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Excellent feedback—keep it coming!
On bases—yes, the game didn’t model this (but then again it wasn’t intended to be a wargame—there was no military action at all in the KCL run of the game). India’s (eventual, long-term) improved defence position in Nepal and Bhutan is something that would have only become relevant in a much longer time frame than the two months or so covered by DIRE STRAITS).
It was certainly the case that some players shortcut the mobilization period, and that the capability card system was a bit much for some players to handle. Interestingly, neither situation arose during the previous play of the game at KCL because (1) very few ever mobilized, and (2) professional defence analysts were a little more rigorous than university students in allocating the cards. Regards combat, only actions at Commitment 5 were really combat operations—everything else was aggressive maneuvering, collisions/ramming, warning shots, etc. The model here was the UK-Icelandic Cod wars of the 1970s, in which 16 UK frigates and a half dozen Icelandic patrol vessels were damaged (with one of the RN vessels effectively put out of action permanently, and several more laid up for a year or more while being repaired), or the Hainan Island incident of 2001 (when a PLAN J8 fighter collided with a USN P3 Orion). Currently there is an average of one excessive/illegal use of maritime force incident per month (ramming, shots fired, etc) per month in the South China Sea, most of those conducted by China.
Thinking on Dire Straits²
Division granularity: When I was playing the war, in couldn’t help but notice how many more loss boxes the Chinese divisions had than the Taiwanese. Some of this is obviously a reflection of how much larger the ground forces of Mainland China are than Taiwan. However, both sides have just as many pre-mobilization units as each other, 2 divisions, which seriously hamstrings pre-mobilization China, who may need to commit ground forces to 4 theatres. My advice would be to make everyone’s divisions all the same size, and giving more divisions to nations with larger militaries.
Mobilization: The one turn wait for mobilization was ignored. This is obviously unsatisfactory (but compensates for the missing turn 9). It might be better to more clearly show the mobilization timeline with the counters. For example, have a timeline that shows how many turns until the unit is ready and have the units start moving towards ready once mobilization begins. You could even have partial mobilization of the military then.
Capabilities: This was a nice touch. However, with a dozen naval units, it quickly became unwieldy to manage which units with what capabilities were where (sometimes this caused tensions, for example when China swapped carrier groups A and B). While the latter is good, the prior is not. Besides giving the Chinese more generals, it could simply save time to just give ships default capabilities and just attach special naval capabilities directly to units like the ground capabilities (i.e. Give subs hunter killer mode by default and cruise missile strike and SLBM by capability card.)
Relatively bloodless combat: Combat came off as relatively endurable (at least before the invasion of Taiwan). Only one step losses were inflicted at a time. When two anti-submarine battle groups confronted a coastal defence submarine group, both sides suffered limited losses (admittedly both sides were at limited engagement, but I’d expect that the coastal submarines would come off worse for wear). When two large fleets clashed in the Strait of Taiwan, again limited losses. Losses should be percentages or something to emphasize how bloody modern warfare can be (The heavy losses in the invasion of Taiwan were because of Control fiat more than anything else.)
Making minor countries more reactive: Singapore deployed their naval assets and Nepal let Indian advisors in. Pakistan didn’t even give a peep in response to India going to Defcon 1. Admittedly, they are mostly pieces for players to use, and making the minors do anything would strain control, but they aren’t puppets and should respond to aggression on their borders.
Nukes: This is a bit of a difficult one. Placing ICBMs in a region gives an obvious deterrent right on the map. However, nuclear missile silos are a costly investment in time and money that has already been made by most of the nuclear powers at this point. ICBMs shouldn’t be on the map at all. Second strike capability through submarines could be modelled by letting players set certain submarines to have nukes on board (as a sort of an exception to the no capabilities change). Tactical nuclear weapons on the other hand, should probably be included in capability cards.
Bases: A big deal was made about establishing military bases along the Sino-Indian border. What difference in game would they make when they were completed? Nothing. Air wings were based all over the region and troops were airlifted out with no problems. Where bases are matters. It should be clear that the Chinese can’t move half their airforce to the South China Sea. It should be clear that bases near Nepal are key.