ORIGINAL: macgregor
The difference is I guess Petraeus has spent over a trillion dollars whereas Ralph has had to keep his day job.
Also, Petraeus can figure a force with three units has five-ten officers whose sole purpose is to manage all aspects of coordinating and supporting those three units -- whereas we are shooting for a system where one guy can come home from work and do a decent job of managing two hundred units while having a beer.
I mention this because you seem to only concern yourself with accuracy. The system also needs to be
simple -- compared to real life.
I am argumentative -- if you decide to argue for simplicity I'll cheerfully switch sides and demand scrupulous accuracy. At the same time, it is true that we need to look at 'bang for buck.' The benefits have to be weighed against the cost -- both in programming time and book-keeping for players.
Personally, I tend to concern myself with advocating changes to things that are simply simulated
wrong as opposed to advocating greater detail -- particularly detail that concerns things that are peripheral or really can't be simulated correctly.
Submarines, for example...
Submarines were important -- but in an extra-TOAW sense. It's not like you should be able to move your 'submarine' unit and block all supply to the Philippines, or order your submarines to chase down and take out a particular battleship. They didn't -- and couldn't -- work like that. They
are best simulated via the sealift and force supply level and perhaps events to cause warships to abruptly disappear. U-505 (or whatever) sank
Barham about half-way through my Mediterranean scenario. I don't want to screw around with some mechanism that will allow a 'sub' unit to attack the 'Barham' unit (the sinking was entirely serendipitous). That would be grossly unrealistic. I just have events that make RN battleships likely to withdraw on random turns. I'd say in an ideal world, only if they put to sea, but come to that,
Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and
Royal Oak were all taken out in harbor.
I don't want all the detail simulating all this would take -- especially since the simulation wouldn't be interesting anyway. So you finally come up with a mini-submarine unit the Italians can use against battleships and harbors. So what?
Of course it sails over to Alexandria and has a go.
Just make an event. Let Ralph spend his time elsewhere -- where he can do some good. I want volume supply, flak that works like flak, interdiction that makes rapid movement difficult, separate truck units -- things that matter, were universal or at least common, and that can be simulated well in OPART. I don't want to be fobbed off with submarines.