Cpl Steiner
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Posts posted by Cpl Steiner
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MikeyD,
Thanks for your response. I agree that this is a danger. However, at the moment the wounded just seem to be forgotten about. If you surrender, then they should at least be added to the prisoners total. If a vehicle literally blows up, then perhaps this should be reflected in the casualties by having the entire crew KIA. You could also prevent abuse to some degree by not allowing direct targeting of units consisting entirely of seriously wounded and men acting as medics.
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Here's an idea I'd like to see in the next version of the game engine.
At the moment, no distinction is made between wounded and KIA. This causes a number of problems. The biggest is the prisoner count when one side surrenders. This is only ever made up of healthy enemy soldiers. What about the wounded? Are we to believe they somehow manage to crawl back to their lines?
Another problem is the visibility of some wounded. For instance, if a tank is blown up and goes on fire, the crew do not escape. However, if you check the AAR after the battle you will see that some of the crew are actually only wounded, not KIA. Where are they? If they are in the burning tank, they should be dead. If they got out, they should have become visible on the map so they could be either captured or killed later.
I think the game engine should track all casualties to the end of the game. I'd have three types of casualty: Lightly Wounded, Seriously Wounded, and KIA. This breakdown would be shown in place of the casualties figure that shows for each unit at the moment.
Lightly wounded would have half normal firepower, or a reduced chance of contributing fire to each attack, whichever was easiest for the game engine to handle.
Seriously wounded would have zero firepower and would be immobile. However, two men (either healthy or lightly wounded) could move a seriously wounded man as if he were a heavy weapon like an MG.
Thus, a squad with one or more seriously wounded could move slowly (also tiring more quickly) if sufficient men were available to carry the seriously wounded. However, the men doing the carrying would be unable to contribute their firepower to any attack, whether moving or not. They'd be too busy looking after the injured.
If a vehicle caught fire, a crew unit would bail out consisting of the lightly wounded and any seriously wounded up to their carrying capacity (i.e. up to half the number of lightly wounded). Any seriously wounded left in the vehicle would automatically become KIA. These men, though ineffective as combatants, could subsequently be captured or killed, so the owning player would have an incentive to move them to safety.
If at any time a seriously wounded man had less than two men looking after him, he would have a chance of dying that turn from his wounds. The player would have an incentive to keep his wounded alive, as seriously wounded would count as only half a casualty to the enemy.
As can be seen, seriously wounded men would slow down the rest of their unit, so the player would need the option of abandoning these men so as to continue the attack. The "split squad" order would be modified for this purpose, as described below.
At present, it divides the squad into an assault group and a long-range weapons group. The modified order would also try to put any lightly and seriously wounded men with the long-range weapon group, leaving all the healthy men in the assault group. Of course, if there were too many wounded, some might have to go with the assault group.
Of course, the player might not have the luxury of allowing so many of his fighters become non-combatants looking after injured colleagues. He might have to leave the injured behind and hope they survive on their own.
To facilitate this, a new "Leave Wounded" order would be made available. This would create a crew-sized unit consisting of all the seriously wounded in the squad. The seriously wounded count for the original squad would transer to the new crew-sized unit. To keep track of where these wounded originated from, the new crew-sized unit would have the parent unit's title in its own designation, e.g. 1st Squad, 1st Platoon, Wounded-A (-B, -C etc. for subsequent uses of the Leave Wounded order). As has been said, these men would have a chance of dying each turn due to being left on their own, making this a difficult choice for the player.
Now that the seriously wounded can potentially end up lying on the battlefield unable to move and on their own, you could add medic units to the force mix - something a lot of people have been asking for. These lightly armed crew-sized units would be able to merge with any abandoned seriously wounded unit, to form a new full-sized unit. Medics would be very good at stopping the seriously wounded from dying, so seriously wounded men with one or more medics would not have any chance of dying even if there weren't enough medics to move them all. Of course, if the ratio of medics to seriously wounded was 2:1 or greater, then they could move the seriously wounded to safety as well.
