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The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

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Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#71

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dreen wrote: post #10

It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.

> I doubt this has much precedent in history. //

On the contrary I'd imagine there was a deal of precedent for it, but probably not well recorded.

I've the vaguest recollection of inferences that crusaders in a North African situation resorted to cannibalism -- I'll have to look for the source on that.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#72

Post by barkingcat »

dreen wrote: post #10

It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.

and that's how so many orcs were able to march all at once, they are eating as they march.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#73

Post by xg15 »

Slightly OT:

I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank.

I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and where building, running (using automation) and defending/attacking supply lines is integral part of the game. I guess the result would be something like a cross between Command & Conquer and Factorio or Transport Tycoon.

The handwaving of logistics can also lead to some surreal moments in RTS single-player campaigns when the hero characters somehow manage to bring huge armies with them wherever they go, even if the story establishes that a place is difficult to get to even as a small group.

Kudos for Blizzard and the design of the Zerg here, which turns that kind of awkwardness into an actual part of the story.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#74

Post by carapace »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

Artificial gravity & anti-gravity.

Inertial dampeners that work well enough to prevent everyone being turned to jelly by accelerations but leak enough to toss people around the bridge.

Disintegration rays that somehow know to stop disintegration at the soles of boots. The floor never gets disintegrated.

Time travel.

For better or worse, Star Trek is teleplay.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#75

Post by baybal2 »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #64
dragontamer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass killings of troops certainly happened: Hannibal's famous "Battle of Cannae" actually destroyed an entire Roman Legion (70,000 killed, 10,000 captured out of ~80,000 troops). They were just very rare. Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smalle…

Another noteworthy battle of annihilation is the Battle of Bach Dang River: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B%E1%BA%A1ch_%C4%9... Fun fact: the South East Asia was safe guarded from the Mongolian invasion because they was stopped 3 times at Vietnam. The Mongolian had heavy casualties from all 3 of the grand campaigns, despite overwhelming number and was forced to retreat.

On other hand Mongol-Song wars were absolutely incredible on power imbalance. Some times with a single tumen (10000) vs entire Song armies at a time.

The entire Song military of 1m+ and god knows how much irregulars first exhausted its supplies by chasing a more mobile enemy across the central plain, and then defeated with "defeat in details" taken to its extreme, after Song understood that they can't match Mongols in open fields, and decided to go on defensive.

As Mongols set on fire more and more cities, Song's giant military started emptying granaries as they retreated south. With each lost commandry, Song was loosing more and more of its grain production, while having to dig deeper, and deeper into its reserve.

During the second invasion wave, Mongols had to set just few more major granaries on fire for Song military's grain consumption to exceed its production. After that their supply shortage started to snowball, and they lost almost all of its military to rout and desertion within a few years.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#76

Post by golergka »

gerikson wrote: post #69
arethuza wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does remind slightly me of Amundsen's approach on his south pole expedition of killing dogs and feeding them to the men and the other dogs. Lord Curzon was rather rude to him about it.

The British ideal of the noble defeat being better than the pragmatic victory is rather strange.

Almost any custom which seems strange when you take one encounter turns out to be perfectly reasonable when you take it in a context of repeated encounters with the same vis-a-vis. Having reputation for being noble, even in defeat, can have unique advantages.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#77

Post by koonsolo »

xg15 wrote: post #73

Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and…

That could be quite fun! Especially since you could try to sabotage or destroy enemy supply lines.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#78

Post by wjmao88 »

xg15 wrote: post #73

Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and…

The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war.

I remember there was an old game, Napolean 1813, that has some level of supply management in the form of needing to build a chain of supply stations in different cities to support nearby troops. The map of that game stretches from Paris to Eastern Europe.

Another game that has supply management is Hearts of Iron, where the map is the entire world. I mostly play other Paradox grand strategy titles, but people have jokingly called Hearts of Iron the "Best supply chain similator game"

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#79

Post by hgal »

xg15 wrote: post #73

Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and…

Stonkers, a 1983 ZX Spectrum RTS game had already had supplies.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#80

Post by dragontamer »

wjmao88 wrote: post #78
xg15 wrote: post #73

Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and…

The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war. I remember there was an old game, Napolean 1813, that has some level of supply management in the form of needing to build a chain of supply stations in different cities to support nearby troops. The map of that game stretches from Paris to Eastern Europe. Another game that has supply management is Hearts of Iron, where the map is the ent…

> The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war.

Hmm, but even "Civilization" magically aways logistics for the most part. Units require "upkeep gold", but there's no real supply-chain that has to be built for units.

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The "Rigs" in Advance Wars delivered oil to the frontlines. But its still simplified logistics, because "Rigs" had infinite oil in them. Still, it was a legitimate strategy to destroy enemy Rigs, cut off their supply-chain, and then wait for the enemy tanks to run out of ammunition or oil and starve them to death.

Although Advance Wars mostly turned into a game of turtling with cheap mechanized infantry (One of the best units for a given price). But the logistics was at least theoretically possible.

--------

I know "war logistics" games exist, but they certainly aren't mainstream. Europa Universalis and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are famously "Excel Spreadsheet games", I've never played them but maybe they are more into logistics than other games.

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv/EUEU04GSK...

https://www.koeitecmoamerica.com/rtk13/system1.html

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