- Joined
- Feb 18, 2021
The thing is, a lot of "simulation" back in the day ran more like D&D than a game of Skyrim. You say something then the game masters mess with the inputs for the software to reflect what's happening. Back then it would have required the staff to plot the distances involved and the means of transportation, then use a watch to wait and simulate time lapse. I wouldn't want to be the young staffer trying to explain to a general I can't allow him to give the order until a clock runs down.But Malcolm gladwell made him seem plucky and intelligent vs the inert military command so he has to be right. Tbf they really should have programmed in hand delivered messengers.
To them it wasn't a priority because the objectives of the wargame are absolutely boring. Are the medics well supplied to treat casualties in the ship or are they going to get overwhelmed? Are there enough IT specialists on board in case systems get damaged? It was never meant to be a true Iran v USA simulation to see who wins, but stress test the American doctrine.
Another similar thing happened with F-14s and F-5s if I recall correctly. Supposedly F-5s racked a gorillion kills against the F-14s, technology drools reformism rules!Any kind of wargame needs to have people asking what the rules are. It's similar to hearing about "X percent of people believe this based on polling" and not assuming it's chickenshit because the questions were probably loaded. Like when Romanian MiG-21 pilots were able to kill USAF F-16s in the early 2010s because the MiGs had been updated with helmet tracking- but they didn't emphasize that the combat started within visual range. The F-16s used had yet to be updated with JHMCS and were not equipped with AIM-9xs, so the MiGs had a chance. In a real engagement, the MiG-21s would've been blown out of the sky by AIM-120s. But the papers were like "OMG 60 YEAR OLD MIG-21 BEATS LATEST F-16 MODEL!"
Well, turned out that this was a sequence of dogfights where at first there were few rules, and the F-14s insta-killed the F-5s. So they progressively increased the number of rules to give the F-5s more and more advantages, and force the F-14s to come up with tactics to counter their disadvantages. One example was the F-14s couldn't fire until visual range. So after suffering a few defeats, the F-14 pilots sent a F-14 ahead to spot the F-5s visually, while others fired from beyond visual range using radar as according to rules there was one F-14 who had acquired the enemy visually. And the rules were changed again, they got beat again, and came up with new tactics to solve the problems being thrown at them.