This week at ADB, Inc., 31 January - 6 February 2010

Steve Cole reports;

Winter weather continued all week as the snow melted from the blizzard of the week before. Four more inches of snow on Wednesday night left the roads slushy but passable.

Most of my week was taken up with work on F&E 2010. I finished and shut down all of the Core Change topics, and moved on to work on staff reports. I did process the PD Federation Deian planetary survey when Jean finished it. I also got Communique #50 finished so it can go out on time. On Customer Service Wednesday, I did a rank chart for Jean, the FC Klingon F5 three-ship card, and checked some bad website links and told Eric to fix them.

Steve Petrick continued to make progress on CL #41.

Leanna and Mike Sparks spent the week dealing with huge wholesaler orders.

Jean and Eric continued working on Facebook, gaining new fans every day. Eric did a lot of stuff on the website. Eric found out this week that his family is moving to Austin right now, instead of next June, which means he will be leaving us shortly. He did a lot of good over the last year and a half and will be missed.

Work continued on the addition to our home as the tile-setters laid the tile, which pretty much took the entire week.

I got word this week that Ghengis Khan, my adopted wolf who lives at the sanctuary in New Mexico, had died suddenly at the age of 14, still in the prime of his alpha wolf life. As many of you know, I drove over there several times taking him beef hearts for a special dinner. He will be missed.

A Gamble for Command

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

One of the experiences I had as a young lieutenant was a struggle to be the "man in charge" of my own platoon. This started while I was teaching my platoon tactics. One of the sergeants (actually, the senior NCO present, but not my Platoon Sergeant who was on Leave a the time, and my senior Squad Leader was also not present) started to tell the men that I had no idea what I was talking about.

It must be understood that my "platoon" was woefully understrength (the aftermath of Vietnam left many units understrength), and while it was authorized one officer and 42 "other ranks", its actual strength (on paper) was one officer and 20 "other ranks", and of that number only one officer and 18 "other ranks" were "present" (two men having been more or less permanently detached to other duties, but still counted as part of my platoon) and two were "non-deployable", i.e., they were in my platoon, but if the platoon was deployed to a combat zone, these two men would have to be left behind due to their profiles. (And of course two other men were not present that day, my senior NCOs.)

At this juncture, I responded to the NCO's challenge by making one of my own: I would take one man and set up a defense, the NCO would have the other 12 men of the platoon (my two most senior NCOs were not present you will recall) to attack.

The NCO had a lot of advantages, not just a six to one edge in numbers, but we were in a local training area which he was familiar with and I was not (I had been with the platoon less than two weeks while he had been training in the area over a year). I was laying out my "defense" based on the "reconnaissance of the ground" I was performing right then as I led my "detachment" in search of a defensive position.

As we moved back, we encountered and had to cross a gully, and about three hundred or so meters beyond it there was a conical rise of ground, a hill, that dominated the immediately surrounding area.

With this, my plan of battle was set.

I deployed my one man on the hill, designating it the "main battle position", then I called the NCO on the radio and announced we were ready. I then deployed my "screening force", i.e., I went back to the gully and found myself a concealed position above it. I chose me as the screening force because it was the "critical task" requiring command supervision.

Then I waited.

After an interval of time I began to hear men jumping the gully (as I had had to do). Now I began using some of the intrinsic intelligence I had of the enemy, i.e., I knew how many men the NCO had, and when the number of men who had jumped the Gully equaled half that number (from the impact of each individual landing), I opened fire. Blindly, yes, and only in their general direction. I switched the weapon between semi-automatic and full automatic, firing a few single shots and then a short burst to create the impression in the NCO's mind that I was making my stand at that point. I could hear confusion, as the gully separated the two elements, and the NCO was clearly totally unprepared to come under attack at that location. Once the magazine was empty, I abandoned the "screening position" and hastily withdrew, first to an interim position where I would fight if there was an immediate pursuit (there was not) and then back to the "main battle position".

Once at the main battle position, I told my one man that he was NOT to expose himself to enemy fire, but place fire on the enemy to fix their attention. I then moved to the rear of the hill at its base placing myself "in reserve" and again waited. Again, the reserve force was the most critical task as the use of the reserve had to be carefully timed.

