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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 8672109" data-attributes="member: 99817">Okay, this is interesting, and something I said in my opening post. Even in wargaming circles, the test for simulation is open to interpretation and ranges of acceptance for plausibility.However, your example assumes that 'game mechanics' can be written absent of the real world and still be used for simulation. This is, at best, highly contentious.Models for wargaming are bespoke, depending on whether its Napoleonic, or World War One pre-trench or trench or post-trench, or War of the Roses or US Civil War or 100 Year War or Roman Civil War or Vietnam. There is no universal 'game mechanics' which you just plug numbers into and they simulate D-Day. D-Day has to be very, very carefully scripted. Totally seperate from the Korsun Pocket. Totally seperate from El-Alamein. And these are all conflicts within World War 2.So unless you have a real-world model for combat what are your hypothetical units doing? What is your 'game system' created in a vacuum telling you? All your 'game system' can ever do - without real world benchmarking - is run made up numbers through a set of made up operations. That's not producing a hypothetical outcome, unless by 'hypothetical' you mean 'entirely make-believe'.A hypothetical outcome - in wargaming terms - uses knowns (like the makeup, deployment and technical specifications of the Warsaw Pact and Western armies) to speculate about unknowns (like the Cold War goes hot in 1985 under different circumstances). That's using the idea of hypothetical in its proper sense - a proposition to be tested based on limited evidence.That's entirely separate from making up fantasy units and a fantasy combat system and seeing who wins between a hydra and frost giant. That's not hypothetical. There is no evidence, and there is no test. The answer changes depending on how you change the numbers and the system - it's all invention. It's no different from the dragon landing on the roof. Made up creatures, made up situation, made up outcome. What happens? Whatever I say happens.</blockquote>

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