Senseless and useless prep point rant

[mogami]

Hi, A play in one act by Mogami.
"Unplanned Operation"
Act I
General Mishap:"OK I've decided to send the boys to Gavamutwobeersandchips Island"
Admiral Shark:"But that island is held by the enemy"
General Mishap:" So what? My boys are trained"
Admiral Shark: Yes but I don't know the tides or shoals or where the enemy coastal defense are"
General Mishap: "You Navy slugs are never ready, my boys are ready 24/7 anywhere."
Major Malfunction: "Err well actually General we are ready for BangaBanga but we are not prepared for Gavamutwobeersandchips"
General Mishap: "What? Nonsense, if your not ready Major I can find a battalion commander who is"
Major Malfunction: Ah OK Sir, what beaches do we land on? What are the assault waves, What are the objectives for the assault companies"?
General Mishap: "Well Major thats easy, they are the same as before"
Major Malfunction: "?????????"[X(]
Admiral Shark:"?????????"[X(]

[ChezDaJez]

Prepping is one of those things that I like about the game.... its also one of the things I hate about the game.

The only thing is the game has it slightly turned around. The prep points aren't for the troops. They could care less what island they're invading, generally speaking. Indeed, most weren't told of there destination until a few days or so prior to the landing. The prep points should be for the leadership, intelligence and supply communities to start working together towards the objective.

Take the 101st Airborne drop into France, for example. The soldiers themselves found out the desitination only 3 days before they dropped. The got an extra day to review the sandtables because the drop was delayed. However, it took months to gather the information that allowed them to build the sandtables, maps and enemy OOBs that the soldiers were going to need.

So, Oleg, don't think of it as the troops training for a specific objective so much as it is the staff, supply and intelligence folks getting their act together (which we all know can take a real long time![;)].

Chez

[ChezDaJez]

I forget specifically where, but I believe this sort of thing happened once or twice. Obviously you've got to have enough combat power to pull it off.

Use the landings on Guadalcanal as an example. They took place one month after we discovered the Japanese were building an airstrip there. There was insufficient time to conduct the intel needed to determine the size of the forces there, we had no tidal charts, no maps and very little aerial photography. We had no land-based airpower capable of supporting the landings, only carriers. We went in blind but we had a very big stick, the 1st USMC Mardiv. Luckily, there was little more than a Japanese construction unit where we landed and they fled into the jungle. Otherwise, it could have been real ugly that first day.

Chez

[Oldsweat]

Actually, the prep point thing is pretty valid. Getting all the charts and maps assembled, writing the actual plan and annexes takes the staff awhile to accomplish then it has to be distributed and briefed, exercises conducted and so forth (I've done this sort of staff work, it's not as easy as they make it sound in the movies, etc.) the larger the unit, the longer it's goling to take. For regular LCU stuff just determining routes of march, convoy order, objective priority and logistics (aside from accruing supplies in dumps per the existing supply rules you have to get individual unit supplies organised and distributed) takes a big effort. Maps have to be printed and sent to the units (I have an air chart from WWII that was printed on the back of a Wehrmacht map of Paris, there was a shortage of paper and the 8th AF was using whatever they could scrounge when they moved Pinetree forward after D Day). Since the advent of radio a communication plan has to be developed (see the film "A Bridge Too Far" for the consequences of an indaquate communications plan, this is an all to common feature of real operations).
If anything an amphibious landing is worse since Hydrography has to be established first and decisions about which supply ships will be level loaded and which assault loaded made. All this takes a lot of time.
I would argue that, if anything, the prep points are overly generous (I would submit that this is probably a design decsion for playability) and should be scaled to unit size and target proximity as well as leader characterisitics (stacking limits of LCY are a whole other thread, George C Scott Directing traffic in "Patton" is a small inkling of the problem).

[usersatch]

So what exactly IS involved in the "prep" procedure for WiTP? Is it sending a butt-load of recon flights over the island and having your combat arms guys rest for a month before they hit the beaches? Or is it more involved?

