Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)

From: gunzler@netcom.com (Mitch Gunzler)

Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1993 02:31:30 +0000

In article <20fv8h$p3v@agate.berkeley.edu> mr-frog@con.Berkeley.EDU (Dave "Human Decompiler" Pare) writes:
>Interestingly enough, I was (re)reading Liddell Hart's "The German
>Generals Talk" last night and happened upon something which bears on the
>subject of formulae.
>
>So the German General Staff were a bunch of smart guys.  Some of the ones
>who turned out to be brilliant during the war had no real concept of how
>mobile warfare was going to affect the battlefield.  Rommel, for instance,
>was a strictly infantry fellow until he "saw the light on the road to Warsaw."
>Many others followed much the same path.
>
...
>
>So this doesn't address the "playability" question, only the "realism" one,
>but I thought it might be interesting to point out a real-life example of
>how commanders didn't really have a clue as to how their units would perform,
>and how too many of the wrong units were bought because of that.

Another classic example from that war is naval air power.
Everybody thought that the trick to winning naval battles was ever bigger
battleships that could shoot bigger shells farther than the other guys'
battleships.  Then aircraft started sinking everything in sight ...

Mitch

(Heat seeking anti air missiles in '67; Gas weapons that turned out not to
be worth the trouble in WWI; automatic weapons that made frontal assaults
much more painful than they "should" have been in WWI; The English longbow
at Agincourt and Crecy; the Greek Phalanx; David's sling...)

References

Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
mebonar@sn01.sncc.lsu.edu (MsciDave)
Fri, 25 Jun 1993 08:38:00 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
mr-frog@con.Berkeley.EDU (Dave "Human Decompiler" Pare)
Fri, 25 Jun 1993 22:46:41 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Thu, 24 Jun 1993 23:13:47 +0000