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Will infantry be fixed in CMx2


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About expected casualties. The Battle of the Bulge lasted about a month, was largely confined to eastern Belgium, and resulted in an estimated *200,000 casualties* on all sides (includes missing and captured in that number), with as many as 1600 armored vehicles destroyed (depending on what you're counting). The infamous 1990 Kuwait invasion "highway of death" saw about as many vehicles destroyed (mostly commandeered civilian) but only a small fraction of the infantry casualties. A LOT of soldiers got themselves killed & wounded during the Bulge battles, especially at the 'tip of the spear'.

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10 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

@Anthony P. yes that happens to his adversary as well, but his adversary - if the game is CMFB - probably has 60mm mortars. Situations like the one in @sonar pictures explain a great deal of the lethality of 60mm, 3 inches, 50mm and other light mortars in CMX2. One well-placed grenade and you wipe out half a squad or a full HMG team (German HMG teams aren't broken down like their US counterparts)...

Well again, can't really see the issue to be honest. His opponent will have 60mm mortars regardless of being in the woods or not, just like I expect he will have 81mm mortars. And I don't think it's news to anyone here that people found out fast that mortars got a whole lot worse in a forest.

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47 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Well again, can't really see the issue to be honest. His opponent will have 60mm mortars regardless of being in the woods or not, just like I expect he will have 81mm mortars. And I don't think it's news to anyone here that people found out fast that mortars got a whole lot worse in a forest.

Not just in a forest @Anthony P. this can totally happen behind a piece of wall, diagonal bocage,  a sandbag "L", some bushes, a building corner etc. There are many combinations of terrain elements that compel the Tac AI to "bunch up" pixeltruppen. I agree with Vanir that some can be avoided during map making... others not so much.

Light Mortars are specifically dangerous when used to fire directly on the target (the mortar leader is the spotter), due to their ROF and ease of transport. You can get one or two direct hits with very little forewarning and/or within a minute of in game time, causing 100% fatalities, and the mortar crew doesn't need to be very lucky.

The most recent event like the above I recall was during my German game against 

@slysniper on the Drums of War 1st round a 60mm mortar fragged a split German squad lying along an awkward line of low bocage with two direct hits fired from about 150 meters within 2 minutes. That isn't an uncommon occurrence - in my experience - when playing against a human led US infantry force. 

81mm mortars are heavier, have lower ROF, I am not sure they're very accurate when firing at targets under 300 meters, and last, most often are found off the map.

It's been like that since 2011, really,  so I agree it is not news. Perhaps now is better, since the bug with mortar crew target acquisition being magical was fixed when CMBN 2.0 hit us. 

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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60mm mortars in direct fire mode being an impressive tool also seems quite historically accurate though, and I doubt that it'd matter much if the fireteam that's hit has spread out or bunched up in their square.

Not quite sure what you mean about walls or diagonal bocage, I've never seen my guys bunch up there?

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@sonar You knew some incoming flak could be expected with a topic like this ;-)

There are times when I feel your pain, but generally it only occurs when moving troops and they decide they should take a route bunching up where a teammate just got shot up. And yes, incoming indirect can literally eradicate squads when a round impacts directly amid some closely spaced troopers. It would have been nice to be able to disperse a team under indirect fire. 

From the screenshot you posted I'm with Vanir as in I'm actually using face commands to force a team to bunch up behind cover in situations where I have a fire team in a place with only a tree for cover. Basically your teams are out in the open caught by effective enemy mortar fire. The discussion were having here is  about how much casualties should HE should cause in such situations, where some abstraction for visual models is necessary, at least imo.

What would you suggest that should be implemented, in order to 'fix infantry'? ;-P

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Vanir Ausf B, in regards to bunching up causing casualties you said "I don't think it does, assuming the tree is between your men and whatever is shooting at them" Surely that can only be effective if there is only one source of fire and it is coming from the twelve o'clock position because incoming fire from any angle outside that, say the ten or one o'clock, will draw a straight line through three or four men and  a burst of automatic fire can easily lead to a stack of dead men. And speaking of casualty rates, I know fighting in close terrain or built up areas will rack up the scores against the attacker who is heavily disadvantaged in these conditions, I expect that should be the case and have no gripe with that, but the stacking behaviour i'm seeing is leading to needless and avoidable attrition {see pic 4} which is frustrating as the player has no control over this and no I'm not asking for more micro managing.

Edited by sonar
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1 hour ago, sonar said:

Vanir Ausf B, in regards to bunching up causing casualties you said "I don't think it does, assuming the tree is between your men and whatever is shooting at them" Surely that can only be effective if there is only one source of fire and it is coming from the twelve o'clock position because incoming fire from any angle outside that, say the ten or one o'clock, will draw a straight line through three or four men and  a burst of automatic fire can easily lead to a stack of dead men.

No, the incoming fire does not have to be from the 12 o'clock position because the trees are thicker than paper and the men, while fairly close, are not occupying the exact same space, so simple geometry says the tree will provide cover across an arc roughly centered on the 12 o'clock position. Yes, the arc is of finite proportions but it's still better than laying out in the open.

Edited by Vanir Ausf B
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13 hours ago, Raptorx7 said:

Not true.

Shells that hit trees explode and cause air bursts in-game as well.

That's what people think, but I tested it. Just 1 tree per square means you need to fire roughly three times as many shells to cause the same number of casualties, compared to targets in forest terrain without trees. Test conducted by 60mm mortars against PAK40.

