or~ The War on Fog
“The ‘Fog of War’ is the
uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military
operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own
capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an
engagement, operation, or campaign.”…
This is
becoming a thing with me… I start a comment in response to someone’s post and a
few hours later I find I have written a post… sheesh. So, this is where I
responds in a very tl;dr way to Mabrick’s latest, “Getting
Round to Make Eve more Real”…
OK, I “basically”
agree with the ‘FoW’ (Fog of War) basis, as Intel is THE KEY in all battles, numerical
& firepower superiority are always second to Intel and FoW is very, very real… Mab
says, “Those FCs with the skills to parse
this spreadsheet quickly and efficiently do best. But this isn't really
warfighting. It's list management.”
Whomsoever
sits in Kirk’s Favorite Chair, be ye Captain or Admiral, warfighting (FCing) boils
down to Asset & Intel Management, period. This is known as ‘C3’,
Command, Control & Communications. The whole basis of C3 is Intel. Without
Intel you are just guessing your fleet to a quick death… A good a
definition of the value of Intel in C3 is as follows from an archive from Old
Earth at the beginning of the 21st century:
“Information management and distribution
provide the backbone infrastructure to allow near-perfect, real-time
knowledge of the enemy and the ability to automatically disseminate that
information to dispersed forces and command centers. Technical challenges
relate to heterogeneous distributed computing environments, distributed
database management, multilevel information security, advanced human-computer
interfaces (HCIs), and automated information distribution.”
In this Mab
is absolutely correct, in New Eden, approx 22,000 years after the above was
written down we have achieved the desired for ‘near-perfect’ Intel… We in New
Eden have highly advanced (far above 2012 Earth standards) Information Collection
and Sharing Systems, IE: Computer Networks, IE: the NEOCOM (I mean it’s WAYYYY
in the FUTURE right?). The technological basis for New Eden’s “Local” is:
(1) NEOCOM (FTL
- Faster Than Light) communications combined with;
(3) all
Stargates are networked via NEOCOM and real time update each other
on ship movements;
(2) no ship
can enter or leave an Empire system without using a Stargate OR a ‘Jump Bridge’
or ‘Cyno Jump’ the last two of which are readily detected and updated to the
NEOCOM Systems AND;
(4) ALL of this
information is accessible to all ships via the NEOCOM network.
The basis
for the HUD (OV – Over View) is:
A ‘Tried and
True’ human-computer interface (HCI) methodology for C3… the spreadsheet, or orderable/searchable
data table. This was invented long ago on Old Earth, which has been refined and
database input and updating are all now AI controlled, but it is still the ‘man
in the chair’ who ‘uses’ this data to exercise C3, and the ‘spreadsheet’ data
format is the best HCI methodology found so far.
In other
words, a “good” General, Admiral, etc. (FC) actually IS “…a better accountant.”
His ability to parse, understand and USE the data provided are still human
qualities that no AI has been able to truly successfully recreate and none of
this reduces or alleviates the uncertainty regarding one's own capability,
adversary capability, and adversary intent (ref FoW definition at the top).
Case in
point:
HBHI lives
in a C3 wormhole, last night we were running a “Forgotten
Frontier Quarantine Outpost”. We are up against the third class of the
toughest AI in EVE. In C3’s the Sleepers Web, Neut and Scram. All of
us were online and in fleet. Our CEO had setup multiple on grid Tactical BMs. Before
going in we went over tactics, primaries, secondaries and operational goals. Our
CEO was over all FC and our Fleet Cmdr was Exec. The majority of us are highly
experienced wormholers, we are well shipped and fitted, we had solid and clear
comms AND we had PERFECT Intel… and even with all that, we still lost a Tengu.
We were fighting
and maneuvering and he got scrammed and went down before we could get enough
ships in close enough to save him. No one “failed”, no one was to “blame” it
was the Fog of War. In the best possible engagement scenario in EVE, PvE, against
the 3rd best AI, the FoW still exists… in PvP it is very much alive
and well and assisting in ship and pod kills every day… you die and learn. The
upside was we pulled Eleventy One Million ISK from just that one site alone.
