Scenario: Acceptable US Casualties Against 3rd World Armies

[Imp]

Can set values as you like if want more outcomes, The Blitz Score Sheet uses
Overwhelming
Decisive
Medium
Minor
Draw
So a total of 9 outcomes

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by shahadi

Defining battle results in terms of political, military, and strategic is intriguing. Imp has suggested scenario designers use Excel in an effort to determine the outcomes of a battle within the game.

In the game guide the difference of damage points determines the outcome as either “Decisive Victory (8:1 ration),” “Marginal Victory (less than 8 but greater than 2),” “Draw (less than 2 but greater than 1),” and a “Defeat (less than 1).”

Not much wiggle room for a draw, but a designer could slice up the categories to include additional definitions with a lot of space to play with in decisive victory and defeat, with about 6 points to play within the marginal victory category, but we have no room for a draw to add additional categories.

I’ve been playing with what I call a “Battle Calculation Sheet” that calculates the difference between total scores of the two sides as follows:

=IF($N11/$O11>7.999,"DV",IF($N11/$O11<1,"DF",IF(AND($N11/$O11<=8,$N11/$O11>=2),"MV",IF(AND($N11/$O11<=2,$N11/$O11>=1),"DR")))).

Column N and O contain cells of the total scores between the two sides.
DV is a decisive victory, DF is a defeat, MV is a marginal victory, and DR is a draw.

Next step would be to pin down, based upon force values how much damage is acceptable within the scenario to say obtain a political, military, or strategic advantage.

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I have not advanced the Battle Calculation Sheet beyond the Excel formula herein. What I'd like to do is develop a method to determine acceptable outcomes based upon initial force values between the two sides.

Given that, the sheet could be used to assess acceptable loss as we've discussed thus far, in particular, to what jp10, and other commentors have brought to the table.

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[Suhiir]

Mispost

[shahadi]

I believe this discussion really is appropriate when talking about a dominant power vs a non-peer adversary, as we'd find in the most recent SEAL operation in Yemen. There, we had Senator McCain of Arizona decrying the raid as a failure using the following language: "When you lose a $75 million airplane and, more importantly, an American life is lost and wounded I don't believe you can call it a success...” Collins, Eliza, USA Today 9 Feb 2017.

So, I'm thinking in game terms, can losses be expressed as a ratio against the force value.

FL/FV

Where, FL is force losses and FV is the force value. The FL then would be determined by FVa - FVb. Such that, FVa is the initial force value at start of battle and the FVb is the force value at end of game.

(FVa-FVb)/FVa

Now, if we could evaluate the ratio in an expression.

if (FVa-FVb)/FVa < 4%

We could say, for example that this battle earned (in jp10's language) "global acclaim."

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[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by shahadi

Regarding Preferences, do have numbers in mind to affect the changes you suggest? I'd appreciate the numbers.

I'll frequently adjust Searching for 1st World forces to 150% when fighting vs 3rd World.

Depending on which 3rd World forces we're talking about I may adjust their Hitting to 60-80%, for say Vietnam I wouldn't adjust at all, for some Arabic forces I'll reduce their accuracy as many make extensive use of the "unaimed spray and pray" method.

I almost never adjust Tank Toughness, they may not be as reliable but that doesn't effect their armor.

I often increase Infantry Toughness to 120% to represent body armor, tho I sometimes reduce opposition Infantry Toughness to 80% instead if I'm dealing with say Korean War human wave type situations.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by shahadi

... as we'd find in the most recent SEAL operation in Yemen. There, we had Senator McCain of Arizona decrying the raid as a failure using the following language: "When you lose a $75 million airplane and, more importantly, an American life is lost and wounded I don't believe you can call it a success...”

Personally I just chalk this sort of thing up to political maneuvering. Believe me, SEALs know what they're signing up for, and while the loss of a man pains them they don't consider it remotely unacceptable or unexpected if their mission was accomplished. And I seriously doubt anyone in any of the worlds "elite commando" organizations view it any differently.

[jp10]

I would think he would be hesitant to talk about losing aircraft.
He lost two Navy aircraft while piloting them. One crash was found to be be McCain's fault, the other due to an engine failure of undetermined cause. He also returned from a training mission to the USS Intrepid with a busted oil line and trailing several feet of electrical cables. Seems he knocked down some power lines while flying too low over southern Spain. As he later wrote. "My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and created a small international incident."

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by shahadi

I believe this discussion really is appropriate when talking about a dominant power vs a non-peer adversary, as we'd find in the most recent SEAL operation in Yemen. There, we had Senator McCain of Arizona decrying the raid as a failure using the following language: "When you lose a $75 million airplane and, more importantly, an American life is lost and wounded I don't believe you can call it a success...” Collins, Eliza, USA Today 9 Feb 2017.

So, I'm thinking in game terms, can losses be expressed as a ratio against the force value.

FL/FV

Where, FL is force losses and FV is the force value. The FL then would be determined by FVa - FVb. Such that, FVa is the initial force value at start of battle and the FVb is the force value at end of game.

(FVa-FVb)/FVa

Now, if we could evaluate the ratio in an expression.

if (FVa-FVb)/FVa < 4%

We could say, for example that this battle earned (in jp10's language) "global acclaim."

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I am changing FL from (FVa-FVb) to SCb/FVa, where SCb represents the Standard Score of player B and FVa is the Force Value of player A.

Now, we may easily get the forces lost of player A, as the standard score of player B from the Battle Report screen at end of game. The force value of player A is obtained from the Editor in the Deploy screen at the end of game (to keep yourself honest) as well.

With such a tool, we may talk about the military outcomes as taken from the Battle Report and political outcomes as taken from manual calculations, to be determined by the scenario designer, or between players in a PBEM game.

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[shahadi]

Finally, after playing several scenarios whilst in the process of authoring a few, I turned my attention to the Battle Calculation Sheet to develop a tool whereby players may account for political consequences, in particular where dominant forces engage non-peer adversaries.

The Excel worksheet is self explanatory. I have protected Columns C, D, and K as these cells contain formulas. The other cells are open to insert data.

The political results are coded from suggestions from this thread as follows:

GA Global Acclaim
PG Prestige Gain
AP Apathy
CD Citizen Dissension
WC World Condemnation


The Data tab houses the settings for the political and military outcomes.

[Steves308]

This spreadsheet is pretty fun, I like it!

Steves308