Time Scale

[Huib Versloot]

COTA gives you a good idea what for example a company of infantry can accomplish in a day, because all elements are present: fatigue, waiting for orders, preparing to move out etc. If you translate that back to CS you'll find that the 6 minute turns can't be applied without reservations (like in the huge Market Garden scenario of 400turns and even here the timepan was widened), since these turns equal to full action. If one wanted, one could calculate an average of action time that is possible in a day (using COTA). As a rule, the more different orders a unit gets, the more time they will spent preparing and the less time there is for action.

To Ed: please explain why a turn is 6 minutes and why it was intended to be that way and how it tranlates back into scenario designing?
The only way I can place it is that the 6 minute turns only represent the actual action/movement, while the rest (sleeping, waiting for orders etc) is simply not represented/skipped by the game engine.
Thus the designer is forced to make his own interpretation of the time NOT represented by the game engine. In doing so he will come on a different # of turns than 240 turns for 24hrs of real time. I usually look what the historical units achieved or could have achieved on a given day and use that to determine the length of the scenario. Most of the time I succeed very well in this I must say.

Huib