Should soldiers surrender more easily + should there be higher numbers of wounded

[Odin]

Couple of questions I thought I'd put out there. Firstly, am I in a minority or majority in thinking that too few soldiers surrender in CMBN? It seems common place to find the number of surrendering soldiers at the end of a game to be be an insignificant proportion. I'm sorry I don't have any figures to hand but I do know that far higher proportions of soldiers surrendered during the Normandy campaign than what you find in CMBN (even taking into account the mass surrendering of large units, which would be more likely to take place on the German side due to their precarious position). Instead, I frequently see 'broken' units in CMBN making a run for it only to be cut down by gun fire, when in reality they would be far more likely to stick their hands on the air (even at the risk of still getting shot). Take this link for evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUUG5mf5ENE&feature=related

Again the tankers might well have been more likely than not to be cut down if they had tried to surrender, but I think the mechanics of the game should have at least had them making an effort to surrender.

Secondly, I don't think I've played a game yet where there are more casualties which are wounded than killed. Again I think statistics show this not to be the reality of the situation.

I know they're relatively insignificant in the overall enjoyment of the game, but they could easily be remedied.

Your thoughts please!

[Bradley Dick]

For end-game statistic purposes, do the lightly wounded count as wounded, as they would in real life, or are wounds only counted when the soldier is incapacitated?

[General Lee Irked]

I do not have enough room on my computer for PixeltruppenPOW's they take up to much hard drive and resource space which is better used by porn so my orders are shoot to kill no mercy.

In truth that does not bother me as I am not to strict on the realism front as I am on the game play enjoyment front. I can see your point however.

[Boche]

Depends on enemy moral, In the german campaign I saw numbers of 4 or 5 soldiers un american squads surrendering all the time.

[Broadsword56]

Just anecdotal, but after about 1 simulated hour of intensive HTH combat in a battalion-plus vs. battalion-plus combat, the WIA to KIA ratio for US infantry companies is:

Company: 2:1

Company: 1:1

Company: 1.86 : 1

Company: 1:3 : 1

The armor figures produce many more KIA and few WIA because a tank kill is more often catastrophic (flames, smoke, blast) to the crew.

There have been some German POWs but no American ones yet -- although this really depends so much on the tactical situation of a particular battle. The German surrender I saw was from a unit that got cut off. But in a situation where, say, defenders manage to wage a fighting retreat and keep falling back before getting close-assaulted, I wouldn't expect to see many POWs because the opportunities just don't come up.

Also, we should bear in mind the scale of battle that CMBN represents. In-game, in a company-level fight, we might see a squad surrender here or there during play. But keep in mind that if the game ends in a total victory for the enemy, maybe all the survivors of the friendly company would have ended up surrendering in real life, once the fight for that particular farm or town or woods had ended.

[sburke]

We also don't surrender. The TAC AI will only surrender given a very specific situation and not as a group. The overall "We can't possibly win this battle and therefore throw down our weapons" is only going to happen in CM in a game versus the AI where you meet the established VCs. Who among us has ever hit the surrender button other than just to finish a game you don't want to play out as you know it won't be interesting?

[YankeeDog]

I do sometimes wonder if WIA/KIA/POW number need to be adjusted in CM a bit. I haven't done a comprehensive enough examination to draw any conclusions. A few thoughts, though:

1) CMBN only really handles surrender decisions on the individual soldier level. So you never see an entire platoon (or larger) formation surrendering at once because it is in an untenable position, something that was not all uncommon in the war. It is difficult for me to see how the game could possibly account for this, as (a) the game would then have to have some way of "knowing" what an untenable position was and ( players would probably get very pissed of when entire platoons started surrendering at once.

2) Players tend not to like to play low-experience, low-motivation troops. But at some times and in some areas IRL (for both sides), a fair number of troops could be considered low xp and/or low motivation. Try playing with these units and you'll see a lot more surrenders.

3) Many WIA who were not mortally injured would probably end up being POW when a defending side loses a fight. Again, difficult for the game to account for since it has to then have some sort of logic that determines when a WIA is captured by the opposing side. Technically possible, certainly, but probably not particularly high on the coding priority list.

3) WIA vs. KIA is also tricky because it depends a lot on what caused the injury. I don't think you can just look at overall WIA vs. KIA stats because this assumes that combat in CMBN is typical of WWII combat in general, and it most certainly is not. CM generally models the "sharp end" combats between units in closest contact, not the day-to-day grind of holding positions, inconclusive patrols, harassing artillery fire, etc. Anyway, IIRC, statistically wounds from machine guns were the least survivable, with something like a 50% lethality rate. Small shell fragments were the lowest, with something like a 20% lethality rate. So to know whether CMBN's proportions are about right, we'd have to tally what caused the casualties, and then compare them to historical data, and see how things added up. More effort than I'm willing to go to...