I think the features outlined above would add a whole new sense of realism to the game. Now you would have to worry about preventing wounded men falling into enemy hands and becoming prisoners, or dying on the battlefield. Likewise, you would have to sometimes leave men behind and press on with the attack, knowing that in so doing you might lose more men. The addition of medic teams would also add a new ethical level to the game.
If anyone has had similar thoughts along these lines then I'd love to hear them.
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If this idea has been posted before then accept my apologies but it's such an obvious one I'm sure it must have.
How about music. This may sound daft, but I think it would be really cool to have a suitably martial soundtrack playing in the background. There are loads of war movie tracks out there that would be suitable - "A Bridge Too Far", "Patton", "Kelly's Heroes", "Battle of the Bulge" (at least I think that was a film). Basically, anything your local military band could play would be suitable.
Am I crazy or does anyone else want a rousing military band playing whilst they send their brave "heroes" to a certain death in defence of freedom, or the Reich, or whatever!
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Hi,
I've been playing CM for years and yet I'm still not sure how the game handles walls for purposes of cover. Does a squad have to be in contact with the wall to get any cover, or is there some amount of defilade cover extending behind the wall. In other words, on completely flat terrain, would you benefit from a wall around a field you where hiding in if fired at from the other side of the wall? In particular, I think you should be able to hide and be completely invisible. Is this the case?
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I've been thinking about this problem and I think you could simulate it by limiting how many units you can give orders to per turn based on how badly things are going.
CM already simulates fear at the squad/crew level by giving units pinned/panic/broken status. This prevents the unit being controlled as easily as when it is not under the effects of fear.
At the commander level, a battle that starts to go badly is likely to induce fear of losing the battle, with associated fears about the shame of being responsible for a military disaster and the possibility of facing a court-marshall, as opposed to fear of being killed.
You could simulate this by reducing the number of units you can control. This is entirely realistic in my opinion. Fear at this level will tend to make it difficult for you to make quick decisions, and give you a tendency to focus on one part of the battlefield where the action is and neglect peripheral areas.
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Michael Emrys,
I played all the Squad Leader games back then too (Cross of Iron, Crescendo of Doom, etc.) and know where you are coming from. When I played the first CMBO demo my immediate thought was, "Wow, this is just like Squad Leader!" Happy days!
Like you I have only ever played CM against the AI. I may give the e-mail game a go though - if only to see why the other posters rave about it so much. I think I am just put off by how much time it would take to play a mission at the rate of say 1 or 2 e-mails a day.
Anyway, thanks for all your comments and sorry if you ended up in a fight not of your choosing.
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Michael Emrys,
Thanks for the suggestion. I think this is the only way to realistically deploy Armoured Infantry in a QB.
I worked out that an Armoured Infantry '44 company has about half its points used up by the half-tracks. Therefore, if you decide in advance that about half the total force will be infantry, then you should give yourself a +25% bonus (handicap) so you essentially get the HTs for free.
The only difficulty is picking the right force size (taking into account the normal % increase given to the attacker) so that the figures work out. For instance, if you want 2/3 infantry in the force, you really need a +33% bonus, but the game only allows +25% and +50%.
I hadn't realized that CMBO used to allow you to remove parts of the TO&E. I understand now why this feature was taken out of the game. Ideally the best solution would be if the force selection screen allowed you to take a varient of the normal Armoured Infantry unit that was dismounted. However, I'm prepared to wait for the next version of the game in the hope that this option will be included.
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Redwolf,
I agree that it isn't much of a problem, although I'm not sure I follow you on the "third party" bit.
However, as a programmer myself (admittedly only business software), I don't see that the option to remove unwanted parts of a unit's TO&E would pose much of a problem. I'd even go as far as to say that you should be able to remove the organic MMGs/mortars if you want to. After all, there must have been occasions when the heavier equipment was left behind.
Don't get me wrong, I love this game. It's just that this restriction on what you can purchase in a QB seems unrealistic and unnecessary. In fact, fixing it might only involve removing the code that prevents you from deleting the parts of the TO&E you don't want. I admit that you'd still have to spend some time making sure that such a change hadn't broken anything, but I doubt that this would take very long. In my experience, removing code usually involves a lot less work than adding it!
