How bloody?

[Hemostat]

I would like to know other gamer's ideas about a topic that recurrently gets to me while gaming.

Had a couple of days off and reinstalled CMBN after having to re-format my hard drive a while ago. I was fooling around in the Roadblock scenario a bit to get my feet wet again. I recall being able to take the farm objective relatively easily and bloodlessly after a mortar artillery prep before but this time my assaulting platoons took horrific casualties assaulting through the gap in the hedgerow causing me to fall back to another method, a brute force solution to the problem. It occured to me then how quickly things can go bad and how bad things can be. Two platoons were wiped out virtually in a minute due to my stupidity.

Then I went on to Barkmann's Corner and was again amazed at the power of a well-sited Panther. Technology can indeed trump numbers. However the AI responded with an end-run around my left flank and a marauding pair of half-tracks turned the corner and hosed my infantry caught at the base of another hedgerow. The losses were again horrific. I managed to swing the Panther around and clean up the situation and came out with a victory, of course, but again I started thinking about the casualty rates from battles like these.

Now, I know nothing specific about the kind of casualty figures resulting from battles in Normandy. That kind of information is hard to find. But I bet those at Battlefront do and veteran gamers might. I do know that battles on the Eastern Front were fought to the death and the casualty rates must have been very high. Again I know nothing specific but my reading has told me that at the front line there no mercy was shown.

I know that a rough figure of overall casualty rate of about 10% is standard (killed, wounded, MIA) but this must reflect a denominator of a lot of non-combatant troops. Does anybody have any information about how bloody the battles in Normandy were for the GI's on the front line?

I would imagine Battlefront and Combat Mission gets it right. I am not making any criticism of a fine game at all. I am just trying to get my head around some very bloody figures. Was it really this bad?

Thanks,

[H1nd]

War is hell.

[Lethaface]

Well hopefully the trained soldiers and officers knew what they were doing, at least sometimes So I guess that because of the average untrained CMBN player commanding all stations, among other reasons due to CM:BN being a game, casualties were a little lower in RL!

[Mord]

There are a couple of giant threads on this topic. A search on casualties would probably bring them up.

Mord.

[Mord]

Here's one to get you started.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=107644&highlight=casualties+real+life

Mord.

[agusto]

Well hopefully the trained soldiers and officers knew what they were doing, at least sometimes So I guess that because of the average untrained CMBN player commanding all stations, among other reasons due to CM:BN being a game, casualties were a little lower in RL!

Besides that many players (including myself) probably dont value the lifes of their virtual soldiers beyond the casualty limit in the victory conditions. It is easy to command a platoon of men to their death if you know they neither feel pain nor have families mourning for their loss.

Anyways, for my pixeltruppen, the motto shall be: 'Victory is life!'. I dont have mercy with them and in fact i even enjoy costly engagements vs. a reasonably armed AI or human opponent more than steamrolling infirior enemy troops.

[H1nd]

Besides that many players (including myself) probably dont value the lifes of their virtual soldiers beyond the casualty limit in the victory conditions. It is easy to command a platoon of men to their death if you know they neither feel pain nor have families mourning for their loss.

Anyways, for my pixeltruppen, the motto shall be: 'Victory is life!'. I dont have mercy with them and in fact i even enjoy costly engagements vs. a reasonably armed AI or human opponent more than steamrolling infirior enemy troops.

My motto is "if your not steamrolling em then you are doing something wrong!"

[Bulletpoint]

Besides that many players (including myself) probably dont value the lifes of their virtual soldiers beyond the casualty limit in the victory conditions. It is easy to command a platoon of men to their death if you know they neither feel pain nor have families mourning for their loss.

Anyways, for my pixeltruppen, the motto shall be: 'Victory is life!'. I dont have mercy with them and in fact i even enjoy costly engagements vs. a reasonably armed AI or human opponent more than steamrolling infirior enemy troops.

I'm the opposite. Of course I know they are not real soldiers, but for me, winning means winning well - which means winning with as few casualties as possible.

[Lethaface]

Since playing with BLUE in CMSF any red cross is one too much! However I feel that I should be less casualty focused, the objectives are important the rest is secondary. Victory at all costs!

[Michael Emrys]

I'm the opposite. Of course I know they are not real soldiers, but for me, winning means winning well - which means winning with as few casualties as possible.

Always been that way with me. I take to heart the same lesson the Allies learned: Bring lots of guns. Off-map artillery can be especially helpful as it is impervious to retaliation.

Michael

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Scenario designers can always include penalties for taking higher casualties in the scenario editor should they wish to do so.

Much depends on your tactics. If you bull ahead rather than using Fire and Manouvre tactics then yu will take higher casualties. The Waffen SS were often very agressive taking high losses but they also used fire and movement effectively.

Gaps in hedgerows will often be covered by machineguns at the very least as they are the obvious route of approach. Hemostat found that out the hard way.

As Michael says one solution is the artillery but there are other solutions to the bocage problem. It tok the US army in Normandy a couple of months to learn and find those solutions. We have the advantage of being able to read a book on the subject and learn what those solutions were. Then we have to figure out how to apply them.

[PeterH]

I hate losing my pixel warriors, but sometimes a little guilty carnage does wonders for dealing with life stress..

[Hemostat]

Thanks all. Very helpful. What I have found out is that I have to be careful about being too cautious and sparing of casualties. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. In order to bring overwhelming firepower to bear I must accept losses. I can still be careful but I need mass firepower or risk being defeated in detail. It has been a hard lesson for me to learn given my nature. I'm just glad the lives lost are silicon ones.

[PeterH]

Shameless self advertising here, but I think I did quite well at bringing ridiculous rates of fire power on enemy positions, shrugging off some minimal losses as I do:

[agusto]

What I have found out is that I have to be careful about being too cautious and sparing of casualties. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. In order to bring overwhelming firepower to bear I must accept losses. I can still be careful but I need mass firepower or risk being defeated in detail.

Exactly. Taking casualties in a firefight is almost inevitable. Your job as a commander is a) to make sure that your men have high chance to win the fight and to make sure that those men of yours who lost their lives didnt die in vain. You always have to carefully weight the lives of your men against the military advantage that exposing them to enemy fire would give you, but if you see an opportunity to make a decisive move, never hesitate to accept the inevitable risk of taking casualties.

During basic training our drill instructor often told us that in combat "Wirkung geht vor Deckung" - effectively engaging the enemy is more important than not beeing engaged by the enemy.