How to best represent the snipers that delayed the Allies?

[Bulletpoint]

I was reading accounts of how German snipers would pester and delay the Allied advance. Wondering how to best represent these snipers in a scenario.

Would they be Heer or SS, or a mix?

What would their typical motivation, leadership, and experience level be like?

Was there any quality difference between Heer and SS snipers? 

[womble]

I don't think the actual arm of the sniper is relevant. But to get the "proper" effect of an almost-invisible unit, you want Elite Experience and probably +2 Leadership in the soft factors. Higher than average Morale will help them, but I'd say you might not want Fanatics.

[Bud Backer]

This is an interesting set of questions. 

38 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Would they be Heer or SS, or a mix?

Would that not primarily be determined by the units they are attached to? If you're making a scenario where the German force is, say, 15th Volkgrenadier Div then SS snipers might be out of place? Or am I misunderstanding your question?

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What would their typical motivation, leadership, and experience level be like?

I'm sure there will be countless opinions but for my part, I'd say that if you're trying to emulate the effectiveness and general nuisance these snipers represented, Elite, High Morale, +2 Leadership would be my choices. Keeping morale to no better than high will still give them self-preservation. Fanatics might just sit and be killed. 

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Was there any quality difference between Heer and SS snipers? 

I have a few books on the subject of sniping and I have yet to hear mention of an SS sniper that stood out at all to be named. The truly high scorers were all Wehrmacht. Is that a training issue, or a numbers issue with Wehrmacht being a larger pool is hard to say.   

Edited July 12, 2016 by Bud Backer

[Combatintman]

34 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I was reading accounts of how German snipers would pester and delay the Allied advance. Wondering how to best represent these snipers in a scenario.

Would they be Heer or SS, or a mix?

What would their typical motivation, leadership, and experience level be like?

Was there any quality difference between Heer and SS snipers? 

Testing is your friend.  Work out the effect you want to achieve and just play around with the hard and soft factors to get as close to that effect as you can as @womble said, the arm of service is entirely unimportant.  I am currently going through this exact same process in a scenario I'm putting together in CMSF.

[Bulletpoint]

11 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Work out the effect you want to achieve

That's the whole point of asking the question here  I want to know what effect I should try to reproduce.

[Bulletpoint]

14 minutes ago, Bud Backer said:

51 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Would they be Heer or SS, or a mix?

Would that not primarily be determined by the units they are attached to? If you're making a scenario where the German force is, say, 15th Volkgrenadier Div then SS snipers might be out of place? Or am I misunderstanding your question?

As far as I understand, many of these snipers would work on their own, completely out of touch with any other parent formations, often letting the front pass them by and then operating behind enemy lines.

[Bulletpoint]

27 minutes ago, womble said:

I don't think the actual arm of the sniper is relevant. But to get the "proper" effect of an almost-invisible unit, you want Elite Experience and probably +2 Leadership in the soft factors. Higher than average Morale will help them, but I'd say you might not want Fanatics.

 

16 minutes ago, Bud Backer said:

I'm sure there will be countless opinions but for my part, I'd say that if you're trying to emulate the effectiveness and general nuisance these snipers represented, Elite, High Morale, +2 Leadership would be my choices. Keeping morale to no better than high will still give them self-preservation. Fanatics might just sit and be killed. 

 

I'm usually reluctant to use troops with higher experience than "veteran", and I don't want to be accused of glorifying neither snipers nor nazis. But since there seems to be support for high experience levels, I will try that out. Still not keen on "elite", but maybe "crack" level.

[Combatintman]

1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:

That's the whole point of asking the question here  I want to know what effect I should try to reproduce.

We might be talking at cross purposes then.  The effect I am talking about is the effect that you want the snipers to have on the Allied troops.  Do you want them to pick particular targets off at hundreds of metres - do you just want them to be an annoyance to the Allied player.  The permutations are numerous - what are the weather conditions, what is the ground like, how long is the mission going to be, what is the Allied Force composition.  Only you can answer those questions because as the scenario designer you are trying to recreate your vision/narrative.

[Bud Backer]

3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

As far as I understand, many of these snipers would work on their own, completely out of touch with any other parent formations, often letting the front pass them by and then operating behind enemy lines.

Yes they would but their parent formation would likely also not be 200km away, they had to have been there at some time and these snipers remained as the parent formation withdrew. So I'd even go so far as to say I would expect that the parent formation is likely to be gone a few hours to a day. 

[Bud Backer]

2 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

 

 

I'm usually reluctant to use troops with higher experience than "veteran", and I don't want to be accused of glorifying neither snipers nor nazis. But since there seems to be support for high experience levels, I will try that out. Still not keen on "elite", but maybe "crack" level.

I fully agree, I don't want to glorify snipers or Nazis either. But you have to consider the settings in this case to be for effect on the opponent, how they perceive these snipers as a threat or nuisance or hindrance. The settings in this case are not meant to represent a level of training or indoctrination or political affiliation. If you want these snipers to be truly the hassle I believe you're trying to represent then you have to give the game engine a leg up and make them obnoxiously good. 

