Is US ROE really that different from NATO's?

[Charles Foulkes]

I'm just wondering what the rationale is for US forces not being penalized in any way for bombarding civilian targets. It seems silly that the US can flatten towns and villages without so much as a slap on the wrist, yet it's a no-no for NATO. Playing the US, I still try to avoid using too much HE in residential neighbourhoods even when it would make my life a lot easier, because it feels a bit gamey and, uh, morally questionable.

Also, since I didn't want to start a new thread just to ask this, is there any way to display more than ten search results when searching the repository? I had to use ctrl-f just to find the search function in the first place, but there is no "next page" or "more results" anywhere to be found. There was nothing in the FAQ about this, and a forum search was unhelpful. Overall the repository interface is pretty atrocious...

[Mord]

The US is penalized at the discretion of the scenario designer. It's all in the parameters the designer sets when creating the battle. Population density, maintaining structures like mosques and buildings etc. There are plenty of scenarios that have those restrictions.

Mord.

[Charles Foulkes]

Thanks for the reply, Mord. I understand it's at the discretion of the scenario designer, but it seems none of the scenarios that ship with the game and the modules include such penalties or restrictions for US forces, and in the notes for the NATO campaigns it says something about their Rules of Engagement being stricter - I was just wondering if that's actually true or if it's simply a cover story for not including those restrictions with the vanilla US scenarios.

[Mord]

You're welcome.

Probably a little bit of everything. But it should be taken into account that when CMSF was released everyone was still new to the way the engine handled scenario making (including the on disc designers) and may have slipped through the cracks. As the modules progressed, the learning curves decreased and the experience of the designers increased and maybe more attention was payed to factors such as those. In real life the US seems to have a pretty strict set of ROEs...so. I am pretty sure you can find some shipped US scenarios with those factors...LOL or I could be wrong.

Mord.

[Charles Foulkes]

That makes sense, and that's kinda what I figured. I doubt US rules of engagement are any less strict than other NATO members' ROEs (except maybe the UK), but the NATO campaign briefings seemed to imply that US forces were callous, cold-hearted bastards in comparison =p

I haven't yet seen any shipped US scenarios take these factors into account, but I could very well be wrong. In any case, I follow my own ROE regardless of scenario design - I won't even drop smoke rounds on residential areas, and I try not to fire on houses until I have a confirmed contact - I have a responsibility to protect those invisible civilians, gotta win the hearts and minds, you know. It certainly makes it more challenging!

[Mord]

I agree...and I think a lot of us play that way though I don't mind recon by fire if I feel really nervous.

In another vein, after playing CMSF for three years or so (worrying about every single casualty I took) it really made it hard re-wrapping my mind around the notion of commanding WWII soldiers in CMBN. LOL for the first few months I'd cringe if one of my dudes stubbed his toe. Now, I lose a squad and mutter "war is hell".

Mord.

[JonS]

The USMC campaign has plenty of Preserve objectives for the USMC player, where it makes sense. Same goes for the missions in the UK campaign that include US forces.

[Charles Foulkes]

Thanks JonS, I've only fooled around with the first mission in the USMC campaign, so it's good to know it's factored in there somewhere.

@Mord: I had the same problem at first with the WW2 games, except I started with CMBN/CW and jumped right into the British campaign. I still cringe at every nosebleed, though, so when I started playing CMSF it was a breath of fresh air for my casualty aversion!

[Mord]

The 1:1 definitely makes it harder to handle and drives home the loses/carnage.

Mord.

[Apocalypse 31]

It seems silly that the US can flatten towns and villages without so much as a slap on the wrist

Leveling villages, you say?

What's your experience?

This conversation can go a few ways; We can talk about how much ordinance is required for 'leveling' a village. We can talk about how many villages have been leveled by US forces since both Iraq and Afghanistan. We can even talk about REALISTIC rules of engagement that US forces have had in both conflicts.

Or we can just come out and say CRAZY THINGS!!!!

[Mord]

I believe he's talking about in the context of CMSF missions not real life...the ability to wail the hell out of some maps without any consequences to the US player's points.

Mord.

[MikeyD]

...but it seems none of the scenarios that ship with the game and the modules include such penalties or restrictions for US forces

Yes, it was still a learning curve for everyone. 3/4 the reason for getting the modules is for the progressively more polished scenarios, over and above all the extra equipment. Really, some of those scenarios have never been surpassed.

CMSF basegame was first time out for everybody so they deliberately avoided making the basegame scenarios nutcrackers. Then as the modules progressed the difficulty level was deliberately raised too. The final NATO module can be a real workout sometimes!

[Charles Foulkes]

Leveling villages, you say?

What's your experience?

This conversation can go a few ways; We can talk about how much ordinance is required for 'leveling' a village. We can talk about how many villages have been leveled by US forces since both Iraq and Afghanistan. We can even talk about REALISTIC rules of engagement that US forces have had in both conflicts.

Or we can just come out and say CRAZY THINGS!!!!

As Mord pointed out, I was indeed referring hyperbolically to the game and not to real life situations, although I could name at least four villages that have been destroyed in Afghanistan, albeit only after their inhabitants were ordered to evacuate. In the case of Tarok Kolach it took about 50,000 lbs of ordnance to level it. However I'm not really interested in pursuing those lines of conversation as they're not really pertinent to the original post. I would however be interested in talking about realistic rules of engagement with respect to how one might employ them in-game.

