Prisoners and surrendering units

[ATD]

15.88
Unless I'm missing something, I cannot see why (at least unless equipment were involved possibly) players would not always choose to surrender casualties in order to create a burden for the enemy (POWs).

If I do not hear to the contrary, I propose to consider that the proportion of losses that would be captured (rather than explicitly due to the normal capture rules resulting automatically from the close assault results table), would occur below the texture of the game. So, small pockets of prisoners are being mopped up without us needing to bother about it.

The principle is a bit like not having to roll for each individual part of a tank for repair. Stand by for the CNA expansion pack rules due for release in 2069.

[Michael Miller]

The issue of prisoners has a couple of dimensions. One, there is likely more propaganda value in long lines of POWs being marched to the rear than just torn bodies as the latter just produces revulsion. That should argue against one side giving up voluntarily. The humanitarian aspect, the desire to avoid senseless death, is what presumably motivates surrender. To take account of both, perhaps prisoners taken should yield some amount of victory points?

I take it you are proposing to simply remove the prisoner rules from the game, abstracting them into the standard casualty results? I don't really object, but feel required to point out the rather obvious philosophical grounds that CNA is the ultimate in non-abstracted.

[ATD]

It's not my intention to eliminate prisoners (the desert war was a relatively gentlemanly affair) - just the ability of each side to convert all casualty results into mass surrenders. If things were simpler(!), the VP idea would be great but VPs in CNA could be practically meaningless. I mean to say, we'd have to actually finish the game for one thing...

[ATD]

Of course there is a major part of the game missing - a part which had quite a bearing on events too. To be fair, in the late 70s, one could forgive the Bergmeister and his team for not knowing much about it. Apparently, Rommel went to his grave still believing there was a spy in the Rome headquarters.

[Michael Miller]

Wasn't Ultra becoming pretty common knowledge among at least military history scholars by then? I seem to recall news filtering out in the early/mid 70s, but I was still pretty young then. The first I remember was a "60 Minutes" piece, which "the Google" tells me was aired on 3 August 1975. Berg should certainly have been aware of this. I imagine it would be difficult to really simulate effectively though and still have a game.

[ATD]

Yes, though only as you say just becoming known. Certainly, there were people in the UK many years later, who still continued to "keep the secret". The full extent of the contribution that Bletchley Park made would not have been that clear on SPI's radar at the time I think. Had an interesting tour of Bletchley Park by the way.

Next time someone suggests the greatest hero of World War II being, say someone who saved three guys from burning tank destroyer, one should consider two names that are practically unknown: Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers, who worked on what we called Tunny and the Germans Lorenz, made enigma look like a child's toy.

Flowers, who had built the worlds first programmable computer, decided in old age that he needed to know a bit more about computing. He enrolled on a local adult education course and was given a certificate. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even mention his earlier achievement. It was said, by those who should know, that their efforts probably shortened the war by a couple of years. As the war was costing 10 million lives a year, that means they saved something like 20 million lives...

[Michael Miller]

I've heard those names, though not any real detail associated with them, so will have to read up a bit. Alan Turing gets much of the credit in the IT world for his contributions of course.

Re the original topic of surrender/POWs, as i read the Close Assault rules, the only choice available to the player is whether to surrender the entire unit (which would have to be declared before the result is known), not the individual casualty TOE points. Am I looking at the same thing as you?

[ATD]

I don't see any explicit mention in the rules that is the the entire unit would be surrendered, or that this would occur prior to combat resolution; certainly not in 15.88 anyway. On the other hand, this might be a very nice way to go. It seems to be another occasion on the rules where the authors have violated their own definition of the word "unit".

Unless anyone has anything else to say on the subject, I'll incorporate that into the rules edit, along with the other clarifications.

[Michael Miller]

Sounds like a reasonable clarification we could make.

[mikeq]

Agreed.


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[Michael Miller]

Rule clarification approved back in April and incorporated into ruleset as below, along with official errata.

[15.88] A Player may always (but prior to enemy CP and Ammo expenditure) voluntarily Surrender his units, rather than have them slaughtered. Furthermore, units which are out of Ammunition or with a –17 or worse Cohesion Level that are assaulted automatically Surrender (see also Case 17.25). If the same –17 unit had an Enemy unit simply move adjacent to it, it would not surrender; however, a –26 unit would, in the latter instance.