shift8
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Posts posted by shift8
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2 hours ago, womble said:
Almost. What's abstracted is the terrain, not the troopers. Whether they become a casualty or not depends first of all on whether an effective round's trajectory intersects their actual polygons as drawn on-screen. The abstraction happens after that: they get a "terrain save" based on their soft factors, their posture and the terrain they're actually in. No, the troopers are not just "a series of markers"; where their polygons are drawn matters.
So yes, it's possible for troops to be "hiding in a 40cm dip", and it not be visually rendered, but it's the dip that's abstracted, rather than the trooper.
Yes this is what I meant.
I did not mean to imply that the the physical locations and bullets etc are abstracted. IMO, this is what a marker is for.
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8 hours ago, Odin said:
The group was out in the open on Migo's test, so it reflects the same or similar circumstances to the handbook quoted by Holmes. You can't really believe it is realistic to take 280 shots+ for a bolt action to hit such a target at 300m?
I have also run my own test where I traversed a German grenadier platoon on flat open terrain for 12 minutes moving laterally back and forth across three Soviet 'regular' teams positioned 280m-330m away (distance depending on the location of the squads they were firing at). At times the German squads were walking at other times they were running. The Soviet teams shooting at the Germans were:
- A one man scoped sniper - scored 9 casualties
- A two man squad, each armed with SVT-40 semi-automatic rifles - scored 5 casualties
- a two man squad, each armed with Mosin Nagant - scored 0 casualties
This was the first and only time I ran the test, and both two man squads expended over 100 rounds. They represent the conditions specified by Holmes, except they were less than half the 600 yard range he mentioned. Unlike your expectation the squads did not get mauled by the bolt actions and going by these results, my experiences in the game, and Migo's tests I just don't believe bolt action rifle accuracy comes anywhere close to reflecting RL rates of accuracy (going by what my two sources state - and both refer to experiences with bolt action rifles).
You are forgetting that the infantry in the game are visually abstracted. They are not a 1 to 1 representation. CMX2 shows more of the visual, but the squads are still fundamentally a series of markers whose actual actions are being calculated mathematically behind the scenes. So for example, on open ground they are statistically finding cover where it cannot be visually scene etc. General assumptions about finding dips in the earth etc.
I have done similar testing, and any unit that was standing when fired on at 300m got torn to pieced until it hit the earth. I watch a squad inflict about 1 casualty per 50 rounds from 300m while both units were hiding against the earth with the default grass etc.
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On 4/25/2016 at 11:36 AM, Migo441 said:
This is what I keep coming back to. The collected data shows the LMG42 is more than TWICE as accurate as the K98 at 300m in the sense that, on average, a casualty is caused every 151.98 rounds fired as opposed to 360.75.
That just doesn't feel right. This isn't "practical accuracy" insofar as I attempted to control for it. The targets were stationary 2-man teams with action spot gaps between them. Automatic fire supremacy against moving targets shouldn't be an issue and the next closest target team is centered 16m away laterally in either direction, i.e., I would not expect a miss to hit a different target team.
What would have a better chance to hit per trigger pull? Of course the automatics (setting aside sniper rifles) and that's understandable. A burst with 4-7 bullets gets 4-7 different chances to hit and that counts for something. But what would have the better chance to hit per bullet? Should be the rifle all the way. I don't see how it can't be the rifle.Your impression of machine gun accuracy is not correct. GPMG's and LMGS have extremely good accuracy in single shots. I have seen people fire single rounds from a 240B out to 600m............more than once.
At 300m, the difference in MOA accuracy between these weapons in academic. Misses will be due to shooter error, not weapon limits. Also, the MG's are shooting from bipods, which is a major advantage.
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Also I have conducted some brief testing in CMRT under worse conditions and Im getting nowhere near Migo's numbers. Im using flat terrain with grass etc, and even combining all round fired from standard squads from all weapons types im averaging about 50 rounds a casualty.
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On 4/25/2016 at 8:53 PM, Odin said:
You make some great points @shift8 and I agree that accuracy under combat conditions is going to be nowhere near as high as it is on the shooting range. However, I still think that the bolt action rifle results in Migo's tests are perplexing and very likely show that rifle fire in CM is too inaccurate - which is something I have suspected anecdotally from just playing the game over the last few years.
