Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
And I'm afraid that's what you might see if you went to an all-computer simulation of COIN...depending of course on how dependent you were on the AI. If you used it like a MUD, for example, I could see the utility. The problems begin as soon as you rely on the simulation to provide the majority of the "actors" and even take on the role of factions.
Actually, David Earnest (Old Dominion U) had a really interesting article on MMO- type multiplayer approaches to COIN simulation in the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulations last year.

My own classroom simulation is designed around this idea of a large number of participant interactions. It works well--especially the sense of intersecting agendas and the imperfect information flows that it generates--but it's human moderated, and pretty much takes up 90% of my week when I run it. USIP is designing software to support that type of simulation (the Open Simulation Platform), into which you would then "slot" your scenario and setting. This is all text and basic chat, though--no WoW style maps and immersive VR environment (or, for that matter, Night Elf Mohawk grenades).