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Buddy Aid


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Also, combatman, I'm not a new guy. :P I was here around the time of CMBO demo - in fact I got acquainted with Battlefront through Achtung Spitfire. My old handle was "TheBog", or something similiar - I don't know if it's still active.

So you may want to watch what you say. :)

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If there is enemy close and you don't want to be performing buddy aid you should be area firing in the direction of the enemy. Regardless if you can target the exact square. Anything in the general direction is useful.

Only anecdotal but I am convinced hiding does help. The graphic stills shows kneeling and the unit in question does spot as if kneeling. Only tonight I saw this happen and the LOS definitely changed as the hiding unit could see over a wall. But even though kneeling the unit wasn't targeted quickly. I suspect the act of hiding (or being the only visible person in the sqd) made the individual harder to spot.

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If there is enemy close and you don't want to be performing buddy aid you should be area firing in the direction of the enemy. Regardless if you can target the exact square. Anything in the general direction is useful.

Only anecdotal but I am convinced hiding does help. The graphic stills shows kneeling and the unit in question does spot as if kneeling. Only tonight I saw this happen and the LOS definitely changed as the hiding unit could see over a wall. But even though kneeling the unit wasn't targeted quickly. I suspect the act of hiding (or being the only visible person in the sqd) made the individual harder to spot.

Lovely, but both of these fixes require more micromanagement...which I've discussed earlier.

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Sorry but this is the post of an irritated person who is fed up and I generally don't like flaming new guys but ....

You start with 'in my opinion'

If your opinion is informed by combat and life saving experience them it is relevant, otherwise it is not.

The BLUF message is, if you forgive the pun ... in regard to the situation described live with it or play real time.

Luke FF's expert advice and my own limited real life experience in these situations is exactly as he said, to even give basic first aid you need to be at least kneeling.

On the other side of the coin think about the person you most love in life and imagine them being stricken. Then think - what would you do? Would you refuse to give aid because 'you only do it lying down'' or would you act naturally despite the risks? How do you legislate for that in a game of this nature? In combat, the people you are with are always your best mates.

What we have in the game is a half way house through abstraction.

Where do we go from here ... multiple threads supported by re-enactment videos, and (if we're lucky) save games. Threads might be as follows:

Scenario 1: 'the guy was hit in the arm by a 7.92mm round fired from 700m at an angle of 3200 mils in open terrain in rainy conditions etc, etc yet the buddy aid guy applied a tourniquet to the left leg although he was a 'Veteran'. In my opinion he would have had a shattered arm and be suffering arterial bleeding and the buddy aid guy should have known that instantly and knelt on the pressure point (because that is what it takes).

Scenario 2: 'The guy should never have been hit because it was a 7.92mm round fired from 700m at an angle of 3200 mils in open terrain in rainy conditions and the firer was rated as 'Green' etc etc.

Let me present scenario 3 - if your bloke gets hit try one or all of the following:

A. Question why your poor play allowed that to happen.

B. Deal with it.

C. Go into medicine.

Again, I apologise for being grumpy but I'm kind of bored with a lot of this 'in my opinion this isn't realistic' stuff - particularly as I haven't seen anybody complain about the body 'disappearing' after buddy aid - from the perspective of somebody who has had to make somebody 'disappear' under fire I can tell you that it is the hardest thing that you can do in both emotional and physical terms.

I have a short question for you as an probable expert:

Is it possible (despite it is physical or emotional hard) to stop bleeding with one or several pressure bandages from a prone position?

This question may implicates another question:

is a man able to produce the pressure without his weight just only by the force of his muscles?

When i ask you that i have for instance options 7-9 of following illustration in mind (using a stick, turning it around and this wise i making more tight to stanch the bleeding):

http://www.stefan.ganz.priv.at/content/med4teens/Data/Print_1_6_5.html

7-8: using a stick, turning it around and this wise making the banadage more tight to stanch the bleeding

Regards

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An area target or a hide command for a unit taking casualties in close proximity to an enemy isn't exactly significant micromanagement.

Sure it is. It's certainly more micromanagement than would be necessary if the troops would either use more judgement/perform it prone.

