Yes of course Lockie, use the graphic if you think it is useful!
Frinik, the briefing was
very well written and added a human and interesting dimension to the mission. I would have added proper 'oral orders' to it, that's all.
If I might add a few points to try to explain a bit more - I'm not lecturing anyone here, just trying to explain what this particular simmer looks for. Simmers who haven't had military training may not miss this sort of thing at all, perhaps because they may not appreciate how basic these things are to the way armies work (and worked in WW2). I'd read many books before getting my own taste of this and (i) very, very few books really touch on the mechanics of platoon and company level operations and (ii) even those that did, didn't really explain things in much detail, or give you a decent idea of how it worked for real. The main exception was a short series of Almarks books, from the late 1970s, on tank, artillery and infantry tactics in WW2), but even they were short and lacking in detail.
So here are my principles. Take 'em, or leave 'em! If I ever get around to making missions, I will follow these, as far as I can. And I know sims impose some big limits!
1.
Start every 'briefing' with a 'battle picture', such as you might give to troops before they begin a piece of training. Perhaps as part of the mission intro screen. You can see this being done at 3.52 in this video clip:
- from where the Para captain is saying 'I want you to imagine...'. The idea is to get the soldiers - or player! - quickly 'in character' and for him to picture his situation - who and where he is. For example, one for this mission might read something like this:
'It's 10 May 1945 and WW2 has just ended officially - but not for you. You're a panzer officer in command of an under-strength platoon with just two tanks, brand-new Panther F models 'borrowed' from a local testing establishment. You're part of a small mixed armour/infantry force of desperate German soldiers, bypassed by the advancing Soviets and anxious to escape to the west, rather than fall into the hands of the vengeful Ivans. Your commander, Captain Schulze, stands before you, about to give you and the other officers and senior NCOs your orders for the last push.'Then could come Schulze's pep talk, and then his orders (the latter is by far the most important bit - but we'll come to that soon).
The difference is that you now know what you command and what force you're part of, before you load the mission.
2.
Implement as far as practicable, realistic unit organisation. Armies fought as organised units, even when understrength. SF missions are typically company-level operations. The forces in the mission and their deployment should reflect this.
The forces for a typical - I emphasise, 'typical' - mission should normally consist of an infantry company with one or two tank platoons in support, or the other way round - a tank company with one or two infantry platoons in support.
The force must have a separate HQ unit - for a tank company, the company commander's tank and his second in command's tank. Equivalent, if the force is based on an infantry company, not a tank one. Their role is to direct the battle, not fight it - so they should be deployed, and operate during the mission, to the rear.
Often, the force will have either artillery or mortar fire support, called in and directed by a forward observer in a vehicle of his own. This will usually move with company HQ.
3.
Implement realistic command and control. As Lockie has said, SF is not a 'strategy' game, it's a tank sim. To digress a little, games like Combat Mission or Theatre of War simulate wargames with miniatures, rather than real warfare, because the player's main task is controlling individual tanks or vehicles, like pieces on a chessboard. That's not how it works. The force commander exercises command and control through the chain of command - running the organisation described in point 2, above. He doesn't give instructions to individual vehicles or soldiers. But to his platoon commanders.
Given a mission, the force commander - in SF, this will usually be a company commander, a major - will make a plan, while his second in command is getting the troops prepared for battle. The major will then hold what the British Army calls an Orders Group, or O Group, attended by all his platoon commanders, including those of attached troops and the forward observer if he has one. Not (usually) all the troops. Certainly not just the player. He will give his platoon commanders his orders as a group, in a set format (the current NATO one is as good as any and better than most - basically it's the one the British Army used in WW2 if not earlier - Ground - Situation - Mission - Execution - Service/Support - Command and Signal). He will refer to a map and perhaps a simple 'model' of the terrain, constructed on the ground from soil, foliage, tape etc. All armies use essentially similar procedures, and have done for many years. For a reason. They work.
This is the procedure that a 'briefing' in SF should follow - your boss is giving you and all the other platoon commanders your orders, while you can follow him on the map. It doesn't have to be complicated - you can just say 'No change' for the last two headings. Forget about what XYZ Tank Army is doing or who the Army commander is. confine any such stuff to the short 'battle picture' given before you get this far. The point is (i) doing this is realistic, so why not do it, rather than being un-realistic and (ii) as in real life, it is the most effective way of conveying to the player what the plan is, and what he is to do.
