Little need for fully sentient beings

In the Winter of 2001 the US Navy began the re-development of the DD-21 destroyer class warship after Congress slashed the original budget. The new ship class DD(X) and named after Admiral Zumwalt was to be the Navy’s first fully integrated command and control (C2) vessel featuring a small crew, multipurpose vertical launch tubes, large flight deck, and with enough electric generation capacity to power small cities or the anticipated kinetic and laser weapons.

What was not divulged at the time was that the Zumwalt’s C2 left little need for fully sentient beings to operate the ship. It has been learned that a black budget division within the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has been replacing the crew of the DDG-1000, currently at sea in the San Diego, CA area, with mollusks and cephalopods. Mollusks, due to their limited intelligence, (newly hardened) protective shells, and stationary nature, have been integrated into the ship-wide computing networks and are now responsible for intermediating with all sensors and actuators — from missile launch tubes to freshwater valves.

How far along the chain of command has been replaced with coleoidea is unclear. There is strong circumstantial evidence that the ship's captain is a human-octopus hybrid. The recent waterproofing polyethylene application to the inside walls of the ship’s bridge and mission control centers suggest that the hybridization is more octopus than human.

More news to come.

Waste Wars

I was reading the New York Times last year and came across an article about the hazardous working conditions of private waste management companies. The work is hard, the pay too little, and the time pressures too great. I don't mean to make little of this horrible situation, but, later, my mind wandered, as it often does, to Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil and the gorilla plumber. I have always been intrigued by the plumber’s statement that plumbing was the last radical trade in the near distant future. What if garbage collection was too? Could its work be made into a game?

"The year 2017 saw the rise of the litteral cut-throat waste management companies. Their goal was to grow their business by any means possible. By 2027 waste management had become paramilitarised." Waste Wars

I never completed the game development. What I have developed is more, I think, a source of ideas for an actual game developer or for repurposing an existing game.

How to start gaming a scenario?

I am working on a scenario and I am looking for advise. I have imagined a setting in the future where inadequate water supplies has lead to national governments and international corporations buying land in other countries to claim water rights. The water is then transported back home -- as water or as foods, eg wheat, rice, etc -- or sell it to the highest bidder. This lead to armed insurrection by the locals even though the water claims are legal. The insurrections have now devolved into multi-party factional/clan warfare. All factions have advanced military equipment (mechs!), but some factions have better supply lines and maintenance facilities than others.

The environment is harsh. Dust storms of national and global scale have made long distance wireless communications unreliable. So, despite the advanced equipment the factions continue to rely on scouting (human and autonomous drones) and runners to convey situation awareness and instructions between units. Even long range targeting and retargeting takes significant time, but once established is accurate. Some factions rely on well planned actions with strict adherence to the plan by the discrete units. Other factions rely on discrete units making local decisions stemming from the unit's overall purpose.

The scenario I am working on is a tanker truck needs to be driven to the coast (ie, off board) by its corporate owners. A rival faction wants to divert the trunk to its own facilities for local distribution (ie, driven off the other side of the board). It is a stalemate to have the trunk not reach either of these destinations before N rounds of play. It is a defeat for both sides if the tanker trunk is destroyed.

My initial plan was to use the Horizon Wars rules as I played an early edition of them from a few years ago. The rules are basic, but do make for a quick game. However, I am not wedded to them so am open to suggestions for other suitable rules.

My first question is how to start gaming a scenario? Is there an approach to determining the units needed? Or is it ad hoc, ie just play a game with a guess at unit composition and respond to the results? Or something else all together?

Update: The working document for this is at "A setting for near-future wargames."