When I played Augustow Plague Boil, I had numerous situations all over the map where this little tableau was playing out. It would have, indeed, been significant micromanagement to deal with them all.

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An area target or a hide command for a unit taking casualties in close proximity to an enemy isn't exactly significant micromanagement.

While I think in the company sized game it isn't that much micromanagement. CM seems to be going more and more of the direction of company+ to two company engagements, and as battles get larger what is too much micro becomes stricter.

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Sure it is. It's certainly more micromanagement than would be necessary if the troops would either use more judgement/perform it prone.

When I played Augustow Plague Boil, I had numerous situations all over the map where this little tableau was playing out. It would have, indeed, been significant micromanagement to deal with them all.

The TAC AI won't do sensible things for you in close combat. If you have units that are unsuppressed enough to be doing buddy aid in a forest and there is an enemy 50m away then ordering them to area fire will give probably give you the best result in most situations. Different thread but I did some tests and firing like that and had good results to targets 100m away in the general direction of the fire.

I am not saying that the micromanagement is good at all but the reality is with the TAC AI like it is close combat isn't great. If you are playing a scenario where you have significant numbers of units that will be in close combat then that scenario will be by it's nature a micromanagement fiesta.

So while the situation you described is bad a single key press to hide or two presses to area fire isn't a significant amount of intervention to perform a critical action where the AI is clearly bad. Especially compared to the grinding task of moving troops through the forest in the first place.

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Kauz, the illustrations at your link speak for themselves - the first aider is in the kneeling position.

No doubt that it is convinient to do things in a kneeling position....

nevertheless....my question was another....

1. Is it possible to do it in prone position?

2. I do not talk about picture 4 in my link!.....! I talked about picture 7-8 in the link. Do i need to be in prone position to set a bandage around the leg and tight the bandage by rotating a stick to stanch the bleeding (picture 7-9)?!

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The TAC AI won't do sensible things for you in close combat. If you have units that are unsuppressed enough to be doing buddy aid in a forest and there is an enemy 50m away then ordering them to area fire will give probably give you the best result in most situations. Different thread but I did some tests and firing like that and had good results to targets 100m away in the general direction of the fire.

I am not saying that the micromanagement is good at all but the reality is with the TAC AI like it is close combat isn't great. If you are playing a scenario where you have significant numbers of units that will be in close combat then that scenario will be by it's nature a micromanagement fiesta.

So while the situation you described is bad a single key press to hide or two presses to area fire isn't a significant amount of intervention to perform a critical action where the AI is clearly bad. Especially compared to the grinding task of moving troops through the forest in the first place.

You're basically saying "we micromanage a lot anyway, what's a little more?" That's the thing - there's too much micromanagement already, we need less, not more.

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Kauz - I refer you to LukeFF's post 11 in this thread.

:rolleyes:

Nice way to argue...

But better than nothing...

So your answer is (with regard to LukeFF´s Post):

Yes it is possible, but it is difficult.

The whole life is difficult, do you think in war god will make an exception for you or any american medic? :P

Thanks for the answer.

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Kauz, I'm not here to argue.

LukeFF has more experience in this area than I do and he had clearly answered the question you posed in post 35 in his post 11. My experience of 'treating' these wounds is limited to two of my three pre-Afghanistan tours training and my experience in this training reflects what LukeFF said in post 11 - you need to get a knee in there backed up by your bodyweight to even have a chance with arterial bleeding and you have to do it quickly. Added to that I benefitted from such fantastic technology such as an easy to apply tourniquet, well-engineered bandages and quick clot.

Mucking about from the prone position with a WW2 era bandage and trying to fashion a tourniquet from a stick ... if you forgive the pun ... is not an act of war.

As to making somebody 'disappear' which is the CM Casevac protocol I have more experience and it is something I have no wish to repeat - it is mentally and physically the hardest thing I have ever done.

Your question has been comprehensively answered so I suggest you accept that and here's a suggestion ... play Red Thunder rather than carp on about it.

