Latest News «
Submit News «


Articles «
Comics «
Journal Entries «
Squad Reviews «
Rat Profiles «


Infantry Bootcamp «
Creating A Squad «
Maps & Radio «
FAQ «
Dictionary «


Official Forums «
Chat Room «


Previews «
Screenshots «
Book Listing «
Equipment Specs «
Links «


Feedback «
Site Info «
Link to Us «

Spawning, Depots, and Headquarters in WWII Online
by Ike

Two fundamentals of warfare that are not often thought of or talked about are distance and time. Yet time and distance are basic to military operations, intelligence, and decision-making. Any formed body of soldiers requires time to travel a particular distance. This is what makes enemy unit identification, strength, and location important in military planning and operations. Further, this is one of the things that distinguishes a simulation from a video game.

"Spawning" is the computer gaming slang word for appearing in the game, whether at the beginning of a mission or after having been killed during combat. If enemy soldiers, solo players or units, can spawn at any city, town, or village that their national team controls, these elements of time and distance are lost in WW2OL. For example, if the 7th Panzer Division has a mission to capture the city of Arras, on Day 1, they will spawn at the nearest German controlled city, town, or village, proceed to the jump-off point for the attack on Arras, engage the British forces which are defending Arras in battle and, for the sake of this example they win, they will then proceed to their next mission. If their next mission is to attack Metz, some 150 miles away from Arras, and the game allows them to spawn at the German controlled city, town, or village closest to Metz on Day 2, without having to travel from Arras, the elements of time and distance are lost to us in the game.

Having said that, how can the elements of time and distance be preserved in WW2OL without some entirely artificial game mechanic or rule about spawning? How can such a relatively few players then fight a war game on this scale and in the context that we are coming to expect of WW2OL? My suggestion is relatively simple. In the real war, each national team had a limited number of brigade, division, corps, army, and army group headquarters involved in each campaign and in each theater. If the Rats use those headquarters to limit spawning, then the elements of time and distance are retained in WW2OL and there is an addition to the historical flavor or context that we the players will experience.

So how could that work? Let me use a military organization that existed in the real Battle of France campaign as a framework for my examples, the British Expeditionary Force, since that is the one with which I am most familiar. Keep in mind throughout this article that I am talking about using the headquarters of the various field formations, not the combat or troop units that made them up. The British forces on the Continent in the spring and early summer of 1940 were organized under the title of "British Expeditionary Force" (B.E.F.). The B.E.F. was an army-level headquarters and it was made up of the a number of corps and divisions. There were three corps headquarters: I Corps, II Corps, and III Corps. Those corps contained a total of eight infantry divisions and there were five other infantry divisions which were not assigned to any particular corps at the beginning of the campaign. In addition to the thirteen infantry divisions, there was one armoured division, likewise not assigned to any particular corps. Each of the infantry divisions was made up of three infantry brigades and the armoured division had three brigades as well. Therefore, in the B.E.F. there was one army headquarters, three corps headquarters, 13 infantry division headquarters, 1 armoured division headquarters, 39 infantry brigade headquarters, and 3 armoured brigade headquarters. If you have read my article on logistics, you know that supply and replacements were transported from Britain to the army depots, to the corps depots, to the division depots, to the brigade depots, and from there to the field units and the soldiers. The significance of this is apparent, I think. The British Coutnry Commander (or the Theater Commander when as and if the Rats implement that level of command) will have 60 headquarters to position for logistics purposes, lines of supply and communication to designate, and -- in my solution -- those headquarters will be the spawning points for British player units and solo players. Notice that while that seems like a very large number of locations, the army, corps, and division headquarters will have to be positioned based primarily on logistical considerations and secondarily on considerations of security, not on considerations of spawning. Imagine the effect on the British chain of command if the army headquarters were to be captured by the Germans! No, I think it most likely that the 42 brigade headquarters will be the primary spawning points if my suggestion is adopted, rather than the army, corps, or division headquarters. It would be possible, of course, to spawn at army headquarters, but one would have rather a long ride to get to any likely objective from there. Consider that in the real world campaign, the B.E.F. headquarters was, as I recall, in Arras, which is a considerable distance -- at least at first; I know -- from where the German attacks will be going in. In a similar way, each of the other national teams will be limited in their spawning locations to those locations where one of their army group, army, corps, division, or brigade headquarters are located. I am not suggesting that any given player unit or solo be confined to spawning at the same headquarters each mission or each time the players log on, only that instead of spawning at any friendly-controlled city, town, or village in Europe, they may spawn only at a city, town, or village where a friendly headquarters is located.

