Realistic Casualty Percentage Levels??

[thejetset]

I always see this popping up on the forums now and again. Someone stating that the amount of casualties are too high when compared to Real Life. (separate issue from the proportion of KIA vs. WIA in a battle)

However, I've found that this is mostly a "commander" error. If you're playing a H2H mission and each side is getting 60% - 80% casualties, this is YOUR fault, not the GAME'S fault.

If you are on the Assault and your first wave fails, then you try something different and it also fails ... and you just keep going at it, you will get high casualties as a result. ... just as you would in real life.

Also, if you're on the defensive and you've been out-flanked, but you keep still holding stubbornly to your positions instead of falling back to a more tenable part of the map, you are going to pay the consequences.

The only thing I would suggest to map designers would be to always include "Exit Zones" for both sides of the map. This allows for more realistic gameplay. Instead of having to hit a "cease-fire" right in the middle of throwing a grenade, Commanders would be forced to exit their troops off of the map and set-up delaying forces to allow for safe exit.

[noxnoctum]

I wander though are these casualty %s people looking at battalion level or smaller? Cause I'm sure that sometimes in a battle a platoon/company or two would be utterly decimated while others might go relatively unscathed.

Anyways people are gonna freak when we get to the Ostfront .

[thejetset]

I wander though are these casualty %s people looking at battalion level or smaller? Cause I'm sure that sometimes in a battle a platoon/company or two would be utterly decimated while others might go relatively unscathed.

Anyways people are gonna freak when we get to the Ostfront .

Yeah! I hear it is kind of hard to find people to interview that served in Soviet Penal Battalions.

[slysniper]

it has to do much more with it being a game. In the game, when things go bad you continue on. Real life would generally not play out like these battles at all. As the attacker , if your battle plan started to fail, you would stop the attack, regroup and likely wait for more units to increase your odds or find a different sector to attack. On defence, in the game you must slug it out, in real life, if it looks like you are in a losing situation, it is time to pull back find better terrain or hopefully receive additional support so that you are not having to stop the enemy outnumbered.

Now in real life there is times that units are not allowed to withdraw, dont really know that they are outnumbered, have poor situational understanding, and so on and so forth. So bloody to the death fights happen. I just read one recently about marines. The unit I am thinking about was a platoon that had the objective to take a knoll overlooking the left flank of the first objective. Thay lost 30% just taking the location, then they held it until reinforced. the enemy countered attacked multible times before they were releived. Only 8 men were alive, most of them wounded. So that would be about 34 dead, 6, wounded, 2 in good health,. (That would be worse than most game results)

So comparing the game to something like that, then it does not look unrealistic at all, but the game is almost always being played as a battle to the death, which is the exception , not the rule in real life

[7thGalaxy]

Also, casualty levels in front-line units were high - as high as ww1 trenches, at times.

Taken as a percentage of all combatants it might look rather low - but then you have branches, such as arty, aa or logistics, where the casualty percentage was low, and they outnumber the front-line units, so the overall figures get warped.

The game probably comes out higher than real life for the reasons discussed above, but I don't think it's particularly broken.

[thejetset]

I fully agree with both of the comments above. Also, we tend to "cherry-pick" potential battles.

I mean what is more fun to play? An important "do or die" assault with campaign-critical objectives? Or a "hold the line" scenario where you are spending hours (or days) fighting back the ocasional probe and taking pop-shots at each other?

[Lt Belenko]

I've often thought the about those scenarios where 2 of 3 platoons are ready for the attack and platoon #3 will arrive in 10 minutes. It seems like Captain Smith would rip Lt Jones a new one for arriving late. "What part of 0700 hours don't you understand Jones?"

Also when the 4 Sherms will arrive in 15 minutes. I think Cpt Smith would say "Stand by men until the tanks get here. I'm not sending my men out without any armor support."

Arty being delayed, I can understand, they are not part of your unit and not in the immediate area.

I haven't really tried not starting an attack until everybody arrived, but I've thought about it and it is just a game. Also in the game if you don't attack at the beginning you will be short of time at the end of the scenario. But in real life the attack doesn't need to end at 0810 and no later, it can go till 0915, provided everybody still has bullets and the casualty rate isn't too high.

Basically waiting around for the full compliment of forces would reduce casualties in real life with 30 more rifles, 2 MGs and 4 tanks blasting away from the start.

[A Canadian Cat]

it has to do much more with it being a game. In the game, when things go bad you continue on. Real life would generally not play out like these battles at all.<snip>

+1 to that.