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You have an inflated opinion of what "Buddy Aid" represents. Standard ww2 gropo gear does not include plasma and IV lines. The best you could hope for is a tourniquet and a bandage.

Even today, combat medics don't carry blood in their aid bags. That sort of thing is the domain of (much) higher-level field hospitals. The majority of my "tools" were a ton of bandages to stop the bleeding, about 6 bags of Normal Saline IVs, and painkillers like morphine. CPR, defibrillators? Nope, those sorts of things involve too much time on the battlefield. A medic trying to revive someone on the battlefield like that would be wasting their time and likely to also end up as a casualty.

Medics have one primary mission above all else in the field - stabilize the victim so they have the chance to make it to an aid station or field hospital.

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The whole life is difficult, do you think in war god will make an exception for you or any american medic? :P

You are really digging yourself a hole here with statements like that. Please, take Combatintman's advice and just play the game.

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You're basically saying "we micromanage a lot anyway, what's a little more?" That's the thing - there's too much micromanagement already, we need less, not more.

The reality is it takes a lot of commands to move through forest. Heaps if you are being careful. For me moving 120m would involve three 40m bounds (command then 3 mouse clicks) with a 20 second pause at each (click on waypoint with 4 pauses times three) for a total of 12 mouse clicks and 13 key presses. That is probably two turns worth of movement.

And with the situation described in the original post one soldier is described as doing the incorrect thing. But assuming it is a ten man sqd you have:

- one man down

- one becoming a casualty to a bad TAC AI decision

- eight doing nothing

The eight doing nothing is the biggest divergence from reality. They should be shooting for all their worth.

And the situation described in the original post is as close to ideal as you could want. You know fairly precisely where an enemy is, you have only had one casualty, the squad is not suppressed and they are still. Unless you are massively outmatched you are a target command and a mouse click away from winning a fight. A single critically important area target command at a critical moment isn't micromanagement when stacked against the amount of commands for that squad to perform the much more mundane task of getting to that position.

At the 50m range described in the original post suppression would happen very quickly. Quite possibly in the first 10 seconds. And as the TAC AI doesn't area fire on suspicion in return you probably have a full minute before a sensible response (if you a playing a human) or no response if it is single player. The flaw in the original post doesn't have a lot to do with buddy aid, it is more the TAC AI lacking situational awareness and squads doing nothing when in fact they are in mortal danger. The squad that opened up originally to cause the casualty probably shouldn't have stopped shooting. You squad should have started shooting back.

The Red Thunder forum had a discussion about fighting in forests. I have done tests and even in thick cover if you area fire in the general direction of an enemy it has a clear impact at 100m. And in pretty much every situation in forest combat area firing first with everything gets the best results. The movement commands (hunt, quick, assault) were largely irrelevant.

Again I don't like micromanaging either but close combat in CM is about all about micromanagement and stomaching watching the TAC AI painfully for a minute sometimes.

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The reality is it takes a lot of commands to move through forest. Heaps if you are being careful. For me moving 120m would involve three 40m bounds (command then 3 mouse clicks) with a 20 second pause at each (click on waypoint with 4 pauses times three) for a total of 12 mouse clicks and 13 key presses. That is probably two turns worth of movement.

To me, this is insane. When I move through forests, I generally click where I want my troopies to go, and that's it. I might make a few modifications to keep the platoon together, but other than that, I pretty much click once and that's it.

I will admit that it never occured to me to manually assign area fire in forest situations. I thought that letting the troops pick their own targets was good enough.

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To me, this is insane. When I move through forests, I generally click where I want my troopies to go, and that's it. I might make a few modifications to keep the platoon together, but other than that, I pretty much click once and that's it.

I will admit that it never occurred to me to manually assign area fire in forest situations. I thought that letting the troops pick their own targets was good enough.

Moving slowly with pauses gives you a chance albeit a slim one not to get shot at first. I only move like that if I expect to get shot at. Even that is pretty rapid but time is important. I would have thought what I described is a pretty normal way to go through any sort of close terrain. This is why fighting in forests isn't great in CM. A lot of command to move a short distance and then some suspect AI behaviour at the end. But that said the commands don't matter too much as long as when you start fighting you starting shooting and don't stop.