A point about your argument, you mention shooting on a range is easier because targets are placed at specific intervals which sights could be adjusted for. That point is also true for shooting with a scope, so I don't see that can help to explain the vastly improved accuracy of scoped rifles which migo's results highlight. The 300 maximum range which migo conducted his test at is also well within what a rifleman with an iron sight bolt action would be expected to hit with far more frequency than migo's results suggest. Again I agree that in the field opportunities to zero in sights are going to be infrequent, but it's the sheer inaccuracy of the bolt action rifle fire in CM, highlighted by Migo's tests, which for to me undermine these compensating factors. Excuse me for presuming, but I imagine you trained with an assault rifle, rather than a bolt action? Semi-auto assault rifles have many advantages over bolt actions of the type like the K98 or Enfield, but accuracy isn't one of them.
Just to go back to the source I referred to (Richard Holme's Tommy). He quotes a section from the British Army Field Service Regulations of 1909. This defined rifle ranges of 600 yards and under as 'close', 600 and 1,400 as 'effective',1,400 and 2,00 as 'long', and 2000 to 2,800 as 'distant'. Holmes himself writes that in 1914 an enemy presenting himself to rifle fire in the open at ranges less than 600 yards was in 'very serious trouble'. Now he is talking about the 1914 regular army, whose marksmanship training far surpassed the conscript one of 1916 onwards. However, Migo's test was conducted with 'regular' units firing at a static target, without cover, at half (and under) the 600 yards quoted by Holmes.
My second source worked day-in-day-out for a couple of years instructing conscripts how to use Enfield rifles. He is also sure (I have spoken to him again since my first post), that a competent conscript armed with an Enfield would have results which far surpassed the stats recorded by migo's tests (to the point where the CM results are incomparable to real life rates of accuracy). No doubt CM has some combat compensator which significantly lowers accuracy from what could be achieved on a firing range. However, even after all these compensating factors are taken into account, I don't think it is reasonable to claim it's historically accurate for it to take 280 shots+ for a 'regular' infantryman, armed with a bolt action rifle, to hit a static man sized target 300m away presenting itself without cover. .
@IanL my opinion is based on two reputable sources, not just a hunch. The first is evidence cited in Holmes's Tommy (pp377-379) the second is a former British Army weapons instructor who trained conscripts in the early 1950s to use the Enfield rifle (and most of the small arms available to Commonwealth troops in CM).
Your assertions are understandable but I still disagree.
You mention the difference between scopes and irons sights. A Non-Zeroed scope is far far far, more easy to adjust shots with. This is because you are much more zoomed in, and can see more precisely where the round hit. Even when there is dust this is still a major assist. Sometimes with scopes you can even see the bullet trail.
Second, the world war one information does say a whole lot to me IMHO. Someone, or a groups of someones, standing in the open at 600m is going to be in a bad way. That doesn't mean that you are getting getting picked off with single shots. I would put down money that if we placed some infantry at 600m in CM right now, and had them get shot at from 600m in the open they would get mauled. Same with 300m.
As for the rifles, I have shot bolt actions as well. This includes a Nagant and a 1903 Springfield. It is very very easy to miss a target 300m without a good zero, and accurate knowledge of the range. And the difference in practical accuracy of the M4 or M16 to a ww2 bolt rifle is not really significant inside of 300m. Even the M4 with the short barrel is a tac-driver at 300m. Shooters that miss at the range are making mistakes, rather than the rifle being the limiter. IIRC, the marines still qualify out to 500m with their M16's.
With a bolt rifle you will likely lose sight picture after each shot. Not so with LMG's. If you have weapons with no zero, and precise range is not known, it is much easier to get a man in two short burst than 3-4 rifle shots. This is due to the fact that if I shoot and miss with the MG, my second burst occupies a larger space, and therefore my compensation doesn't need to be as good. Each bolt rifle shot must be right on the money.
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1 hour ago, Migo441 said:
@Bulletpoint, thanks for resurrecting this thread! Couple things:
1.) I do agree with the people pointing out "combat conditions" which makes any comparison to firing range statistics or experience problematic (to put it mildly).
But that brings me to...
2.) Wouldn't we expect the "combat conditions" to affect all weapon types? The part that nags at me isn't necessarily the accuracy of the rifles, it's the accuracy of the rifles relative to the other types. At 240m, the accuracy of the LMG and rifle types are tightly bunched. At 300m, the LMG types are notably MORE accurate (1) than the rifle types. Is that defensible?
Likewise with the comparison between rifles and SMG types at, say, 120m. It's not necessarily that "rifles suck" but it's "do SMGs suck more than rifles enough?" when focused on accuracy.3.) And why are the SMGs almost as accurate at 180m as they are at 120m? I'd think that effectiveness would degrade hugely in that span. (again, allowing all due caveats about limited sample sizes of the testing, etc...)