Another interval passed and I heard weapons fire as the NCO began his assault on the hill. I listened to the volume of fire and the noise level, and when it "seemed about right", I initiated my counter-attack, sweeping around the base of the hill and arriving in the left rear of the NCO's assault. I found that, as I had anticipated, the NCO had committed all of his men to a frontal attack: there was no over-watching element or base of fire set up.

I was hoping to at least inflict heavy casualties (the likelihood that I would get all 13 of the attackers even with the advantage of surprise was pretty small), but here I found that my "covering force" action had paid a major dividend. The platoon had been split at the gully, and the NCO (even with squad radios) had made no effort to reunite the two elements. He had only half the troops with him, the other half was (as it happened) doing the right thing and "marching to the sound of the guns", but they were too far away to even see what was going on (due to intervening terrain and vegetation), and by the time they arrived, the action was over.

With the absolute numbers in the assault greatly reduced, my counter-attack actually achieved unqualified success, wiping out the entire assault element before they even knew I was there. The last to fall was the NCO, literally "shot down" as he turned to give orders to his men only to see the Lieutenant he had been disparaging standing behind him with a leveled weapon and all the rest of his men already eliminated.

After disposing of the NCO, I continued to the top of the hill rejoining my "command". Shortly afterward the other half of the platoon arrived, saw the "casualties" on the forward slope of the hill and, literally, broke on Morale and decided that they did not want to attack the hill. (Truth to tell, had I been with that element I would have tried to attack the hill, but I would have left about half of it to provide cover and supporting fire, a thing that would have destroyed my "counter-attack" had the NCO done so.)

It was a gamble that, honestly, I should not have taken. That it worked out so well was a major plus for me although the NCO never forgave me (and I had enough brains never to give him another chance to try to beat me in tactics, I knew I had been lucky, and stupid to even take the chance, but at the time I really did want to settle the issue).

HOW NOT TO GET INTO THE GAME BUSINESS

Steve Cole writes:

I constantly see things on industry mailing lists and in my Email where people want advice on entering the game business. The best advice I have is my free book which you can find at www.StarFleetGames.com/book as a nice multi-chapter PDF.

In one recent case, an individual wrote to say: "I just lost my job and have decided to be a game designer for a living. I need a stable income of $4,000 a month. How long would it take me to get there? Three months? Six?"

I laughed and cried at the same time. For one thing, I don't make $4,000 a month now and I've been in the industry 28 years. (A few years I have made that much, barely, but not in the current market.) The sad fact is that except for the lucky three or four, game designers won't ever make that much. Worse, you probably cannot make a living as an independent game designer at all, since game publishing companies were (99% of the time) created to publish the owner's games because no other company would publish them.

In another case from some time ago (I'm going to blur some facts here so that nobody can tell who I'm talking about), a young game enthusiast decided to quit his day job and focus his full time efforts on game design and publishing. His wife said that she would allow this only if he "brought home" a paycheck of a defined amount each month. He had some money from an inheritance which was separate property and his wife allowed that he could use this. Well, he went through the nest egg, borrowed money from savings without telling his wife, maxed out the credit card he got for the business, and then got two more cards (those offers in the mail) without telling his wife and maxed them out. All the time (his company lasted 18 months and did a dozen products) he was "bringing home" the required paycheck. His company was making a profit beyond expenses, but not enough to cover the paycheck, but the paycheck continued because (a) his wife insisted and (b) he was sure he would start making more sales any time. One of the credit cards was a $5,000 cash advance spent on advertising (which produced few if any new sales). Every month, he wrote that paycheck but came up short elsewhere. He had established credit with the printers and with the companies that sold him advertising pages so he ended up deeply in debt to the printer and to advertising publishers. Worse, his first product (which sold well enough) ran out of print, but it was going to cost $20K to reprint it and the dwindling rate of sales (nowhere near as good as it had been 18 months earlier) would not support the debt load, but he "had" to reprint it to avoid looking like a company on the way out. Finally, with no more places to borrow money and creditors threatening legal action, he took the case to his wife for a home equity loan. She, of course, had no clue that his company was $40K in debt (for which he was personally liable) or that most of the family savings account was gone. It's a wonder she didn't kill him or leave him, but she did force him out of the game business immediately. He sold out for what he could get and applied that money to the debts. Moral of the story, if you are married, make your wife a part of every business decision and do not keep secrets from her about family money.