This is why area fire is important and much more effective than people realise. Even in dense terrain area firing the maximum distance 40m the bullets go a lot further and impact targets well beyond your visual range. And you guys won't stop shooting if the targets drop out of sight.

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Two points:

First, Combatentman makes some really great points and validated by real life experience. However, I think in some haste and frustration, he invalidates anyone who has not been in real life combat as having a valuable perspective. I resent this and I think after he gave it some thought, he might accept that those of us with no such experience can gain a semblance of an intelligent understanding by having studied numerous accounts from people who really have been there. If he were not to accept that as a valid point, I would have to point out that he would actually have had to be a World War II medic to have a valid understanding and not a simply modern medic experience. Furthermore, even if he were a WWII medic with real combat experience, he would still have to admit that his memories become tainted after years and further, that his experience may not represent all such experiences, or even the majority of them.

To top it off, I don't believe in the original question we were even talking about "medics", but rather buddy aid and whether they give aid is not even a question of reason and logic, it's often a purely emotional decision.

It is my understanding that medics were not as available on the line in WWII and that when we are talking about buddy aid, we're talking about an individual soldier's decision to render aid to the wounded instead of fight and that he may not have a logical reason for doing it.

Here's an example. It's my understanding, purely from a lifetime of study mind you, that snipers routinely wounded the first target they picked, instead of killing him, so that other members could be lured out into the open to render aid to the wounded soldier (and in fact, the Japanese used small caliber weapons for the reason that they realized it was more beneficial for them to wound and incapacitate an enemy rather than kill him, thus tying up many more personnel and supplies in saving him, transporting him to a medical facility, caring for him, feeding him and then shipping him home). Anyway, the idea was to draw others out into a sitting duck position in order to get an easy clear target and slowly get everyone in the squad.

Of course the sniper's enemy knew that this is what the sniper was doing on purpose. They knew they were being baited. Yet they routinely fell for the bait anyway, even veterans. Why? Because the desire to save the wounded soldier overcame any rationale to kill or drive off the enemy first.

Now let's take the case of a medic. Medics feel not only compassion for the wounded soldier but also an intense drive to do their duty and fulfill their purpose and job and go save that guy (See? And you thought I could not understand). But we're talking about someone with even less reason than that medic. We're talking about the one guy in the squad who the wounded soldier had the most camaraderie with. Most likely there was a guy or many guys in the squad who owed their lives to the wounded guy. Most likely they felt they needed him desperately. They loved him. They spent every day, all day in the most dire of circumstances with this guy and they depended upon him all the way and he did his best to deliver. We're talking about the one guy who felt the most kinship and brotherhood with him, perhaps his best friend and a relationship that is literally closer than brothers.

It does not matter what the enemy threat level may be, or how imminently he is dooming himself and his whole squad, emotion is going to drive him to drop everything and help that wounded soldier. So the sniper gets two for one. This tactic worked.

Or so I am told. Sorry I wasn't there to tell you from personal experience.

So I think buddy aid is working exactly like it was supposed to.

Another point I read earlier that I thought was a little off, was the one about nine men in a squad doing nothing while another one is giving buddy aid. I once read about a WW2 study that showed that for any nation, with even the most experienced troops in a squad only 30% would be returning fire at any given time, at best. Some men, even the most battlehardened, will sometimes cower, others are trying to unjam their guns or load them, or deploy a weapon, or giving orders or trying to get others to fire, or in Kelly's Heroes the one guy was off taking a dump while all the explosions are going on. It was a comedy, but the study revealed that there was some truth to it. In a green squad only one man or perhaps none would return fire.

Lambaste me all you want for my lack of experience or the fact that I was not there, I'm just telling you what I've read from statisticians who were there.

So the point is, that I think it might be very realistic not only for the giver of buddy aid to be kneeling but also to be giving buddy aid in the most dire circumstances when common sense dictates that he should take cover and return fire now to save all their lives, and give aid in a few minutes.

But what do I know.

P.S. Thank you CombatantMan for your service and thank you all who served. Further, I can tell from your remarks, you are a man of character, and I appreciate that.

