Buying troops for quick battle

[Fed]

I was wondering what the differences in experience, motivation, fitness, and leadership are in choosing troops for QB. The difference in price can substantially add up, and can even double the price of units. Is it worth it? What do they do? I now what the manual states, but I am wondering about people's experiences.

Thanks,

Fed

[cool breeze]

Last time I bought purposely low quality units, to get as many as I could, did not go well. While I did have a TON of guys, the AI crushed my entire force with utmost swiftness. They drove an ran forward high tech german mech infantry style, and came upon my abundant reverse slope position, lots up front and 2 or 3 fat rows of supporting fire back. I'm expecting to whoop some but with so many guys and a pretty good defense area, almost all my guys can see the reverse slope defense area. Well it didn't matter cause , see, the germans shot in the general direction of my guys with MG's and that was about all they could take. My hundreds of guys just ran away and surrendered they were surrendering fields at a time. Platoons would lift white flags together. On the other hand high end troops do pretty much all you could want of m, except that they till die about as easily as regular guys. I mean i guess they use cover a little better but it still just takes one bullet hit per guy to kill em all. So they will fight to the last man and whoop a$$ doing it but you cant afford as many so it may not take as long for the enemy to kill em all. I usually just go with typical setting but then I tweak it or just drop certain groups or squads or whatever based on my needs. I think you'd get the most bang for your buck by picking that stuff based on what you need. Like for example if you wanted occupy/defend a town but expected it to get blasted by arty pretty good, it might make sense to get troops with a high motivation and maybe a little extra leadership, but if they are only gonna be fighting at super short range maybe it would be good to have m conscript or green, and if they dont have to move they can be unfit. That way they have the moral fortitude to withstand the barrage and the numbers to be strong and tough at short range.

It helps to think of them as separate factors. experience is mostly I think how good their aim is. but its also how much of a$$kickers. But then their is their motivation, their are motivated a$$kickers and ones that don't care that much. Motivation also effects aim since it effects suppression which effects aim. Motivation is like the general moral toughness. it makes em really want to to what you told em to do. It also can make em stupid. experience makes em good smart fighters, motivation makes them brave, sometimes too brave. high experience guys are good at running out the back door before its too late, high motivation is good at staying there to the end. Leadership is trickier and i hope others weigh in on this issue, but it does kinda what you'd imagine, it makes the leaders better. One thing it can do is let you keep fighting after your general moral is low. Even if everyone is rattled and broken if you keep your leaders alive and yelling you can get em to keep doing stuff until they are all dead. But lately the main thing i have been thinking of leadership is grenade throwing points. It seems throwing a grenade is always the right thing to do, and that they will to it in relationship to how much leadership points or something they have. A group without a leader is hard to get to throw grenades.

I never tried unfit guys but I imagine they just get tired extra fast. like I would in that situation lol.

[Sublime]

It makes a huge amount of difference, which is why you noticed the points can double even.

Experience is how well theyll take cover, aim, use grenades, etc. Also how quickly they'll panic. Motivation is how hard theyll fight, how quick theyll surrender, or run. Fitness is how quick they'll tire out.

There are other factors the +1, -1, etc. Thats how good of a commander they have. 0 is average, and you get the picture from there.

Being in command and control, etc help quite a bit.

[womble]

For me, the most worthwhile "boost" is Motivation. High Motivation troops can sustain a lot more punishment than Normal, a much greater, IMO, proportion of increase in durability than the additional points cost.

Experience also markedly affects spotting chance.

[Lt Belenko]

The biggest thing I've found is low quality units will not hold fire with a short cover arc.

[DasMorbo]

Once in CMFI, the scenario had me playing the Italians. All green troops. They spotted jack s**t. One squad was fired upon by US Paras for approximately five minutes while at least four other squads watched. There didn't even appear a question mark to give a rough idea of the enemys location. Completely useless these guys.

[womble]

Once in CMFI, the scenario had me playing the Italians. All green troops. They spotted jack s**t. One squad was fired upon by US Paras for approximately five minutes while at least four other squads watched. There didn't even appear a question mark to give a rough idea of the enemys location. Completely useless these guys.

I'm having similar problems at the moment with some Green Semoventes. Not even the 75mm ones can compete with .50Cal-armed M2 halftracks. They (and their 47mm brethren) panic and bail the first time a burst of BMG hits the armour and spalls a bit, even with no casualties caused. And they don't even see what's shooting at them. Their morale quality is "Normal" but they're Green with -2 leadership.

[Sgt Schultz]

For QBs, I have found that the best overall value for the points spent is a global setting for infantry of Regular/High/0

Regulars will do the job just fine without spending a lot, since vets die just as fast under indirect fire.

High motivation keeps the boys from running into worse conditions under small amounts of fire.

The average Joe doesn't need the +1 costs of a leadership modifier.

All HQs on the other hand, get a +1.

All FOs go Vet for better performance.

Indirect assets go Vet for accuracy and response times.

Armor is whatever you can afford up to Vet/High/+1.

Anything over High motivation can result in foolhardy behavior that can become counter-productive.

+2 Leadership is costly for a very slight increase.

Vets, Cracks and Elites can make one feel a tad silly if they are standing on a TRP and the world falls on them.

[easytarget]

Apologize for resurrecting an old one, but I've got a question related to this thread.

I've only been playing scenarios in PBEM w/ CMBN, but started up a QB today.

I must be missing something because there are no specs on the units in the purchase screen that I can see, in CM1 series I could highlight a unit and get a cursory bit of info, one piece in particular regarding the gun on a tank (say 75 vs 76) was rather helpful for example.

Is this gone or I'm missing how to bring it up in the interface, any help greatly appreciated.

Otherwise it would appear I'm forced to look each one up in the manual (yikes) or memorize specs (more yikes).

[Vanir Ausf B]

It's not there. You have to look it up or write it down for future reference (what I have done for infantry). This was talked about when the game came out. BFC indicated that they intend to implement some CMx1-type of information display whenever they get around to overhauling the QB system, which they said might be done for the first East Front game. But that was 2 years ago and I have no idea what the status of that is now.

[easytarget]

Ah, thanks for the response, appreciate it.

Well, that's a shame then. Had a feeling that was the answer though, hopefully they'll get it back in eventually, I found it quite useful.

[A Canadian Cat]

While this is not quite what you want; but when you have a choice for the make up of a unit it can be there. For example if you have selected a Sherman formation you can see which variant of Sherman it is and the 76mm and 105mm and 17lbr variants all have an indication in their name. It is at the bottom of the UI where you can tweak the vehicle variants in your selected branch of the formation.

[easytarget]

Thanks, I'll look for that.

I'll admit the way I use the purchase screen may not be optimal, I don't tend to think of it in terms of formations, yet it really wants me to.

What I'm looking to do is hand pick what I want. My impression of the interface is it wants to resist my efforts to do that.

[Michael Emrys]

What I'm looking to do is hand pick what I want.

You can still do that. Purchase a formation and delete the parts you don't want. Then tweak the remaining units to your satisfaction. You can individually set their level of experience, morale, and leadership. Knock yourself out.

Michael

PS: You can also purchase specialist teams and vehicles and guns individually, though it is usually more economical to purchase them as part of a formation.

[womble]

My impression of the interface is it wants to resist my efforts to do that.

Indeed. It's a large step forward from the method used in the Shock Force titles though, which had far less (i.e. zero, AIUI) option to customise your force. BFC are keen that the core of your force have some connection to historical reality; not only does the interface "resist" just picking the forces you want, it gives positive incentive to use Formations, as there's a large premium per unit purchased individually. There's an overhead per Formation, too, but for vehicles, if you want more than 3 that could be bought as a single formation, it's cheaper to buy the formation. Similarly for infantry teams that have direct analogues within formations.

[easytarget]

Right, I've got that part (purchase formation delete process), the missing piece is the loss of the ability to highlight over what I'm hand picking and see some cursory data about the units.

And I'm aware of the pricing discrepancies caused by formation purchase vs individual, just another element of the interface in my opinion working against the way I want to interact with it, which is hand pick what I want.

[easytarget]

Indeed. It's a large step forward from the method used in the Shock Force titles though, which had far less (i.e. zero, AIUI) option to customise your force. BFC are keen that the core of your force have some connection to historical reality; not only does the interface "resist" just picking the forces you want, it gives positive incentive to use Formations, as there's a large premium per unit purchased individually. There's an overhead per Formation, too, but for vehicles, if you want more than 3 that could be bought as a single formation, it's cheaper to buy the formation. Similarly for infantry teams that have direct analogues within formations.

I appreciate their "keenness", they aren't mutually exclusive features. When I'm in a position with few points at my disposal, I want to buy want I want to buy. To tell me I'm wrong amuses me I'll admit.

[easytarget]

Thanks btw for the responses everyone, greatly appreciated. I really just wanted to make sure it wasn't user error that caused me to miss the info I used to get about units in CM1.

More often than not it is in fact user error! haha

[womble]

I appreciate their "keenness", they aren't mutually exclusive features. When I'm in a position with few points at my disposal, I want to buy want I want to buy. To tell me I'm wrong amuses me I'll admit.

Nobody's telling you you're "wrong" (not even the game). And you still can. There's just this rule (like the rule that says random infantry can't drive an abandoned tank) that says you have to buy some kind of HQ structure to put it in (first): buy an infantry battalion, delete everything except the a single HQ of whatever level (you won't actually be able to delete everything in the "HQ" stanza, until you've added at least one new "cherry-picked" element; every HQ has to have something to command, even if it's just a jeep), add what you want, then get rid of the team that you couldn't delete at the start. You just have to go about it in a way that fits the game structure.

[easytarget]

Very good, thanks for the additional explanation, I'll continue to play around with it and get accustomed to it and I'm sure it will work out fine.

Btw, if you don't mind one additional question, I've not picked up CMFI yet, does it work with the same purchase screen lay out I assume as CMBN?

[A Canadian Cat]

^^^^^ Yes CMFI does use the same method