[Nisse]

Här följer en liten text jag sammanfattat hur jag tänkte och resonerade!

"En dåres försvarstal"

A number of years ago WaW Eisenbach Gap was published. I bought a copy immediately and enjoyed playing it very much. I e-mailed Mark and asked if he could do a Scandianvian expansion. He mailed back and said that he would like to have one and if I wanted to do it, it was fine by him. So I started to work on Op Garbo. This was before Blood and Bridges, even before Death of the 1st Panzers.

I questioned Mark how I should rate Swedish hardware and how he gave values to the US and Soviet vehicles in WaW EG. I did not get a clear answer, more like rough guidelines. So the Swedish stats were basically extrapolated from the US and Soviet values ( a swedish 105mm gun is basically the same as a US one and so on) As work progressed I got the stats from "Blood and Bridges" to check if my values were in the ballpark, which I thought they were. I honestly did not think the infantry values would create such a furor.

Now a number of questions have arisen to why certain units have certain values. I will try to explain my thinking.

I gave some Soviet units a morale of 8 as these are the elite units of the Soviet warmachine. These were the best trained, best equipped and most motivated soldiers the Sovietunion could muster. I believe they were comparable to the US Elite units such as rangers, 82nd airborne. Thus to give them a certain edge over ordinary infantry units, which typically have 6 or 7 in morale, I gave them 8. If a future expansion adds rangers, other airborne forces or british paras I would not be upset if they also got 8 in morale.

In my playtesting I did not have the "move an fire" capability to either the S-tank or the Centurion. I must have made a mistake somewhere as this capability went into the game.

PBV302 assault value. The Swedish APC was designed to let the troopers fight EFFECTIVELY from the vehicle. It therefore had two large tophatches which let the entire squad in the back stand up (although exposed from the upper chest and above) and fire. So instead of looking through small narrow apartures in the hull and firing without using the weapons sights the troopers could see well and engage targets well, ( although it is never easy to hit targets from a moving vehicle). This was also reguraly practised with live fire drills in battlefield like conditions (driving over uneven terrain, with trees around and engaging small, hidden targets at different ranges). I believe this would augment an APC platoons assault value as not only the APC can fight, but also the infantry squad.

The PBV302 also had a built in "spaced armour" that would reduce the effectivness of HEAT warheads.  The outer armour was fairly thin, inside this armour was 1,5 feet wide storage space area before the main armour of the vehicle. This also gave the vehicle its bouyancy and ability to swim rivers and even lakes.

Sweden had a conscript army. Conscripts are not worse soldiers than volunteers, I honestly don´t understand why conscript is authomatically equalled to "worse soldier" than volunteers. West Germany had a conscript army and the soldiers "behind the counters" in Death of the 1st Panzers are conscripts. Israel also have a conscript army and the soldiers behind "their" counters in the expansion in LoF.

And the biggest complaint. The Swedish infantry combat values. This is my reasoning: Sweden had a very large proportion of support weapons to its  platoons. As Sweden knew that any aggressor would have lots of armoured vehicles, the Swedish answer was "anti-tank capability in every bush, behind every tree". So infantry platoons had lots of AT capability. Even fieldkitchen units had GPMGs, 84mm recoilless rifles and disposable LAW:s.

The 84mm RR is a very capable weapon. It has a very good reach, more than twice that of an LAW and very good hitting power. I understand the argument that it is a high increase with one extra dice that upsets people. I also do not think that a swedish platoon is 33% more effective than another foreign platoon. But the dice system in WaW is fairly coarse and it is difficult to give a unit a "small" increase in firepower. As an ordinary platoon has 2 dice and I cannot add half a dice I was stuck with one extra dice or nothing.

I understand the complaints and it is not "nationalstic bravado and Swedish selfworshipping" that made me give them 1 extra dice. I wanted to give them a small extra edge, as I believe that correctly models reality. But I was stuck with either nothing or 1 extra dice. If I was nationalistic I would not have made the Swedish "home guard" units so weak and would not have made the Soviet paratroopers so strong.

Another reason I gave the Swedes one extra dice was I only thought in a context relating to its opponents, the Soviets. I did not think of it as an comparison to the US forces in WaW EG, which was the only other module at the time I assigned the values to the Swedes.

I wanted to model Swedish mech inf and Soviet paras as more capable than ordinary Soviet infantry. I did not intend to integrate US, British or West German units in the module or future scenarios.

As I can see now, with a couple of years´ hindsight ,all troops (Syrian, Canadian, Soviet, British, German, American, Israeli) having the exact same stats I would not have given Swedish infantry that extra edge.

Had I designed the module today with alot of other modules available for comparison I would not have given them that extra dice.

S tank and its defense value "bar/cage armour" giving great protection against HEAT warheads. From the front the cage armour makes the warhead detonates between 1,5 feet up to 5 feet from the main armour. If kinetic rounds hit the cage armour the chance that the projectile is distured before it hits the main armour also increases. As the front armour is very sloped it also greatly increases the chance that a kinetic round will "slide off" ( not modern 1990:s long rod penetrators, but older models of kinetic projectiles).

A picture of the cage armour can be seen on Wikipedia

[Fredrik H]

Jag har nu inte spelat något av seriens spel, men tycker att din argumentation verkar rimlig. Systemet verkar dock väldigt trubbigt om allt infanteri i hela världen ska ha samma kvalitet. Märkligt att ett plutonsystem för modern krigföring inte har bättre differentieringsmöjligheter, som du själv påpekar. Jag tror att den stora grejen här är att du satt värden utifrån det specifika spelets kontext och kritikerna ser det utifrån alla moduler.
Trots att spelet/systemet inte tycks vara min kopp te så är det ju kul när det kommer ett spel med svenska förband från kalla kriget.

 

[Andreas Lundin]

Jag håller med Fredrik. Spelet suger, men jag uppskattar insatsen.      

[Strv102r]

Verkar som om stormen av upprörda amerikaner har stillats efter ett par inlägg som förklarar tankarna bakom valen. Känns mest som om de som skrek mest om "nationalistic bias" är de som led mest av det. Hur kan något vara bättre än VÅRA AMERIKANSKA grejer!?

Kanske för att deras grejer aldrig varit avgörande. Kanske andra saker än hårdvara avgör vem som får bäst effekt? Så var det i VK2. Så var det i Vietnam. Men för en nation som lever taylorismen är det svårt att förstå.

Den som inte förstår vad jag menar MÅSTE läsa Martin van Creveldts "Fighting power". Den förklarar mycket samtidigt som den gör mig gråtfärdig. Var har armén varit och vart är vi på väg...

[P-O Jönsson]

Det var ju riktigt underhållande att läsa deras upprördhet. Hoppas att någon tar och gör en expansion med väglös norrlandsteräng och NB85 nu också.

[Tordan]

Yeah baby! Nu snackar vi.

[jonjac]

Nu har det kommit en errata på brickorna:
http://www.locknloadgame.com/OperationG ... Errata.pdf

Ska tydligen komma som riktiga counters i Line of Fire nummer 9.

[Andreas Lundin]

http://larsgyllenhaal.blogspot.com/

Spelet nämns.

[Lee Brimmicombe-Wood]

I now have this module. Anyone up for a game?