Quote:
Originally Posted by Webstral
I had an evil thought tonight. The war in Europe in 1999 is characterized by long-distance penetration raids. Obviously, the formations nearest the enemy bear the brunt of this. Obviously, it’s impossible for the number of troops remaining to control the whole front. The formations nearest the front would be expected to mount patrols into the areas they couldn’t control directly. This would suck for them. What if some of the units at the forward edge of the NATO or Pact occupation zone in Central Europe strike an arrangement with their counterparts on the other side. Say, for example, the 476th Motor Rifle Division foresaw that there would be no need to patrol a given area during a specified time on a specified date. If enemy raiders penetrated this area and tore up friendly units in the rear… well, those sorts of things happen when the units at the forward edge of the occupation zone don’t get enough supply or reinforcement and find themselves obliged to make arrangements with the enemy across the way so that the higher-ups in their safe rear area command posts can feel good that the war is being prosecuted without us poor s.o.b.s who got unlucky enough to be stuck at the front all getting’ killed for no good reason at all.
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Absolutely. This sort of thing happens from time to time in war.
This sort of small unit, impromptu front-line diplomacy is an aspect of the T2K game that most games seem to neglect. I know that most PCs like the combat part of T2K, but it seems that in the T2KU of '99 and 2000, a lot of folks would do just about anything they could to avoid taking casualties, up to and including talking to the enemy.
In a brillant T2K PbP I played in a few years back (
Stalemate War on RPGnet), a company-sized unit of the 5th ID was surrounded in a town outside Kalisz (Blazki, I think) by elements of a Soviet MR regiment. They both took a lot of casualties in the battle for the city. The American company commander contacted the Soviets (or vice-versa) to arrange the "escape" of the American unit. Neither side wanted to lose more men KIA/WIA, so the Soviet commander agreed to give the Americans a couple of trucks and look the other way during a two-hour window. That way, he looked good for taking the town without any more casualties and the Americans avoided fighting to the last man or ending up as POWs. I though the way the GM set this scenario up was pretty genius.