Above the Trenches
Design Essays

Offensive Thoughts

You might think that historically the British got an unpleasant surprise running into the superior German aeroplanes, but that's not the case. In fact, British losses had been rising since the beginning of the year -- markedly so in March -- and the Royal Flying Corps had no reason to expect April to be any better.

But the western Allies were committed to launching coordinated offensives in April, 1917, and the RFC and the Aéronautique Militaire were required to support those actions, ready or not.

Since Above the Trenches puts you in the same position as the RFC & AM commanders, it, too, needs external drivers to force aerial commitment. The mechanism in this case is a collection of Offensive Markers (OMs) for each major combatant (Britain, France, and Germany). On any given turn a combatant might have a Current OM, which is public knowledge and affects scoring this turn, and/or a Pending OM, which is known to its owner but hidden from the enemy until the following turn.

I'm going to postpone the question of when OMs are assigned until the "game story arc" installment. Let's just take it for granted that on any given turn, one or more OMs are Current, and others are Pending.

Some OMs are labeled "All Quiet on the Western Front", and have no game effect other than possibly misleading the enemy. But most OMs have a game area and a point value, for example "Arras 6". The name determines where the offensive is occuring, and the value are the points at stake in that offensive.

Those points are important because they're the big opportunity in the game to make high scores.

You can score points each turn in each area for performing various missions. But in areas where no friendly offensive is occuring, there is a rather low limit on the amount that you can score: one point for bombing and two points for reconnaissance, for a total of three. On average the Allied and German scores in each area should cancel each other out for a net gain of zero.

If there is a friendly offensive happening in an area, your reconnaissance missions can score up to the counter's value in points. In the "Arras 6" case, three reconnaissance missions (@ 2pts) can score.

But there is a twist, in that unclaimed points are given to the other side. Continuing the "Arras 6" case, if only one British reconnaissance squadron succeeds in its mission, the British score two points ... and the Germans get the remaining four!

These mechanics still require some playtest as to the exact point values, but they seem a sound framework to nudge the players in historical directions. You don't have to commit to support an offensive, but doing so will cost a lot of points.

This scheme also gives me a hook to differentiate reconnaissance and bomber aircraft, which has hitherto been a bit of a design conundrum. Past versions of Above the Trenches have always equated bombers with strategic bombing -- but now differentiating on the tactical level makes sense, too. You need a bomber wing to pick up the extra point in an area, but they'll never make the big scores that the reconnaissance wings do.

The exact mix of Offensive chits can be postponed for a bit. Here's what happened historically, for use as a basis for the countermix and further thought: