Source for real world small action casualty rates

[Freyberg]

The unrealism lies in the nature of wargaming itself - an artificially limited time-frame within an artificially limited area - rather than CMx2, doesn't it?

[Mr.X]

@Jason C:

totally agree with your statements.

Normally, every small CM-Battle had to reach for 5-6 hours, instead 30-45 minutes. But who would be interested in such endless things....May be, players should get an electric shock for every casualty, they get? To learn, showing respect

A very good example for the compressed action of CM is the scenario "Wittmanns Demise". I don´t want to be misunderstood - it is a great map and a fantastic designer´s work - but a Commander of any tank formation, who would have been responsible for about 30 losses within 90 minutes of fighting in a two squaremile sector - he would have been brought to the court martial even, if he belonged to the Red Army

Regards

Frank

[warrenpeace]

Hi All:

I just wonder what would happen if to the game if the accuracy numbers were reduced, but suppression effects were left intact. I'm not sure it would effect the battle outcomes, but you would have more guys left at the end (admittedly most would be broken or rattled, but isn't that how it should be?).

One other thing is that I think grenades are a bit too lethal. I have seen as many as six guys taken out by a single one. Part of the issue here is that I don't think the shielding effect of bodies are included in the blast calculation, so the blast radius is just seen as an empty vacuum. Also, as John pointed out, the packing of men in units is also a problem.

[Childress]

If memory serves, the most punitive morale and suppression system yet seen in a CM game was introduced in CMBB. Pulling off an infantry assault, for example, required very careful planning. Rewarding when it worked but you really had to line up your ducks in a row. But it was disconcerting after CMBO and there were complaints from users: 'it's like herding geese!'. In response a chastened Battlefront softened this behavior for CMAK. They ditched or modified the infamous 'crawl of death' (a good thing).

But players adapted. Years go by. Now many view, in retrospect, the basic system in CMBB as the zenith of realism: 'damn, that's how it really was'. Go figure. They can't win!

[warrenpeace]

Go figure. They can't win!

I wish people were less defensive on the board. The point of the discussion is to have a discussion. There are no winners and losers.

[JasonC]

Childress - they get to sit in air conditioned offices programming computers to make games they also get to play and call it a job. They are clean, well fed, healthy, and nobody is shooting at them.

I'm not knocking it, I am marveling - I have those things too.

We have already won. Or rather, some suffering real world soldiers won for us, and gave us the world. A little gratitude now and then goes a long way...

[JonS]

Besides playing with green troops (and not too many leadership bonuses etc)

And yet, in another thread, you are recommending the use of "a solid 40-50% or so veteran" and "mostly regular, with a mix of up to a third veteran." Are you trying to have it both ways - on the one hand complaining that casualties in the game isn't accurate enough for you, and on the other advocating what you consider to be inaccurate experience levels? Erratic advice like this doesn't help anyone.

scenario designers should go easy on the flag objectives, using only modest numbers of the lower value ones, or balance those out across the field, instead of putting a huge value-portion worth in the defense backfield, only. ...

... scenario designers should go easy on the extra ammo and uber weaponry. ...

To sum up - designers go easy on flags and divided them around the field, keep ammo to basic loads and troops to green as a standard quality level. ...

Leaving aside the breakoff levels (which is also primarily a player function), this post indicates that the game is more than capable of producing casualty levels that are perceived to be realistic. The only thing standing between players and the casualty levels they desire is themselves.

[JasonC]

No, I was trying to honestly answer the fellow's question in the other thread. The formations he asked about were well above average quality for the war as a whole.

If he or anyone else wants to dial all the quality levels lower, fine by me. But all he asked about was the actual historical troop quality of the 325th glider regiment, 82nd airborne, and the 4th panzergrenadier regiment, 2nd SS panzer, in December of 1944.

As for what the game is capable of, I try to give practical advice. I tell players and designers what I think they can do themselves to get the most realistic performance out of the game engine we have. I also give the advice - again, I've stated it numerous times - that the game would be more realistic if rally were significantly slower, like by a factor of two. And it would.

The former work arounds in no way negate the latter statement.

Moreover, you will notice my advice referred to rule and scenario conditions, not to actions taken by players. The former are the controls that need to move. Telling players to just play differently is not a solution - they are rationally responding to the incentives the existing game systems and typical scenario conditions set for them, trying to win within those constraints.

If you don't change those constraints and one player commands very cautiously and his opponent does not, the more realistic play of the former is not rewarded by a superior battlefield outcome. Quite the contrary, the reckless play of the latter will be. That is why both players are drawn to the "bad equilibrium" of unhistorical, overaggressive use of their forces.

The scenario conditions and rules and VCs have to change, to make any appreciable impact on that bad equilibrium. Yes, scenario designers can do those things, and players can abide by additional rules like enforced cease fire offer loss levels, without changing the game engine. But those solutions are not just the players choosing to risk their men less or anything of the sort. That is not an answer.

[JonS]

No, I was trying to honestly answer the fellow's question in the other thread. The formations he asked about were well above average quality for the war as a whole.

If he or anyone else wants to dial all the quality levels lower, fine by me. But all he asked about was the actual historical troop quality of the 325th glider regiment, 82nd airborne, and the 4th panzergrenadier regiment, 2nd SS panzer, in December of 1944.

The context of the question - information for scenario design - was blindingly obvious, yet you chose to misinform.

The former work arounds in no way negate the latter statement.

Using features of the game to produce the effects they're intended to produce is in NO way a "work around"

[Childress]

Jon, what's your expert opinion on CMBB, in terms of morale, suppression and rally? Were you around then?

[JasonC]

Childress -I for one loved CMBB. CMx2 with the latest MG changes is getting pretty darn good in my opinion, but I still have a soft spot for aging old CMBB. It was a blast, I prefer the theater it covers, and the game play challenge was awesome and felt right.

(My biggest remaining gripe with CMx2 isn't the rally speed thing, it is the force selection process, that now requires so many more mouse-clicks to get what I want. I know why they did it, for the communications side command structure stuff, but I still find that interface just horrid from a ease of use perspective. The tedious effort in that step deters me enough that I play a lot less... Not a realism complaint, a pure user interface one, but there it is.)

[DavidFields]

The context of the question - information for scenario design - was blindingly obvious, yet you chose to misinform.

Using features of the game to produce the effects they're intended to produce is in NO way a "work around"

I must be missing something, because I don't understand the tone of this reply.

From what I understand of what JasonC wrote, his two statements do not seem to be inconsistent:

1. A certain unit that someone asked about might indeed be have a percentage of experienced soldiers on a particular day.

2. But if CMBN systematically underrepresents the fear and panic at all experience levels (perhaps intentionally), than one to compensate would be to play with all green troops (or, green for veteran, and conscript for green troops--if conscript exists)

1--involves an objective knowledge of the service history of the soldiers in a particular unit at a particular time (which I think JasonC is probably a good source for), combined with a subjective judgment about how service experience maps to CMBN experience levels, an opinion about whether experience helps or hurts "the nerves" (someone here could argue that service experience "wears people out" psychologically and would make them more brittle. As a game system choice, Battlefront has chosen "veteran" to mean less emotionally brittle).

2--the OP generated discussion where the consensus (which may or may not be true) that casualties are higher in CMBN than in real life, combined with an objective (and true) statement that putting troops to green would make them more brittle, with a debatable contention that having everyone green would lower casualties (if the defense is also all green, might that increase casualties? An attack that maintains cohesion and gets to a successful end quickly might lower casualties overall? I don't know), combined with a judgment that having all green troops would be more realistic, and, perhaps, also combined with a bit of subjective judgment that this would be more realistic. And a tiny bit, perhaps, of chiding of scenario designers (is this the problem? it seemed mild--hey, this is JasonC).

Again, much to debate, but I don't see incompatible sentiments by JasonC on this one. On the other hand, other than the "rollseyes", I am not sure I understand the last sentence, so I may be, as I said, missing something.

[DavidFields]

The context of the question - information for scenario design - was blindingly obvious, yet you chose to misinform.

Using features of the game to produce the effects they're intended to produce is in NO way a "work around"

I must be missing something, because I don't understand the tone of this reply.

From what I understand of what JasonC wrote, his two statements do not seem to be inconsistent:

1. A certain unit that someone asked about might indeed be have a percentage of experienced soldiers on a particular day.

2. But if CMBN systematically underrepresents the fear and panic at all experience levels (perhaps intentionally), than one to compensate would be to play with all green troops (or, green for veteran, and conscript for green troops--if conscript exists)

1--involves an objective knowledge of the service history of the soldiers in a particular unit at a particular time (which I think JasonC is probably a good source for), combined with a subjective judgment about how service experience maps to CMBN experience levels, an opinion about whether experience helps or hurts "the nerves" (someone here could argue that service experience "wears people out" psychologically and would make them more brittle. As a game system choice, Battlefront has chosen "veteran" to mean less emotionally brittle).

2--the OP generated discussion where the consensus (which may or may not be true) that casualties are higher in CMBN than in real life, combined with an objective (and true) statement that putting troops to green would make them more brittle, with a debatable contention that having everyone green would lower casualties (if the defense is also all green, might that increase casualties? An attack that maintains cohesion and gets to a successful end quickly might lower casualties overall? I don't know), combined with a judgment that having all green troops would be more realistic, and, perhaps, also combined with a bit of subjective judgment that this would be more realistic. And a tiny bit, perhaps, of chiding of scenario designers (is this the problem? it seemed mild--hey, this is JasonC).

Again, much to debate, but I don't see incompatible sentiments by JasonC on this one. On the other hand, other than the "rollseyes", I am not sure I understand the last sentence, so I may be, as I said, missing something.

[JasonC]

JonS - the publishers ship the game with lots of scenarios, which involve a lot of design effort and time. The designers they picked out set the quality levels in those scenarios. They set the number of flags in those scenarios, and the overall VCs. The designers themselves set the rally speed and thus the typical robustness of the troops involved in all of the above, which they playtested.

When I have to go back over all of that and change everything to get realism, yes it is a work around, and it is work. Work the original designers might have done but did not, because they made their own call about troop robustness, whether for realism or playability reasons. Those calls result in typical losses per engaged *company* per *hour*, in a typical included CM scenario, that exceed typical losses for an engaged *battalion* per *day*, in the heaviest fighting of the war.

Yes, fixing design tuning mistakes with the controls available to us as players and as designers is a "work around". I am happy to have those controls - CM games have always been smart to have an editor to let us fiddle with their decisions and second guess their design tuning. I'd be happier still if the original designers made the same call on average troop brittleness that I would have made. (And yes, I am well aware not everyone would make that call the same place I would).

[poesel]

If you want a simple solution to lower casualty rate (and BFC were Autodesk) then CM came with a license for 1000 deaths. If you loose that many men the game stops working.

That would save a lot of pixel lives and we instantly had more than realistic casualty levels...

[JasonC]

Rankorian - it is really quite simple. If you ever give JonS a chance to be an ornery jacksomething and stick a finger in someone's eye just for the fun of it, you can be sure he will take it. With a smile on his face and a song in his heart. Just who he is...

[Michael Emrys]

Wargame: AirLand Battle.

Thank you.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Rankorian - it is really quite simple. If you ever give JonS a chance to be an ornery jacksomething and stick a finger in someone's eye just for the fun of it, you can be sure he will take it. With a smile on his face and a song in his heart. Just who he is...

A slight exaggeration, but accurate enough as a description of one side of Jon's personality. But keep it fair and keep in mind that he can also be an extremely generous soul who genuinely loves the hobby and has worked tirelessly to make it more fun for the rest of us.

Do I wish he would shed a bit more of his orneriness? You betcha. He is not what I would describe as a perfect soul. But then, neither am I, and I don't get to see too many floating around.

Michael

[Childress]

Childress -I for one loved CMBB. CMx2 with the latest MG changes is getting pretty darn good in my opinion, but I still have a soft spot for aging old CMBB. It was a blast, I prefer the theater it covers, and the game play challenge was awesome and felt right.

Well, it had the morale constraints that you- and other grogs- favor. But who wants to return to the era of Bobble heads and borg spotting? But, I have to say, running CMBB after CMBO proved a shock to the system. And it wasn't the theatre, the snow or the T-34s. It was the infantry modelling.

Sometimes you get the impression that, in CM2, the resilience, relative 'un-brittleness', of the modern volunteer and professional U.S. Army was carried over to the draftees of the 1944.

re: Wargame: AirLand Battle. Forget it, Michael. If the company finds you were born before 1960 the download aborts.

[MikeyD]

I'm reminded of the Cobra Breakout where Panzer Lehr division was virtually annihilated. The estimated German deaths from the Battle of Normandy (lasting roughly 2 1/2months?) was ten thousand, with fifty thousand prisoners. "Typical" small unit actions may have had relatively few casualties but "tip of the spear" units often faced obliteration. Front line US infantry units in Europe were looking at casualty rates of over 200% in some cases. The combination of the fortunes of war and *our* bad generalship in the game conspire to create 'everybody dies' situations. The Hurtgen forest battles are examples of similar situation arising in real life too.

[JasonC]

MikeyD - total losses were much, much higher than that. But they occurred gradually to a large number of units. People who do not do the very simply math do not get how low a loss rate on the tactical time scale is entirely decisive as pure attrition at the operational scale.

The Germans sent 228 battalions of infantry to the fight in Normandy, start to finish. From the invasion to the end of the Falaise battle on August 21, there are 76 days of combat in that campaign. Each battalion did not fight the whole time because they could not and remain alive - 10-15 casualties per day would wipe them out to the last man, if in action that long. What actually happened is those battalions faced loss rates around 25 per day to 50 in the worst cases, which burned them to cinders in less than 4 weeks apiece.

In a CM fight, we think if we hold the objective and "only" lose 40 or 50 men out of a couple of companies, that we are fine. But a battalion that made that a daily practice would be wiped out to the last man in 2 weeks.

Obliteration starts around 25 men lost in one CM level fight, in other words. Above that level we are talking about obliteration so rapid the formation seems to evaporate on contact, without even holding its part of the line for any appreciable period. Operational scale loss tolerances are just way, way lower than tactical gamers imagine.

[JonS]

Again, much to debate, but I don't see incompatible sentiments by JasonC on this one.

If you ignore context there is no incompatibility.

But as they say; context is king.

I am not sure I understand the last sentence, so I may be, as I said, missing something.

Jason believes that using functions and features that are already in the game to produce the effects they are designed to produce is, in his pejorative term, a "work around." I fail to see how using existing features and functions to produce the effect they're intended for is a 'work around.' In my world that's just called 'getting on with it.'

I do, however, understand why Jason gets so precious. After 10-15 years of beating the same drum, he cannot understand why us dummies still don't understand that we're doing it wrong. We shouldn't be enjoying ourselves, we should all be falling into line with Jason's hair-shirt crusade about how this game should be played.

Jason is sharp as a knife on some things, and dumb as a rock about others.

[ZPB II]

Grog fight!

[Baneman]

...

In a CM fight, we think if we hold the objective and "only" lose 40 or 50 men out of a couple of companies, that we are fine. ...

This is one of the reasons I wish we had the option to keep some sort of indication in the UI of "KIA/WIA/MIA" men.

They already go yellow for a light wound, why can't they go red for KIA/WIA and lose the weapon icon if buddy-aided ?

I think this was talked about/asked for when CMBN first came out, but it's been largely ignored since then.

[ZPB II]

This is one of the reasons I wish we had the option to keep some sort of indication in the UI of "KIA/WIA/MIA" men.

They already go yellow for a light wound, why can't they go red for KIA/WIA and lose the weapon icon if buddy-aided ?

I think this was talked about/asked for when CMBN first came out, but it's been largely ignored since then.

This is indeed something I've been desperately lusting for ever since Shock Force. I like to keep track of casualties and it is a chore since the UI gives practically no feedback. Having somesort of minor UI graphic that shows casualties in red would be immensely awesome. It could just be a small number somewhere in the unit panel that counts how many casualties the unit has taken during the scenario.

The UI already gives very specific indicators on ammunition and suppression, so it would be logical for it to display casualties as well. Either that, or remove all the psychic mumbojumbo and make us players count the clips and grenades our pixeltroops are carrying.

On the bright side, exercise for the brain is good. I just wish it was slightly more relaxing GUI wise to play CMx2. BFC has stated many times that GUI improvements are on the to-do list, so I assume it is a matter of time.