You discuss
how, “…perfect intelligence about who you
are fighting is terribly unrealistic.” Again, “basically” true… but what
about Cloakies? Alts? Neutral spais & scouts? Corp Infiltrators? Logoff/Logon
Tactics? AFK Cynos? There are still many unknowns in New Eden… we just have vastly
more advanced technology is all… better ‘tools’.
You cannot equate
the Pearl Harbor attack with warfare in New Eden, any more than ANY such ‘surprise
attack’ would have been possible just 50 years later. The advances in
technology between the late 20th and the start of the 21st
century were sufficient to bring the advent of SOSUS, the
rudimentary beginnings of what they called “Smart
Weapons” and the earliest beginnings of Combat AI systems such as the Predator MAE
UAV, and Tomahawk
Cruise Missiles. You cannot begin to compare the Technology available on Old
Earth in AD 1940 with the Technology of New Eden in the year YC 113 (AD 23,349) [no matter how
new the system you play EVE on is…].
=]
In re: “CCP
has already said Dust Bunnies will be able to take down local for brief
periods.” HURRAH!! THIS is Virtual REALITY at its very finest. I have
several friends who will NOT play in W-space ever due mainly to ‘no local’… the
loss of NEOCOM Intel makes applying C3 VASTLY more difficult as we who live on
the other side of the sky know only too well every day. Keep in mind also I am
sure CCP will have counters for this… Hire and send in a DUST Team to take out
the other team and re-establish Local Comms… Fun to be had for ALL!!! =]
I do have
one concern though… you say, “…and the
Overview was gone?” Where do you read that the Over View was going to
be removed? I read ALL the Dev blogs while the recent patch was loading and
that was not what I read. The UI is mentioned in “Stay On Target!” but
there is no statement that the Over View will be removed. Do you know something
we don’t? My understanding is the OV will probably have icon changes to match
on screen icons, but basically remain as is. And while the screenshots don’t
show the Over View, they also don’t show any Chat, Selected Object or any other
windows either… It was a screen cap with extraneous data removed to show just
the onscreen icons.
As re: “Blob
Tactics”… please see the US M4
Sherman main battle tank of WWII. And I quote:
“Shermans were often outmatched by the 45 ton
Panther tank and wholly inadequate against the 56 ton Tiger I and later 72 ton Tiger
II heavy tanks, suffering high casualties against their heavier armor and more
powerful 88 mm L/56 and L/71 cannons. Mobility, mechanical reliability and
sheer numbers, supported by growing superiority in supporting fighter-bombers
and artillery, helped offset these disadvantages strategically. The relative
ease of production allowed huge numbers of the Sherman to be produced.
This allowed many divisions, even many infantry divisions, their own organic
Sherman assets. Some infantry divisions had more tanks than German panzer
divisions did. This was a huge advantage for the Americans.”
What this
amounted to was a defacto US Armed Forces BLOB tactic against smaller although technically
far superior tank forces. It worked in AD 1944 just as it works as well today
in YC 113. I bet the Germans whined and moaned quite a bit too as the survivors
jumped from their wrecked Tigers and Panthers and fled from ‘blobs’ of Sherman tanks
and ‘hordes’ of American troops. ANY successful tactic is not a thoughtless
tactic, just ask the winners.
If the Germans had access to something
equivalent to New Eden’s ‘local’ and
been able to know, instantly, the type and number of the forces deploying
against them, yes they would have used different tactics… but that would have
been (and is in EVE) a two edged sword as the opposing force probably would have
had access to the very same intel.
I also strongly
feel that ‘theory crafting’, IE what ships and fits work best in fleet
formations also gives rise to an element of ‘FoW’ in EVE, hence as you said, “…that is less a statement about the
capabilities of the outnumbered pilots, than it is a statement about the poor
fitting prowess of the other side.”
Remember, and I cannot stress this strongly enough,
the Fog of War is not about technology… it is about the human factor. It is, the uncertainty regarding one's own
capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an
engagement, operation, or campaign.
A man
armed with an assault rifle he does not know how to use will lose to the man skilled
with a knife.
I am very
interested in how things will go once the DUSTers start to get really involved…
as the Chinese saying goes, “May you
live in interesting times.” CCP is keeping things in New Eden interesting
indeed… =]
