Broadsword56

Further comment re: Translating suppression and other factors...
 
Chris wrote:
 
Leadership, yes. If the leaders are hunkered down in their holes, too, concentrating on survival and without situational awareness, then they've stopped leading. So if a unit is suppressed in the boardgame and is entering a CMRT battle in that state, I knock down the leadership rating to -2, and also worsent its starting motivation. Also, the unit has to start the action on HIDE and keep a temporary, very small fire arc for the first several minutes. After that, I let the owning player lift the arc and issue any orders. 
 
But experience should not change from suppression. Their training and battle-savvy doesn't disappear, it's part of who they are. Some games even make suppressed units harder to kill, because once they go to ground they make tougher targets.

@sburke: Thanks for posting about our latest battle. Once I get Turn 9 and the single Night turn completed, I'll post another summary here of the overall operation "for all you folks watching at home."
 
@chris: Great questions!  I'll tell you how I handle it the personnel/casualty translation between layers, but this may or may not be to everyone's taste. 
 
Let me preface it by saying that when you use a boardgame system like the GTS, you'll always have lots judgment calls to make about things like this. That's because Cohesion Hits simulate casualties and losses to unit cohesion, all in one. There simply is no ironclad set of policies that will cover every situation and objectively reflect the reality of CM in the boardgame, or vice-versa. So I use some general rules, and then look at every battle as if I'm a forensic historian -- using any knowledge I have about the historical campaign, doctrine, and common sense as  I try to interpret what story the pixels are telling for translation into cardboard (or Cyberboard). This fuzzy logic is a big reason why op-tac campaigns turn some players off, I think. It goes back to the schism between wargamers of an engineering mindset, who prefer games where things are objective and transparent, and those who favor "design for effect" and are perhaps more wiling to tolerate imbalances and anomalies in games as part of the cruel fortunes of war.
 
You're correct about the 11 possible situations of a unit in Panzer Command. But to keep things simple, I like to view it this way:
 
Consider 40% personnel losses as the threshold for a unit to be eliminated. (Extrapolating from the 15% threshold that the Pentagon found tended to be the case in American WW II rifle battalions, the actual losses among the front-line rifle companies for that figure would be closer to around 40%.) Elimination doesn't literally mean dead, just that the unit is combat ineffective, not able to perform its mission anymore, and shattered as far as this campaign's time frame is concerned.
 
In Panzer Command, 4 Cohesion Hits eliminate a unit. (It gets 2, the third one flips it over to its last step, and then since it retains its original 2 Cohesion Hits, a third hit will kill it).  If 4 hits = 40% losses, then I treat each Cohesion Hit as equivalent to 10% losses.
 
But 10% of what number? In Bagration, the German units were lucky to have even 50% of their paper TO&E strength at the start of the campaign. That usually was true for the Soviets, too, but before Bagration they made a big effort to beef up the manning levels in unites slated for that attack.
So I usually start my Soviet units with 70% of TO&E. CM doesn't let you reduce personnel strength below half, and that's OK because it's more realistic to start consolidating depleted platoons and companies into single, more effective formations.
 
Even these policies should leave ample room for judgment calls. It's documented that a unit's ability to sustain losses and keep fighting also depended on other things, such as morale and leadership, or even its particular mission at the time. I just eliminated a German heavy grenadier company that took its fourth Cohesion Hit, because it had just been close-assaulted by a fresh Soviet Guards SMG company. The attack was in dusk, from a flank where an entire Soviet regiment was bypassing them. And this German unit had already had quite a busy and rough day. To quote from its battle log (a text note that travels with the counter in Cyberboard):
 