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1.) Using average rounds per casualty as a surrogate for accuracy. So the answer isn't a matter of more bullets thrown; the LMG types are shown to be more accurate per bullet.
Yes, for two reasons.
The first is that the statistic data does not really show how accurate the rifles are per shot. A bolt rifle must reset after each shot. It would have a higher average accuracy per shot, not necessarily every 10 shots etc. The first shot may also be a easier target to make, and the second harder for whatever reason. etc etc.
Second, fully automatic fire has a high degree of practical "accuracy" on the battlefield. Particularly against a moving target. Hitting something you weren't shooting at would still be a hit. There is also the advantage tracers give, for LMGS. And for SMGS, the general volume of fire contributes to the ability to correct the next shot. Especially when we are referring to weapons that may not have a perfect zero. If I fire one shot from my Mauser and the zero is off, it misses because it is a point target missed by a single point projectile. If I see a man at 100m with my MP-40 and I let off a burst, I might still hit him with the spray.
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The range of the qual is irrelevant.
You can qualify expert in the US Army 300m rifle qual and miss every single 300m target that comes up.
Second,
Shooting at 600m works on the range. Shooting at 600m without optics in combat is VERY hard. On a range, you KNOW the target is EXACTLY 600m away. In real life, you guess. There is also the issue of having a good zero. In a qual, you have time to get one. You will often not have this opportunity in real life. And if your weapon does not have a good zero, you WILL NOT be hitting things at 600m or even 300m on your first shot 90% of the time.
When I was in Afghanistan we used to re-zero our weapons every 2 weeks or so. The reason for the repetition is because even good weapons and optics lose their zero over time as they get banged around and such. We always had a fob to return to after a mission. During ww2 this may have been possible at certain points in the campaign, but something tells me that in major offensives during ww2 people didnt get alot of chances to re-zero.
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A Gtx 960M is not a high end card. Even its desktop "equivalent" which is quite a bit faster is not high end.
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So I have no idea if this subject has any history, so I apologize if this has been brought up or answer before.
So I'm one of those people who generally prefers WE-GO non-PBEM multiplayer. I can understand why some people prefer PBEM though. One advantage PBEM has is that you can rewind turns. You could do this in non-PBEM CMX1 as well. So I guess Im curious why you cant do this in CMX2 non-PBEM games, and if it could possibly be added in FBk.
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There is nothing wrong with the Russian representation in this game, in fact it is one of the most accurate ever done. If ANYTHING, the Russians have received more buffs to make them balanced than the Americans have.
What you do not understand is that not being the Iraqi Army does not mean you are in a competitive position. The Iraqi's had EVERY conceivable disadvantage, not just technological. They were out gunned, under trained, had poor tactics, suffered from operational problems, and lacked air cover. The Russian Army is certainly better, but "better" does not equate to "good enough"
There is a myth going around with grognards right now that the Russians are some kind of forgotten phantom that is overly disparaged, and that in reality their army is some kind of wonder-wagon that will defeat the over confident Americans with their expensive weapons. This is a load of dung. Since their collapse, the Russian Military has been in disarray, and despite attempts to modernize, has largely not succeeded.
Lets focus on that tanks shall we?
The most modern Russian Ammo usable by the T-72B3 is the 3BM46 round. Funding shortages and technical limitations have kept newer rounds from entering service. This round in from 1991. The T-72B3 is protected by kontakt 5, which does not cover the entire frontal quadrant. None of the tanks currently in service in any numbers are capable of fitting the Relikt in game that is fitted to the T-90AM. It is one of the reasons the Russians want to upgrade their fleet eventually to the AM standard. M-829A2 was designed specifically to defeat K5, and M829A3 was a further improvement of that. M829E4, which is supposed to entire service this year or next IIRC, is specifically designed to defeat relikt, which, as I stated before isn't even in service yet. The M1A2 SEPv2 in game IS in service right now.
The T-72B3 is a utterly inferior vehicle to the M1A2 SEPv2 if faces in CMBS. It is the Same IRL.
If this fight were to happen right now, the US Army could field equal if not superior numbers of greatly superior tanks. The T-72B3's sabot ammunition is only capable of 650mm of penetration dead on at 2km. The M1A2SEPv2 has between 650-960mm armor. There are weak points of lesser thickness, and this is modeled in game. The T-90 and 72 in game can penetrate the lower hull of the Abrams in certain places when the range is low enough. They have a difficult time with the Glacis or Turret at any practical range. The M829A3 in service right this very second has estimated penetration abilities of 800-960mm at around 2km. The T-72B3 has its thickness armor on its turret when K5 in included, at around 750mm. Its Glacis is about 690mm w/K5. There are lots of places on both the T-90 and T-72B3 that are not protected by K5, and have as little as 500-300mm of armor underneath. In short, your T-72B's and T-90s are mince meat kinematically. In game, the Americans are using M829E4 to offset the also not yet currently in use T-90AM. Estimates on above values vary, but CMBS is in line the the Majority of the estimates available.
