[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by Bellman

SQ: I promise not to open up 'old fronts' but you disparage the MP scene at your risk !

As you do not seem to take part in MP activity you

I do play MP games on gamespy. It's fun if you just want to shoot some torpedoes but if you want to play around with different search tactics, or asset allocations it's no good. I suspect that the virtual fleets might be a little better in a certain sense, but I don't have the time to commit to them. So far I have yet to see a scenario that really just nailed it for me. I've seen a lot of people try hard, and some come closer.

grant yourself the indulgence of postulating 'theories'
and techniques which you can enjoy spreadsheet on lap within SP

Absolutely. Part of the fun of wargaming is being able to do precisely that. It's what they do at the Naval War College. "What if?" is probably the driver of most wargames, one of the "What if's?" that people can indulge in is tactics. We do this in professional wargames for the Pentagon too. The term they use is "CONOPS development" but really it's just deciding what tactics they'll use in the game. Tactics, really, are the one thing you CAN experiment with and actually learn a lot about real world naval operations because the system performance numbers we use, while at their best are very well researched and hopefully close, ultimately are made up.

If you can't "what if?" tactics then you might as well not play wargames.

with the ever ready facility of 'PAUSE'

Actually, I specifically didn't want to do that. That's why I do everything ahead of time and keep it canned. All I need to do is type in a few numbers and read the answer off the screen. Everything should be quick and easy.

This actually mirrors what I've seen with real world operations. There exists a whole family of computerized mission planners and other tactical decision aids to be used for making recommendations.

The fact that one has the time to do this also reflects reality. Have you ever heard the joke that ASW means "Awfully Slow Warfare?" If there's anything ASW ISN'T, it's fast-paced. It's one thing I like about naval combat simulators, actually, is that I can read a book or do something else while I'm playing. Flight simulators aren't quite so slow paced. :-)

My capitals do not shout but merely emphasise the fatal flaw in SP - the ability to enjoy extensive thinking-time
or to revisit situations and problems.

I don't think that's a flaw. It's actually exactly what it's good for. You can do that in MP too, sometimes a lot more shamelessly. There's one MP scenario I've played, where I'm convinced that the only way for blue to win, is to have played it before. Without unnatural precognition it's a total sucker punch.

One of the things about wargaming, both professional and commercially available, is that it allows one to revisit things. And also, in a realistic ASW scenario, you should have a lot of think time. It should be possible to search for 16 hours and find NOTHING. It's completely realistic for platforms to go into the game, not find each other, and decide to knock it off.

Planning is important. Thinking things through is important. ASW by it's nature is extrodinarily cerebral. In this game there's a lot of options. The name of the game is, "what would you do?"

(With less than 2 days playing time if at all possible )

I've been working on another one. I'm trying to decide whether to make it MP or SP. It should be difficult, though, because it's a datum search with a fair amount of time late against a target in transit. The SSN in the scenario really only ever has 1 chance to catch the target and if he doesn't the whole thing is over. Because of that, he'll have to rely on the MPA to cue him, otherwise there's only about a 25% chance that he'll catch 'em. I originally made this one because I wanted to ask myself "okay... what if I had an MPA... what if I didn't because the weather was bad.... what do I do?" Obviously, you don't do as well. Regardless, I want to put them out as a pair. Good weather / bad weather.

This one is another long one, though. It takes more than 6 hours to play largely because there's a lot of transiting involved. I'm not sure how MP friendly that might be.