Acquire & supply depots

[StieliAlpha]

I guess you never heard the adage, "Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics." Supply is incredibly important. It is the lifeblood of armies, right down to the squad and individual soldier level. I remember hearing that something like two-thirds of all the soldiers in uniform during the war were devoted to getting supplies forward to the other third. Not suggesting that CM should get that deep into the subject, but the suggestions put forward in this thread do not strike me as entirely excessive in their concern.

Michael

Hi michael

Don't worry, I am well aware of the importance of supply. But simulations can not simulate every aspect of life. Some things need to remain abstract for practical reasons. In this thread e.g. everybody discusses about ammo resupply. But what about food and water? What about stretcher bearers and medics? What about command runners or telephone cable pullers? There are certainly much more things going on on a battle field, than any system could simulate.

That's why I say: Keep it simple. And focus on what we want to see (and play): The combat.

After all, the game is called "combat mission". And not "how to construct supply lines" or "how to administer a company".

As a practical answer: I, too, liked the simplification of the old CM games. When troops are low on ammo. They still could self defend under attack, but not actively fire.

[StieliAlpha]

Unless we have some octgenarians here on the forums, no one here has "real life" experience with WWII tactics and deployment -- modern tactics and SOPs aren't necessarily the same as WWII. However, if you read AARs from e.g., Fallujah in 2003, you don't have to look very far to find accounts of units sending runners back to vehicles and/or ammo resupply points to resupply during intense firefights.

And ammo resupply points were an integral part of small unit deployment in WWII; you really don't need to look any further than the period FMs (U.S. Army training manuals) to verify this.

Whether the ammo was in a truck, a handcart, or simply in a dugout in crates depended a lot on the tactical situation. But regardless, ammo resupply points are definitely relevant at the CM scale.

Well, I just read an eye witness account about a company size 4-day engagement in Afghanistan (in 2010, I think), where resupply was only done at night time.

As always in life: There are nice examples for everything.

Again, I am not saying resupply is not an issue. What I say is: It should remain abstracted, like many other things.

[Michael Emrys]

In this thread e.g. everybody discusses about ammo resupply. But what about food and water? What about stretcher bearers and medics? What about command runners or telephone cable pullers?

Don't worry. We'll be getting to those in a couple more years when we've run out of other things to wish for.

Michael

[StieliAlpha]

Don't worry. We'll be getting to those in a couple more years when we've run out of other things to wish for.

Michael

Please don't.

If you want to build supply lines, play Gary Grigby's "War in the Pacific". There you learn how to arrange convoys, assign escorts, load transport vessels, shuffle troops and supplies around, build stockpiles, run the transport convoys back and forth before you finally can launch an attack.

Takes a little patience untill you see the action and if have not done it right, it won't last very long.

[womble]

...simulations can not simulate every aspect of life. Some things need to remain abstract for practical reasons...

Well, the boat has sailed on that one, in CM, wrt ammo resupply. With ammo tracked bullet-by-bullet, and the possibility of including "spare and supernumerary" vehicles specifically to allow resupply, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Refining that model so that it has more variety and verismilitude can only be a good thing.

...what about food and water?...

Straw man. Every trooper carries enough water to last them the typical length of a CM battle. And the degradations in performance due to marginal dehydration are below the level of granularity of the simulation. Which you could read as abstractracted out. Ammo resupply is already explicitly supported. Different issue. We're not arguing (as Michael says: "Yet") for a complete logistic model (with fuel and food and boots and repair, largely because that level of logistics is for the most part way beyond the level of conflict the game is addressing.

What about stretcher bearers and medics?

Currently entirely abstracted. Not represented explicitly in the existing engine, like ammo resupply is.

What about command runners or telephone cable pullers? There are certainly much more things going on on a battle field, than any system could simulate.

Again, abstracted currently. Not explicitly represented.

There's a massive difference between iteratively refining an existing representation/feature and adding in new ones.

That's why I say: Keep it simple.

Too late. Ammo resupply exists. Addressing its shortcomings is more likely than it going away.

As a practical answer: I, too, liked the simplification of the old CM games. When troops are low on ammo. They still could self defend under attack, but not actively fire.

Pining for the old days won't get you anywhere.

Well, I just read an eye witness account about a company size 4-day engagement in Afghanistan (in 2010, I think), where resupply was only done at night time.

And one example where conditions prevented something occurring is a reason for it not being simulated in-game. There were lots of firefights in Normandy where tanks weren't involved. By your logic that's a reason to not include tanks in the game.

As always in life: There are nice examples for everything.

And, as always, the worth of the example depends on the context in which it is drawn.

Again, I am not saying resupply is not an issue. What I say is: It should remain abstracted, like many other things.

