WMD in MC; negative values

[Hans Boersma]

Apparently the negative values which can be assigned in the scenario editor only work per side, and not per side and type: for chemical weapons I wanted WP to have free use from the start, and NATO only being able to use them after WP has used them. No problem sofar, but for nukes I'd like to have the opposite situation; free use for NATO from the start and retaliatory use only for WP. Alas this isn't possible. Perhaps this is eligible for a future fix/patch?

Hans

[Dog Soldier]

Would there not be serious political repercussions for a NATO military authorizing a nuclear strike over NATO soil without the excuse of the "WP did it first"?

I think this is the basis for the rule working as it does. What you are proposing would never be a capability given to the NATO military, but controlled by the governments of NATO. Thus changing this is beyond the scope of the MC series?

Dog Soldier

[Kuriltai]

Would there not be serious political repercussions for a NATO military authorizing a nuclear strike over NATO soil without the excuse of the "WP did it first"?

I think this is the basis for the rule working as it does. What you are proposing would never be a capability given to the NATO military, but controlled by the governments of NATO.

But what if NATO was losing the conventional war in a big way? How far could the PACT advance before someone decided they had to be stopped at any cost?

[Dog Soldier]

A good question. One I am glad never had to be asked.

FWIW, my opinion would be that nuclear weapons would not have been used as a scorched earth policy by NATO. As a rational, what be the use of ever attempting a counter attack to regain ground so poisoned and populations your side had murdered (aka collateral damage). The economic damage to infrastructure, cities, etc. would make returning as a liberator a hollow victory to say the least.

Dog Soldier

[JDR Dragoon]

But what if NATO was losing the conventional war in a big way? How far could the PACT advance before someone decided they had to be stopped at any cost?

You also have the fact that France possessed an independent nuclear capability, which was under french political control and wholly seperate from most of the rest of the NATO decision making apparatus regarding use/non-use of WMDs.

[JDR Dragoon]

FWIW, my opinion would be that nuclear weapons would not have been used as a scorched earth policy by NATO. As a rational, what be the use of ever attempting a counter attack to regain ground so poisoned and populations your side had murdered (aka collateral damage). The economic damage to infrastructure, cities, etc. would make returning as a liberator a hollow victory to say the least.

Dog Soldier

What if your rationale is to keep the french borders inviolate from conventional attack?

[Glenn Saunders]

Guys - it is getting way too complex and that is why the rule was imp,imented as it was - not designed to cover French Nukes vs other NATO Nukes. In the original design NATO had no Chem Weapons and I am not sure where that came from because it was found to be incorrect pretty quickly.

In any case the premise was always that NATO (even the French) would not use WMD until they were used by the WP. If you want to get more complex Just make they FREE for all to use and then inforce a house rule as I assume this is with a massive Campaign file that you guys are referring too here.

Glenn

Glenn

[Hans Boersma]

Thanks for the response gentlemen. For me it is an issue how the AI acts in a scenario; indeed in H2H this could be solved easily with house rules.

Regardless how realistic / believable things are, I think it would be good if a scenario designer would be able to moderate chem/nuke use independent from each other. Though they're both labelled WMD, in the ladder of escalation nukes hold a very different position from chemical weapons. With the use of tactical nukes things could very quickly spiral out of control into a mass nuclear exchange, or so it was (and is) thought. This means that the question of using chems or nukes is not quite of the same gravity, which means linking their usage is not necessarily plausible.

As I understand it NATO deliberately did not proclaim a no first use policy on tactical nukes; it was thought they would be needed to compensate for the perceived imbalance in conventional forces. If WP would manage to catch NATO forces off-guard, the use of tactical nukes would probably be asked for after as much as a few days. Whether they would actually be used is another thing of course — but that's exactly the what-if area in which our scenarios exist. Indeed government(s) would decide over the use of nuclear weapons, but since nukes are in the game, so is at least that part of the political factor.

Regarding chemical weapons I understand NATO (or rather the US) had some limited stocks intended to "discourage" chem use by the other side — for retaliatory use only, in other words. If not anything else the size of US chem stocks against those held by the WP alone would be a strong incentive not to use them first.

Hans

[FLG]

I think the whole argument that NATO/the allies would never use WMD's first but WP would is somewhat naive. I would think that NATO countries were just as likely to strike first as the soviets given the right set of circumstances. The chances of WP launching first strike unless they are seriously under threat is ridiculous, as history and the cold war has proved to us.

It would make more sense to have both NATO and WP have the option to launch WMD's. Maybe it could be tied to optional rules which would see loss of troops and reinforcements from the country where the strike is made or reduction in supply to represent political backlash.

The whole idea soviets are evil bad men intent on the destruction of the West is just an idea from a comic book. They are just average people like all the rest of us, mostly good ones trying to do the best for their fellow country men with a few bad ones, just same as the rest of us.

[Hans Boersma]

WP would have a political/moral advantage on the world stage by refraining from the use of nukes while forcing NATO to use them first by use of their numerical advantage in conventional forces.

Indeed the image of the Big Bad Soviets is an over-simplification, but saying that they were "just like us" is too. It's not so much about the Soviet citizens but about the political system that governed them. Prior to Gorbatchev few Soviet leaders would pass as "being like us", and there were some pretty paranoid figures in government and in KGB especially.

I like the idea of adding some sort of penalty for the use of nuclear weapons. That could be easily done by making that side paying in VPs. NATO would pay more as they would be using these weapons on home ground.