Occasionally I hear from guys who look for more interactivity in their games. These fellows, while relatively few in number, have a common refrain: It upsets them to watch the enemy move while their units "just sit there." Interactivity levels are merely a matter of degree. All games, other than the few simove ones, require units "to just sit there" for some period while the enemy moves all or some of his units. That's just the nature of the 'beast.'

For my purposes, I'll ignore the "si-move" games as I believe all such attempts (in manual, not computer, games) have been failures of one degree or another-and as solitaire items extreme failures.

Type of Integration

There are two basic ways that sides can move: interleaved by unit, formation, and/or command or by player phase. Both have been tried at various times in the past with the latter far more common. There is also a third possibility, which I will discuss below.

Interleaved systems require some sort of activation method (chits, dice, whatever) where players alternate moving single units, or groups of units as the case may be. Once one player moves a few units, the other can directly counter that movement with some of his own. This cycle repeats until one or the other has run out of groups that can move

Phased systems merely set the interleaved group size as "all." When the player can move, he can move them all and so on. This is something all gamers are very familiar with, so I do not think explanation is needed.

The argument of the "just sit there" folks is that during the phased "all" move, some of their units should be able to interpose themselves into the festivities of the bad guys. What they don't seem to realize is that a fully interleaved system makes all units simply reactors to the last move the enemy made on a one for one basis. It is as if all movements on the battlefield can be viewed in isolation, separate from everything else that might be going on. That nothing actually happens simultaneously.

Since the interleaved system devolves into a move- countermove immediate reaction format, little or no planning is rewarded. Sure, the guy with more units or formations can eventually whip-saw the enemy by causing them to run out of viable formations (thus moving the rest of their formations without enemy reaction since they are "used up"), but real planning is never done, just reaction to local events as if the world always moved sequentially.

In effect it trades one set of errors for another. I suppose it all depends on what you want to be wrong and how important you feel planning is (Hint: in real life proper planningcombined with adequate lower-level initiative to fill in detailis absolutely critical). Fully interleaved games do a wonderful job of simulating chess, only with hideously more rules.

That said, what of this third type of integration? This would be integration based on operational posture and preparations (i.e. planning). This requires the player to take the bold (?) step of looking at the turn as a whole, rather than viewing each phase in isolation (sorry, this just appears difficult for a handful of guys; I know the rest of you can do this (daily) in stride). The turn's phasing can be used to separate out simultaneous events (formations moving together, combats occurring at similar times, and so on) from those that are more sequential (reactions to enemy plans, or taking advantage of conditions existing after one's combats).

This is what the OCS does. A player's move does not consist of a series of separate phases that have no relation with each other. The turn must be viewed as a whole. The enemy can't yell "stop the presses" right in the middle of a bunch of semisimultaneous enemy movements to deal with them in isolation, but can interject planned andprepared reactive forcesinto the mix before non-overrun combats and later exploitation of events. In time, this shows an amalgamated Boyd Cycle of events. While it does register this cycle uniformly for all units (a generalization), it avoids the opposite error of claiming that all such cycles are independent and do not correlate in time at all. It rewards planning (not everyone is ready for every job they could be called on to do. And forces which are not selected and prepared for reactive operations are not ready for instant action). But anyone looking at, say, the Movement Phase in isolation will not see this.

Time Scales

Besides the time ordering matter of phasing structure above, selection of time scale (at a given ground scale) is critical to the determination of how much interleaving is appropriate. With the OCS ground scale, interleaving (at all) would be ridiculous if the time scale was something on the order of an hour to maybe a day. In that time frame, no Boyd Cycle affecting matters at that distance scale is reasonable. Such a cycle might start, but to think that it will proceed to conclusion and allow meaningful action before the enemy conducts operations (already planned and operating) is silly. At another extreme, a month long turn, for instance, great amounts of interleaving will be needed to give both sides the needed cycle speeds. Importantly, the OCS time scale lies between these extremes. Likewise, the sequence-based interleave seen here is the middle ground between the potential extremes. I think this follows logically as a model of real life.

Real Life

There are two matters the "just sitters" forget about real life when they dive in head-first to "fix" the OCS. The first matter is the simple fact that some things in real life, do indeed happen simultaneously. The enemy (except in the most extreme examples) does not march one formation out and then allow you to examine that move in peaceful contemplation so you can react to that, in isolation. Everything is moving at once and while you are busy trying to figure out what matters and what doesn't, things happen that you just don't have time to interrupt. Likewise, the enemy has limited time (it isn't easy) to throw out a feint which he can expect to divert your entire attention for even a brief time. In a fully interleaved game, one player can do this simply by the order of his moves. I realize some players look at this as part of the fun of the game, and that is great as that goes, but there simply isn't enough time available in the framework of most game turns and scales to allow so many sequential actions.

Many more things than that go off at the same time. For example, two hexes some distance apart hold two strong formations. The interleaved sequence will usually allow the player to move some units to strike against one of them before the enemy can respond. The enemy, of course, will hustle the unharried force to counterattack the force attacking the other. All manner of alarms should go off in your head at this point: where are the forces you, as a good game player or, heck, military commander, would have sent to lock down the other enemy force so that neither could disrupt your plan? The interleaving advocate in his rush to make sure nobody is "just sitting there" has made a portion of your attacking forces "just sit there" instead of fulfilling their role in pinning down enemy formations.

