Which Sun Do Tzu Orbit?

[Greybeard]

Hello Seabolt,

I agree with Steel God.. many players simply don't have enough recon to keep track of the opposition.. it's what you don't see that comes to eat you..

other than that..

A favorite addage from an old movie.. never give a sucker an even break.. - or do unto others then run like hell..

for planning and strategy: never draw more in the morning than you can erase in the afternoon

For partial answer to unescorted armor: bigger is not always better

Murphy's law rules the game in most respects.. all you can do is minimize the murphy effect..

:)

Greybeard

[seabolt]

I agree with Steel God.. many players simply don't have enough recon to keep track of the opposition.. it's what you don't see that comes to eat you..

Oh, I certainly don't want to go on the record as the guy advocating playing with a blindfold on! There's a balance to buying 25-pt recon units vs 21-pt infantry squads that eat 25-pt recon units on first contact, that's all.

for planning and strategy: never draw more in the morning than you can erase in the afternoon

That's a valid point. Always good to remain flexible.

For partial answer to unescorted armor: bigger is not always better

You made the point of regarding your opponent's cutting-edge MBTs as big fat targets in a Final Armageddon discussion earlier, and it's certainly a valid one. The problem with premium units is that they make premium targets for the enemy, especially in 1980+ settings. I kind of loathe buying Abrams or T-90s, really. You have to assign a flotilla of infantry and recon vehicles to protect each one.

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[Steel God]

Mine were always:

1) There's no such thing as too much recon.

2) Vehicles without escort are victims looking for a place to die.

3) It's called Fire and Movement for a reason. Fail to do one or the other, or fail to do them in the right order, and you might as well ask for terms.

1. I'm a mild contrarian on recon, only because I think many players will overdo it given the chance. They'll spend too much on scouts, then everything else sits while they sneak a net of them forward. It's often easy to defeat that style by gobbling up prime real estate and getting settled in. By the time that they've pieced together the big picture, it's not a pretty one.

2. Certainly, that would be my Commandment 1 of the SP Combined Arms Bible.

3. This one often bedevils me. My opponents rarely are generous enough to leave me LOS as my turn begins. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to elaborate on the topic?

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1) I said there's no such thing as too much recon. I didn't necessarily mean recon UNITS. Perhaps I should have said intel. Certainly recon units are part of that intel, but so are aircraft, and any information gathered from any source. How you gather is up to you. As for the fear of losing a 25pt recon team to a 21pt infantry squad...my recon teams tended to have their weapons on safety and never fire. I'd frequently have them under cover in the heart of "injun territory" as the battle progressed and the enemy advanced. You buy them for what they can spot, not what they can shoot at (which is dang near nothing anyway).

2) It seems we are in agreement.

3) Well, yes, there is no way around the 1 hex shuffle it seems (at least not in any SP platform). But the principle remains. If a guy ridge pops with MBTs and then pops back down at the end of the turn, I'm still going to make him displace or pay the price. If I can't do it with direct fire, I'll use indirect fire, but after he takes that first shot he had better displace. I always assume others have the same approach which is why I say it's "Fire and Movement".

[Stonefire]

3. All else being equal, the guy who displays *this much* more aggression will win. I don't know that I've ever seen this theory in print, but it's implicit in scores of Westerns and mob movies. The trick in just about any fight is to measure how far your opponent is willing to go and go a little further.

Oh it has been said before - just look under my signature :)

Regards
Stonefire

[Narwan]

1) Recon

2) Intel

3) information management

I'm fully with Steel God here. It's all about knowing what's out there facing you before the other guy has you figured out and then knowing what to do about it. This remains valid throughout the entire game. Even when you already know the scope of the enemy force, it then becomes important to find out who is where exactly and where/how they're moving.

There are many different ways to do recon; so first is to know these methods. Second is to use these methods to gather USEFUL intel. Third is to be able to translate intel into a battlefield advantage.
Or from another perspective, it's a fluid game and there are no golden rules that always apply about what's most important until you know what you're dealing with.

Narwan

[seabolt]

1) I said there's no such thing as too much recon. I didn't necessarily mean recon UNITS. Perhaps I should have said intel.