Top this off with the fact that the 2nd Gen FLIR in the SEPv2, as well as its other subsystems are of a higher level of quality and technology than their Russian counterparts, and you get what you see in game. The Abrams see's first, shoots first, and is more survivable. War is a rich mans game, and America has had alot more money to spend over the last 25 years.
Dont like this? Tough. This game is not about balance. If you do what Rinaldi suggested you might have a chance against a average opponent. If not, tough luck.
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Irrespective of the territorial gains, the failure to achieve one of the main objectives of operation Barbarossa, that being the rapid destruction of the soviet army in the summer of 41, signalled eventual failure further down the road. Hitler was obsessed with taking and holding terrain but it didn't really matter how much he took and held, as the undefeated enemy just got stronger and stronger. On a tactical level, we hear a lot about casualties in cm battles being ahistorical, this is explained away as "real commanders wouldn't push their men as hard as cm commanders. If you take the view that you should reinforce success and not failure, can't it be argued that a lot of real battles would bog down due to commanders being given unrealistic objectives, and the same commanders, would be unwilling to sacrifice their men on senseless "take the hill" type operations?
The rapid destruction of the Soviet army was unlikely, given its size. You would also be wise to remember that one of the linchpins of the Stalingrad battle, you know the one that constituted the turning point of the Eastern Front, was as much about Hitler obtaining the oil fields behind the city as it was about the Russians recuperating and reorganizing for the counterattack. Armies run on gasoline, and food etc. Those resources exist on land, they dont grow on the backs of soldiers.
I cant think of a single major war in the last 100 years that resulted in the utter and total destruction of the enemy army that was not the result of the loser running out of places to retreat to. Ultimately, destruction of the enemies forces only happens when he surrenders because he has been forces back onto and untenable position and chooses to surrender. Nobody wants to fight to the last man, and even if they did, it wouldnt matter (see Japanese holding out on islands until the 70's...) OR all the islands in the Pacific we bypasses that had large numbers of Japanese troops on them.
Terrain and Attrition are both means to and end. They do not exist in as vacuum. One does not superseded the other intrinsically, only with the situation dictates.
But dont mind me, just look at how an ACTUAL army does things. The US Army trains METTC. NOTE: Terrain and Enemy are BOTH on there. Most people in the Army simply refer to the aforementioned acronym as "mission dictates" or in layman's terms, IT DEPENDS.
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I think you and Rinaldi are missing the fact that I was merely quoting Jason's sig line as a means of explaining why his posts are the way they are. I was not defending it.
nevermind then
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"A certain amount of dogmatism and pigheadedness is necessary in science."
Well at least you agree that its dogmatic and pigheaded.
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Lol.
You are living in a fantasy land. The geopolitical situation is absolutely relevant to the definition of victory. People don't fight wars for the hell of it.
If you invade my nation and I push you out, I WIN. You wanted to take my land, and I pushed you out. You failed your objective, which by any sane definition is losing.
Winning a war is determined solely by whether or not my political objectives are achieved. Your army can twiddle its thumbs for all I care If control the territory or resources I am fighting for. Very often, neutralizing your force is the means to that end. But not always. The path to victory is situation based. The massive overwhelming bulk of the Japanese army in WW2 was bypassed. Seizing key terrain isolated entire armies and made them useless. The war ended with Japan having 2 million troops still untouched in the home islands alone. You gonna claim the USA lost? You are trapped in a doctrine vacuum and your not considering the nuances of reality. There is no such thing as a one size fits all military strategy---period, full stop, end of story, THE END.
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All the military systems that focused the lower level field officers on complying with ground control edicts from muckety mucks by certain hours and regardless of enemy or opportunities and the like, were unsound. In command push attrition attack systems, they could approximate sensible action by driving subordinates to attack relentlessly, but at a serious cost in losses and lack of military intelligence. Those worked, when they did work, not because of actual ground control but because of destruction of enemy forces and the results that followed from that. In short, it was a command "hack" to get their underlyings to fight. But it was - and to a large extent even is - the single stupidest piece of bloody waste that commanders routinely engage in. Military intelligence begins when those urging such things as necessary are blown a raspberry and told to go screw themselves.