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WWB
If you choose an Infantry Division you get a different unit organisation entirely - i.e. no organic MMGs/mortars and squad size of 12 men instead of 10. The HQ is 5 men instead of 2. This is all very well and good because the TOE is for an entirely different unit - but my point was that you should be able to play a QB using dismounted Armoured infantry.
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July-1944/American/Combined Arms/Mechanised.
GoofyStance understands what I'm getting at. A platoon of mechanized infantry can only be purchased with the half-tracks. You can't even delete them after you purchase the unit as a whole. Yet how accurate is this historically? I think in most battles the infantry would have dismounted and advanced to contact on foot.
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One thing that really cheeses me off about Quick Battles in CMAK is that if you want to choose your forces you have to take loads of half-tracks with your infantry. The game doesn't seem to allow you to take infantry as "dismounted" or "motorised" - especially for American forces.
I tried to play a QB in Italy in July '44 recently, and all the force selection screen offered me was dismounted engineers or infantry in half-tracks. As many have mentioned in this forum, half-tracks should not be taken in most games because they are expensive in points, not very effective, and easily destroyed.
What is even worse is that historically, they don't appear to have had much of a front line role either, being used primarily to taxi men to the front rather than fight along side them. Why then should the game force you to take them?
This is really something that needs to be fixed in my opinion. Does anyone else agree?
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I don't see why maps would need to be huge if only one side, namely the US, has the long range weapon systems. Don't think tank versus tank or helo versus tank, think RPG versus truck! You can't use a long range weapon if you don't know where the target is until he starts firing RPGs out of the second floor window of a block of flats!
A feature I'd like in a modern CM game would be the ability to create a squad by specifying all the weapons it carries and naming it. This would allow players to design scenarios to simulate conficts that haven't even happened yet, but may be happening once the game is out.
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I played the tutorial scenario last night and managed to pull off a total victory with just 2 casualties - neither of which was KIA. Has anyone done better?
By the way, does anyone know if the Brit unit shown in the scenario was the forerunner of the SAS? I know they started in the desert.
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Thanks for replying everyone, and sorry for the delay in getting back to this post.
JasonC, you are right that I meant mechanized parent unit but armour force mix. Thanks also for your in-depth analysis of the problem.
I have been using a couple of half-tracks and an armoured car to scout ahead, with a sharpshooter and either a mortar or FO in each half-track. However, once they spot the guns I've pretty much been bringing up the tanks immediately to try to put them out of action. What usually happens then is that guns I hadn't spotted open up and the whole thing degenerates into a tank on gun shooting match.
I have noted your suggestion about using HMGs to suppress guns. This is quite strange because one of my tactical decisions was specifically to leave out HMGs. I thought they'd slow everyone down, so I opted for LMGs instead. Maybe I've given up too much heavy firepower?
One of the problems is that I don't really know how much time I should give myself. Perhaps I am trying to rush things more than would happen in real live. I typically set the map size to small and number of turns to 35 variable but I always seem to run out of time.
Another thing I may be doing wrong is making the battlefield conditions too tough. I typically leave everything set to "no damage", "mid-day" and "clear". In real life, I doubt whether an assault would be ordered without some artillary bombardment of the enemy positions prior to the advance. If I gave the map some level of damage (to give the infantry some craters to hide in), gave the defender some light casualties, and set the weather and timing to "overcast" and "dawn", I am wondering if this would give me a better chance without sounding too much like cheating?
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Recently I've been playing the same sort of game over and over and have been getting trashed by the AI every time. As the Axis I've been picking an SS mechanized force in an Armoured Assault against an all-infantry Allied defender. Every time I have had virtually all my armour wiped out by masses upon masses of AT guns, including some in pillboxes.
Of all the quick battle games I've played, I think this is the toughest. I thought making the defender all-infantry would make things easier for an armoured assault force, but if anything it is ten times harder because of the number of AT guns the defender gets.
I was just wondering if other CMBB players had experienced this, and if they had any solutions?
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I've noticed in this thread that everyone seems to be fixated on one-sided wars involving the West versus some third world dictatorship like Iraq. You could easily get a more balanced game just by picking wars more representative of the modern era.