[Charles Foulkes]

Thanks for the reply, MikeyD - do you have any particular "unsurpassed" scenarios in mind, either individual battles or the module campaigns? So far I've only played five missions of the Canadian campaign, trying to decide what to play next...

[Dietrich]

My view is that one of the elements of the best-designed scenarios is taking into account things like penalties for collateral damage (here used, not as a whitewashing euphemism, but as a blanket term for destruction of civilian structures, casualty infliction on noncombatants, etc.). To elaborate on what Mord and MikeyD have said, in the early days of CMSF (and thereby also of CMx2) scenario designers didn't understand the scenario editor's potential the way they do now.

That said, I surmise that the implication of the NATO scenarios'/campaigns' briefings that US forces are (to put it hyperbolically) "callous, cold-hearted bastards" in terms of ROE actually is a not-all-that-inaccurate reflection of how some in the British/Canadian/etc. militaries view their US counterparts. Unlike others on this forum, I myself am not ex-military, nor have I read hundreds of books about modern military stuff (only a few dozen), nor do I keep close contact with individuals in active service; but the impression I get from what I've read and viewed is that US forces tend to be somewhat more profligate with firepower than their allied counterparts.

The differences in culture and military philosophy between the US and other North American/Western European nations are illustrated pretty well by the reaction to and fallout of the Kunduz airstrike—multiple high-ranking officials (including the German Army's Chief of Staff, General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and then defense minister Franz Josef Jung) resigned over allegations relating to the incident. (When's the last time even one similarly high-ranking individual in the US military resigned because of mistakes front-line US military personnel made?) Yet the ordinance-delivering aircraft in this instance were not Luftwaffe Tornados, but rather USAF F-15Es. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to surmise that if the only available on-call aircraft were from one of the other (i.e. non-American) air forces providing air support for ISAF ground troops, the airstrike wouldn't have happened.

[Paper Tiger]

I'm no expert on modern military affairs as plenty of folks around here will be happy to confirm. I had a military 'advisor' given to me when I was crafting the NATO campaigns and he hammered the point home to me that NATO had much stricter ROE in place than US forces did pointing out that pilots/officers face criminal prosecution in some Human Rights court in Brussels if they make a bad call that results in 'collateral damage'. ISTR that NATO forces have some sort of lawyer attached that will advise them if a particular weapon strike is permissable. I could be remembering wrong though as it was a while back.

FWIW, I crafted an independent campaign (USMC Gung Ho!) that employed the same strict mix of PRESERVE, DESTROY and Casualty VP conditions that were employed in the NATO series as a test. I found that combination to produce much more realistic restrictions on what the player can or can't do with his abundance of air and artillery assets. IMO much better than simply removing said artillery/air assets. Generally people don't really like having these restrictions in place and would prefer to play without them as it's more fun.

[Charles Foulkes]

Thanks Dietrich and Paper Tiger, your replies were enlightening. I knew British ROE were quite a bit stricter than their US counterparts, but I didn't know that about the Germans, etc., although on reflection it's not that surprising. I guess I just assumed since the US is also part of NATO that they would be broadly comparable, but it seems they are not.

By the way, Paper Tiger, I downloaded all of your campaigns and fooled around a bit with the first mission of Road to Dinas - they look very promising and I am looking forward to playing them. I'm glad to hear Gung Ho! employs those restrictions - I for one find it more fun to operate within that framework, as the alternatives of removing them or placing no restrictions on their use kind of destroys the immersion or feels like cheating.

[LongLeftFlank]

Well keep in mind that the CMSF backstory assumes bloody WMD attacks on the West, triggering universal outrage and invasion by NATO, as well as general muzzling of the customary hand-wringing among the Western leftist media amid the general horror. So under these circumstances we would expect the kid gloves to be off to some extent -- if the Syrian armed forces and populace have chosen to support their terrorist regime, woe unto them!

As opposed to Iraq and A'stan which were/are nominally nation-building exercises aimed as much at winning over the population as exterminating the enemy, exercises which were/are actively disparaged by a good chunk of the polity and media in the occupying countries.

Regardless, I would expect different RoEs may to apply to combat between conventional (mechanized) armies than those in a "police action" against guerrillas and terrorists. It's hard to pull punches with dueling 120+mm guns.

[Charles Foulkes]

Good point, LongLeftFlank. I conveniently forgot that the backstory centres on spectacular Syrian-sponsored WMD attacks as it kind of stretches belief in my opinion that even a fundamentalist state with any instinct for self-preservation would initiate such attacks on western nations directly... I prefer to substitute something along the lines of Afghanistan where Syria is accused of harbouring the responsible parties.

I'm also generally more interested in playing out small-scale, high-intensity actions against unconventional forces than epic clashes between mechanized armies, but you raise another good point there.

PS - I am eagerly awaiting Baba Amr!

[Paper Tiger]

By the way, Paper Tiger, I downloaded all of your campaigns and fooled around a bit with the first mission of Road to Dinas - they look very promising and I am looking forward to playing them. I'm glad to hear Gung Ho! employs those restrictions - I for one find it more fun to operate within that framework, as the alternatives of removing them or placing no restrictions on their use kind of destroys the immersion or feels like cheating.

Of course, in the Red v Red campaigns, there are no such restrictions on the player . 'USMC Gung Ho!' uses maps from the Dinas campaign though so it will look familiar even if the battles play out in an entirely different fashion. BTW, I thought 'Gung Ho!' was the best thing I did for CMSF.