What is the "time scale" of the game - how long is each turn - 6 mos - 1 year?

[Stoob]

Hi there, is AA50 working under any “time scale”?  Seeing that most games seem to last at least 6 turns, is a turn (in theory) a year of war, or 6 months of war or what?  Are all my games ending in 1948 if I play 7 turns?

Does it matter?

Am I stupid?

Why is the sky blue?

Ok Enough for now.  :lol:

[Imperious Leader]

Larry says its about 6 months, but it could be as short as 4 months

[Lema099]

I’ve also wondered about turn scale and did some searching a while back.  Larry Harris has twice said on his forum that, if he had to lock it down, A&A turns are about 3 months long:

15.Sep, 2004: “There is no specific time period. HOWEVER… If I had to absolutely give a turn a time I’d say a turn was just about 3 months.”
http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/bb2/viewtopic.php?t=90

07.May, 2007: “by the way, I think a turn represents about 3 months.”
http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/bb2/viewtopic.php?t=1330&start=16

Both of these were in discussions about Revised - I haven’t seen anything he may have said about other editions.

[LuckyDay]

cool, good to know.

[Lucifer]

If the 3 month time scale is the same in AA50, then many wars (games) will only last a couple of years…sometimes only a year  :roll:  :lol:

[GUY 1NC09N170]

Yikes! that’s 16 or so turns to get to the end of 1945. I don’t have that kind of endurance. 10 turns is considered a long game with my group.

[Lema099]

@Subotai:

If the 3 month time scale is the same in AA50, then many wars (games) will only last a couple of years…sometimes only a year  :roll:  :lol:

@GUY:

Yikes! that’s 16 or so turns to get to the end of 1945. I don’t have that kind of endurance. 10 turns is considered a long game with my group.

I have a feeling that’s why Mr. Harris’s default position seems to be that there’s no specific time scale: game length in A&A seems quite variable depending on player actions.  And his scale may(?) be more based on movement/production rates rather than speed of play.

It’s sometimes the case that wargame players go faster than history at a given scale…  In the designer’s notes, Frank Chadwick wrote about Command Decision that he’d seen an instance of using tactical rules to simulate larger battles which led to an entire tank corps taking 50% casualties in 5 minutes of scale time (which is why the operational Command Decision scale was developed).  Games of A&A that only last a few turns remind me of that a bit… I applaud those players’ skill for using every unit to the fullest every turn, but my own games aren’t that skilled and thus tend to last longer, perhaps more like history where maximum use wasn’t made of every unit at all times.

I was initially surprised to read how short some players’ games are (sometimes 4-6 turns).  Back in the day with 2nd Ed. A&A, it wasn’t unusual for our games to last ten turns or so.  And my first solitaire game of AA50’s 1941 scenario lasted even longer.

So I can see why Larry was hesitant to assign a locked-in scale to an A&A turn: it seems to have more to do with the tempo set by a given set of players.  I just posted what he’d said on the topic when it came up on his forum.

[Adlertag]

@Lema099:

And his scale may(?) be more based on movement/production rates rather than speed of play.

This makes common sense. I discussed this issue with Larry, and will edit in a link later. But the importent here is the production rate. The ship movement dont fit into this, because it took 12 days to cross the Atlantic, not 3 months.

When it comes to speed of play, as you put it, that is very a difficult issue. In the 1939 startline we had no guarantee that WW II would go on for 5 years. If UK, France, USA and Russia had attacked Germany in 1939, then the war would have lasted 1 year, because of an alternate decision. If Hitler had not done all his mistakes, the war might have lasted for 10 years. Just look at the Vietnam war, that lastet for 20 years, in one tiny territory. And the Iraq war 1990 lastet 100 days. The speed of production are fixed, the speed of movement and play are not.