In another case (actually, there are four or five of these I have seen, all about the same), an enthusiastic game designer who knew nothing about the industry but was sure his game was the next big thing got a home equity loan, printed thousands of copies of his game, and THEN (and only then) asked other game companies how to contact stores and wholesalers to sell his game. He had no clue what size the market was (few games sell over a couple of thousand copies) or who the wholesalers were or what it would take to get them to buy (some now demand that you pay them $500 for advertising before they will carry your game) or even what the discount structure was (which meant that his cost per game was fairly close to the 40% of the retail price he had printed on the games). Moral of the story, learn as much as you can about the industry before you spend a dime getting into it. GO READ MY BOOK FIRST.

I see lots of gamers who think that running a retail store, and on-line discount store, or a game publishing company involves low work and high reward. It does not. If it did, a lot more people would be in this business.

Language and War

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

Good leaders will make use of every tool, even things as mundane as language, to win the battle.

While I am hesitant to begin this with the above words, as it will sound as if I am "blowing my own horn" in what follows, I think the point is important.

Back in 1979 I was participating in a training exercise involving my then unit (the 197th brigade) against elements of the 82nd Airborne division. At one point in the exercise I found myself in position to assault a choke-point. (Essentially a simulated ford site in that it was a narrow corridor across a major road which passed through the "battle area", mechanized forces were not allowed to cross the road in other locations, excluding other designated crossing sites of course, in order to avoid tearing up the road.)

At that juncture, I was employing a great deal of "intelligence" to make my decisions. Among these were the fact that the 82nd had dropped that night, and was largely foot mobile from that point. To my front (which was actually to the right of the enemy position, I then being technically on their flank) I heard engines. I knew the enemy was the 82nd, and I had been in the Army long enough by that point that I could discern the sounds different engines made, and these were Jeeps. Hearing Jeep engines, I had mentally assessed what I knew about Jeeps, the 82nd, time, the terrain, and recent contacts with "enemy elements" (we had brushed aside some screening elements earlier that night). This had led me to the conclusion that what was to my front was a TOW element, i.e., Jeep mounted anti-tank missiles deployed to cover the ford site and prevent the mechanized elements of the 197th from crossing and driving deeper into the 82nd's drop/deployment zone. (I was at that point unaware that the 82nd's drop had gone badly with elements out of position, so badly that for much of that night the umpires had put a hold on operations while the 82nd tried to straighten itself out.)

Having come to a reasonable determination of what was to my front, I decided that an assault with my available troops would probably clear the position, but I expected to also be able to call on supporting fire from the Armored Cavalry element on the far side of the "river".

Near dawn I finally received permission to make the assault. (I had made repeated requests to be allowed to do so, but was never advised that operations were on hold, I simply had my requests turned down.)

As we swept down on the enemy position, I ordered my first squad to deploy to the left and come on line with my second squad and to get the second machinegun in action.

The result of the platoon assault on their flank out of the pre-dawn darkness was a complete route of the defending unit.

Probably the single most effective weapon in the assault was the commands I gave. These were a weapon because one of the things I kept in mind was that we were engaged in what amounted to a "civil war", i.e., the enemy not only was trained to a similar doctrine, but spoke the same language.

They never "saw" the force rolling down on their flank, but they "heard" the weapons fire and the commands, and from that knew that a full platoon was rolling down on their flank, threatening to envelope their position and cut them off from escape.

What attacked them was barely a squad. They actually had the advantages of numbers and firepower. But the commands they heard out of the dark greatly inflated the force that was rolling on their flank, and they took council of their fears (they had heard the tanks and APCs of the Armored Cav unit arrive on the far bank, but were unaware that a "platoon" of infantry had "crossed the river" and gotten on their flank.

The assault opened up the choke-point, and the "river" obstacle was breached, allowing the 197th to drive deeper into the 82nd's deployment area. The breaching occurred while the bulk of the 197th had not yet closed up to the "river".

The use of language as a weapon had breached the "river".

I know this in part because a judge who was there informed me that he was awarding me the capture of the site AND the destruction of the TOW unit that had been there because he, himself, had believed, based on the noise and the commands, that a whole platoon had come rolling in from the flank, and was stunned to learn that the entire attacking force had consisted of only one (crazy) second lieutenant and eight other men.