A couple more points here.
The player CANNOT be the force commander, unless you give him control over EVERY unit in the mission. And if you do that, forget about the player fighting the battle - his job has become to plan and run it, not shoot. No - except for missions which depart from the normal pattern of company and platoon operations - and SF has some of these, fine! - the player is a platoon commander in somebody else's force.
The mission design needs to follow the sort of plan a real company commander would devise, if given the same mission. He decides, in his plan, what formation the force will form up in. Who will be on the left. Who will be on the right. Who will be in the centre, or back in reserve. Whether tanks or infantry will lead, and whether they will move on the same axis, or on different axes. What routes will be followed. How many phases the mission will be broken down into, and which platoon will do what, for each phase.
And the 'briefing' - or more accurately, his O Group -will be where
he explains this - all of it - to the player (and the imaginary AI platoon commanders, who will be there too!).
4.
Simulate command and control, during the mission. The boss - a company commander in a typical SF battle - doesn't just make the plan, give the orders, then disappear back to a chateau somewhere 'in the rear, with the gear'. He will operate just behind the forward troops, exercising command and control on the radio - running the battle. It should be possible to simulate some of this in an SF mission, with suitable radio messages - the sort that would come from a company commander, exercising the aforementioned command and control. For example, at the very start, he might say (using British Army radio voice procedure in this example 'Hello all stations, this is 39, move now, I say again, move now. Out' (or ending in 'Off!' if you want the WW2 version). When it's time to start the next phase and the appropriate mission trigger fires, or condition is satisfied, he might say 'Hello all stations, this is 39, Phase 2 now. Out!' If things are going too slowly or a time limit (though I hate time limits in missions, they are very artificial) has passed, the boss might come onto the company radio net and tell everyone to get a move on, perhaps in suitably colourful language. An enemy counterattack might prompt a warning, 'Enemy armour coming in from the west - watch your arcs, everybody!!!' Or he might congratulate everyone when the mission is won. There are many possibilities.
The important thing is that the messages are realistic; the sort of thing an army officer running a battle would say on an operational radio net. Why bother? Well, because it's realistic, dramatic and immersive. It creates the impression that you and your platoon really are part of a company-based combat team whose commander is doing his job. The airwaves in SF are often too silent. Little is said on the intercom; less on the company net.
5.
There's no need to overdo the 'challenge'. Most battles were not fought till everyone was dead; mostly, one side often gave up if casualties got beyond a certain point, well short of 100%. Rather often in SF battles, your side seems to be almost wiped out, even it 'wins'. Besides the whole point is to win the battle, and this means concentration of effort. For an attack, your boss will have done his very best to ensure 3 to 1 superiority locally, preferably 6 to 1. Not just if he's Monty. I think it was Napoleon who said that the main thing in battle is to have more forces than the enemy, at the point where you are attacking, or being attacked. If your boss can't do that, he probably won't attack, till he finds a time and a place where he can, because he knows he's too likely to lose. Of course not all battles followed that pattern but many did. Was it Clausewitz who said, never start a battle till you have already won it? A sensible fellow, whoever it was. Let's have missions where you have plenty to shoot but can bring most or all of your platoon through alive unless you're reckless, and not be the 'last man standing' too often.
6.
Avoid time limits or other victory conditions which terminate missions un-necessarily. Yes timing is important, for fire support and for co-ordination between units, but stopping a battle and telling you you have lost because you didn't achieve a certain result in a given time (even if that was made crystal clear in the briefing, but especially if it wasn't) is bizzarely un-realistic and highly frustrating. That ticking clock in the Battle of the Bulge movie, counting down the time to when the Germans had to reach Antwerp, was movie theatrics at its worst. Such things should have no place in a tanksim (thank goodness you could hand-edit the silly time limits in most Panzer Commander missions). Time limits may be suitable for video games, but are not, for anything which makes any pretence at simulating warfare.
With the above, an SF mission will be as authentic as its tanks and other kit.
PS if you haven't already seen it, this British WW2 tactical manual available over at the PE development group website is very useful reading; it includes the WW2 equivalent of the NATO format for orders, which you can see is basically identical, with different words for the headings:
http://pedg.chollie.co.uk/pedgfiles.htm 
