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Ratio KIA/WIA still dubious


Mr.X

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Maybe the casualty figure split by CM doesn't reflect the same criteria that official numbers do. The difference between WIA casualties and KIA casualties is that some of the WIA might come back in a later campaign battle.

The game certainly seems to make a distinction between shrapnel/blast casualties from HE and those inflicted by fast-moving lead. Vehicle-heavy games have higher KIA numbers reflecting the "killed in packets" nature of kills on occupied vehicles. Wounded tank crew are quite likely to turn into dead ones if their mates can't get them out before the paranoid enemy smack the AFV again to make sure it's dead, and when you get multiple red crosses over a catastrophically exploded tank, it's unlikely any of them are "only wounded".

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I currently have about 30 minutes left in a huge 2-hour H2H meeting engagement. We have two areas of battle that we refer to as "meat grinders" I've lost about 2 1/2 Co. Of infantry and a sqdn of tanks. My opponent has lost about 3 to 4 Co. Of panzer grenadiers, vehicles, and 14 to 15 PzVs. I'll let you all know what the final tally of KIA To WIA is. Neither of us has been retreating, just broken and panics running.

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I do not see any anomaly in the data set. It follows a very predictable path ... If the companies take 30% losses, (2,025 men), the division only takes 13.5% ... All the above is commonly known.

Sure, but the thing is that it seems that this is not commonly known. Or if it is commonly known, then the implications are only rarely worked through. Dupuy seems not to have bothered himself about it* (and I'd noticed the distinct lack of anything resembling a confidence interval in Dupuy's work too). There is at least one poster in this thread who continually confuses the micro with the macro, with predictably amusing results.

Jon

* although, to be fair, IIRC Dupuy was working up to try and develop a theatre-level model. With CM people are generally trying to work down from theatre-level models to figure out what would be 'typical' at the company level.

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My men know that there will be no coin toss regarding their fate: they all rush forward to eagerly join death's cold embrace. Those that survive are forlorn, and are filled with hope that they may get another opportunity to enter the halls of Valhalla!.

Damn stirring stuff and on that note it's back to Red Thunder :)

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The choice of the ill-conceived Rapido River battle as an example with its horrendous and atypical US casualties numbers strikes me as a gross departure from the mean, BG. Those responsable should have been lined up against a wall and shot.

Well, the idea was to characterize the extremes, which by definition, do not happen too often. Or in other words, the "mean" is the most typical outcome, the "variance" gives you an idea of how "rare" are outcomes different from the mean, depending on their difference w.r.t. the typical result.

Note that in the Rapido figures, there is one unit on the "mean" as well. There's something here going on which isn't explained alone by weapons lethality and rates of attrition. Those figures give us some leverage on the level of variation in outcomes, depending on a number of factors which I will discuss later, when I show to you guys Dupuy's predictive model (that is, a simple equation that anybody can use to see how what you get deviates from what it should be provided that Dupuy's model is a perfect model).

Another thing to keep in mind is that many CMx2 scenarios cover such "ill-conceived" battles because they're perceived as "balanced" - in other words, the defender has a more than reasonable chance to hold his position, and the scenario scope is set to cover just the attacker assault - and, very importantly, because of the inherent drama value.

As I've said, these "extremes" do not happen too often, but they weren't either rare as in a snowflake standing its own in a pizza oven. See for instance the figures Dupuy gives for two battalions of the 393rd Infantry Regiment, for the period encompassing 16th to 18th December 1944:

1st Bn/393rd Regt, start str: 857, loss: 648, cas rate: 25%

2nd Bn/393rd Regt, start str: 837, loss: 383, cas rate: 15%

Both battalions suffered almost double the casualties than "average". Indeed, both battalions - if my memory serves me well - were deployed covering a frontage of over 15 kilometers and got hit by 2 Volksgrenadier divisions and elements of a SS Panzer Division. They were, nonetheless, deployed on an awesome defensive terrain and the attacking Germans were most of the time tightly constrained to few roads cris-crossing that bit of the Ardennes.