Genghiscon, February 11-14, 2010

Jean Sexton reports:

Genghiscon XXXI, in Denver, Colorado, will be held on February 11-14, 2010. ADB, Inc. will have a game presence there thanks to Andy Vancil and Scott Moellmer.

There will be three Federation Commander scenarios: "Who Is the Mutineer?", "Combat Rally", and "Last Stand".

Star Fleet Battle Force will have a competition.

Andy Vancil will be running Star Fleet Battles scenarios.

The GURPS Prime Directive game is sold out already.

It sounds like a good time will be had by all.

For more information, see their website: http://denvergamers.org/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=13 They still list our games under Task Force games, so choose that after you navigate to the Board Games page.

FEDERATION COMMANDER: PLAY IT ON-LINE

Many people do not know that you can play FEDERATION COMMANDER on-line in real time against live opponents.

Eight years ago, www.SFBonline.com was created to provide players of STAR FLEET BATTLES with an on-line gaming experience. It was a smash hit as hundreds of gamers joined the battles. Tournaments and other competitions, plus general opening gaming, have gone on around the clock since then.

This successful operation has now been expanded to include FEDERATION COMMANDER!

Now you can play with real live human (not to mention Klingon, Romulan, Kzinti, Gorn, Tholian, Orion, and other) opponents all over the world in real time 24 hours a day! The computer automates many functions and acts as a friendly assistant for mundane chores.

For the modest subscription fee of less than $4 a month, you have access to all of the ships in the FEDERATION COMMANDER game system as well as new ships still in playtest and development. The Java Runtime system is compatible with Windows and Macintosh systems.

Never worry about a lack of opponents. Never worry about opponents who don't show up for games day because of silly reasons like family reunions or their own weddings. Don't be cut off from your regular gaming group while on vacations or business trips.

Even better, you can join in on-line tournaments and campaigns, and your victories will add up to a higher and higher average score!

The system also allows you to chat with friends, taunt your enemies, and watch other players fight their own savage battles. (Why learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from someone else's?) This "observer" system allows players of either game to learn the ins and outs of the other game before deciding to invest time and money in it.

So come to www.SFBonline.com right away. You can even fly the Federation CA or Klingon D7 as a free trial, or watch any game in play. Legendary SFB aces and new FEDERATION COMMANDER aces strut their stuff in combat arenas all the time, and you can learn from the best.

GHENGIS KHAN 1996-2010

Many of you know that Steve Cole adopted Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary's alpha wolf Ghengis Khan. On February 1, 2010 Steve wrote this memorial:

The wolf that I adopted at Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, the misspelled alpha wolf known as Ghengis Khan, passed away on 21 Jan 2010. Word reached me about this on 1 Feb due to the snow storms. Ghengis was nearly fourteen, old for a wolf, having been born at Wild Spirit as one of seven pups on Easter Sunday 1996. His parents had been captive wolves all their lives and the litter could not be released back into he wild. Ghengis outlived his three brothers and one of his sisters. He was the indisputable alpha wolf of the huge 50-wolf pack at the sanctuary, and never backed down from anything. He died suddenly, on a day he had been very active, presumably of a heart attack or stroke. He was known as the star of the sanctuary tour, clearly the biggest and most powerful wolf presence there. Never shy, he was always at the front of his enclosure to meet the guests (and size them up for dinner). Only the two most experienced handlers could enter his enclosure, only when they had to, and they had to do so with protective clothing and something to keep him at a distance. Ghengis knew he was the head wolf, and he acted like it. Other wolves (unable to instinctively understand the chain link fences), hid their food from his view. I was proud to have known Ghengis, and to have met him on four different occasions, each time bringing him a beef heart, the traditional portion of the kill reserved for the alpha wolf. It was very special that I could spend most of a day with him last October, and to have personally fed him over 20 pounds of meat (heart and liver) that I brought to the camp just for him. That was, the sanctuary staff told me, the greatest day of his entire life. Artemesia, his female companion for many years, is devastated and inconsolable, as am I.

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To visit the website of Wild Spirit's Wolf Sanctuary, go here: http://www.wildspiritwolfsanctuary.org/