Editor's Note: This article first appeared in the Naval SITREP. Our thanks to the publishers for permission to reprint it here. Wargamers are used to discussing the details of combat, damage, and naval construction. They can quote figures for endurance and sensor performance. They know the successes and the failures of the generals and admirals in many historic encounters. What they don't understand is command, control, and communication, or C3. C-cubed is hard to model. Commands, reports, and messages are not physical, like a ship or a tank, and their path is almost never a straight line. It is difficult enough for defense consultants with lots of money and computer resources to model. Putting it in a manual game would only slow play and impose artificial restrictions on players. So why do it? Because it is a real constraint on a commander's ability to exercise control, which is the reason for playing any wargarne. Allowing a player infinite control over every unit under his command is patently unrealistic. Even modern datalinks still require some time to act, and there is plenty of room for digital fog of war. Use the form printed on the opposite page for communications in Command at Sea games during a 3-minute Tactical Turn. It can be addressed to an individual unit or a group of units under the player's command. The 30 spaces are for thirty characters, including blanks, and represent the amount of information that can be written on a message blank, transmitted with flag hoist or signal light, and received clearly. (You computer types can think of 30 characters per three minutes as the baud rate). Although UHF voice radio was used in WWII by the US it was not always effective, and did not actually prove more reliable than the tried and true methods. Players interested in making a first attempt at understanding the limitations reality placed on WWII naval commanders should try using this form to issue commands, make reports, and send messages in the Tactical Time scale. You will begin to see why doctrine, standing orders, and prepared drills were such an important part of naval warfare. Back to Art of War Issue #20 Table of Contents Back to Art of War List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Clash of Arms Games. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com