Cheers,

YD

[Holman]

The discussion about KIA:WIA ratios in CMBN has come up several times.

As I understand it, "WIA" in the game means "might come back in a future campaign scenario" while "KIA" means "definitely won't." This is all it has to mean in game terms.

Since in real life most WIA would not be back in the line on the scale of a CM campaign anyway, they might as well be KIA for our purposes.

There. I have squared the circle to my satisfaction.

[Rocky Balboa]

AFAIK, the surrender state of an individual soldier/unit is solely based on morale level. Once a soldiers morale gets to a certain point then they will throw up hands and hit their knees.

Since surrender is really just a function of morale they can come back from the surrender state by moving friendlies close enough to have them recover. So the reason why the pixeltruppen didn't surrender when exiting the tank was because they hadn't reach that morale level yet.

[womble]

Couple of questions I thought I'd put out there. Firstly, am I in a minority or majority in thinking that too few soldiers surrender in CMBN? It seems common place to find the number of surrendering soldiers at the end of a game to be be an insignificant proportion.

I have to agree that the 'headless chicken' behaviour of Broken units under extreme pressure seems badly modelled. It sucks the fun out of the last few turns of a scenario, when you're reduced to shooting fish in a barrel because the troops that would like to flee cannot and therefore just mill about in whatever cul-de-killing-sac they've wound up in. Some of this can be addressed by scenario design (have fewer locations with only one way in/out; make entire baseline map edges "Exit" zones that score no points) and troop placement (don't put troops that are in danger of having to fall back in places where the only place to fall back to is a walled garden...), but in the times when such precautions are to no avail, I think surrender should be a more frequent option.

Secondly, I don't think I've played a game yet where there are more casualties which are wounded than killed. Again I think statistics show this not to be the reality of the situation.

I usually have a good 50% more WIA than KIA. I am pretty anal about getting buddy aid to my troops before scenario ends, if possible, even holding off the "final push" that I think will probably cause an AI surrender for a turn or three while my fallen get attended to. It seems to me that more deaths are caused by small arms fire at close range or by direct HE hits (not a surprise really) than by fragmentations and distant small arms fire. I try and make sure I have fire superiority at close range, so the other side aren't shooting back, and most of my casualties are from the latter two causes.

Perhaps you're less cowardly with your pTruppen in the close assault phases of your battles, or fight more defensive actions when direct fire HE has a better chance of getting ground zero hits on teams? AIUI, "wounded" casualties have a chance of turning into KIAs at scenario end if they've not been Buddy Aided, so if you're not as soppy about making sure your pTruppen get attention, your Killed:Wounded will be higher than what I see.

[YankeeDog]

Perhaps you're less cowardly with your pTruppen in the close assault phases of your battles, or fight more defensive actions when direct fire HE has a better chance of getting ground zero hits on teams? AIUI, "wounded" casualties have a chance of turning into KIAs at scenario end if they've not been Buddy Aided, so if you're not as soppy about making sure your pTruppen get attention, your Killed:Wounded will be higher than what I see.

There is a weakness in the Buddy aid logic of the game here in that the game can actually penalize the player in terms of WIA/KIA ratio if the player presses home the attack and finishes off the enemy quickly, thereby forcing a global surrender, rather than stopping to Buddy aid any WIA.

I've noticed this when playing against the AI; if the AI does a global surrender before the scenario time runs out, the game does not consider any WIA still on the field to have received Buddy Aid, even if the player would have had time to do so had the game run to its full time limit. So, if you have the AI on the ropes and think it's likely to do a global surrender soon, in terms of KIA count it actually is to your advantage to delay pressing home the attack to avoid ending the scenario, and take care of all the WIA before finishing off the enemy.

I don't see any easy way to solve this issue as it would probably be a complex piece of coding for the the game to have a way of "knowing" when a player has won a scenario by a sufficient edge to be able to more quickly care for WIA. But it's something to keep in mind when looking at KIA/WIA performance.

But logically, in many situations, one of the best ways to help any WIA on the field would probably be to press home the attack, drive any remaining enemy away, and so allow stretcher teams and ambulances to move up and take proper care of the wounded. But the game gives no reward for this.

