Reviving the C2E2 wargame engine from GrogNews

[bayonetbrant]

the original posts were collected here:  http://grognews.blogspot.com/search/label/C2E2

I'm reposting the first two in the hopes of sparking some contributions / ideas from the peanut gallery (and our overseas friends, the walnut gallery) about ways to implement...

First - the intro

So far here at GrogNews, we've talked a lot about current military, defense, and security news, all around the world. Unlike a lot of US mil-blogs, we try to give a more international perspective to go with the news and photos we share. We've got our regular and recurring features starting to nail down, and we're ready to embark on a new (and quite ambitious) project.
We're looking at creating an open-source based current events wargaming engine for our readers and correspondents to rapidly develop and prototype some interesting scenarios about current events and throw them out on the tabletop to push their way through the current and potential conflicts we report on.
The initial outlines of such are madcap fantasy look like this:

1. The Rules: we're going to start with a basic set of guidelines, numbered and segmented, as blog posts that people can read and comment on for now. Once they get detailed enough, we'll look as some other mechanism for posting them, be it a Wiki or online document repository, or something similar. The basic mechanic is going to be d10 based, because it easily segments into 10% increments, and offers a decent spread of results without requiring a bucket full of dice (not that there's anything wrong with buckets of dice, just not for this project).

2. The Counters: We'll start with a few mockup options by Brant, and let folks make their comments on some design ideas. The values and ratings will be fluid based on the rules changing as we go, but once we stabilize them, we'll do our best to churn out the ORBATS based on known units in the areas under consideration.

3. The Maps: We're actually working on a pretty nifty little tool for maps right now. Stay tuned, and prepared to be impressed – we hope!

4. The Scenarios: We expect lots of people to pitch in here. If there's a current event out there that looks kind of compelling, then we ought to be able to rapidly prototype some scenarios for people to push counters around with. For example – Venezuela's military is moving toward the Colombian border right now. Someone could quickly develop a scenario that involves the Fighting Chavez's rolling right over the border, while someone else puts together one that involves sporadic artillery exchanges and insurgent raids before the two sides trip into an escalating fight. Getting more people involved gets more ideas in the discussion.

The idea here is not just to wargame what *is* happening, but what *might* happen and what *could have* happened. If we can do it within a robust set of rules and with some standardized counters, then we'll have all sorts of fun to play with.

Stay tuned for the first cut at the counters, and some comments about mechanics.

and the second, wherein I beclown myself kicking around some counters and mechanics

Wargaming Engine – Initial brainstorming thoughts.

These are from notes I've got scribbled on pads and cut-and-pasted from online conversations, so it's a combination of bullets and more complete thoughts. It's NOT anywhere near finalized and just the first draft of the ideas. That said, I do want the comments that you've got so please feel free to discuss liberally and at length below.

Units will be a mix of echelons as needed to describe the events going on. If a discreet 12-man SF ODA can have an effect on the battlefield, there's no reason not to model it alongside the 600-man infantry battalion, or even (potentially) the 3000-man motorized brigade.
The way to scope the abilities of the participants is through the Area of Effects, which acts as a 'sort-of' range factor for how far units can project their influence.

Units need to be rated on a variety of factors


Kinetic factors:
- Attack: ability to go kill stuff
- Defense: ability to not get killed
- Support: ability to help someone else kill stuff
- Reaction: How quickly can you project over your area of influence? Think of this + Area of Effects = movement + range, but not quite exactly.


Non-kinetic factors:
Need some sort of multi-faceted system that is more detailed that DIME, though that's not a bad base to start with. For game purposes, I would like to simplify it to some form of "rock-paper-scissors" mechanic, with a rough cut perhaps being:

local influence/tolerance -> economic/security support -> information ops -> local influence/tolerance

This is a key mechanic and will take some time to get right, but needs to be addressed, so that units can be rated on (and operate along) both kinetic and non-kinetic axes.


Support factors
- Deployability: when talking about power projection from some home station or strategic mobility, there will need to be some rating of how quickly someone can move their Area of Effects.
- Logistical Support: at the strategic/operational level, what does it take to keep that unit in the field. One mechanic I do want to experiment with is potentially tying this to current news-tracking polls showing support for varying operations/policies so that as national support for something goes down, the ability to sustain long/large deployments also goes down, and can change scenarios from week to week.


Now, that's a lot to cram onto some counters, so here are some mockups and let's see what you think.