A friend and I just finished Huzzar. My initial move to contact and flanking maneuver after the scouting phase was a disaster. I lost 3 tanks and two HT to bogging in a ford and three tanks to a Panther right after first contact. I am pretty sure IRL they would have pulled back at least to recover the bogged vehicles and try a new plan.

I did pull back a bit and spend time getting some artillery to help out. Then I managed to break through one flank and the proceeded to rollup the rest of the defense. I am pretty sure IRL the Germans would have pulled back to fight another day. In the end my opponent had only a hand full of men left and no AFVs.

OTOH we had loads of fun. What a great scenario. The initial scouting was interesting and with that sized map there were options on how to attack - just coming up with my plan was fun. Highly recommended.

[A Canadian Cat]

I should have added that my friend and I agree that the only way to "make this better" is to have H2H campaigns. That way pushing your men to the breaking point would have real consequences for future battles and successfully breaking contact and withdrawing would have real positive effects on future battles.

See wish list item 2) below:-)

[thejetset]

I should have added that my friend and I agree that the only way to "make this better" is to have H2H campaigns. That way pushing your men to the breaking point would have real consequences for future battles and successfully breaking contact and withdrawing would have real positive effects on future battles.

See wish list item 2) below:-)

I agree. I think that a workable opp-layer is my most desired missing feature in the game. Also, I think it is a feature that will give BF a nice return for their investment as far as increasing interest to a larger crowd.

...and, staying on topic, it would greatly effect casualties per the added incentive to "fight annother day". .... so long as there are exit zones on the map!

[Broadsword56]

Or, for those who lack an op layer but want more realistic outcomes, agree to maximum casualty thresholds beforehand -- for example, attacker maximum 40 percent or it's a loss; defender maximum 80% or it's a loss. Or whatever seems better to the players involved. As long as players are willing to agree to some asymmetry in the setup, it can affect the way they play and make them balance achieving the mission with conserving lives.

[Holien]

I should have added that my friend and I agree that the only way to "make this better" is to have H2H campaigns. That way pushing your men to the breaking point would have real consequences for future battles and successfully breaking contact and withdrawing would have real positive effects on future battles.

See wish list item 2) below:-)

This would be sweet if we could ever get it, as you say the player would then take lots more care in how they approached the individual battles.

As has been said IRL the attack would be called off if units lost cohesion and too many forces were lost.

There are always points in my games where I would personally stop but as it is a game I press on....

[slysniper]

This would be sweet if we could ever get it, as you say the player would then take lots more care in how they approached the individual battles.

As has been said IRL the attack would be called off if units lost cohesion and too many forces were lost.

There are always points in my games where I would personally stop but as it is a game I press on....

Now there is a interesting aspect here, where the game is correct.

IRL at times, commanders will push the attach even when losses are high. Why. Because if you can break the cohesion of the defence, you then have the advantage, the defender is not going to regroup, cannot receive additional help, cannot recover, cannot control the rest of the battle if you can continue an coordinated attack. You start to destroy a enemy that is becoming or is in a state of panic, you then also have a chance to push behind front lines and force higher objectives. The thing was in WWII, commanders did not really know if they were about to break the enemy or not many times. So aggressive leaders would push attacks more than what you might expect. Which did result in Heavier losses.

So again, the situation in real life would compare to the game at times, where as, other times it just goes back to its a game and we do not find it hard to risk every pixel to get our objective. Adding a higher level to the strategic benefits to take losses in the battle would add interest to keeping your men alive. But would it make the game better, likely not. When the truth is told we dont want real men, We want to see heros, who complete amazing events to come out alive and able to win epic battles.

I know I love to go through the stats of my survivors after a hard fought battle and see if any have earned numbers that would be medal worthy in reral life.

[JonS]

Slysniper,

with regards to your post, it made me think about the edge-of-the-map effect, and how that feeds in to this. In The Real World, there is always another unit just off the map. The front in Normandy stretched continuously from the coast north of Caen to the coast west of St Lo. And the front, on both sides of the FEBA, had depth. Both those factors mean there was always forces and firepower that could be fed into a battle to stabilize it, and the knowledge of which would always be at the back of any commanders mind - there's always more out there, somewhere.