A focus on killing the enemy is sound. A focus even on taking ground that can be taken cheaply can be sound, especially when integrated into a system of reducing enemy maneuver or surrounding and bypassing them, etc. But a focus on taking ground that is as heavily defended as can be imagined without regard to enemy casualties, let alone without regard to friendly casualties, is unsound. It is Magnin level stupidity and directly responsible for the deaths of millions of brave men to no purpose whatever. Don't indulge those urging it.
War is not football, you don't win it by gaining yards or scoring a touchdown.
Notice how thoroughly this illusion has corrupted much of what passes for military thought and popular history. WWI battles in which half a million men were torn out of the enemy order of battle are called "indecisive" if the ground that changed hands was only a few miles. WWII battles just as attrition driven in reality, and frequently less efficient in applied force, are regarded as sound maneuver and perfectly decisive, when they decided only a battle and not even a campaign, let alone a war, if only the ground that changed hands is measured in 50 to 200 miles instead of 5. The war was still decided by attrition and an enemy running out of field forces, not by ground anything. Sound ground maneuver matters when it improves the conditions of fighting - e.g. the logic of encircling the enemy described by me earlier in this thread. But just scoring a touchdown wins nothing, and capturing the most defended flag at high cost even less. That isn't sound attrition warfare strategy, and it isn't maneuverism either. It is just pig headed stupidity and lack of imagination.
To shift8, sure the scenario designer set a scenario objective for a reason. But it wasn't my reason, and he is not in command of my force. I am. He does not dictate my goals or my methods, I do. If the scenario designers has a script he expects the players to follow, the very first command act you should commit is to set that script on fire and burn it to ashes. Take the actual tactical situation in front of you as a configuration of terrain and forces. Yes the actual configuration *of the terrain* may dictate that a specific spot is important and may make it worth something to get it. But "worth something" in tactical terms means precisely an *advantage* in the actual fighting. If being on that spot means instead being at a *disadvantage* (including an intel one e.g. the enemy is expecting you there), then no it is *not* tactically important. It is instead a mere trap.
Tactically important objectives do things like allow you to shift into a defensive stance, cut up the enemy by fire lanes and thus restrict his movements, integrate your various arms and weapons, or allow you to achieve many on fews, or to chosen whether to engage or not by creating or cutting LOS by a short movement, and similar things. Places that do this are important whether there are any flags planted on them or not. Places that don't do any of these things are not tactically important, even if the designer plants a million magic mcguffins there. If proper use of the tactically important bit lets you cheaply kill or paralyze the enemy force, then you can gather mcguffins after doing so. If focus on imaginary flags (and have no doubt about it, all of those assigned importances are completely *imaginary*, compared to the smallest degree of real tactical importance) gets your force killed or leaves the enemy alive, it won't actually help. Not in real war.
I completely understand that tons of people think that war is about ground control and following orders and accomplishing a mission to reach a certain spot by a certain hour, whatever the cost. But I am telling them, and you, and anyone who will listen, that that whole understanding of war is just completely mistaken. Terrain importance arises for reasons of the interaction of the terrain with the operating variables of the various true military strategies, attritionist or maneuverist. It is not an additional element besides those. Men who don't understand those systems or what they try to accomplish, or how they work when they work, try to short cut that lack of understanding by substituting things like ground control and fulfilling the higher commander's plans (whether that was sensible in the slightest or not), which amount to hoping that someone else is thinking about the war, so they don't need to. When you know what the whole strategy is, how it works all the way up the chain, you know which of the microactions available truly support and further it and which do not.
Tying the enemy in knots does support the maneuverist strategy and what it is trying to accomplish, and movement is critical to that. But ground control is ministerial to that purpose, not the other way around. Advancing relentlessly straight over the enemy in a command push manner is indeed a basic starting method or initial attack plan in the attritionist strategy, and that strategy may well focus on hitting enemy strength rather than weakness. But that strategy works by killing the enemy, and the hitting him where he is, is above all a matter of fire, and concentrating said fire on the most promising targets. It is not a matter of trying to take a hill simply because the enemy put a lot of defenders on it. It works by sending shells first, and bodies only where the enemy is expected to now be weak rather than ready, because first heavily shelled. It views the forward positions of the enemy as opportunities because there he is exposed and can be reached by our weapons. In that whole strategy, that our own men go stand there is completely secondary. The attritionist strategy views any place where the enemy cannot stand without being annihilated by our fires as owned by us - not the places where our men are standing. That the two sometimes overlap is simply a byproduct of infantry having great firepower at very close range.
