is it that there is no grocer at all if I fail my IQ check looking or
> is it that I just can't find 'em?
> Saying I can't locate the grocer sounds more reasonable than equating
> a failed check with a total lack but why would it be harder to locate
> an establishment in a smaller city?
> On top of it I have even less chance of finding city hall w/o the
> admin skill or a bank w/o the finance skill or even worse w/o finance
> I stand a better chance of assuring the b cityb  has no bank at all just
> by checking.
> If the latter is the case the Dark Lord is sending Prootwaddles out to
> look for stuff like guard towers, armories, forges, and similar
> structures in any city that opposes him.
>
> ''This includes both rolls to determine whether such an establishment
> is there at all (the usual application), and rolls to locate a
> specific establishment the GM has already decided is present.''
>
> Just wow... complete and total fail here.
> It's literally the worst of both worlds.
> Even worst there is no metric given for a missed check.
> It seems the usual check is boolean but a check for location doesn't
> give any information at all for resolving checks.
> If I miss the check to locate an establishment that has already been
> deemed present how do I read the checksum?
> Is it just a boolean 'you can't find it today, try again tomorrow' or
> is it something more like 'your lost for an hour per point you failed
> the check by'?
> The text is silent here.
> It seems the best defence against the Dark Lords Proots would be to
> heavily advertise the structures you want them to find and man each
> building with 101 people for a +8 mod.
>
> How much more of this must I endure?
>
> This is section 1
> POPULATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
> Search Modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
> PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . .5
> Terrain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
> Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
> Hygiene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
> MAGICAL ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . .6
> Mana Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
> Enchantment Level . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
> CULTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
> Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
> Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
> Tech Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
> ECONOMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
> Wealth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
> Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
> Low-Tech Wealth and Status . . . . . 8
> POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . .8
> Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
> Control Rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
> Corruption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
> MILITARY CAPABILITIES . . . . . . . . .9
> Military Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
> Defense Bonus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
> A Rabble in Arms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
> NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
>
> That's half the document counting the three front pages with little of
> nothing and the last index page.
> Why does a document that has only 17 pages of nominal content have an
> index?
>
> So a quick glance at the table of contents shows terms like
> population, terrain, hygiene, culture, tech level, economy,
> government, corruption, and military capabilities that are all handled
> in playable manner in 4x models.
> I suppose I'll end up finishing this at some point but this is so
> disappointing as to convince me that my time is better spent on other
> tasks currently.
>
> So back to the mass combat stuff.
>
> From the GURPS WWII stuff the German CoC in 1939 looks something like
> the following
>
> Hitler
>
> Direct reports
>
> I; OKW Keitel
>
> Ia; OKH Brauchitsch
> Ia1 Generalstab
> Ib; OKM Raeder
> Ic; OKL Goring
>
> German Military Districts and garrisoned Units 1939 Aktiv Dienende
> I East Prussia * b  1, 11, 21 Inf; 1 Cav
> II Pomerania, Mecklenburg * b  2, 12, 32 Inf
> III Brandenburg b  3, 23 Inf; 3 Lt, 3 Pnz
> IV Saxony, North Sudetenland b  4, 14, 24 Inf
> V Southwest Germany b  5, 25, 35 Inf
> VI Westphalia, Lower Rhineland b  6, 16, 26 Inf; 1 Lt
> VII Upper Bavaria b  7, 27, Inf; 1 Mnt
> VIII Silesia, East Sudetenland b  8, 18, 28 Inf; 5 Pnz
> IX Hesse, Thuringia b  9, 15, 29 Inf; 2 Lt; 1 Pnz
> X Schleswig-Holstein * b  10, 20 22 Inf
> XI Hannover, Prussian Saxony b  13, 19, 31 Inf
> XII Middle Rhineland b  33, 34, 36 Inf
> XIII Franconia, West Sudetenland b  10, 17, 46 Inf; 4 Pnz
> XIV Special Magdeburg b  2, 13, 20, 29 Mnt
> XV Special Jena b  1, 2, 3, 4 Lt
> XVI Special Berlin b  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Pnz
> XVII Upper and Lower Austria b  44, 45 Inf; 4 Lt; 2 Pnz
> XVIII Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria b  2, 3 Mnt
> XIX Special Vienna (reserved for new units)
> XX Polish Corridor occupied
> XXI Western Poland * occupied
> 39 Inf, 1 Cav, 4 Lt, 6 Mnt, 5 Pnz divisions
> * Maritime District
>
> A Division has a Generalstab Leader who serves as a Chief of Staff
> with Leaders of each troop-type in the Division reporting to him in
> the Tactical Group.
