WW2 Radios

Started by holdfast, 17 February 2021, 12:08:02 PM

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Ithoriel

It doesn't matter if everyone in the whole feckin' formation has a radio! BKC is top down!

What matters is, are the formations achieving too much/ too little/ just the right amount? If the latter then all's well. If the first two, is that a problem with the rules or the players. If the latter, the rules don't need tweaking. If to much or too little then I'd suggest tweaking things very, very gently to avoid producing a different set of problems.

For me the Great Patriotic War games we play work as expected. Russians are an axe, Germans are a scalpel.

Of course, people's view on achieving too much/ too little/ just the right amount is likely to be very subjective. Once upon a time there were three bears ..... :D :D :D
There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

holdfast

These are genuine queries, asked by folk with a certain amount of a. knowledge and b. experience.
If the only response is 'its top down' then there isn't much point to the Rules Queries section.
If it doesn't matter how many radios there are in a unit then why were radios provided I wonder.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

Bear in mind there simplification in the system - recce can only see 60 cm, and with difficulty at that distance. However they do give advantages. Likewise HQ's - don't do what one person did in a big game and start with the CO and work down, rolled a 12 on his first attempt, and then got shot at. It can be very frustrating to do things like that - give it a chance. Everyone on here will help, and there is a considerable knowledge base. Play a few games with the current slick version of the rules, discover what you think is wrong and use local ammendments to suit your taste. Then share them here.

On radio equipment in WWII, yes tanks use theirs for command control and could talk up and down the COC, but in action your troop/platoon commander would be concentraing on his job, Foley's Death of A regiment is a good read to show how it was done. British infantry landed in Normandy with 38 sets in the platoons but these were withdrawn because the op's were an easy target for snipers, and as it was so heavy they couldn't keep with the rest of the platoon. German Infantry certainly did not have a radio per platoon, in many cases they didn't have one at company. US troops had the Walkie Talkie but it has an appaling range and eats batteries the way a gready Labradour grabs unattended food. In 1940 it was even worse, both US and German Tank platoons had 1 transmitter, rest of the vehicles had recivers only. The British had radios in almost all of their tanks (not certain about Matilda I)

Hope that helps.
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Lord Kermit of Birkenhead
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T13A

Hi

I suspect that someone using the callsign 'Holdfast' is fairly familiar with the British Army in particular.  :)

I for one would like to know where it says in the rules that they are "top down" and what that is meant to mean anyway.

Cheers Paul 
T13A Out!

Big Insect

Quote from: holdfast on 18 February 2021, 03:41:02 PM
These are genuine queries, asked by folk with a certain amount of a. knowledge and b. experience.
If the only response is 'its top down' then there isn't much point to the Rules Queries section.
If it doesn't matter how many radios there are in a unit then why were radios provided I wonder.

Don't be put off  :D these are all natural queries
When I started playing Commander rules (all those many years ago) I found the concept of removing hits and suppressions very odd. But it is now 2nd nature to me. But other players have adapted the base rules and play a faster (more bloody) game with the hits remaining on between game-turns.

Command and Recce seem to make up the majority of new player queries ... that is very understandable ... but I assure you to does all make sense (in the end )  ;)
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

Westmarcher

Disclaimer: I'm not a WW2 gamer .... but giving tank (and artillery) units an edge when testing command because they're better equipped and/or organised for radio coms, seems reasonable to me. However, determining what that 'edge' should be might not be straightforward given the varied equipment used by the various combatants. As ever, a case of balancing desired levels of complexity and playability, I suppose. For example, here's a link about the different types of radio fitted to only one type of tank, the Sherman, that may be of interest. 

http://www.theshermantank.com/sherman/the-m4-sherman-tanks-radio-setup/

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Zinkala

Here's a real example of wartime command and control. A neighbour that grew up on land that I now own was a tank platoon commander in France. He was standing in his turret yelling at one of his tanks on the right to go check some movement further to their right when he was shot from the left by a sniper. Bullet came down through his mouth and out into his right arm that he was pointing with. Lost most of his teeth and had a crippled arm afterwards. All this talk of the effectiveness of radios and still sometimes the best option is to stand and yell to get the point across. Just didn't work out well for him. He was an experienced tanker with a couple months hard fighting behind him when it happened.

My point is that for this scale of game I'd expect things like better radios, better training, etc to boost effectiveness but not allow one side to totally dominate the other. So many factors rolled into one stat/roll.

Big Insect

You are so very right Zinkala - the game is an abstraction - it has to be and it needs to be fun, and equitable and attempt to give a realistic outcome the majority of the time, but also allow for exceptional variables. You know the sort of thing ...

That 'really bad day' - we've all had them - the radio doesn't work, somebody forgot to pack the tea/coffee/sugar, there's water in the diesel, one of the crew has a dose of the shits and you are lock-down close combat and some idiot only loaded you with smoke rounds!

Then there are good days - you escaped being hit by that Tiger in ambush & brew it with a single return shot, the air support turned up in time, you found a case of champagne in a hay stack (along with a very pretty and obliging young french collaborator to keep you company) and you ended up warm & dry in an empty chateau with the main fighting 5 miles away.

All can be achieved on the single roll of 2 x d:6 Command dice  ;D
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

Quote from: T13A on 18 February 2021, 04:34:21 PM
Hi

I suspect that someone using the callsign 'Holdfast' is fairly familiar with the British Army in particular.  :)

I for one would like to know where it says in the rules that they are "top down" and what that is meant to mean anyway.

Cheers Paul 
Paul it means that less attention is paid to nuts and bolts - the technical stuff and rather focuses on the comanders actions. Bottom up stuff would be the Challenger series, Flames of war, Battlegroup etc. inculding most of the stuff I wrote.
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T13A

Hi Ian

Thanks for the clarification, makes sense now.

Cheers Paul
T13A Out!

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

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Lord Kermit of Birkenhead
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