Absolutely nobody is arguing that you should seize a hill just because the enemy has placed defenders on it. We are arguing that you might take said hill even at a tactical disadvantage because it will create tactical advantage in the future, or because it creates a operational or strategic advantage either now or later. To that end, a scenario designers choice of a victory point on the map does not need to be of tactical significance to justify capturing it as a definition of victory.
What you are still not getting is the killing the enemy IS NOT the goal. Taking terrain IS NOT the goal. There is only one goal: win. If that sounds vague, its because its supposed to. The victory conditions of every battle in every war are different. They take into account politics, attrition, terrain, time, and any other endless number of factors. Over emphasizing some singular formula for victory is a recipe for defeat.
Wars are not fought for their own sake unless you are some sort of pacific islander tribe. We fight them for things like "terrain" or "morals" or "resources" etc etc etc. To that end, kill the enemy, or take his terrain, as much as I need to to win. No more, no less.
If someone invades my nation, my goal is to repel them. Maybe I push onwards into his nation, or maybe I dont. But I dont have to annihilate his army to win. If I only want to control my own land, then I need only push him out and then sit on my haunches and defend till he gives up. If I am the invader and he has more manpower or industry than I, I may very well need to come close to annihilating his force to win. And we could come up with different situations with different definitions of victory and different methods to achieve those ends all day long.
Even if I focus on the enemy army, It would be sheer lunacy to set out to pulverize said army for its own sake. Like I said earlier, in that scenario my goal isnt absolute destruction of his forces. It is far more likely his army will be defeated because his situation becomes untenable, not because I wiped him off the face of the earth. Very, very, few battles have resulted in complete destruction of forces. My goal is to force checkmate, not kill every piece on the board. I only kill the enemies I need to do this.
I would bloody well love to see you ignore orders on the battlefield as a commander of some sort. See how well that fly's in any army. It wont.
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I think you're misunderstanding Jason in this case. He's arguing that what the designer has specified as the VCs doesn't matter until you've eradicated the enemy. Once his troops are dead or huddling at his friendly map edge you can saunter onto those overvalued Occupy VLs at will. The rest of your post cogently outlines situations where that might not be true. Many of them would be obvious in the briefing if the designer set it up right, but you would still need to account for the detail of the VCs if you were playing for points.
What is not being understood here is that "murdering" the enemy force IS NOT the objective in war. Neutralizing the enemy force is.
And no, that is not just semantics. Like Bill pointed out earlier, unless you have a massive advantage in firepower or manpower, you cannot ignore terrain in a fight, and even then doing so would be wasteful in most circumstances. In reality, all battles are won by achieving and advantage of some kind. Whether that is through troop concentration to achieve mass for assault, or bombardment reduce the enemy's ability to resist, or through maneuver to force the enemy into a disadvantageous position that enhances your own forces ability to fight.
Attacking the enemy with cookie-cutter fire and movement is a recipe for suicide. It is very much akin to clearing a room. NOBODY in their right mind stacks up and breaches a room through weight of bodies if your rules of engagement would have allowed you to satchel the entire building instead. Room clearing or building clearing tactics are a basis for clearing a structure with the fewest possible casualties by attempting to mass bodies into a room before the enemy can cut you all down. Somebody is going to die though if your enemy is not caught unawares. Same goes with platoon or company fire and maneuver. Im not going to initiate an assault involving suppressive fires and bounding movements when I could just sneak around the back of a hill and come up inside the enemies flank.
That being said, the terrain objectives on a map have to be assumed to have some sort of strategic/operational/tactical significance. Lets just look at another historical example shall we?
During the Mortain Counter-Attack in August of 44, Hill 317 Could not be bypassed because it was an important spotting point for artillery and air support. IE: Terrain dictated the focal point of an entire offensive, and successful defense of that objective impeded the entire advance (among other things.)
Bastogne, possessed a road network that was important to maintaining the German advance in the Bulge. Not taking it tied down units that could have been doing other things.
We could also mention the cities of Caen or Saint Lo, or the Rhine as important pieces of Terrain that influenced how battles were fought and their outcomes.
If a mission designer puts a box around a town, it only makes sense that on some level it is necessary. Going beyond that objective, and attempting to destroy the enemy beyond what you were ordered to do would in most cases be stupid. For example, lets say you are orders to seize a high point that overlooks a bridgehead. You successfully do that. So are you now going to assault the bridge on your own into enemy forces that might now have a defensive advantage? What your force even set up for such an operation? Are you authorized to go on wanton assaults you were not ordered to?