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Well that makes sense. First of all trees definitely can cause airbursts. Absolutw fact.

Two if you have a regular grass tile and a tree bfc has repeatedly said not to imagine that as woods but rather how a manicured park would look.

The forest tile has the forest microterrain which would be what you d see in a true heavy forest.

So there.d obviously be more cover in heavy shrubs logs etc

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On 6/16/2016 at 2:38 PM, BletchleyGeek said:

81mm mortars are heavier, have lower ROF, I am not sure they're very accurate when firing at targets under 300 meters...

81mm mortars are plenty accurate at sub-300m ranges. They work just as well as 60mm do, if not better due to their bigger bomb. They just aren't as common at the pointy-end.

It's worth noting that 60mm mortars aren't magic: they do their best work in Direct Lay at short, rifle-engageable ranges. So you need to get the enemy's heads down with some other weapon before nailing them to death with direct-lay mortars, or the return small-arms fire once you're spotted will make your mortar's crew cower.

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I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that teams could have a button toggleable for two types of spacing they'd maintain while moving or arrived at their destination.  Close and Far.  Far would spread a fire team over multiple action squares, close would return their spacing to what we have now.

Likewise teams could benefit from a second button which toggles between two formations like file and line or file and wedge.

You wouldn't put a full squad in a building that's likely to be targeted by arty because that would be doing the enemy's work for him.  Likewise a team leader operating in an enviroment with a high probability of enemy contact might choose to sacrifice control in favor of survivability by spacing his troops 25 meters apart rather than 5 meters.  

The formation your unit moves in is important in that it maximizes either control, or firepower.  For example a line maximizes fire power to the front but sacrifices firepower to the flanks.  A file provides you immediate firepower to the flanks, but minimal to the front.  A wedge is a compromise.  

I'm not saying I need it, but perfectly reasonable and would better mirror reality.  

Edited by TheForwardObserver
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Formations and fire teams don't mix in mechanised warfare. The practical difference between 4 men in a line and a wedge, when the Truppen are negotiating terrain, is trivial; any formation will be disrupted more often than it will be established. And if you forget to cancel the wedge formation when they get up to the hedgerow, they won't take the good firing positions there if they maintain their formation.

I contend that it's neither reasonable (due to control and coding issues raised), nor would it better mirror reality.

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1 minute ago, womble said:

I contend that it's neither reasonable (due to control and coding issues raised), nor would it better mirror reality.

I concur. Furthermore, I still can't see the necessity for it. Infantry formations were important right up to the end of the age of muzzle loading musketry, but with the weapons available even at the beginning of the 20th. century that was no longer true in most cases. There may have been a general practice of assigning each man a sector to keep his eye on, but the actual formation had to be fluid to adapt to the terrain the squad was moving through.

Michael

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Bunching up is due to engine limitations and hardwere restrictions. Its taken into account in the code with HE being nerfed and its the same for smallarms with microterrain saves etc. 

It might look a bit wierd at times but it plays out as it should. 

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"And if you forget to cancel the wedge formation when they get up to the hedgerow, they won't take the good firing positions there if they maintain their formation."

That sort of "automation" requirement is exactly what computers are supposed to handle with programming.  CM2 troops already behave semi-realistically.  The above example would be an extension.

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2 hours ago, womble said:

Formations and fire teams don't mix in mechanised warfare. The practical difference between 4 men in a line and a wedge, when the Truppen are negotiating terrain, is trivial; any formation will be disrupted more often than it will be established. And if you forget to cancel the wedge formation when they get up to the hedgerow, they won't take the good firing positions there if they maintain their formation.

I contend that it's neither reasonable (due to control and coding issues raised), nor would it better mirror reality.

Respectfully disagree.  Carry on.

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Do not want to hijack this thread but there seems to be two issues interwoven here. One is a concern about bunching and the other is about the lethality of combat in CM.  I have been astounded and even put off by how bloody close combat can be in the game and have had to fight the impulse to blame the game for the carnage. The amount of effort it takes to protect my troops which I consider a priority has led to a very deliberate and stealthy method of approach to arrange the sudden delivery of overwhelming fire superiority on the enemy. The amount of effort this takes always amazes me and the tension created is often unbearable. I have been playing off and on for years and in reading this discussion I finally realized how this is really an expression of how successful the designers have been in creating such a great game. If this makes me a fanboy so be it.

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2 hours ago, Hemostat said:

 I have been astounded and even put off by how bloody close combat can be in the game and have had to fight the impulse to blame the game for the carnage.

Well, it's a game about war after all :)

But actually I think the accuracy of the weapons in the game is way low. Just yesterday I watched one of my teams with 1 SMG and 2 rifles try to kill one single enemy soldier crawling across a road some 60 metres away. Took them nearly 2 minutes of continual fire to do it, with several magazine reloads for the SMG.

The reason we have lots of casualties is because the engagement range is really short, and that squads often keep fighting even after taking quite heavy casualties.

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The fact that AI controlled teams never really retreat more than a few meters at a time unless there's a plan telling them to also contributes quite a lot towards the high casualty figures I believe. If we ever get MP campaigns where we only get access to a company for a week worth of breakthrough battles in e.g. Normandy, I think we'll quite quickly see people becoming very much more conservative with how many casualties they'd tolerate in exchange for achieving their objectives.

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