for Combat-Mission (SOCC-M)
FAQ
1. The only way the Western player will stop a significant tank breakthrough to his north is heavy ATG weapon deployment and timely commission of his own tank reserve in the north -- which is kind of a reactive move. So you are indirectly stacking the deck for the guy on the east -- he has the initiative assuming he does take that route. I'm also assuming the Germans, who in that kind of open terrain, also have an equipment advantage, will play the East.
I am trying to set up a perfectly even match as far as resources and assets go. But how the players utilize those assets and deal with the complexities of terrain, time, distance, etc. is entirely up to them. Each side's mission statement will be vague enough that either an offensive or defensive player could be successful, mainly because it will focus on destruction of the enemy. This will also eliminate the possibility of both sides digging in and sitting out the war. The successful player will be the guy who figures out what his opponent is doing, anticipate it through good contingency planning, and still accomplish his own objectives. This will help in the economy of force issue, by making it easier for a defender to focus his defending units and allowing the attacker to mass his. At the beginning of the campaign the sectors along the middle with the large river will be neutral. Seizing a bridgehead could be very easy or very hard, depending on how each player decides to attack/defend. Also the campaign maps are very generalized as far as terrain goes. Wooded terrain in the campaign map is practically impassable to vehicles (except along roads). There will still be cover in the form of buildings, brush, walls, and scattered trees in the relatively open areas shown on the map. But just as a commander looking at a 1:50,000 map 10 klicks from his objective prior to an attack, the players wont know exactly what the terrain in a particular sector looks like until they've set foot on it. Which raises another quandary for the player. Surge forwards and possibly seize an indefensible river crossing? Or take the time to conduct some reconnaissance to find the one that would be the easiest to hold onto and support the main attack? When a player sends a Recon unit to a sector he will receive a copy of that sector map for future planning. As the player’s knowledge of the operational area increases, so will his planning abilities.
2. Intel, supply and reserves are all abstracted, and that sounds good for this scale of operation. But how will you handle issues like forces getting cut off? Do you need to maintain lines of communication back to regimental HQ? What if you don't?
I think its safe to say that since we're dealing with a short span of time here (a couple days) isolated units will probably be able to maintain at least radio contact with higher HQ. The supply issue will only become a problem as far as fuel and bullets goes. I think I would be willing to consider a unit out of fuel and ammo after three TE’s without contact with a friendly unit.
3. If a battle in a sector is not decisive, can both players retain forces there after an operational turn?
Yes. The TE will simply carry over to the next OT. This is why it will be very important for players to maintain the last few PBEM turns so that the final moments can be analyzed to come up with an accurate picture of the units involved and damage to the terrain.
4. In some scenarios I've playtested (not SOCCM scenarios), reinforcements occasionally just appear right in LOS to, say, a platoon of Panthers up on a big hill.
These TE maps will be quite large, at least 5 x 6 klicks. This will ensure plenty of maneuver room and prevent a lot of these problems. Most TE’s will be Operations of a Static type. This way the players will have use of the entire map during the entire operation, rather then the sliding effect of most operations. Each TE will be close to 40 turns or so in length, in order to give the players time to maneuver their forces over these distances. If a player wants to lead with a Recon screen he can do so, and I probably wouldn't have a problem extending the battle for a couple turns for him to do that. But if he wants to conduct recon and attack in the same OT then it will have to occur in the same TE (scenario).
This is when the players choice of movement modes for his units comes in to play. If he decides he wants to rely on speed and get as many units on the board as fast as he can, then he should choose traveling mode. This will signal me that he wants to move them onto the board via a road. He'll get the units quicker and closer together, but the payoff may be that they come under fire from the enemy's interdiction fire, definitely a real world possibility. If he chooses bounding overwatch, then his units will arrive more spread out in time and the terrain, making it harder for an enemy to predict where they are entering at. Of course the enemy will have no idea which mode a player has chosen.
6. It looks like you can issue orders only once every 24 hours (four turns) but after each turn you can "cancel or modify" orders. This distinction needs to be made clearer. Does the cancel/modify step mainly cover things like canceling an advance that was contingent on some other event (e.g. TF A failed to take their objective, so Team B should not go in and set up their hasty defense in that sector)?"
This step was added to give a commander a little more flexibility and to save us all some game time. Say a player is sending forward two small recon by force missions into Towns X and Y and an Attack into Town Z for OT 1, he also has a company team in Reserve status. This would result in possibly three different battles in OT 1. It turns out that one of the recons finds an empty sector. The player is notified that there will be no combat in that area. Based on the intel he received the player may decide to cancel his Attack for that OT. This may be possible provided it hasn’t started its attack, a distinct possibility if the recon force was motorized (giving it a high rate of march) and the player set the H-hour for the attack to be late in the OT. He may wish to use that TF with attack orders to exploit the empty area found in the recon. He can then place that task force in defend, reserve or hold status. Since an OT is six hours of campaign time long, battles will always occur at slightly different times, giving rise to the possibility of these little battlefield updates and hasty mission order changes. The player may choose Reserve status so that in OT 2 he can move them freely to another sector he controls, however this would cancel his attack order permanently. Hold means that the attacking units are still in their assembly areas, awaiting the order to move out. A player might choose that status if he simply wants to delay the attack rather then cancel it. What he cannot do is have the attacking unit move into the cleared sector in the same OT. Unit staffs just aren’t that fast. It takes awhile to get a battalion turned around and new orders issued. However, the unit he has in reserve can move into the newly cleared sector, provided it’s adjacent to it. So OT 1 might look like this: the recon by force clears sector 1, the Attack on Sector 2 is placed on hold, the recon by force in Sector 3 meets stiff resistance in a meeting engagement. At the end of the OT the player has a number of options. He can order his Attack to go through on Sector 2 to provide some relief in Sector 3. He might also commit his reserve in Sector 3 and have his attacking force (if he placed it in Reserve instead of Hold) go into Sector 1, in an attempt to exploit that gap.