Pride,

This is really impressive and I am coming really late to the party here. Brant and I work together and have white boarded out this concept with our development team a few times. Conceptually, all things discussed here are extremely important to factor in. However, there are a couple of concepts which may be being overlooked.

1. EBO already has a good framework for examining the impacts of actions by a faction (to use your terms) in the DIME/PMESII concepts. You may want to consider this.

2. Decide if the tool is going to be a trainer of process or a predictor of behavior. Process is easier to model and easier to teach. Behavior lacks the rules and will be significantly harder.

3. Use of an arbiter is critical. As you know systems follow rules, and these rules remain a constant in game play, until your engine/framework are powerful enough to "learn". A key aspect of human behavior is cavguy's idea that we cannot predict our wives, let alone a bomb maker. Balance the rules with the arbiter. Conversely allow the rules a flexibility through constrained random behavior to keep the player from "learning to play the game well"

4. Don't only use your S-2 as the arbiter. From my experience in working with the civil military folks, they will often bring a non-military solution to issues, which are often right. Not disparaging the MI team, as they have certain grown into civil-military guys in their own right. However, I would suggest that the IO or CMO team could help OC the play

5. Consider a non-server based, LAN instantiation of the system. This type of training is invaluable, but Marines on ship, or guys at NTC might not have the internet access your solution requires.

6. Pick an Echelon - If you are really serious about this as a prototype consider narrowing the echelon. The surest way to fail is to try to please all and ultimately please none. If you can do a proof of concept using the Battalion for example, selling other echelons to stakeholders is easier.

However, with all that being said, I submit the obvious, which has been in the subtext of others posts here. If you are starting out with a development environment and a good idea, you might be starting a little behind. There are several engines which are a good start (I have seen MOSBE and it is sexy, but it too has some limitations). You could spend months just examining the engines and finding the right one, but it will also save you years in new development. Beyond that, I would suggest that once you have an engine, this becomes more of a systems integration and software customization effort than wholesale new development (which saves a lot of time and money, in the long run)

Last, there are ideas which I haven't posted as they are propriety or more sensitive. You can PM me and we can chat offline on the concepts. However, I would suggest that there are several major agencies solving for this right now, and I don't believe anyone has a real comprehensive solution, and ultimately, many of them will wind up shelved when users determine that their value only takes them part way. Again, I am not trying to kill any enthusiasm - I believe in this idea, especially the more we rely on the E-6 squad leader to be an ambassador of good will. Let me know how we can help drive this ahead.