Armchair Dragoons Forums
Wargaming => Age of Gunpowder => Topic started by: bayonetbrant on June 24, 2020, 06:33:24 PM
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Tom with some interesting thoughts about what step losses represent in games, using a bunch of age of gunpowder games as the exemplars
https://hollandspiele.com/blogs/hollandazed-thoughts-ideas-and-miscellany/from-the-archives-scattershot-thoughts-on-step-losses (https://hollandspiele.com/blogs/hollandazed-thoughts-ideas-and-miscellany/from-the-archives-scattershot-thoughts-on-step-losses)
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Interesting read, not something I had given much thought to until recently starting to learn the GCACW series. The rules and designer notes talk about how the fatigue levels and strength point markers help show combat effectiveness of units and not just the KIA for a unit.
In general I wonder how much this would change between the various game scales and even time scales in a game for that matter.
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That's a little bit of an older article, too. Tom's more recent wargames, like his Swords & Shields II system have some interesting mechanics that largely dispense with step losses as well, being more focused on how the loss of a unit impacts the units adjacent to it, causing them potentially to rout. For games that cover eras where maintaining a line is critical, this is a really interesting system. It really stops players from moving units willy-nilly everywhere on the map.
Then there's Horse and Musket, where we ignore casualties entirely and focus only on morale. There are "step losses" but they are more like what Tom describes in the article, since most units have more than one morale level, or step. Of course there are casualties happening, but we're saying that in the period we're covering, casualties don't get really serious until the unit's morale breaks. So we're tracking morale. That means that units can rally those morale level losses back, potentially taking a unit close to breaking back up to full morale. Of course it takes a leader to do that, and doing it expends some of the very limited Command Action Points the leader has available.
Those are just a couple of examples. but I really am pleased at the much more sophisticated mechanics we are starting to see these days that go beyond the two step loss systems of the past. That some of these aren't even focused on casualties but rather morale. fatigue, and general combat effectiveness of the unit is a major advance in mechanics that depict pre-20th century armies.
It's interesting to me that the two step loss system, focused on casualties evolved around the same time that "body counts" were a thing in Vietnam. I don't believe there's any direct connection, but I do think this represents a commonality in the way people at the time thought about military operations. I think our understanding of what happens on a battlefield is more sophisticated today and wargames are reflecting that. Even more, I think we have a better understanding of how behavior on a battlefield changed across different eras, and we're seeing game mechanics that capture that.
That many of these systems are actually easier to play than the older systems is a bonus.
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A good article.
I like step-decreases in combat. As the author points out, it distills many different factors that affect a unit's combat effectiveness into a set of stages that are easily tracked, and that don't bog down gameplay. I've been playing some of Paul Rorhbaugh's designs lately, and he uses step-based damage extensively, even for naval combat.