It therefore makes sense to push into or closely around Terrain objectives as (as the terrtain allows) because if I get there first, then I can be on defense for the rest of the match. If I ignore the "stupid designers objectives" I will most likely fight myself having to fight and offensive battle that I might have entirely avoided. Commanders issue limited terrain objectives FOR A REASON. By taking important pieces of terrain, I might force the enemy to retreat to some other place where the battle for the rest of my army will be easier. Its alot like how in game of chess, you sometimes move pieces into certain spaces just so you can get the enemy to move his pieces somewhere else, some where when you can reap far greater rewards than if you had committed totally on the spot.
So in short: If there is a terrain objective, it is there for a reason. Maybe not for the tactical battle you are fighting, but for the larger war you are fighting in. If I fight for a road junction and lose far more men than my opponent, that is just fine, because at the end of the day holding the junction (perhaps not useful for me tactically) might mean the difference between between resupply or reinforcements arriving.
I cannot emphasize enough that there is no single paramount military objective. In certain circumstances, a terrain feature may be a means to and end. In others, maneuver might be, or in others simple reduction of the enemy force. A nation fights to defeat another nation: not the nations army. If I can blockade you and starve you out, then Id rather do than than fight a pitched battle. If killing the enemy was the only thing that mattered, then any time you came across a superior force you would just retreat. But eventually you would run out of places to go, and would have to make a stand somewhere. So in effect, seizing terrain produces increasingly less realistic options for your opponent. If you do that well enough, they might just give up without a fight.
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I think some of you missed the point in my original post where I said buildings should be exempted from the rule
It doesnt matter if its a building or not. whether the enemy is hiding behind a bush or in a church steeple, a soldiers area fire is not going to saturate a area larger than the spot he is directed to shoot. Unless he suddenly came down with brain cancer.
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If they were "guided" by other troops, doesn't that imply that they had a partial contact in CM terms?
Personally, I believe Area Fire is often abused by players. The classic case, as discussed here, is when the player uses knowledge gained by one unit to instantly guide the actions of other units (with no contact markers, partial or otherwise from their perspective) and direct their fire on a location. It's a clear circumvention of the C2 net.
But here's the thing, I see no viable solution. (I always play Iron.) Because, as many are saying, recon by fire is a real thing. Sometimes the player wants to target a certain key location with units that have no enemy contact markers (sometimes in the opening stages when nobody has an enemy contact marker). So when it comes to nerfing Area Fire as a blanket case, the cure may be worse than the disease.
For my part, I always try to ask, "Would this guy REALLY take this shot?" with Area Fire. Oddly, if there's no enemy contact markers in the vicinity (from anyone's perspective), the answer is always yes. That's the Recon by Fire or an educated guess about what's critical at that moment. If there IS an enemy contact marker (but not from the shooter's perspective), it's a grey area. Sometimes the abuse is obvious, i.e., a tank pointed in a different direction juggling various partial contacts in its sector swivels and starts pounding a random building halfway across the map. But in many other cases, it's defensible so it's a tough one.
This gets more at the heart of the issue, but your blaming wrong mechanic.
The omniscient presence of the human player, and his ability to micro the battlefield is inherently not realistic. This is something that ALL RTS games have in common to some extent. You are managing a battle on a level that nobody does in actuality. A company commander rarely, if ever, tells a specific tank to face a certain direction. He also does not micro the movements of squad fire teams, or does a litany of other things that the player does in combat mission. The only true way to rectify this in a game would be to have it played like a first person shooter, with players issuing orders to other units and then those human units carrying them out, each unit only seeing what he can see from where he is at.
In combat mission, we already have the most realistic approach you can probably get in a RTS, and it still be a RTS. WEGO. Wego limits specific orders to only occurring every minute, which in my opinion is a decent way to make C2 more realistic, as it makes it less possible for you to instantly micro units. If you want something else, then you wont get that from a strategy game, period. They are by nature exercises in theory, not C2 simulations.
With that said, it is totally unfair to single out the "area fire" mechanic and claim it being abused. If you wanted to alter this in some physically unrealistic way to ostensibly reflect some C2 conundrum, you would still be left with a imperfect solution (as you said). But worse, you would have altered one specific mechanic unevenly when there are loads of other things you do in this game that benefit from the nature of the players abilities. If we tried to alter all mechanics like this, pretty soon there wouldn't be much for the player to do anymore, except watch the battle unfold.
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Any doctrine that views "murdering the enemy" as a objective that occurs within a vacuum is also rubbish.