> At the Field Command level with multiple Divisions and supporting
> Units the staff command structure was broken into 5 sections.
> General Staff (Generalstab)
> 1 Chief of Staff
> 1a deputy
> 1b supply
> 1c intelligence
> 1d training
> 2 Adjutant (Generalstab)
> 3 Legal
> 4 Supply
> 5 Chaplain
>
> Infantry: ~17,000 men, 400 cars, 600 trucks, 5,000 horses
> 3 regiments (~5,000 men) of 3 battalions (~1,500 men) each.
> Panzer: ~14,000 men, 324 panzers
> 2 regiments (~7000 men, 162 Panzers) of 2 battalions (~3,500 men, 81
> Panzers) each.
> Light: ~14,000 men, ? trucks
> (Infantry support for Panzer divisions, so my best guess is that the
> structure mirrors the tanks but this isn't stated in the text)
> Mountain: ~13,000 men
> 2 regiments (~6,000 men) of 3 battalions (~2,000 men) gebirgs
> (mountian) and jager (rough terrain) divisions both with ''Much
> lighter baggage train than conventional infantry''.
> Cavalry: District I lists the b 1 Cavb  as a supported division but Cav
> isn't listed in the Key nor is a cavalry division listed as a type in
> the section on the Heer structure, but the info on a standard infantry
> division suggests that a Cav division
>
> Musterung
> Reserve I: under 35 fully trained
> Reserve II: under 35 partially trained
> Ersatzreserve I: under 35 untrained
> Ersatzreserve II: unfit
> Landwehr I: 35 to 45 trained
> Landwehr II: 35 to 45 untrained
> Landsturm I: over 45 trained
> Landstrum II: over 45 untrained
>
> The German army in 1939 was about 3.75 million souls.
>
> Aychwawa! little wonder they never seem to have bothered describing
> the German army at the start of WWII much less 1944.
> Still, the command structure fits into Illuminati pretty nicely.
> I'm translating the main NPC's into TFT and describing the commands as
> Illuminati groups.
> Most Illuminati actions are possible role-play scenarios not just
> attacks but even something as simple as a money transfer can provide
> adventure, especially if the roads are lawless.
> The real headache looks like describing the 300 to 400 thousand
> 'elements' of the German army.
> Let's see what I can see from my 4x sources.
>
> Well Civ4 with the first expansion has a 'Road to War' scenario that
> starts in 1939.
> As the designer didn't take advantage of the option to name units
> individually this is going to take some slogging to crunch through and
> see how historic the setup is.
> The map is pretty obvious though, lets do the counts...
> I get 113 squares e/w by 85 n/s over an area roughly 9000 miles e/w by
> 4000 miles n/s.
> This gives a rectangular tile of well under 50 miles across n/s by
> approaching 80 miles e/w.
> Squaring that up suggests each tile is roughly 60ish miles across.
> Of course that messes up the maps dimensions quite a bit.
> This happens pretty frequently when analyzing realworld based scenarios.
> It's my guess that this results from not defining the base tile size
> when mapping.
> I realize that the tile size is abstract for mod flexibility but
> failure to acknowledge scale at all led to the disaster of Civ5.
> And the hex-tiles looked SOOOO promising.
> One unit per tile killed it however.
> I saw some knuckleheads site trying to claim that there was no
> possible overpopulation because the world population (6.5 billion)
> could all fit into Rhode Island with each person having 4 square feet
> of space which is 4 people per Melee-hex.
> He conveniently forgets to mention anything about arable land vs. the
> 80% that's not gonna feed anybody but the packing problem gives an
> idea of why I have real problems with the idea of 1 unit per tile at
> the scales Civ implies.
> The concept of a tile being able to hold a major city but limited to a
> single unit is fundamentally broken.
>
> So anyway, if anyone is interested I'm going to spend the evening
> seeing what I can get done with the order of battle in detail.
> I'll be using the Road to War scenario from Civ4, the GURPS WWII supps
> (mainly Iron Cross and the Weapons Supplement) and Illuminati to get
> my working data to drop this all into TFT.
> http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/179431-The-Road-to-War-Ultimate-Edition
> !
> http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/img/illuminati_rules.pdf
>
> Oh, and in this day and age it's probably not a very good idea to name
> your working file for translating the German command structure into
> Illuminati 'germ ill cards'.
> Just about got Steve Hatfill'd over that.
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