Netlogo warfare

So, I spent a little time this evening with Netlogo - mostly getting to know 'er, and trying to decide if I was going to buy into 'er. At this point, it seems like a viable tool to use for my Military Reversal Of Misuse (using Military Tactics to create art). To reiterate, the idea is to use a networked Military maneuver to create art, as opposed to the military using artistic concepts to creating maneuvers.

I can already hear you say "Whatever"...

Maybe this will be more interesting: I plan to use a basic flocking algorithm (probably using this Netlogo package), but with image alterations that should provide for interesting artistic results.

First steps first, though. I need to do a little more research into the Blitzkrieg movement, and also try to establish some sort of idea of networked communications between participants. My suspicion is that, unlike the current army, there was relatively little direct communications between tank drivers; instead, they had to depend on visuals and proper spacing to prevent constant crashes and mayhem. I also suspect that, in and effort to maintain maximum forward motion, they avoided anything that was too troublesome and took the easy road to the end location.

This is all useful information for working with a simulation.

I have started fishing around about the military history of the thing. It turns out that Wikipedia is more complete than most of the crap on the net. It's section on the Blitzkrieg contains both historical information and strategic validity (which it turns out is mostly negative), and gives a pretty full view of the concept - along with a lot of links for more info. This is one of those cases where Wikipedia is a robust fount of knowledge.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll make my first Netlogo sketch that will get me on my way.

[ddg]