(note that these are actually the Mk2 mock-ups that integrate a 2-sided non-/kinetic approach depending on unit mission. also useful for showing shift from one mission the next, if changed while deployed)

       

more to follow, but please feel free to offer your thoughts...

how should units interact for combat, support, etc?
how should units interact with the underlying local/civilian population and infrastructure
what metrics need to be tracked within this system? local factors, national factors, fatigue/morale/competence modifiers on either side?  other global factors like approval ratings or influence ratings?

[bayonetbrant]

OK - upon further reflection, I had to add the latest post from GN into here b/c of the potential re-work of the factors

So here's how we're changing this up, and how they might interact with each other.

First off, kinetic factors are dropping to 2:
COMBAT- how well do you fight
REACT(ion)- how quickly do you get to the fight and how quickly do you get inside your opponents' decision cycles. Is this just another way to describe "initiative"? Maybe. But he who reacts best doesn't always act first. It may be that a decisively better C2 system gives you the ability to let the other guy start acting, and then you react to it once you see what he's doing.

We're also adding a non-unit-specific factor: MISSION. Based on what you've tasked the unit to do, they may perform in different ways. While KIN / N-K is an obvious distinction, there are certain types of units that should have certain types of missions, and within certain types of terrain, that might (as a part of the mission profile specs) affect adjustments to their factors.

Support factors aren't changing much
AREA: The space(s) in which you can project your combat power. This plus your reaction allows you to determine the ground you can cover in an operational/tactical sense.
DEPLOY: What does it take to move your unit somewhere else? Think of this as a strategic level movement factor.
LOG: What does it take to keep your unit in the field? This can apply in many ways. It may take a full log cost to redeploy your unit to another location. It may take a full log cost to conduct a full kinetic operation. It may not take any log cost to sit still for a turn within certain boundaries. This one will have to interact with your lines of supply, as well as the "friendliness" of the local environment. Log support is going to be higher for US guys in Uzbekistan than in Kuwait.

Non-kinetic factors:
This one's taken up the most thought, and is still not to the true level of fidelity it should be, but in the interest of playability, we're throwing out a basic rock-paper-scissors model that should cover many of the key concepts, as well as provide some basic meaningful interaction between them.

I/O --> Governance --> Security --> I/O

I/O, the information operations, covers the media, the local mosque preaching to the flock, the home-made flyers handed out, the al-Jazeera broadcasts, and the urban legends of man-eating badgers let loose by the occupying forces. It's the stories told over the pig roast at the cartel wedding and the parent showing the kid the olive grove that once belonged to the great-great-great grandfather.

GOV(ernance)is a continuum, in which units might be rated positive or negatively, as they may contribute to better stability and control of the area, or may contribute to anarchy and lawlessness. Religious militias may seek to stabilize an area, even if their agenda is not in line with the national government. Anti-IMF protesters seeking to loot electronics shops while dodging tear gas and riot police are not contributing to any form of stability.

SEC(urity) is the ways and means of enforcing governance, but fighting corruption, protecting capital investments, and maintaining a safe and hospitable atmosphere for the local population.

Now, I'm not even going to pretend that this is an accurate model of how the real world works. My real question is this: "Are we close enough to start looking at how to model real-world events within a common framework (game rules) without instantly throwing up our hands and screaming about how hopeless this is?"


Some interactions that need to be addressed:
Combat is a mixture of
CBT + TERRAIN = how well can you fight/defend in that area
REACT + the mission you're given = how likely you are to hit something in that area, and how hard you might hit it to roll back into CBT + TERR math
REACT + AREA = who acts first/last, and when are casualties assesed
LOG + DEPLOY = cost and time to move from place to place

Map will need some hex-based areas to cover the operational actions and REACT and AREA factors, with some key strategic centerpoints that provide the LOG / DEPLOY costs to move between and maintain presence.

Some unit types:
- Heavy / Light combat units, with perhaps some different ratings on the N-K factors based on their sourcing. For instance, most US Nat'l Guard units have a lot of pretty useful N-K skills that aren't going to be accounted for in their official KIN missions.
- Civil Support units: PRTs, construction engineers, police, legal assets, trainers, etc. that can all offer significant N-K pluses, with just enough KIN factors to protect themselves.
- SF/SAS/CDO/Chuck Norris: Very low log costs, but very high REACT/AREA values, and CBT almost never affected by terrain. Other than some I/O value, probably not terribly useful in N-K functions.
- (Need a label for) opposition/protest leadership that are capable of organizing protests, demonstrations, strikes, social media events, traditional media events, and the occasional total out-of-control throwdown bar mitzvah jams. These guys can play total havoc with all sorts of N-K factors, and force KIN units to operate in a realm where they really don't belong.