I can hear the first objections already: "But, the German Army didn't use brigades, their divisions were made up of regiments!"; "The French Army called theirs demi-brigades!", et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. Well, lads, the order of battle information is fairly readily available in print if not entirely on the Net (fairly readily when you remember we're talking about a war that started about 60 years ago!) and it would be simpler even though not entirely historical for the Rats to simplify the naming by referring to all the sub-units of a division for these purposes as a "brigade". For my part, I would like to see the historical unit identifications used, too, but that may be too much to expect and it certainly is in the early parts of the beta testing. If that is too much trouble, they could identify the initial divisions on each national team and then identify the brigades as "x/y" where "x" is the number 1, 2, or 3 of the brigade, and "y" is the historical identification of the division. Or they could simply number the divisions from 1 to "x", where "x" is the number of divisions in France in 1940 on whichever national team we're referring to, and use 1, 2, or 3, to refer to the brigade headquarter number. Example from the B.E.F.: 2nd Division was made up of 4th, 5th and 6th Infantry Brigades, so their identification numbers would be: 4/2, 5/2, and 6/2, respectively. Bear in mind that these headquarters would be only an identification number, a location, and a map icon on the strategic or operational level maps of the owning country.

Now I hear the second set of objections: "How can we decide how many army groups, armies, corps, divisions, and brigades that each national team can have, total, for the whole war?" "How can the Rats decide when the additional headquarters can be built and fielded?" "How can any possible attrition in the headquarters units be calculated?" "Will losses of home country resources affect how many headquarters units can be maintained?" Good questions! First, the Rats have the historical record of each of the theaters as to what headquarters were there at the beginning of operations in those theaters. That will give both an initial set and a time line or time table for fielding the headquarters units. Second, they can decide based on that historical information, some maximum number of headquarters units that each national team can field. Keep in mind that this doesn't have to be entirely historically accurate or precise. All that is needed is some significant reduction in spawning locations to maintain the "time and distance" factors in the game. One of the factors to be taken into account is the relative size, population, and industrial capability of the respective nations. Why? Because size and population relate directly to the numbers of soldiers that nations can field and the industry relates to the nation's ability to equip those soldiers both with weapons and with communications needed to have a headquarters. How to handle attrition of headquarters units? When a headquarters unit's location is captured, the game decides how bad a hit the HQ took and based on that we are told that the HQ retreated and takes some number of days to relocate to "x" and reorganize itself, or, that the HQ was effectively destroyed and a new one will have to be shipped out to the field from the home country. The Rats will have to figure how much transportation capacity is taken up in moving a brigade, division, corps, army, and army group headquarters, and the Country Commander and Theater Commander will have to dedicate the resources and the logistics capacity to moving a new headquarters unit to replace that lost one. Not precisely historical, but that can make for some interesting choices: "Do I move those three brigade HQ's to replace those lost last week, or, using the same transportation capacity to ship a new tank brigade instead?" How about the problems of sunken shipping, crashed air transport, delays from bad weather... I could go on and on, but you can readily see how much potential fun that would be. As to the third question, since I have no firm idea or guess as to how the Rats are going to simulate or handle resource utilization at the strategic level, I don't even have a guess as to how or even if it will cost resources in the same sense that building a capital ship or doing technological research will cost resources. My wild guess at this point is that it won't cost resources at the strategic level to build a headquarters, just time and then transportation capacity to ship it to the theater and location where it needs to be.

That's a brief outline of my thoughts on limiting spawning to keep the time and distance factors that make up such an important part of war and should make up a part of WW2OL. I invite all of you to send me your comments, criticisms, counter-suggestions, and all that, as I think that discussing this kind of thing both stimulates our own thinking and gives the Rats ideas that they might not have had yet! As I think of other implications and ideas about this, I will update this article; and, if there is enough comment/criticism of it, I'll write a reply here.