I don't see any solution to this, as it would probably be quite a complex piece of coding to give the game a way of "knowing" when a player has won a scenario a sufficient margin to allow faster and more complete care of the WIA. But it's one thing to keep in mind when looking at KIA/WIA ratio.

[womble]

There is a weakness in the Buddy aid logic of the game here in that the game can actually penalize the player in terms of WIA/KIA ratio if the player presses home the attack and finishes off the enemy quickly, thereby forcing a global surrender, rather than stopping to Buddy aid any WIA.

But logically, in many situations, one of the best ways to help any WIA on the field would probably be to press home the attack, drive any remaining enemy away, and so allow stretcher teams and ambulances to move up and take proper care of the wounded. But the game gives no reward for this.

I don't see any solution to this, as it would probably be quite a complex piece of coding to give the game a way of "knowing" when a player has won a scenario a sufficient margin to allow faster and more complete care of the WIA. But it's one thing to keep in mind when looking at KIA/WIA ratio.

It doesn't seem too hard to have an extra step for when a Surrender occurs to process all the WIAs as having had Buddy Aid. But yes, for less cut-and-dried situations it's going to be a of a head scratcher.

[Nigel Ewels]

Broken troops and bailed out AFV teams should definitely surrender more easily. In the former case, as others have stated, its no fun slaughtering headless chooks who run lemming like into fields of fire (they are panicked and scared yet when they see their comrades cut down in the open they neither surrender, seek cover or run the other way but run into the killing field) and in the latter case they currently tend to behave like assault troops once they've bailed out and pushing onto their objective sans AFV something made worse by the current modelling of pistols which make the way too effective. While some AFV teams might join in the assault most would head to rally points once they had bailed out, seeking to evade a fight. Why waste trained tank crews in infantry fighting?

[Bradley Dick]

I never thought about how buddy aid isn't processed when the enemy does a surrender. It should be, though, shouldn't it? Once the enemy starts waving the white flag, my guys have no excuse for leaving wounded comrades to bleed in the grass.

[sburke]

This may be a real dumb ass question, but if you have forced a global surrender do you care about the KIA/WIA anymore? It seems like it sets up, yeah I got a global surrender too, but at 250 points, HA! Perhaps it is a ladder play for ratings or some thing. Honestly I have never done those and have no idea. Just trying to understand why one would care at that point.

[YankeeDog]

This may be a real dumb ass question, but if you have forced a global surrender do you care about the KIA/WIA anymore? It seems like it sets up, yeah I got a global surrender too, but at 250 points, HA! Perhaps it is a ladder play for ratings or some thing. Honestly I have never done those and have no idea. Just trying to understand why one would care at that point.

Well, in that sense, the KIA/WIA ratio doesn't really matter for anything. It doesn't affect your point score at all.

So the KIA/WIA it's only really interesting for those who like to role play a bit and contemplate how many letters they're writing home, and how many men they might be seeing at the unit reunion.

[xian]

I never thought about how buddy aid isn't processed when the enemy does a surrender. It should be, though, shouldn't it? Once the enemy starts waving the white flag, my guys have no excuse for leaving wounded comrades to bleed in the grass.

Very good point.

Also - panicked troops should be able to exit the friendly map edges and count towards MIA.

[JonS]

Fair enough YD, and that's a good post. But how do you square it with this bit of hyperbole?

There is a weakness in the Buddy aid logic of the game here in that the game can actually penalize the player in terms of WIA/KIA ratio if ...

[womble]

This may be a real dumb ass question, but if you have forced a global surrender do you care about the KIA/WIA anymore? It seems like it sets up, yeah I got a global surrender too, but at 250 points, HA! Perhaps it is a ladder play for ratings or some thing. Honestly I have never done those and have no idea. Just trying to understand why one would care at that point.

Apart from YD's point, I care about stopping Wounds becoming Deads because I'm playing Campaigns, and those WIAs can come back in the next scenario.

Also - panicked troops should be able to exit the friendly map edges and count towards MIA.

I think MIA currently means "surrendered", so exited troops shouldn't be counted in that number. To get more (probably unnecessarily) complicated, you'd want to have a "Captured" (which would include all the ones that surrender during the battle, any survivors on the battlefield when their side surrenders and some proportion of the wounded on the field, which would be difficult to determine). "Missing" would be a proportion of those that have exited the field in a poor morale state.

[YankeeDog]

Fair enough YD, and that's a good post. But how do you square it with this bit of hyperbole?