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4th (Heavy) Company 1/195 Sturm Regiment 78 Sturm Division XXVII Corps --- Battle history: 1100 hrs, 23 June: Despite being cut off, this unit's Opportunity Fire destroyed final step of adjacent SU-152 unit from 11 Gd Mot Inf Div that was in Hex 4707 and was trying to deploy from the forest track into fighting formation in the open. 1500 hrs, 23 June: With 195 Sturm Reg leader defying Hitler's standing orders, the unit attempts to break out of encirclement to the SW. Opportunity Fire costs it 1 Cohesion Hit, but it succeeds and regains friendly lines in Hex 4809. But, in the Peat Bogs,  it ran into a battalion of the Soviet 40th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment that was flanking the German line. Their opportunity fire caused the German company to suffer its 2nd and 3rd Cohesion Hits and thus lose a step. But it avoided suppression and made to Hex 4710, where it formed a refused flank on the extreme right of its regiment's line. At that point the unit was down to about 35 men. Turn 9 (evening 23 June): Assaulted by 1 SMG/167 Gd in Hex 4710 during the Soviet flanking attacks in the Peat Bogs. Lost final step and eliminated.  
On the other hand, sburke had a German Sturmpioneer company that was heavily engaged throughout Day One. It was consolidated to a single remaining platoon, but because it fought from trenches and bunkers I let it fight longer and harder. It managed to repulse an attack one last time before finally succumbing to elimination. Here's its battle log:
 
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Sturmpioneer Company 195 Sturm Regiment 78 Sturm Division XXVII Corps 
 
23 June, afternoon: Suffered 1 Cohestion Hit (10% casualties) in the Battle for the T Junction. In the second wave Soviet attack that afternoon, this company lost a further 13 men (19%) for its second Cohestion Hit. Occupies woods fortifications in Hex 4508 with its remaining 56 men. Then, after the battle but still in Turn 6, direct fire of MG Co/171st Reg causes it to lose its 3rd cohesion hit, and the unit loses a step. --- Sturmpioneers made their final stand in trenches in Hex 4508 on the right flank of the Single-Track Railway, fending off a MG company and hanging on by their fingernails.  While they beat back the attack, they lost 25 of their remaining 56 men and were eliminated as a combat-capable force. -----   It's stories like this, as they develop, that make op-tac campaigns so rewarding and entertaining. You start to get a sense of the human character of a unit. My particular favorite is this little German dismounted AT platoon that turned heroic and performed far beyond what might have been expected:   --- Tank Destroyer Platoon/14th (Antitank) Company 481st Grenadier Regiment 256th Infantry Division VI Corps   23 June, 0915 hrs: Reinforced battle for Hex 4506 fortified position. Saw light combat, cleared casualties and evacuated position with the StuG company. 23 June, 1100-1300 hrs: Tremendous valor holding the fallback defensive position at Hex 4507, despite artillery barrages and assaults by Soviet SMG and SU-76 units. Suppression by SMG unit removed by Rally event at 1300 hrs, further illustrating this unit's superior leadership and toughness. 23 June, 1300hrs: Repelled 3-round Close Assault by Soviet SMG company of 1 Gd Inf Div, with no casualties. In its final action, the platoon infiltrated the swamps to harass a Soviet armor-infantry column as it moved up to attack the Single-Track Railway on the afternoon of 23 June. But the swamps provided insufficient cover, and the teams were hunted down and wiped out by Soviet SMG-equipped tankodesantniki troops. Still, their presence slowed the momentum of the attack and wore down the infantry enough that it was unable to reach the RR and accomplish its assault mission. ----------------   Bottom line: For all the numbers and factors involved in a board wargame, using it with CMRT in an op-tac campaign often feels more like "playing with army men in the backyard" (and as much fun, too) than something objective and quantifiable.

I have two Crete scenarios made so far, both of areas around Rethymnon (Retimo) airfield.

But I hesitate to post them because they were made for HTH play of battles that my Crete boardgame campaign generated. There's no AI and nothing was play-balanced because they weren't meant for standalone play. The VPs and objectives are rubbish too.

But the maps are good and the OOBs are there. So they can be adapted any way you want. I found it's not hard to approximate the German FJ 1941 TO&E with some tweaking and using Italian light mortar crews to represent their platoon light mortar team.

Those who really want the scenarios can PM me.