If we start looking, I'm pretty sure that we can find a substantial number of examples where forces suffered massive casualty rates (coming to my mind are the Hurtgen Forest and other attempts to breach the West Wall in Autumn 1944, or the hapless 99th US Division in Normandy, or the fighting in Normandy in general) where we cannot clearly put the blame on unimaginative, almost criminal, commanding officers.

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Sure, but the thing is that it seems that this is not commonly known. Or if it is commonly known, then the implications are only rarely worked through. Dupuy seems not to have bothered himself about it* (and I'd noticed the distinct lack of anything resembling a confidence interval in Dupuy's work too). There is at least one poster in this thread who continually confuses the micro with the macro, with predictably amusing results.

Jon

* although, to be fair, IIRC Dupuy was working up to try and develop a theatre-level model. With CM people are generally trying to work down from theatre-level models to figure out what would be 'typical' at the company level.

Yes, the "theater-level model" was his objective and what he cared about: that was what he actually wanted to sell the Department of Defense as a tool - I suppose - to inform defense policy making (in the context of the 1960s and 1970s quite a hot topic, given the controversy surrounding US policy in Vietnam and its political outcomes). In that context, his models are strikingly accurate and flexible. Besides that, you can also see him stopping from time to time and reflecting on "what might be wrong with what I am writing". Yet he doesn't do that very often: I perceive a certain degree of "advocacy" in his works, probably because the HERO efforts had been derided by the Operations Research community entrenched in the Defense Department (who didn't appreciate amateurs coming out of the woodwork to piss on their turf).

On the other hand, in his books you can find all the pieces necessary to "instance" that model to a level that matches well that of Combat Mission.

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Another thing to keep in mind is that many CMx2 scenarios cover such "ill-conceived" battles because they're perceived as "balanced" - in other words, the defender has a more than reasonable chance to hold his position, and the scenario scope is set to cover just the attacker assault - and, very importantly, because of the inherent drama value.

You're right on that score. The best candidate for CM treatment seems to be the royal ****-up battle founded on faulty intelligence, unexpected events or simple hubris on the part of the commander(s).

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It's certainly been interesting to read the posts about casualty figures from the front, and I think everyone agrees with the point that CM battles lead to much higher casualty rates than were typical IRL. The OP, however, was not concerned with this percentage, but rather the percentage of casualties that are KIA.

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I keep coming back to this account, but here's the war in Normandy as seen from the battalion and company level in the British infantry unit the Hallamshires Battalion. It is horrifyingly intimate in its portrayal of losses and how keenly they were felt. It also neatly illustrates the deadly and arbitrary nature of enemy support fires not directed at the front line.Instructive is how many factors conspired to preclude an accurate accounting of what really happened to MIA casualties. Recommend you start with The Second Phase of the Battle of Fontenay-Le-Pesnel.

http://www.irdp.co.uk/JohnCrook/normandy.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

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It's certainly been interesting to read the posts about casualty figures from the front, and I think everyone agrees with the point that CM battles lead to much higher casualty rates than were typical IRL. The OP, however, was not concerned with this percentage, but rather the percentage of casualties that are KIA.

It might indeed look like we might derail the thread, but not quite. In my first post I discussed the data that Dupuy published on the statistics of battle casualties. That data seems to suggest that the CM KIA vs. CM WIA seemingly almost perfectly random distribution is quite in line with historical data.

Nonetheless, it is obvious that if casualty rates are much, much higher than historical casualty rates, the proportions given by Dupuy might not hold or be distorted (for instance, there are so many casualties that there isn't just enough personnel in good condition to apply first-aid and send those casualties to the rear). Hence, taking a look at historical casualty rates, and how variable they could historically be, kind of debunks this "casualties in CM are crazy high" statement.

My point is that these casualties can be indeed crazy high, but comparatively speaking, similar to the casualty rates recorded for crazy historical episodes. Given the scope of World War 2, it is quite clear that there was plenty of opportunities for the "crazy" to happen.

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My point is that these casualties can be indeed crazy high, but comparatively speaking, similar to the casualty rates recorded for crazy historical episodes. Given the scope of World War 2, it is quite clear that there [were] plenty of opportunities for the "crazy" to happen.