Eh? How am I waxing hyperbolic? I thought I had made it clear I was referring to KIA/WIA count specifically. As I have noted, KIA/WIA ratio has absolutely effect on point score. So if you only care about point score, Buddy Aid & KIA just don't matter. If you do like to looks at your KIA/WIA ratio and think about how many of your casualties might actually live to see to tell war stories to their grandchildren, then this stuff does matter.

Womble: Apart from YD's point, I care about stopping Wounds becoming Deads because I'm playing Campaigns, and those WIAs can come back in the next scenario.

Are you sure this is the case? Even relatively minor bullet or fragment wounds would take at least a few days to recover from, and usually much longer -- weeks. This would put the recovery and return to active duty of WIA out of the scope of most campaigns, which usually don't run more than a week or so. Maybe very rarely for a wounded whose injuries are quite minor, but I should think you'd be looking at under 5% of the WIA here. After all, we do have the "Injured" category to account for non-incapacitating wounds.

Perhaps I missed something, but I have never seen anything to suggest that you get a higher chance of replacement in campaigns for a WIA than you do for a KIA.

[womble]

Are you sure this is the case?

No, sorry, I'm not. I seem to have forgotten to type the "I think" that I meant to put in there. I am acting on a mostly gut feeling. My current campaign, though, 1 Coy has been point for three scenarios on the trot, and I'd've thought it was getting a bit more chewed up than it actually seems to be. It's Die Letzte Hoffnung, and I seem to remember reading the author (Field Marshall Blucher) saying that there are no personnel replacements for the Core units in the scenario, since it takes place over the span of hours, not days. The disparity between my perception of the attrition 1Coy should have suffered, and the actual numbers of effectives would be handily explained by the return to action of (some of) those Wounded who've been Buddy Aided.

This feeling has been reinforced by comments like Martyr's assertion:

"WIA" in the game means "might come back in a future campaign scenario" while "KIA" means "definitely won't."

but I'm absolutely not certain about it, no.

[sburke]

Note from the manual, this may influence how you percieve injured soldiers are counted and how it affects their being available in future battles in a campaign. There doesn't appear to be anything more specific, but I am still looking.

Note: dead (KIA) and severely wounded soldiers (not eligible for buddy aid) are counting as “Casualties”, while lightly wounded and incapacitated soldiers (eligible for buddy aid) are counting against “Condition”

[YankeeDog]

Hm. Interesting. I can't find anything that conclusively proves one way or another whether there is a link between the WIA and campaign replacements, either.

I suppose certain types of temporarily incapacitating casualties could rejoin a unit within a day or two. For example, being tossed about by a nearby HE blast could certainly knock a soldier unconscious and leave him with a concussion, even if other injuries were minor. A soldier with this type of battlefield injury would definitely be out of the fight for the next few hours, but might well be capable of fighting again in a day or two.

But I should think that the vast majority of casualties you see in CM would be actual perforations by bullets and shrapnel, and these types of injuries usually take weeks to recover from.

[Dave85]

I agree that there should be more large scale surrenders during battles. The morale of green troops only seems to be effected by casualties or suppression, not by finding enemy soldiers directly in their flank or rear. I would imagine that IRL poor quality troops who have taken a beating would quite happily surrender in platoon or company strength on discovering that the enemy has got behind them.

I also find the AI has to be virtually annhialated before a battle is won. You can of course get round this with the ceasefire button but IRL a battalion on the attack would be mad to contiue its attack after taking 50% loss without moving the enemy from his positions, yet in the game it usually has to receive about 80% before the battle is over. I'd like to see the enemy have the option to withdraw instead of surrendering.

[womble]

I agree that there should be more large scale surrenders during battles. The morale of green troops only seems to be effected by casualties or suppression, not by finding enemy soldiers directly in their flank or rear. I would imagine that IRL poor quality troops who have taken a beating would quite happily surrender in platoon or company strength on discovering that the enemy has got behind them.

Absolutely. Unfortunately the AI doesn't have the capacity to grasp that sort of context.

I also find the AI has to be virtually annhialated before a battle is won. You can of course get round this with the ceasefire button but IRL a battalion on the attack would be mad to contiue its attack after taking 50% loss without moving the enemy from his positions, yet in the game it usually has to receive about 80% before the battle is over. I'd like to see the enemy have the option to withdraw instead of surrendering.

It's difficult sometimes to get to a point where you're prepared to push "Ceasefire" without having the AI surrender on you first. When the AI's positions are on the Victory Location that's the major portion of your VPs, you get nada for Ceasefiring until you've swept it totally clear of the foe, and so you often hit the AI capitulation conditions before you've gotten the VL clear.