Vehicles being hit with no penetration and crew reactions

[Vanir Ausf B]

But I still don't think a unit starting in an undamaged building should be combat effective after that building has received enough fire to destroy it.

I don't doubt that is true, but it is quicker and easier to completely destroy buildings in the game than in reality.

IIRC in the CMx1 games it worked more like how you want it. That led to a popular tactic of hitting an occupied building with enough firepower to guarantee its collapse in a single turn before the other player could withdraw.

[DreDay]

While I agree with your concept...the Russian army is still 50% "conscripts" with vestiges of some recent less disciplined times.  But I am doubtful that Russia would send those conscripts as the core of a force in Ukr.

 

If you are talking about the CMBS stroyline and not current events; Russian army would have absolutely no choice but to send conscripts into Ukraine. It's not like the have seperate "professional" and conscript formations. Except for a few rapid reaction VDV battalions and some SepcOps units; all of their ground forces use both professionals and conscripts as a part of same units down to patoon level...

[DreDay]

Standing their ground after the two story building they are in collapses around them? Not likely. It's not about the training. It's about the physical/psychological limitations and the motivation of a modern era soldier. Ukraine 2015 is not Stalingrad 1942. Even if they were still physically effective after a building collapse, which is doubtful, not sure even the best soldier is not going to seek to live to fight another day if that is an option. Watch Youtube videos of the fighting in Ukraine and Syria and you will get a much more realistic view of combat than all the Jane's books and hardware websites could ever give you. A lot of spray and pray. A lot of noise, fear, panic, confusion.  And a lot of "discretion is the better part of valor" moments. 

 

I appreciate your points, but I just find it difficult to agree with most of them. You are making an assumption that conscripts by definition are poorly motivated and suffer from low morale. That absolutely does not have to be the case, there are TONS of examples of conscripted soldiers (whether Russian, Ukrainian, Israeli, or Vietnam era American) fighting till the last drop of blood. Likewise, there are plenty of examples of professional soldiers failing to show any valor or resiliency.

 

As for the destroyed house example, several posters have already explained that events like this are a bit abstracted. Think of it as RPG gunner waiting out the bombardment in the safety of building's basement and then coming outside to engage the enemy tank when the shelling had stopped....

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

The conscript thing is worth of note when it comes to units freezing though.  It's not at all a question of morale, it's a question of training and the experience to be doing what needs to be done next .2 seconds vs 20 seconds after the event occurs. 

 

I think that's really a point worth making.  The conscript who's been in country three days asks himself "was that a bullet?" when here's getting the snappy noises that come with bullets going close then hits the dirt after he's come to the conclusion "THOSE ARE BULLETS!" or when ****.  The conscript who's been in country three weeks is hitting the dirt with sufficient vigor to make an impact trench about halfway through the first snaps (on the other hand, he's moving hunched over and moving with a purpose when it's "just" bullets whizzing by because those aren't the close ones).

 

Same deal for tanks now that I think about it.  A tank taking direct fire isn't going to just hang out and get shot if it can at all avoid it.  If it cannot return fire, it's going to pop smoke and back up out of direct fire LOS.  There should be a delay built into this based around the experience of the crew because a crack crew knows what an RPG sounds like hitting the tank, and knows it's a good idea to leave, while a green one is going to take a few seconds to debate if that was an RPG, or that was the neighboring tank.

 

On the other hand, a more experienced crew might know that "well hell, that was just an RPG hitting the frontal slope.  We're fine.  Grease that building it came from" and stick it out and keep fighting while the regular crew knows they're in danger and backing up is a good idea.

 

Just a thought.  Either way popping smoke and reversing is the right answer, just a question of delay.  

[DreDay]

The conscript thing is worth of note when it comes to units freezing though.  It's not at all a question of morale, it's a question of training and the experience to be doing what needs to be done next .2 seconds vs 20 seconds after the event occurs. 

 

I think that's really a point worth making.  The conscript who's been in country three days asks himself "was that a bullet?" when here's getting the snappy noises that come with bullets going close then hits the dirt after he's come to the conclusion "THOSE ARE BULLETS!" or when ****.  The conscript who's been in country three weeks is hitting the dirt with sufficient vigor to make an impact trench about halfway through the first snaps (on the other hand, he's moving hunched over and moving with a purpose when it's "just" bullets whizzing by because those aren't the close ones).

 

 

100%! That's an excellent point, and perhaps that's bit of a gray area in CMBS that is not completely simulated by simply considering training and morale. Not sure how that could be addressed by the game engine, but hopefully it would be at some point.

[dan/california]

100%! That's an excellent point, and perhaps that's bit of a gray area in CMBS that is not completely simulated by simply considering training and morale. Not sure how that could be addressed by the game engine, but hopefully it would be at some point.

The green experience level pretty much covers it.  They do NOT have a clue.

Edited April 19, 2015 by dan/california

[DreDay]

The green experience level pretty much covers it.  They do NOT have a clue.

 

Right that certainly is a part of it; but what panzersaurkrautwerfer is describing is a lack of proper situational awareness of battle conditions due to being new to the combat environment. It's more than just a function of training. For instance, you could have a squad that had decent tactical and firearms training and will generally hit their targets and spot enemy units as it is supposed to, but would not know how to properly react to incoming fire. While (I believe) a "green" squad in game terms will not just be clueless but would also have poor accuracy and spotting (amongst other factors)...

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

 

Right that certainly is a part of it; but what panzersaurkrautwerfer is describing is a lack of proper situational awareness of battle conditions due to being new to the combat environment. It's more than just a function of training. For instance, you could have a squad that had decent tactical and firearms training and will generally hit their targets and spot enemy units as it is supposed to, but would not know how to properly react to incoming fire. While (I believe) a "green" squad in game terms will not just be clueless but would also have poor accuracy and spotting (amongst other factors)...

 

 

On the other hand, a professional army with long time serving soldiers has either a fair number of people with some practical experience, or simply the "what next?" has been drilled in over the course of several years, vs being proud graduates of Conscript U. about three months ago.  I've always viewed it as something like green reflects some knuckleheads they put in uniform on short notice, conscripts as short term mandatory service obligation fufilling soldiers, with regular representing the full time professionals....with crack/veteran/elite etc representing any of those forces given the proper experience (so a green formation after a few months in combat, conscripts that survived the "what was that?" phase of combat, or regular forces that finally established if NTC was really harder than combat).

 

Regular forces with longer serving soldiers will command a qualitative edge, and will still react better in combat.  My point wasn't so much that looking at folks suddenly being shocked and dispirited and hiding in the bottom of the tank was the wrong expected reaction from a hit, and it was a more useful model to think in terms of someone completing the OODA loop in response to being shot at.  More experienced, more trained crews will always do the OODA cycle faster than less trained, less experienced crews.

 

So again, a tank just illing out in the open because it got shot and everyone is super scared inside, and remaining out in the open for an extended time is a bit daft.  A tank that did not get penetrated based on training and experience levels will take some variable amount of time to decide it doesn't want to give the guy shooting at it another go at finding the weaker spots on the armor.