But in CMBN we don't have that. In fact we have the opposite. Any battle is more-or-less balanced, and very tightly constrained in terms of time, space, and forces involved. You don't have to worry about another force entering the fight from the flank or thew rear, or firing on your forces from the flank or rear. It's almost Napoleanic in that sense, since the entire battle is visible to and under the hand of one commander. And once you start getting a snowballing advantage there is nothing to stop you, as a player/commander from pushing that advantage to the complete annihilation of the opposing force, which is also quite Napoleanic in outlook. Which leads to abnormal losses on the losing side, and abnormal losses on the winning side too since there's no 'next battle' to worry about, and no incentive to pull punches in order to minimize friendly force casualties. In fact, the incentive is usually in exactly the opposite direction - damn the torpedoes and crush the enemy.

[Fenris]

After all these years a lack of a real campaign layer in CM is a real let down. I'm still playing and enjoying CM1 because of RobO's campaign system.

[slysniper]

Slysniper,

with regards to your post, it made me think about the edge-of-the-map effect, and how that feeds in to this. In The Real World, there is always another unit just off the map. The front in Normandy stretched continuously from the coast north of Caen to the coast west of St Lo. And the front, on both sides of the FEBA, had depth. Both those factors mean there was always forces and firepower that could be fed into a battle to stabilize it, and the knowledge of which would always be at the back of any commanders mind - there's always more out there, somewhere.

But in CMBN we don't have that. In fact we have the opposite. Any battle is more-or-less balanced, and very tightly constrained in terms of time, space, and forces involved. You don't have to worry about another force entering the fight from the flank or thew rear, or firing on your forces from the flank or rear. It's almost Napoleanic in that sense, since the entire battle is visible to and under the hand of one commander. And once you start getting a snowballing advantage there is nothing to stop you, as a player/commander from pushing that advantage to the complete annihilation of the opposing force, which is also quite Napoleanic in outlook. Which leads to abnormal losses on the losing side, and abnormal losses on the winning side too since there's no 'next battle' to worry about, and no incentive to pull punches in order to minimize friendly force casualties. In fact, the incentive is usually in exactly the opposite direction - damn the torpedoes and crush the enemy.

good points.

I also wonder if all the comments about CM needing a campaign system added to it would really be the answer to the game.

No question it would make the battles more realistic as to what you as the commander might want to do. But it might make it more boring. Plus, this is a tactical game, not a strategic one. Once you go to that level, a good game would represent victory from choices at that level, not at the tactical level.

Tactical level victorys do not create strategic victory. It is the other way around, strategic victorys will almost always dictate outcomes of battles, we love to read about battles when those that should have lost win against terrible odds, but how often does these battles ever really change the outcome that was going to take place at the strategic or operational level. Not often. General Lee won many a battle that on paper he should not. But he was not going to stop the North from victory which was a given, because of the difference in men, materials and ability to receive supplies from other nations.

Taking a good strategic game and giving it a tactical level makes a good add on. Taking a tactical game and making a strategic level might fall short.

The only games I have played that mixed levels well so far for me has been.

The total war series, Which when you think about it. Is more of a economics operational game, which lets you play some tacical battles which would be much larger scale in real life. But the game is won on the operational world map, not by your victories in the small battles. I love playing the close battles because my leadership will play a big part in the outcome to help keep losses down. But mismatched battles the machine generally is allowed to handle since the outcome will generally not be impacted much. Game realistic levels(maybe 2 out of 10)

The close combat series had it campaign systems that were there, which really it was more of a tactical game with that campaign level added. Which again never really felt truely correct. Because of how you had 15 units max, could add pretty much any available unit to a depleted group and so forth. Not really what I would call anything remotely realistic to how real combat group are formed and how one might find what they have to use against a enemy in their sector. (realistic level 2 out of 10)

Enjoyed both games, but they are games to the max with how they deal between the two levels

So here we are with combat mission, the same desire is out there, but like everything with this game , people want it to be realistic . I can see how boring and hard this could get. Already note how with the added realism, we have lost many a gamer, because the game is less predictable and game tactics do not work as well and the player has to allow for more misfortune because that is how real war works.

I love to hear players complain about the spottong issues in the game now. They wanted more realism, the game now delivers that, but players dont want to play because, the side that spots the enemy first normally kills the enemy and no arm chair general can control that. so less want to play, because they cannot accept that as being real, except it is much closer to the real world situation.

[Broadsword56]

After all these years a lack of a real campaign layer in CM is a real let down. I'm still playing and enjoying CM1 because of RobO's campaign system.

As we keep saying in other threads, there's absolutely no reason to moan and whine about what CMBN isn't -- you can enjoy what it is (tactical) and use a different game to have a concurrent operational or even strategic campaign with all the bells and whistles you could possibly want. That is, if you really want to have that and are willing to help create the maps and scenarios that make it possible. The tools to do it are literally on your desktop right now.

