Bradley Crews Making Questionable Decisions

[evilman222]

Has anyone else had problems with their M2A3s wiping out their own troops with friendly fire? It seems like these guys are particularly bad about it. I was playing one scenario, where I had an Abrams and a Bradley creeping along in file along a narrow road (with copious infantry support, of course) when a Syrian infantry squad tried to dart across the road in front of us. Both vehicles spotted them, and the Bradley crew decided that it would be a great idea to try and shoot through the Abrams to hit the infantry, in the process knocking out just  about every external system on the damn thing.

Same thing with infantry. I had a bradley with Infantry about 50m in front of it, and the vehicle spotted an enemy ahead on the fourth floor of a building. Literally every shot landed absurdly short and knocked out the friendly infantry.

I get that blue-on-blue fire is still a problem in warfare (side note, has anyone had it happen to them with CAS in the modern titles? I have seen planes strafe friendly forces in the WWII titles but not the modern ones), but this is just absurd...

[A Canadian Cat]

Interesting. I have not seen that.

Question for you - are you playing on Iron? I ask because on Iron if a blue unit does not see another blue unit they will fire like they are not there. This can lead to what you are talking about. But so can just missing the red target too.

As for CAS I have not seen that but I also make sure by air support calls are well away from my forces - learned my lesson from WW2 games not to be calling CAS anywhere near my forces.

[37mm]

I've never seen Bradley's shoot up an Abrams but I've certainly seen & conducted a large number of blue-on-blue incidents ever since the days of CMSF1.

Bradley's & the mk19 Grenade launchers are particuarly prone to these incidents.

You learn, after many horrible incidents, to be extremely careful with autocannon like weapons & more properly consider where your AFV's are, where they could be firing & where your footsloggers are.

Here's an incident that occured recently when someone tried out the CMSF2 Demo.

[Chibot Mk IX]

I have seen a lot of Blue-on-Blue infantry casualty caused by trigger happy auto-cannon  gunner in CMBS.  It is very likely to happen if your infantry is staying under a tree, and the AFV behind fire shots that hit the tree.  This is a risk you have to take when you put infantry in front of your AFV 

[Erwin]

Have found friendly fire casualties can be fairly common - caused mostly when a friendly "big gun" (50 cal and larger) fires on an enemy that is close to or in line of fire of a friendly - the friendly can easily get killed by proximity - eg: fire grazing the ground where the friendly inf is lying.

Care has to be taken using arcs etc and relative placement of friendly inf and vehicles to avoid the above (as much as possible).  Generally, you want to avoid having any friendly to be along the fire line of a "big" gun.

[RexSaur]

yep, have that all the time with Bradleys firing in trees and hills killing friendlies.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

BMP-2s are just as trigger-happy.....I recently fought a battle where over 50% of my casualties were inflicted by my own IFV's attempts to 'support' their dismounts!  

[evilman222]

On 8/30/2019 at 4:49 PM, IanL said:

 

Question for you - are you playing on Iron? I ask because on Iron if a blue unit does not see another blue unit they will fire like they are not there. This can lead to what you are talking about. But so can just missing the red target too.

I am playing on Iron, but with the Abrams incident they were able to see the tank in front of them.

 

On 8/30/2019 at 4:49 PM, IanL said:

As for CAS I have not seen that but I also make sure by air support calls are well away from my forces - learned my lesson from WW2 games not to be calling CAS anywhere near my forces.

I have been able to give a target area command with my own forces in it, and not have any issues with CAS intentionally attacking my forces (sometimes there'll be casualties due to my men getting caught in the blast radius of munitions meant for the enemy, but that isn't really what I'm talking about). I have never seen intentional BvB from CAS in the modern titles (In the WWII titles, meanwhile, I rarely if ever use CAS, even on the opposite side of the map from my forces, because my pilots seem to have forgotten which side they're fighting on...)

[Sgt Joch]

Generally, friendly AI units can fire through other friendly AI units with no damage. There was a post by Steve about this eons ago. In RL, there are complex rules about weapon deconfliction, but as I recall it would be too complex to code. Just to give one example, just the blast from the M1 Abrams main gun can injure personnel within 50-100 meters.

Having said that, yes there are many instances, if you use area fire, indirect fire, if a shell/missile falls short or hits an obstacle where friendly units can be hit. Weapon deconfliction is an important concern, especially in CM modern where you can pile on a lot of firepower very quickly.

[MikeyD]

I recall during one of the gulf wars (I forget which) a story of a Bradley putting 25mm rounds into the rear of an Abrams and knocking it out. Former NFL player Pat Tillman died from friendly fire when his platoon's .50 cal gunner area fired onto Tillman's position. Modern day firepower seems to be at odds with the concept of having troops forward as a screen for you armor because most-everything you fire these days would rain flying sabot petals down on them.

In the game friendly fire casualties are 'designed-in' to night battles. Its been a long time since I've played a night battle so my memory's a bit hazy.