How will the overall model work together? We need some way of tracking the local civilian 'mood' and support for the different sides, through political organized, governance, levels of I/O, etc. We also need a way to keep track of the body count, and what thresholds of dead units start to trigger counter-actions from the dead units' families. How do you know what true effects you have on the local areas, and how do you assess it, and how do you establish the longevity of the effects?

When military forces deploy to a tsunami zone, what are they bringing with them in terms on N-K factors, and how well does that play in affecting the local perception of them? How does training units in certain aspects change what their performance can be on the ground? If you plus up an infantry brigade with a variety of N-K assets and training, are they really more effective on the ground in N-K roles, or have you just degraded their KIN capabilities instead?

Look, this is a lot to digest, and until I can mock up some maps / counters it's hard to visualize. But I also need to think hard about how to track the influences of these unit actions, and the missions they can be assigned, on the local population, that needs to be measured somehow.

[bayonetbrant]

what I'm hoping for here is some feedback on ways to implement, but also on ways to improve.  so this is part crowd-sourcing, part open-sourcing, and part I-got-no-clue-what-I'm-doing-so-I'm-looking-for-sourcing

[bayonetbrant]

sooooo... anyone got any ideas, thoughts, or comments?

[Toonces]

I spent some time looking at this and I'm having a hard time seeing how this gets implemented into a playable "game."

Some maps and counter setup might help flesh this out.  The idea of a by-forum table-top wargame exercise is neat.  It might be more effective to have the administrator worry more about the ruleset, while the players exercise their moves similar to an RPG, and the administrator takes care of the battlefield results.

[bob48]

I spent some time looking at this and I'm having a hard time seeing how this gets implemented into a playable "game."

Some maps and counter setup might help flesh this out.  The idea of a by-forum table-top wargame exercise is neat.  It might be more effective to have the administrator worry more about the ruleset, while the players exercise their moves similar to an RPG, and the administrator takes care of the battlefield results.

Now that sounds like a good idea. Built in fog of war, limited intel, correct usage of recon. Each side could have an overall 'commander' and needs to build up intel and a picture of what's going on from sub-unit commanders (the players).
Based on that, the force HQ issues orders and assigns assets etc.

I'm just bouncing idea's around here atm.

[Toonces]

This sort of reminds me of what we did in Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) phases 1 and 2.  In both you were given a hypothetical conflict and OOB and had to develop various Courses of Action (COA) to address the conflict.

In JPME 1, it was a hypothetical conflict in Borneo.  You had a whole OOB and had to develop the deployment timeline, logistics support, etc. and then how you would deploy forces to meet the threat.  In JPME 2 it was a different area, but you went through the phases of conflict from Deter through Redeploy (or something like that).  In that sense, you actually scooted counters around and the school used a wargame program to resolve damage.

This idea of Brant's reminds me of a combination of the two phases' campaigns.  It's a neat concept, but what we really need is some examples of what this would look like in order to provide meaningful feedback.

I did a quick google for the JPME1 scenario but didn't get any hits.  It might be on DTIC.  I have a copy of it, and I think it is public domain, but I'd prefer to find it on the internet somewhere than pull it from my course materials. 

I might even have my old campaign slides...I'll have to look around and see if I can dig that stuff up.  It's been several years, and it's definitely not on this computer.

[bayonetbrant]

I've got a half-dozen scenarios we could do that with - and I've even thought about running a few here - but that's all more work for me :o

[Jack Nastyface]

BB,
Not sure if you are still monitoring this thread, but after reading this through a couple of times, I think I am getting a better idea of what you are trying to achieve.  One idea / game mechanic that may be useful here might be the idea of gaining points/dollars/megabucks/koku etc that a player can "spend" on any number of different things.  A simple iteration of this is in Risk - count up your countries, divide by 3, add bonus for contintents = how many new armies I can buy.  Same thing (pretty much) works in Axis and Allies.  But what about the spend options you have in Shogun aka Samuari Swords?  In that game, you can spend money (koku) on a) regular military units, b) ninja (used for intel, or assasination), c) fortifications d) rented mercenaries or e) activation order.  Might it be possible to use a "points accumulation system" wherein you generate or lose points based on K or NK activities, and can spend them on a number of resources or actions (intel, community goodwill, mosque building, road-building, new troops, jet sorties, etc) to deploy that turn?

Just thinking out loud...

Jack Nastyface