[A Canadian Cat]

Agreed that we should enjoy what we have. And I do - very much. It is just at the end of some aniolation games I am left wondering about when a real commander would have backed off. I hope some day to try my hand at scenario design. I am curious if the current game's scoring can be used to encourage more realistic behaviour on the part of us commanders:)

[Paper Tiger]

Lower all the units' morale and you'll see them behave more realistically. They will react to incoming fire and casualties more readily if their morale is set to LOW or POOR. And their Global Morale falls faster as well which will mean they'll be less willing to carry out their orders if the player has been taking heavy casualties.

Personally, I think NORMAL is just a bit too good. And anything above NORMAL will give you very heroic units.

[MikeyD]

When they designed the CMSF NATO module campaigns they really took casualties into consideration. Hard fought objectives but Blue side given real world

modern day' acceptible casualty limits to do it in. You lose 20% of your force in a battle and you've lost the battle no matter who takes the objective.

That's loosened up considerably for CMBN because 1) you don't want the basegame to be absolutely unwinnable for novices, and 2) acceptible casualty levels were very much higher back then. The US suffered 29,000 killed in the Normandy campaign, the British another eleven thousand and Canada another five thousand. Those few months' totals exceed US casualties for all of the Vietnam war.

[JasonC]

MikeyD - um no, they don't.

Also, I would wager that CMx2 players have by now lost several times as many pixeltruppen on the fields of Normandy as the allies did in the actual war - with maybe a tenth as much fighting.

Losses in CM are high for the reasons JonS stated, and because individual unit morale is too high, and because rally from fire effects is way too high, and because morale effects above the single squad or team level are basically non-existent, all in addition to the first poster's comments about CM players pushing "too" hard. Except it isn't too hard for CM as a game, because in CM it works. In real life it wouldn't, even remotely (for JonS's reasons, and for the morale reason, and because you'd lose the war tomorrow).

As for campaigns as a solution, I've run 3 CMx1 campaigns as a human ref, with an operational layer. Reinforced regiment scale on a side, dozens of tactical fights in each. Players do try to control losses much more realistically, but the losses per fight are still on the high side, and over multiple fights throughout the campaign hit wipeout levels in a couple of days, max. Now that did actually happen from time to time, in the intense fighting periods, and it is much more realistic than complete wipeouts in 30 minutes (for smaller elements, to be sure). Still on the high side.

Notably, players often pushed such fights to total armor wipeout, meaning one side or the other would go "all in" on a particular tactical fight at one point, and either get an operational edge from victory in that one fight, or lose their entire remaining armor force (often down to half strength or so by the time this happened) in one go. That also happened in real life, so realistic enough. It does mean, however, that folks expecting a continually realistic combat environment from embedding the incentives of limited scale in something larger, can only get part of it. Whatever operational force players command, they will risk all of it or its major effective strength, on one tactical engagement, somewhere and soon.

The real war was not decided in that manner, despite some similar incentives and many frankly pretty boneheaded attempts to end it in an afternoon with such measures. It was instead decided by slow attrition processes that turned on how efficiently fighting was done at all times and all scales, in all tactical stances. Yes sometimes a temporary initiative, maneuver advantage could act as an efficiency enhancer in all of that, but despite endless hype to the contrary, it never actually replaced the underlying attrition logic of the war.

In that real driving sense, possession of this or that bit of ground was basically irrelevant, and nothing justified losing twice what you inflicted on the enemy. Driving the loss rate on both sides higher could be useful and justified locally, if doing so didn't have a steep cost in slippage on the ratio of exchange between the two sides. But normally it did have at least some such slippage. Because offensive stance exposes men more, artillery fired all at once finds targets deep in their holes and overkills what it does destroy, etc, etc.

Basically the whole notion of ending the war - almost any war - in one big push has been a mirage since oh about late in 1914. The men not being willing to go all in on such things at the likely cost of their lives, have in fact been more rational about the whole affair than the muckity-mucks pushing them around like so many bloodless tin soldiers...

[Lt Belenko]

In Band of Brothers. The scene where they go on patrol in Bastogne. The one guy steps out from the wood pile and gets hit in the neck. There are attempts at the medic command. But they return to base. It's been a while since I've seen it, I believe one more guy gets a less critical hit as they near where Eugene the Medic is waiting.

In the game every attempt would be made to take out the MG nest with additional casualties. In real life they just waited for Patton before attacking again.