- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm going to use some made up numbers to illustrate my point. THESE ARE ONLY JUST ILLUSTRATIONS PLEASE DO NOT ROAST ME ALIVE.
[holds up pleading hands]
Anyway.
I'd rather have a field-tested, 80% reliable system that only works WITH the flagship...
Than have a field-tested 30% reliable system that works WITHOUT the flagship, and hope that the reliability of the system will rise to 80% with the flagship but not have field-testing of that assumption. At least if you want to use the new key asset to its fullest potential.
It's very hard to successfully integrate a key asset into a plan that was originally designed on the assumption that the asset wasn't there, without changing the parts of the plan that make it "would work without the key asset," and without field testing.
Of course, in a real set of war games the most likely solution would be to "do both;" the umpires would schedule four or five different 'games' over a period of about two weeks. Each one would operate under different rules and assumptions. And one or two of those 'games' would start with "the Thirishar is in the hospital and we haven't had time to rush another explorer to the scene, you'll have to stop the 'mentat' without explorer support."
EDIT: As an example, when tanks were first introduced to the British Army in World War One, they had little or no idea what to do with them. At the Battle of the Somme, tanks were thrown into a few sectors of the battle, but the overall plan was set up as though the tanks didn't exist. Consequently, the tanks didn't live up to their potential. They didn't have the support they needed to be maximally effective, because the rest of the army was off doing its own thing.
It wasn't until much later after a lot of trial and error that people figured out that yes, tanks were hella effective, but only if they cooperated with other forces in certain ways. This was tested successfully at Cambrai. Even then, the tanks STILL failed to live up to their potential because the British cavalry commander threw a hissy fit and refused to cooperate with the tank attack, behaving exactly as he would have done if the tanks weren't there.
...
Although if you want really good combined arms look at the Canadians. I did a paper on them in college, and let's just say that one of the journal articles I read, titled "Not Glamorous, but Effective: the Canadian Corps in World War One" captured their quiet maple-flavored badassery rather well.
[holds up pleading hands]
Anyway.
I'd rather have a field-tested, 80% reliable system that only works WITH the flagship...
Than have a field-tested 30% reliable system that works WITHOUT the flagship, and hope that the reliability of the system will rise to 80% with the flagship but not have field-testing of that assumption. At least if you want to use the new key asset to its fullest potential.
It's very hard to successfully integrate a key asset into a plan that was originally designed on the assumption that the asset wasn't there, without changing the parts of the plan that make it "would work without the key asset," and without field testing.
Of course, in a real set of war games the most likely solution would be to "do both;" the umpires would schedule four or five different 'games' over a period of about two weeks. Each one would operate under different rules and assumptions. And one or two of those 'games' would start with "the Thirishar is in the hospital and we haven't had time to rush another explorer to the scene, you'll have to stop the 'mentat' without explorer support."
EDIT: As an example, when tanks were first introduced to the British Army in World War One, they had little or no idea what to do with them. At the Battle of the Somme, tanks were thrown into a few sectors of the battle, but the overall plan was set up as though the tanks didn't exist. Consequently, the tanks didn't live up to their potential. They didn't have the support they needed to be maximally effective, because the rest of the army was off doing its own thing.
It wasn't until much later after a lot of trial and error that people figured out that yes, tanks were hella effective, but only if they cooperated with other forces in certain ways. This was tested successfully at Cambrai. Even then, the tanks STILL failed to live up to their potential because the British cavalry commander threw a hissy fit and refused to cooperate with the tank attack, behaving exactly as he would have done if the tanks weren't there.
...
Although if you want really good combined arms look at the Canadians. I did a paper on them in college, and let's just say that one of the journal articles I read, titled "Not Glamorous, but Effective: the Canadian Corps in World War One" captured their quiet maple-flavored badassery rather well.
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