I believe you are perfectly correct. The thing is, CM battles seem biased to fall on the high end of the graph. My own belief is that is not only due to the playing style of the individual player, but (as someone mentioned earlier in this thread) because of the insistence that battles be "balanced" and the victory conditions also drive towards a "do or die" conclusion. You don't usually receive many points for preserving your troops, although you can lose them or forfeit them to the enemy if your troops get whacked in significant numbers. IRL if the attacker did not have a significant force superiority, if faced with a determined defense, the attack usually stalled or was paused until more force could be brought up and applied. Or the attack was re-routed through a softer area.

Michael

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Nonetheless, it is obvious that if casualty rates are much, much higher than historical casualty rates, the proportions given by Dupuy might not hold or be distorted (for instance, there are so many casualties that there isn't just enough personnel in good condition to apply first-aid and send those casualties to the rear). Hence, taking a look at historical casualty rates, and how variable they could historically be, kind of debunks this "casualties in CM are crazy high" statement.

I agree that there may very well have been times IRL where most of the casualties in a battle were KIA, and that CM simulates the types of battles where that was more likely to happen (last stands, etc.). I've noticed, however, that even when you have light casualties in a map (i.e. less than 10%), you still have the high KIA/WIA ratio, as OP noticed, with like 10 dead and 4 wounded. Now I know that there may be a good reason for the 10 dead in a specific instance (e.g. a tank blew up), and that I don't have the hard stats from 100 AARs to back it up, but I strongly doubt that the KIA ratio increases the greater the percentage of your overall casualties, aside from the fact that you may not be able to buddy aid as many fallen if you have no troops to do it with.

In sum, I agree that there may be some battles where the KIA ratio would be accurate, but it seems from my experience (and I stand to be corrected) that it is just a random number that is generally too high. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter as, whether the guy is WIA or KIA, the gameplay effect is the same - he's out of action.

It's still odd seeing the end of a campaign AAR, where you've inflicted 800 KIA, 400 WIA and 10 Missing (captured) on the enemy, when IRL you think it would probably be more like 100 KIA, 250 WIA and 860 captured. I guess that's the nature of a tactical simulator, where, as has been noticed, battles tend to be a little bloodier than IRL. While we may not be able to do anything about the captured for coding and gameplay reasons (people would be furious if their whole left flank just decided to raise the white flag), it seems that changing the KIA/WIA ratio would be easy to do, and maybe increase the chance that buddy aid saves someone, to simulate the effect you are describing (e.g. when a whole company is wiped out there is no one to take the wounded back to the medics).

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I keep coming back to this account, but here's the war in Normandy as seen from the battalion and company level in the British infantry unit the Hallamshires Battalion. It is horrifyingly intimate in its portrayal of losses and how keenly they were felt. It also neatly illustrates the deadly and arbitrary nature of enemy support fires not directed at the front line.Instructive is how many factors conspired to preclude an accurate accounting of what really happened to MIA casualties. Recommend you start with The Second Phase of the Battle of Fontenay-Le-Pesnel.

http://www.irdp.co.uk/JohnCrook/normandy.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

By the way, Thanks John, that was a great link.

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If the game was totally realistic in troop behavior which would then give realistic casualty returns I imagine it would be rather boring to play. A wargame has to find the right line between fun and realism and Battlefront have found a good level. However this does mean we get high casualty rates be it wounded or KIA ( I do think though maybe the ratio between heavily wounded and KIA could be tweaked abit so most casualties are heavily wounded rather than KIA)

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I can imagine a simple solution passing through every coder's mind right now: "ok, let's just check the ratio of reported kills to make sure it won't create angst in the players, and adjust it appropriately before printing the final screen. Fiddle the balance sheet, so to speak."

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Not really...? A lot of the dead troops would just be cowering, fled, etc.

Well I think the problem is that the troops would be cowering or have fled long before the circumstances that led to their death in the game. I admit it would be funny to have a situation along the lines of The Thin Red Line where your company commander refused to send his troops to attack the hill and the troops just sat there despite your repeated "assault" orders. That being said, you'd probably have a lot of complaints on the forums.

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