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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Not a very well developed thesis on Artillery. If the author is reading, please get a copy of Dunnigan's How to Make War which describes in detail how to calculate the various effectiveness of different artillery strategies. I've got a dog eared copy of the 2nd edition I was using while writing my 'ultimate replacement for Bright's empire' game (unfinished :-) But overall, in the context of war gaming it is an excellent reference.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Fourth-Edition-Comprehensive/...

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After reading this, I came across this article discussing specifically the German forces 88mm howitzer: http://99div.com/olddirect/american_and_german_field_artille...

It seems that from that it really wasn't the American's accuracy that enabled their simultaneous fire, but rather the American's understanding how important coordination was with artillery and starting from just after WWI working on making that a reality.

Do you recommend any war games that are playable on Linux? (web or otherwise)

Reading this article makes me want to play one.

Starcraft II via Wine

[0] http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7257017667

I have never tried it on Linux, but Steel Panthers: World at War is excellent and has a gold rating at WineHQ.

You can find the free version of SPWAW at the SPWAW Depot: http://www.spwaw.com/

If a bit of self promotion is allowed, check out https://github.com/spring1944/spring1944. It's an RTS, so a little more action oriented than the (typically) more detailed turn based wargames, and a bit larger scale than something like company of heroes, but hopefully fun.

Players tend to be around in the evening GMT. Contributions weclome, either in player-hours or pull requests -- hacking in Lua, primarily, with some supporting tools/infra in perl and python.

I really liked Unity of Command. Operational-level, Eastern Front, WW2. Available for Linux.

Yes, Unity of Command is one of the best light wargames ever created. It's all about supply; balancing the need to advance quickly to capture the objectives within the uber-optimistic schedules vs needing to protect your supply vs. not wanting to outrun your logistics vs. trying to surround enemies and easily eliminate them when they're inefficient and out of supply.

The AI is excellent especially when playing the defense (which is nice, since for the human playing the attacker is the more interesting role). It's great at noticing when the player has overreached and mercilessly punishing those mistakes.

I can't recommend it highly enough if you have any interest at all in wargames. It works as an entry level game, but is also deeply satisfying for the grognards.

I've been very impressed with the modeling in in Wargame: Airland Battle, which is available for Linux via Steam

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