That's certainly a valid distinction. Still, there's always a tradeoff. Classic 1-hex-per-turn, right-clicking every hex scouting robs initiative. Aggressive recon (fast scout vehicles and aircraft, for instance) robs flexibility, because a quality opponent will destroy those units, so you have to be committed to acting on the "snapshot" that they provide instantly, before your opponent can adjust and make the investment pretty much meaningless.

Over time, I've become less obsessed with ensuring that I know what Bad Thing is coming, and more keen on trying to be the Bad Thing coming ...

3) Well, yes, there is no way around the 1 hex shuffle it seems (at least not in any SP platform). But the principle remains. If a guy ridge pops with MBTs and then pops back down at the end of the turn, I'm still going to make him displace or pay the price. If I can't do it with direct fire, I'll use indirect fire, but after he takes that first shot he had better displace. I always assume others have the same approach which is why I say it's "Fire and Movement".

Ah, OK, this is in line with my experience. You either have to "ridge pop"* or find a nice keyhole for opfire. And against a really careful opponent, any sort of opfire tactic can be dicey. I was hoping you might have some new insights into getting those precious stationary targeting percentages ...

* I tend to use the term "popup," as with attack helicopters, because of a wonderful old tabletop game called "Striker," in which you could design your own gear for anything from the Great War to Star Trek. It posited antigrav tech that transforms MBTs into uberApaches. This sort of devolved the game play. (My AFV pops up. Umpteen hunter-killer drones respond. I decide everything else will lurk like hell!) But it really reinforced the concept that nothing was so mighty that the only chance to survive wasn't via ridge-popping, or popups, or snap-shooting, whatever you want to call it.

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[seabolt]

Oh it has been said before - just look under my signature :)

Regards
Stonefire
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In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.
Ulysses S. Grant

That's not quite the same thing, but it's a) in the same ballpark and b) certainly relevant to a discussion of SP maxims. The game do lend itself to battles of mutual annihilation.

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[seabolt]

I'm fully with Steel God here.

And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with either of you, other than to suggest that there's a tradeoff.

Second is to use these methods to gather USEFUL intel.

I was nodding along in agreement until I hit this one. I'm curious as to what isn't useful intelligence. Over time, I actually find my intelligence-gathering increasingly takes the form of Sherlock Holmes pondering the dogs that don't bark. That is, given an understanding of my opponent and the weapon platforms and points available to him, sometimes substantial things can be inferred from a lack of intelligence.

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[Narwan]

I was nodding along in agreement until I hit this one. I'm curious as to what isn't useful intelligence.

Quite literally what it says; intelligence you can't use. Recon and intelligence gathering isn't a goal, it's a means. The point is to act upon the info. If you can't act upon something, often you risked the unit gathering the intel for nothing. Timing is essential. You have to know when to pop your head up for a quick look around and when not to. Gathering useful intel means your intelligence gathering has to be integrated into your plan of action as a whole.
Which is also why I completely disagree with your point of a trade-off. Recon isn't about knowing everything all of the time, it's about knowing the right thing at the right time. And that wins games.

[seabolt]

1) Recon
2) Intel
3) information management
[...]It's all about knowing what's out there facing you before the other guy has you figured out and then knowing what to do about it. This remains valid throughout the entire game. Even when you already know the scope of the enemy force, it then becomes important to find out who is where exactly and where/how they're moving. [...]

This strikes me as a substantially different operational principle than this:

[...] Recon and intelligence gathering isn't a goal, it's a means. [...] Timing is essential. You have to know when to pop your head up for a quick look around and when not to. [...] Recon isn't about knowing everything all of the time, it's about knowing the right thing at the right time. And that wins games.

I find myself in near complete accord with your (unabridged) second description. (Except for the part where you describe yourself as in disagreement with my position, given that this is an excellent alternate description of it.) This philosophy, which perhaps can be summed up as "only bother bringing your eyes up when there's a gun barrel right behind them," streamlines the usage of recon to where its absence can only be a detriment. It's only when you transition from stance 2 back to stance 1 that you begin trading off initiative or flexibility for intelligence, IMO.

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