In a near-term, practical sense, I'm quite content with the way this is handled in TacOps.
On the other hand, a supressed infantry unit will abandon defilade and attempt to move in accordance with (new) orders during the next turn - even into the supressing fire. Given the time scale of TacOps (one minute per turn, fire on a 4 pulse/turn cycle), this would sometimes seem to be improbable behaviour at the level of abstraction we're talking about (squad * 15 seconds * 10m^2). Sure, trained professionals might be willing to advance (cautiously) towards a position shortly after small arms fire killed one of them. But readiness becomes a factor, say, if they had several casualties from an unspotted machine gun in the last pulse of the previous phase; and not just as a 'morale' type consideration. The combination of unpleasant suprise, checking injuries, trying to figure out where the gun is, trying to give and hear orders in the confusion, reporting the incident on the radio, and etcetera would have a definite impact on thier ability to report -> recieve orders -> distribute orders squad wide -> implement orders (to improvise a little model). This aspect of supression would be a C&C abstraction problem, and would be difficult to adress 'realistically', since C&C is transparent in TacOps at this time, and your imperialist DoD won't sell me JANIS for the mac .
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However, I'd like to reapproach the same situation from a more 'morale' oriented perspective, as well. The troops in TacOps are optimally trained and intrepid. Ok. That's reasonable, up to the point where events start to depend on the nature of that training and interepidity. For instance, are members of the American infantry trained to 'go over the top'? (To leave entrenched or defilade positions - say, already within firing range of the enemy position - in order to close at a run; I actually don't know, myself). Certainly, in Korea, that proved to be an aspect of OPFOR's training. However, my uninformed guess would be that in a volunteer army without extreme incentive, the best you could do would be a sort of slow, person-by-person, mostly defiladed advance - unless they were stuck in the middle of a golf course 350 meters from a tank. [with a 300m range LAAW]. If I'm wrong about US forces, substitute 'NATO', 'UN', or ? into the question. Here you have a case where a tactical situation within the level of abstraction of TacOps can depend on what sort of orders soldiers are trained to expect. This isn't morale in a "Let's not and say we did", "I'm tired", "I quit", "I vote we go on strike" sense. An implicit contract between the troops and the command structure - that the command structure will not issue insane orders, orders that cannot be obeyed, or orders that will not be obeyed - has been broken. A clearer, if less usefull example: illegal orders. Ordering missile battery strikes on your own reserves, air and artillery strikes on a single sniper in 'town' terrain (Geneva convention - re: undue force and collateral damage), etcetra. I'm not saying that TacOps should ultimately attempt to model these things, or that trying to do so would be a good use of Major H's time. TacOps is at such a 'high resolution' level of abstraction (compared to, say, AVH's Stalingrad) that there are literally hundreds of instances like this where there's a temptation to break that abstraction down further, and this is far from the most tempting (well, except to me) or important (to any of us, I suspect) instance. I'm just saying that where a game (in the formal sense) resolves towards a model or simulation, these 'abstract' or 'nebulous' factors have more - rather than less - impact, and it becomes important to understand what thier absence means, and note them as limitations of the model, rather than ignoring them or avoiding them (which, from the outside at least, would seem to be the military response to these "'morale' category" types of factors).
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Especially for you Americans. To use recent events as an allegory to contain the preceeding moral: the Pentagon assessed it's air capabilities versus the JA in Kosovo with the implicit assumption that the JA would be actually deployed or deploying in the theater (it didn't), as an 'unthunk' basis for believing that their remote observation capabilities would suffice to designate tactical targets (they weren't) and that they could effect decisive destruction upon the JA by air (they didn't, except where the KLA provided close observation and reporting towards the end of the campaign). So, they were willing to get into a situation of limited engagement with allies that were not willing to use ground forces, which led to a failure to deploy ground forces in a threatening manner, which led to the non-necessity of the JA deploying ground forces in a defensive manner, which led to those elements (most) of the JA not engaged with the KLA or civilians being hidden piecemeal in houses, which ended the effectiveness of the remote observation, which diminished the threat from the air, which led to a standoff situation where NATO's political resolve was severely tested, and might have broken if the Russians had continued to support Milosovich. Which was exactly the sort of limited engagement nightmare they never would have agreed to, if they hadn't had (needed to have, for political reasons) such faith in thier investments. A junior officer who practices expending infantry to save armour, or an Orc chieftan who plans on micromanaging his warriors in battle... either may someday encounter similar problems.
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sorry for the very long post.
matt lye