Game Mechanics for Calling Support?

[DS615]

  I'm looking for opinions on good ways rules handle support for a game, like calling in reinforcements, artillery strikes, air support, air lift for extraction, etc.
  I've got a set of rules I wrote a while ago and I'm quite happy with for game play, but this aspect is lacking.  I've considered "cashing in" VP from previous games, generating points randomly, even a system where support is unlimited.
 
  I was hoping some of you had some good or favorite mechanics for handling such things?

[nic-e]

What about a deck of cards with various effect?

or rolling on a table of results with a modifier based on your general/commanders skills? (eg : move your result 1 place up or down the table per value of x skill. ? )

[Elbows]

What elements of support are you interested, and how far would you like to take it?  When I think support, I think a few things:

- What's the weather like?  Is the support available, are conditions conducive to its use?
- How accurate is the support and how readily available? (range, amount of artillery/etc. available)
- How long can air support loiter in the area --- are there defenses against it, is the area hostile or does the user have air superiority
- Do the models who want support have radios?  Is the reception good?  Is the support being tasked in other areas, or do you have a steady supply of on demand?
- In a modern conflict is the support allied or domestic --- can you communicate readily with the units providing support?
- How good is the person calling in support?  Is he a dedicate combat controller, or is the unit just a lieutenant pointing out a vague grid?
- If you're playing modern games, what is the RoE --- can the unit call in artillery if the baddies are in a populated town/near a religious building/international border, etc.

If you're calling in reserves, how readily available are they?  Did they get mined or ambushed on the way, etc.  The same line of questions emerges.  I think you can do some really cool tables before the game - determing weather, availability of support, accuracy, number of times you can call it in, etc.  I like to limit who can call it in, so you need officers or radios to do so - perhaps you must have line of sight...or you can blanket an area with less accuracy.

I do tend to enjoy support which is tough to get a hold of, or support which must be called and secretly aimed 1-2 turns in advance (i.e. time to target is lengthy, and the baddies may have moved by the time those rounds hit, etc.).  I do like artillery or mortar support to get better if it's called in several times on the same location (walking rounds in on target).

Lots of cool/fun stuff to consider.

[MartinR]

As noted above, artillery and Air support tends to be fairly structured in all Armies since 1914. The likelihood of getting support and rapidity of response depends on the level of tasking (organic, direct support, general support) as well as the C3 procedures, ranging processes etc.

So a pre registered final protective fire from the  battalion mortar platoon will be almost instantaneous (once the call for fire gets through), a request for a battery of Corps 8" guns which isn't pre planned might take a few days once all the relevant authorisations have been obtained...

Most games simulate this sort of thing by throwing dice, although some require message passing up and down the chain of command. It partly  depends what level of game you are doing, how simulationist you want to be and how much in the way of pre planning.

[robh]

Warwick Kinrade has an excellent approach in his "Kampfgruppe Normandy" and its successor "Battlegroup XXX" rules.
Artillery and Air are assets that can be purchased like any other troop, different levels of support are possible from regimental up to corps/army level with differing availability and accessibility.

[Connectamabob]

What robh says is more or less where my mind immediately went. On the level of an ongoing battle, artillery and air support are very logistics dependent, and not something you can just call down on a whim unless it was already set up at the beginning.

Basically, they should be "on the table" as part of army setup at the beginning of the game, regardless or whether there are actual models or not (which in most games there wouldn't be, given range vs table size). So making them part of a point cost allocation system for your army is the most "clean" way to go.

Artillery has to be part of the up-front points cost, but is instantaneous response. Air strikes may be instantaneous if they're part of the up front cost, but is you didn't budget for air support up front, you can still call it in, but at a delay of X turns/rounds between when the target is called and when the boom actually arrives. Airlift extraction would be the same as air support, but with some kind of susceptibility to being intercepted by the enemy in place of aim roll. Maybe just an opposition roll, maybe a free attack bonus according to enemy proximity to the LZ.

As far as hits and misses, how about this: a singe 3d6 roll, with 2 different color dice, lets say 2 red and 1 white. The roll describes polar co-ordinates: the two red d6 are D6-D6 Fudge equivalent describing distance, and the 1 white D-6 describes radians. On the red D6/fudge dice, zero is the pole i.e the intend target, and every non-zero roll is that distance from the pole (in whatever measure scales to your table/minis) in the radian dictated by the white D6. You'd need a common value for L, but that can be agreed upon before hand ("L is always in the direction of that edge of the table, perpendicular to said edge"). This gives a probability curve that is random in the radians, but with a weighted bias in the distance.

You could change that up easy to suit preference and game balance. It's just a start. I wouldn't personally want to add more dice or use non-D6 though, as IMO simple dice + easy to construct graphical cheat sheet is what would make it fast and painless during play.

I would not personally bother with radio reception rolls outside of special circumstances, such as being isolated in particularly hilly terrain, or the enemy team having access to countermeasures like jamming or chaff. In the latter case, this should be as explicitly a part of the other teams loadout as any other weapon, and should have to be deployed/activated by that team's player as an action, rather than assumed always on.

If you want to get fancy, designate a given units as radiomen, so if those units are killed or cut off, you can't call in. Not sure if that would be a thing with modern militaries, but for (conservatively estimated) WW-II through the 80s it would be. Similarly, if the enemy model has jamming hardware, that should be linked to a specific model which could be sought and killed/destroyed to clear the jamming.