Why does this happen? It is simply a matter of eliminating all simultaneous actions in the favor of making everything sequential instead. While substituting one (worse, in my mind) problem for another, the "just sitting there" player has managed to make the entire battlefield "just sit there" except for the one unit allowed to function.

This is worse in my mind because not only does it generate a possibly equal (but opposite) error in its grail-quest, but also chucks planning out the window at the same time. Why bother planning the attack, since you'll just be reacting (instantly) with whatever units happen to be in the area to unfolding events? Likewise, the defense isn't planned at all, rather as each offensive formation scurries forward, what (if anything) to do about it will be dealt with at that moment. Designating reserves is merely a matter of not sending a formation into action ... planning by default. Just like in real life, huh?

The second matter is an issue of reaction speeds. Units not currently deployed in a defensive position or all-ramped up for an attack are not ready to jump up and run to a fight at a moment's notice, period. That is a fact of life. LTC Leonard gives an excellent summation of the life of an armored division in Fighting by Minutes showing that the normal status of the unit is unpreparedness. When not already committed to an ongoing operation (which brings its own problems in terms of extricating itself), units are refitting, resting, scattered to the four-winds, or otherwise dispersed and unable to reorganize rapidly, let alone jump into a rapidly changing situation with cat-like reflexes. The only exception to this rule are units designated as reaction forces (reserves) which are on high alert during their time as such. Interleaving, with its elimination of planning, delete these guys in favor of "everybody is always ready," which shows an lack of understanding of how combat units work.

Even for troops designated as reaction forces and set aside by higher command, it isn't like the men are sitting in their vehicles with the engines at idle when the word comes down. They still need to deal with a modicum of planning (Attack whom? Where? When? With what support? Who's bringing the supplies? What do we do when we're done? Who's running vehicle recovery and straggler management?) and that (with its normal orders sequence) comes after the owning command has come to the conclusion that the sketchy reports from "the front" warrant deployment of the reserves and are not just a feint or distraction from more important enemy actions.

This is not to say that the reserve has not some contingency planning as to how to handle a few potential enemy actions-but even in the case the enemy does just what was expected, orders must go out to execute "Plan Y" and the sub-units must be alerted and formed. This is all much more complex than many game players believe possible and is the matter of "friction" as defined by Clauswitz and others.

OK, so your alert armor battalion managed to get itself ready to roll in an hour (minus two or three vehicles found unable to start, and an artillery fire plan written on a napkin from the mess tent ... ). What do you do now? Let's say your enemy is reported moving as close to you as possible in OCS terms but not in the same hex. Great, you crank off at 25 mph to get there with possibly slower speeds as you "feet" your way into enemy contact. Also, give the higher command 30 minutes to get the story right, make a decision, and order the commitment of its major reserve force.

At 25 mph (warp 1), it'll take your battalion 12 minutes to get to the war, plus at least another 5 to deploy for the attack or defense at the other end. This gives 1 hour and 47 minutes to get into contact.

The bad guys just probed the screen up there and stopped to wait for you, right? Hardly. For the higher command to commit the battalion reserve to this fight, rather than some other one (remember, things happen simultaneously in real life), this had to be something of note-like a motorized regiment attacking through the screen like a bat- outa-hell. This regiment smashed into the screen when the clock started, and rolled deeper into your position as fast as it could in contact, once more at the same 25 mph you were able to do under similar circumstances. Additionally, keep in mind that they are operating according to their plan (already set), as opposed to you (who found out you were doing this a little over an hour ago and are advancing into a desperate situation not of your own making). In the hour and 47 minutes, the enemy regiment has run some 44.5 miles or about 9 hexes. Even if you give your screen credit for identifying the enemy in the hex ahead of their defense, the regiment is now some 7 hexes to your rear before you get there aching for a fight.

So Colonel, when the enemy buzzed through your position, why did you just sit there?

A game with total interactivity would allow players to alternate moving one unit a hex, then the other guy can do that, and so on. In that extreme case, your battalion would have arrived in time to be in the way of the regiment (they move one hex to be adjacent to the screen, you move into the screen's hex). In the OCS (just sittin' there), your reaction will come after enemy movement. A mech infantry unit (like above) will have a combat mode MA of 8, with an overrun of the screen unit, that allows only a limited distance to the rear afterward. In the interleaved case, the reaction force could redirect its thrust to hit the spearhead (now past the screen hex) which is an impossibility in reallife.

In the OCS case, the reaction comes (temporally) right where it should-with the advantage of both planning and simultaneous actions.

This is where interleaving lays its final egg. After losing planning and the entire concept of simultaneous action, it does nothing to alter the OCS equation in this example. The enemy formation moves and moves fully before the reaction force can do anything.

Why run after something mumbling "just sitting there" and replace it with something "just sitting there"?

The answer, I suppose is "so, the reaction force can react to "some other" enemy formation. Which, of course, is frozen in time (no simultaneous actions, remember?), dare I say "just sitting there"?, while the reaction player picks and chooses where and when he wants to react.

Better? I greatly doubt it, but you can be the judge.