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Here's an example. It's my understanding, purely from a lifetime of study mind you, that snipers routinely wounded the first target they picked, instead of killing him, so that other members could be lured out into the open to render aid to the wounded soldier (and in fact, the Japanese used small caliber weapons for the reason that they realized it was more beneficial for them to wound and incapacitate an enemy rather than kill him, thus tying up many more personnel and supplies in saving him, transporting him to a medical facility, caring for him, feeding him and then shipping him home). Anyway, the idea was to draw others out into a sitting duck position in order to get an easy clear target and slowly get everyone in the squad.

Of course the sniper's enemy knew that this is what the sniper was doing on purpose. They knew they were being baited. Yet they routinely fell for the bait anyway, even veterans. Why? Because the desire to save the wounded soldier overcame any rationale to kill or drive off the enemy first.

Now let's take the case of a medic. Medics feel not only compassion for the wounded soldier but also an intense drive to do their duty and fulfill their purpose and job and go save that guy (See? And you thought I could not understand). But we're talking about someone with even less reason than that medic. We're talking about the one guy in the squad who the wounded soldier had the most camaraderie with. Most likely there was a guy or many guys in the squad who owed their lives to the wounded guy. Most likely they felt they needed him desperately. They loved him. They spent every day, all day in the most dire of circumstances with this guy and they depended upon him all the way and he did his best to deliver. We're talking about the one guy who felt the most kinship and brotherhood with him, perhaps his best friend and a relationship that is literally closer than brothers.

It does not matter what the enemy threat level may be, or how imminently he is dooming himself and his whole squad, emotion is going to drive him to drop everything and help that wounded soldier. So the sniper gets two for one. This tactic worked.

I certainly believe that this happens SOME of the time, but should it happen ALL of the time? In my opinion, no.

Yet that is the way the game works, currently. The troops will always stop to render buddy aid, even if there's a pile of corpses there.

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I see. I hadn't taken it happening ALL the time inconsideration into my argument, since it has not happened to me yet but maybe twice and then in not too threatening a circumstance.

In fact, I've had just the opposite problem. I use unneeded truck crews or squads with only one man left or such odds and ends and use them to clean up the battlefield when I can, but I find that I have a hard time getting the troops to render buddy aid. In fact, this morning, I'm watching this one soldier laying across the body of a wounded soldier for several minutes, not an enemy in sight and he won't give aid.

I'll pay closer attention. Maybe it is happening all the time and I just have failed to notice. I've only been playing CM2 for a month. At this point in my learning curve, most of my troops are too busy running in terror to give buddy aid. I assumed earlier posters were exaggerating when they said it was happening all the time, I didn't realize they meant literally every single time.

At least you can say this for the game--It may not yet be a near perfect modeling of battalion level tactics in WWII, but it's good enough that when you try to explain it to people they don't say, "Oh, is that like Risk?" Why do people always say that? It gets so infuriating.

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In fact, I've had just the opposite problem. I use unneeded truck crews or squads with only one man left or such odds and ends and use them to clean up the battlefield when I can, but I find that I have a hard time getting the troops to render buddy aid. In fact, this morning, I'm watching this one soldier laying across the body of a wounded soldier for several minutes, not an enemy in sight and he won't give aid.

That's sort of been my experience. Most times they give aid, but sometimes they do not. Their current morale state might have something to do with it—I haven't made a close examination to be sure. But sometimes they just seem to sit there and ignore their bleeding comrade. This after I've made sure they are in the same AS and not under fire.

Michael

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The one problem I have with giving buddy-aid is that the casualty will almost always inconsiderately fall across the border of 2, 3 or even 4 AS's, making a whole new sub-game of "guess the AS" in order to be in his AS to render aid. ;)

While I have seen occasions when a trooper will give ( or attempt to give ) buddy-aid in an exposed position, I have certainly not experienced it "all the time".

I think that is one of those cases where you notice it because of the ill-effects of losing an extra man, but it's not exactly common. Certainly not common enough to need a tweak from BFC - them's the breaks.

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