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From: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ (George W. Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Combat Simulation
Summary: If it were that simple...
Message-ID: <5407@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 5 Apr 89 02:20:22 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ (George W. Herbert)

In article <5332@cbnews.ATT.COM> sjost1@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Steven J. Owens) writes:
>The perfect solution to this would be some sort of mult-dimensional
>array with each dimension representing either a battlefield condition, a
>goal, a strategy, etc.... and then to resolve the battle you cross-ref
>all of the dimensions and arrive at an answer that gives both statistics
>(X number of men on side A killed) and results in plain english (Side A
>driven back from the defensive position of side B).  

If it were that simple, WWIII would have been reduced to a sheet of paper
handed out at platoon-commander level with instructions.  The problem is that
random conditions (not really random, but...) result in random outcomes:  the
way conditions interact is variable, the conditions are usually badly understoo
and the results best predicted by using a D6. [oversimplification again]

george william herbert
maniac@garnet.berkeley.edu