Terrain is more than just cover to defend your troops or block your opponents movement. To treat terrain like a side note is pure fantasy. You are placing a cookie cutter concept (destroying the enemy force) on a pedestal and ignoring any other possible considerations. Talking about a game of basket ball stating "you only goal is to score points" and ignoring the effect that controlling sections of the court has on that, is crazy.
Terrain effects nearly every facet of combat, tactical/operational/strategic. It determines engagement ranges, choke points, avenues of approach, mobility, etc, etc, etc. In many ways it is like having a 3rd army on the battlefield, which opposes both sides. A lot like the weather actually. It is a heck of a lot more than simply defense for your units and places your can block the enemy.
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I stopped taking this thread seriously when it was implied that I should shoot terrain known not to be occupied by the enemy with small arms fire to deny movement.
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This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There isn't any reason that a weapon directed at a piece of terrain should be less accurate simply because you cannot see the "target" that is presumably occupying said terrain (but cannot been see by the shooter.)
To build upon the church tower example posted by Rinaldi, if I told a MG to fire a object like a church tower than is concealing a target that is either suspected or spotted by a unit other than the shooter, there is no reason what so ever that the shooter should be "less accurate" in his attempts to hit the spot he is directed to shoot. The Machine gun in question should not be made artificially inaccurate just because it cant see the target. The fact that it might not hit anyone in the tower because it cannot see them, but is in fact saturating the tower in hopes of hitting them, is already modeled. Once directed to shoot at a specific area, a unit would not just randomly start shooting something 15 feet to the right of that area. In other words, If someone orders a tank to blast a bell tower, than tank should not be randomly missing right or left of the tower or shooting some place other than the tower outside of ballistic limits of the weapons or skill limits of the shooter.
When I was in Afghanistan in 2011, the FOB I was at came under attack from a 3 story building just outside the ECP. The shooters occupied the roof, and were using it to fire over the walls and into the base. A patrol came back during the attack and was directed to shoot the rooftop with its 50 cals. The troops firing could not see the enemy because of the height of the building. So they were guided to shoot the roof by people in higher up locations. The people manning the 50's did not start randomly hitting things other than the roof area. They ONLY shot the roof area. Not the second floor, not some other building. Not seeing the enemy did not suddenly reduce their mental capacity to fire at a directed point.
There is no such thing as "abuse" of area fire. There are no rules in war. It is completely possible, and was a historically common occurrence, to saturate areas with fire.
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Here you stated that the game DOES NOT, use the same terminology as the the Army. The specific term we were arguing over was the definition of PP, which is clear from part 3 of the post you made before the one Im quoting here.
Hence my not understanding why you seemingly argued that you have proof that the game does not use the same definitions. Clearly CP was placed inside PP or P, but there isnt any proof that the first part of the definition of PP doesn't still hold with the Army's view.
For that specific gun vs armor scenario at that range, yes. It makes perfect sense that a gun that should be penetrating, or is very close to penetrating might inflict serious damage from a near pen. 3 out of 10 hits is not alot.
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I am done arguing definitions. Yes, the game uses different terminology than the 1940s-era US Army. No, that is not "insane" nor does it mean there must be something wrong with the ballistics modeling.
Here you stated that the game DOES NOT, use the same terminology as the the Army. The specific term we were arguing over was the definition of PP, which is clear from part 3 of the post you made before the one Im quoting here.
Hence my not understanding why you seemingly argued that you have proof that the game does not use the same definitions. Clearly CP was placed inside PP or P, but there isnt any proof that the first part of the definition of PP doesn't still hold with the Army's view.
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Rinaldi claimed that not me. And that figure was vs the Tiger. what percentage of PP's that killed a tank would be entirely subjective to just how close that gun was to penetrating. So if you have a guns that just a few MM from doing the job, it stands to reason that alot of failed hits have a high chance of displacing plate into the tank.
As to the first part, I derived that you were implying proof by referencing the original argument from before, when you first quoted me on the matter.
Work on Patch v1.01 has started
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted · Edited by shift8
The 90mm M3 could not effectively penetrate the Panther glacis except with T-33 APBC at 1000m or with HVAP at around 400. The initial issue APCBC and AP were ineffective unless the panther in question had very poorly made armor.
The problem here is not that the M36 is losing penetrative power. The relationship is backwards. IIRC T-33 APBC didnt come into service in number until 1945 or ultra late 44 (dec). HVAP could only penetrate at 400m due to the negative slope effects that APCR rounds incur. What should be happening here is that the M36 should be completely ineffective up until 1945 against the Panthers glacis.