For instance, Africa has seen more wars in this era than practically any other continent. You have the Belgian Congo, Rhodesia, Angola, Libya (against Chad in the 80s, Egypt in '77), not to mention Somalia, Namibia and countless other war zones to choose from, ranging from the 60s to the present day.
The terrain doesn't have to be all jungle either. much of Africa is a bit like the steppe of Russia - wide open grassland broken up by the odd clump of trees.
You don't even have to rule out AFVs. Plenty of soviet tanks and BMPs were used in these wars, as well as western equipment fielded by the Rhodesians and South Africans.
You also have western mercenary units to choose from, such as Mike Hoare's men in the Congo in the '60s and the infamous Colonel Callan in Angola in the '70s. For fictional scenarios you also have some great movies to draw from, such as "The Wild Geese" and "The Dogs of War".
You could provide OOBs for some major players in the region, such as South Africa, Rhodesia, Cuba and a few others, and some general OOBs such as "Soviet Equipped Militia". You could also have a "Design your own" option to create OOBs for countries not listed. This would allow you to build squads and teams out of standard equipment of the period, and name the units to suit your scenario (e.g. "UNITA Rebel Infantry", or "British Mercenary Infantry").
I think for representative modern era wargaming Africa is definitely worth a look. Does anyone else agree?
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Here's a nice easy one that I'm sure would make a lot of games more enjoyable and realistic.
1. Have a "Use Roads" order for vehicles that can be toggled on or off. When on, the vehicle will calculate extra waypoints to use any roads that take it in the right direction.
2. Have a "form column" order for vehicles that tells the vehicle to follow another friendly vehicle as closely as possible. This would allow vehicles to be chained together in a convoy that moves at the speed of the slowest vehicle and maintains regular gaps between vehicles.
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Has anyone thought about the possibility of doing an Allied BCR campaign?
For whatever reason, I think most people prefer to play the Germans, partly because there are more memoirs written from a German perspective, but I think a Russian campaign could have some interesting features.
You would have to set the campaign later in the war, when the Russians are mainly attacking. I'm not sure of my history, but '43 onwards would seem feasible. I'd pick a Guards Mechanized company as the main battle group, possibly with a T34 or two thrown in.
To reflect the harshness of your communist party masters you could have the possibility of losing your CO in a "purge" if he loses too many battles. This would encourage play that is more aimed at winning at any cost if you know your superiors are keeping an eye on you.
The last phase of the campaign would see you taking your men into the ruins of Berlin.
Would this appeal to anyone?
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Bitlong,
I too have been thinking about campaign rules and would love to see what you've come up with. I may also try my hand at a map soon.
One suggestion - why not have the end of the campaign be some time after D-Day, when your company is transferred to France. This would have been seen as a kind of victory to most Germans on the eastern front. You could even run another campaign immediately after using CMBO starting in Normandy for the same unit!
Wounded as Prisoners
in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps
Posted
YankedDog,
Thanks for another thoughtful response.
I agree that the micro-management and gamey aspects might be a problem. However, I am still concerned that the number of prisoners taken is not accurately reflected by the game due to the exclusion of wounded.
I also take your point that you can imagine that lots of so-called wounded are actually men assisting injured men to the rear. This is not something I'd actually considered before. If this is the case though, I would have expected a lot more men to appear as wounded than do at present. I would also not expect them all to show as wounded at the end of the battle.
As for making the battlefield look too bloody, I dispute that this would put players off. This is, after all, what war is like. In some ways the inclusion of wounded and medics etc. would add drama to a game, in much the same way that scenes like these add drama and pathos to a film like "Saving Private Ryan". It would bring home to the player that these are supposed to be real people, and each casualty is a personal tragedy for someone.
Perhaps some of this could be automated. You could have casualty collection points set up at the start of the game, which spawn medical teams that patrol the map looking for squads with lots of casualties. These would then be move back to the collection point.
I admit that I'm starting to have doubts about my original idea now, thanks to your comments. I still think though that a few bodies or bandaged guys about the place would definitely add to the realism, if that doesn't sound too morbid.