And, again, you've missed the boat. It's already explicitly represented, with some abstractions within that representation (no distinction between how the ammo is crated/clipped/belted for example). Most of the suggestions for ammo dumps aren't adding complexity, any more than adding a new model of truck adds complexity.

[Vinnart]

I think a lot of this problem would go away if SMG toters were inhibited from firing their weapons at ranges beyond 50 meters. That way they would be less likely to fire off all their ammo before their weapons really start to take effect and you want them to be shooting.

Michael

BF has improved this with some tweaking since before the tweak they were burning through even more ammo at longer ranges. This tweak has helped. Even though the effective range would be that short SMGs can still throw lead down at longer range for suppression so if it were limited to 50m one would lose that suppression at longer ranges. When it is all said and done I would still just rather have more ammo available than stricter fire discipline, which still would leave him with his head up without firing. It is always more fun to shoot more stuff up anyways.

[Vinnart]

I have promoted a modification in the acquire key ever since the release of CMFI. Sadly I’ve come to learn battlefront doesn’t listen or care about its customers so I don’t foresee anything good changing with respect to this issue anytime soon. Apparently only the reviews of gaming websites matter so until one of these sites mentions these short comings, we the customers aren’t going to get alteration.

I disagree. From what I have observed they are more involved with the forum than other developers whose games I have played. I have seen many ideas here incorporated into the game eventually. The reality is they are a small team, with limited recourses to put every feature in that the players want all at once. It is an on going process. Each build since the CMx2 engine has come out has been better than the last. Trust me they see the ideas on here, and sift through them.

[Michael Emrys]

Even though the effective range would be that short SMGs can still throw lead down at longer range for suppression so if it were limited to 50m one would lose that suppression at longer ranges.

I said 'inhibited', not 'prevented'. An SMG-armed unit could still fire at longer than 50 m range, it would just not be as likely to do so. As to what precise criteria would be used to determine whether a unit would or would not fire its SMG, that is something to be discussed if BFC shows an interest in the concept.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

I said 'inhibited', not 'prevented'. An SMG-armed unit could still fire at longer than 50 m range, it would just not be as likely to do so. As to what precise criteria would be used to determine whether a unit would or would not fire its SMG, that is something to be discussed if BFC shows an interest in the concept.

Michael

Yeah... it would be good to see some tweaks in this area. I know they reduced the ROF for SMGs at longer ranges somewhat a patch or two ago, but I still see SMG used quite intensely at ranges over 150m so don't think it's enough.

Compounding the problem is that, AFAICT, units don't have any kind of low ammo awareness. I can accept a soldier with a Thompson tossing a few bursts at a target 150m away if he's got a full ammo load; he's very unlikely to hit at that range, but he can probably get rounds close enough to at least contribute to suppression. But once he gets 50% or so below standard ammo, he should definitely be more reluctant to waste ammo firing at distant targets. Ideally, this behavior should apply to all weapons, but it's particularly important for SMGs since they burn ammo very quickly.

[LukeFF]

But, seriously, have you ever tried to carry around a tactically significant amount of ammo? Not for your individual use, but enough to resupply several squads?

I've carried cases of 7.92mm and 7.62x54R ammo and yeah, they are very heavy.

[LukeFF]

What about German ammo? 7.92k is never available for resupply. Was there a shortage on the front that they only had one ammo load out or is this a bug in the game? I would like to see some way to resupply that rifle.

MP44s were very rare in Normandy, so a limited amount of ammo for them is plausible. It's just that, for some unknown reason, BF thought it'd be a great idea to have the only 7.92K ammo cache located inside bunkers. :confused:

[YankeeDog]

Yeah, there is the one random bunker with 7.92K... one of the odder design choices in CMBN.

I can believe that 7.92K was a little hard to find in the German supply chain in Normandy. German logistics in general weren't great and I can see how an uncommon ammo type for a relatively rare weapon wouldn't be a priority. However, I have a hard time believing it was so rare that the only supply was the few mags issued to soldiers as standard load.

The issue is compounded by the fact that in CMBN a soldier with an MP44 and no ammo for it can't swap it out for another weapon, or even beg a mag or two off some guy with an MP44 in another squad (except by the local ammo sharing feature, but this is hardly sufficient). So once his personal issue of 7.92K is gone, he just tags along with the rest of his squad, pointing his empty MP44 at the enemy and shouting "Bang! Bang!" er sumfink.

It's particularly a problem in German campaigns where the designer sets supply to low or nothing and expects you to resupply from vehicles. The original release Panzers Marsch! campaign is an excellent example of this problem. Ammo resupply is entirely from vehicles in this campaign. It's very easy to have one or more of you soldiers carrying MP44s use up all their ammo in the first half of the campaign, and then they're useless for the rest.