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

Use the landings on Guadalcanal as an example. They took place one month after we discovered the Japanese were building an airstrip there. There was insufficient time to conduct the intel needed to determine the size of the forces there, we had no tidal charts, no maps and very little aerial photography. We had no land-based airpower capable of supporting the landings, only carriers. We went in blind but we had a very big stick, the 1st USMC Mardiv. Luckily, there was little more than a Japanese construction unit where we landed and they fled into the jungle. Otherwise, it could have been real ugly that first day.

Chez

That'd be going in with 20-30 prep points gamewise..[:)] And IJA/IJN would probably have had something like 50. Going in with 0 prep points would be like landing the nearest troops from ships the next day after the Japanese were discovered on GC with no planning. [:)]
Anyhow, since this is operational level wargame, prep points are simulating the difficulty of getting intelligence, logistics and overall planning to adjust to change in plans...major pain in butt.

As Greycompany said:
"proper prior planning, prevents piss poor performance"

Sometimes one has to improvise, but better be strong enough then to do it [;)] It'd have been ugly indeed if GC landing had discovered dug in IJA division or something like that.

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: usersatch

So what exactly IS involved in the "prep" procedure for WiTP? Is it sending a butt-load of recon flights over the island and having your combat arms guys rest for a month before they hit the beaches? Or is it more involved?

What Oldsweat said and lot more. It's used as abstraction of all that since you don't have staff to do it for you in the game. For example, amphibious operation in real life wouldn't commence by just having enough troops and ships in same port even when you can do it in game.

[Nikademus]

Preperation points fill 2 primary roles for LCU's

1. For amphibious landings they impact the degree of disablements on landing (expressed in the combat report as "casualties") An LCU with 100 prep points will suffer 50% less disablements vs a unit that lands with 0.

2. Combat bonus. A unit with preperation points attacks better than one with none/less. A unit defending with prep points for the location it is based at fights better still. Eliminating all other factors (leadership, experience, fort levels) a unit attacking with 100 prep points against a weaker LCU can gain a 6:1 modified result vs a unit with 0 which might gain 0:1 or 1:1

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Sometimes it was done like that [:D]

But, in game you have same penalty for situation you describe, as you would have for, say, changing the place a trained, well prepared USMC division will land tomorrow from Lunga to say Tassafaronga (same island, same climate, same mosquitos, same enemy as Lunga).

To put it short - interesting discussion overall. I still have prep points among most unliked features of WITP.

O.

You have to think of prep points in a much broader scope Oleg. For instance two unprepared units that meet up fight on even terms, but a defender with say 50-60 prep points has had time to lay in pre-designated fire points or cleared out fields of fire before the battle and has set up well supported machinegun positions. The more prep points the defender has, then the more pre-planning a successful offensive operation will need to drive them out.

Units can jump from place to place in the game as you want, they just can't succeed against well prepared defenders without some serious planning. Even if those defenders are untrained conscripts. Units prepared for a fight know the terrain they are fighting over. Little things like good hard cover or hull down positions with good fields of fire make a huge difference when you don’t have to search these places out under fire. Also well planned fallback positions or coordinated counterattacks have all been pre-planned well ahead of time. This kind of planning is hard to overcome on the fly; even battle hardened veterans will lose more often than not against well planned offensives or defensives if they themselves lack any planning.

I remember seeing a picture once of a German mortar pit on Omaha beach. There were water color images hand painted all around the inside rim of the pit. Each image was of a specific area of the beach painted to scale from the pits location and under each were the pre-registered fire coordinates. Now that would be an example of a defender with 100 prep points, no need to even look up the pre-registers in a notebook, simply find the image that matches the area of beach the target your looking at occupies and fire for effect.

But prep points also represent mundane things like making sure chow is where it needs to be when it’s needed and water is plentiful for the men when needed as well. Without little issues like these being pre-planned, large combat formations on the move turn into massive traffic jams as people scramble to first locate and then move the said needed supplies.

A simple thing like a water truck being lost by no more than a half a mile could take a full day to sort out, keeping those troops sitting on their haunches while command hunts for the lost truck. In the mean time what little attack plans and coordination you may have been able to hobble together get thrown out the window. We won’t even get into the repercussions of a lost ammo truck when your men are under fire.

Prep points represent a lot of little mundane issues that make a world of difference when your opponent has his sorted his out and you haven’t.

Jim

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, A play in one act by Mogami.
"Unplanned Operation"
Act I

We want Episode II [8D]

Anyway, Lord Vader said it concisely (click below)

Vader to his Admiral

Oleg

[mogami]

Hi, Act II was just a lot of swearing.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

If there's one thing I hate in WITP design then it's the so called prep points. The idea that otherwise top quality Japanese or US infantry division will perform atrociously against very low quality colonial Dutch Militia or Mongolian tribesmen, JUST because top quiality division is prepped for some other place while irregulars have 100 prep points for the place they are currently in, is, well, strange, to say the least.

This is one of the things that should have been abstracted via leaders. Prep points are something you really should not be worrying about at this scale (along with, perhaps, aircraft altitudes, another feature I find unnecessary, but not nearly as annoying as prep points).

Then, prep takes way too long and is used inconsistently, ie only for infantry. You can change TF commanders overnight, assign new LCU leaders without any performance penalty, take ships from TF to TF with no penalties (even though TF "group" training was important), but if you use INF division prepped for god forgotten village A to attack god forgotten village B they will perform very bad, because they didn't spend 50-some days to train to attack village B?

Is this really so complicated in real life? Prepping I mean? I'd guess a well trained INF unit needs just a short briefing, couple good maps, and it's all the same for them if they attack Kiev, Kharkov or Rostov (well just imagine East Front game with this prep point joke). "No herr General we can't attack Smolensk this early, we need to get our prep points to at least 30 (meaning, another month of idle thumb-twiddling for OKW.)".

Rant over. [&o] Carry on with usual daily tasks.

[8D]

BTW, let us not forget that after the LCU is prepared 100% then it starts to train till it reaches the MAX standard value (for nationality and year) and that is the only way to train LCU's...


Leo "Apollo11"

[Nikademus]

prep points really help the defender too. Even if the attacker also has full prep, the defender with full prep will have the edge.

[Rainerle]

But there are still some issues which look odd about the PP system. For example Div A prepped 100% for Ulan Bator (Mongolian Desert) meets Div B prepped 100% for Buna/New Guinea just outside the gates of Ulan Bator. Even though this Battlefield (mongolian Desert) is so much like Ulan Bator itself and so much unlike Buna the units behave all equal cause both are outside their prepped bases. What would be needed (more rules I know *sigh*) is preparation for region in addition to prepping for specific target. This prepping should take more time (or the specific prepping less ?) and require supply representing new equipment for the troops.

[Nikademus]

Preperation points at this time are specific to a base/city hex. It would be nice if one could gather prep points for non city hexes but regrettably thats not the case. However one improvement at least was that LCU's now have the ability to build some fort levels in non base hexes

[1275psi]

As a military man myself, and a gronard - my 2 cents - If I had my way nobody would be able to conduct an amphib assualt until 50 points prepared (held by the enemy) occupy a enemy hex -25 points(not held by the enemy), relocate to a friendly base 10 points prepared
This only to apply to invading from the sea , no idea for land
That would slow everything down.
I love the Prep point thing - playing against the AI, or head to head I have my own set of "home rules" reflecting the above - really makes the planning of operations a lot deeper and more difficult - and more realistic

just my 2 cents

(IN PBEM Im my own worse enemy - pack em up -ship em out - oh, that did not work -wonder what went wrong[:D][:D])

[Halsey]

[tsimmonds]

Sounds to me like an irrelevant Halsey house rule....[;)]

[Lord_Calidor]

That system could be uber-gamed:
Defending opponent could put small LCU fragments on EVERY little dot or 1/1 base across Pacific, so attacker must sit down and do nothing for up to 50 days, for every single god-forsaken sand patch with a single tree on it. That would really hog Japanese expansion. Too much.

[tsimmonds]

It all depends on what kind of person you are up against. House rules have to be tailored for individual games.