[Bulletpoint]

9 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

We might be talking at cross purposes then.  The effect I am talking about is the effect that you want the snipers to have on the Allied troops.  Do you want them to pick particular targets off at hundreds of metres - do you just want them to be an annoyance to the Allied player.

Well that is exactly my question. I don't want supernaturally strong enemies, but I do want to make sure that the snipers are a force to be reckoned with, because they were in real life. I want to stick as closely as possible to making the scenario plausible.

As for weather etc. I am thinking around noon in August, so that likely means sunny, hot, and not too windy. I guess that would mean decently experienced snipers would be accurate out to... 4-500 metres?

Edited July 12, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Combatintman]

4 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Well that is exactly my question. I don't want supernaturally good enemies, but I want to make sure that the snipers are a real threat, because they were in real life. I want to stick as closely as possible to making the scenario plausible.

As for weather etc. I am thinking around noon in August, so sunny, warm / hot, and not too windy.

To be honest you're not going to get a definitive answer by playing forum tennis you have to test against the objectives you want to achieve by using the settings available.  As I said I'm working on my coming Osama Bin Laden CMSF scenario and going through exactly the same process and trying to solve the problem.  Here is my documented thought process on some testing I did this evening to give you a flavour for how you need to attack the problem (the full story is coming to a thread in the CMSF forum soon). 

WARNING SPOILERS FOLLOW++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Quote from my thought process begins ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned earlier on, I want to run some tests to see how these elements react to each other and if necessary test and adjust.  So with my ‘Property Defenders’ I initially went with the lowest experience value of ‘Conscript’ which would be reflective of their ability but unfortunately I pretty much had to move my Spy Group pretty much on top of them to provoke a reaction.  However they did react to the SEAL team from a slightly greater (but still really close) distance.  So following further testing I manipulated what I think are the two important factors in this calculus.  The first one is obvious which is to increase the experience level of the ‘Property Defenders’.  The second is less obvious but I touched on it in one of my earlier posts and it relates to the ‘Civilian Density’ setting within the data menu.  This was originally set as ‘Sparse’ and as a result I have changed it to ‘None’.  Is it reflective of the environment … no, however it has a direct impact on how UNCON units are spotted.  In simple terms, the greater the civilian density the harder UNCONs are to spot so by dialling down the values I can increase the likelihood of them being spotted which is the effect I want to achieve.  Additionally, unless the player reads this thread or cracks the scenario editor open, they will never know what the values are.

 

My overall reflections on this testing is that I can’t really get the exact results I wanted to achieve which were to make it possible for ‘Property Defenders’ to be able to spot out to about 4-5 action spots.  However things are what they are so rather than brood about it, I will stick with my final settings and lay out the ‘Property Defenders’.  No need for details at here because I have shown you the mechanics but the art/science of laying them out requires a bit of what the military call ‘Red Teaming’ and/or Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace.  If you look at either my planning thread on the CMRT board or anything that @Bil Hardingberger has done in his many AARs you get the idea.

 

Put simply, I don’t want to put ‘Property Defenders’ all over the map, just in those places that I think will sit close to likely exfiltration routes that the player will take.  Remember the effect is just to generate thought and planning in the mind of the player.  However what is important is that I record the numbers of ‘Property Defenders’ that I pick and deploy in case I decide to set an ‘Enemy Casualty’ parameter as a victory condition for the Blue Player.  The magic number is 15 for those that are interested.

Quote ends.

SPOILERS END +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 

However there are other ways that you can achieve your ends using casualty parameters, weighting Victory Points and various other tricks which can simply be to say in the Mission Orders - 'German Snipers have been operating in the AO over the past week and have caused many casualties'.  You need to look at the mission as a whole rather than focus on one aspect of it which is not something that you will solve discussing on the forum.

[ASL Veteran]

You should also keep in mind that the number of actual 'trained' snipers who were operating in a way that a modern sniper might recognize were fairly limited.  I'm going to guess that more often than not, personal accounts and 'reports' of sniper activity were likely simply individual riflemen or perhaps buddy teams who went out and 'sniped' even though they were not fully trained 'snipers'.  In some cases these reported snipers were simply teenage boys separated from their unit who happened to have a rifle handy and the will to use it.  So I think you have two choices available to you.  You could sprinkle a relatively large number of low quality 'sniper' teams with maybe regular skill and normal morale all over your map or you could sprinkle one or two high skill snipers with normal morale out on your map.

[Bulletpoint]

4 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

You should also keep in mind that the number of actual 'trained' snipers who were operating in a way that a modern sniper might recognize were fairly limited.  I'm going to guess that more often than not, personal accounts and 'reports' of sniper activity were likely simply individual riflemen or perhaps buddy teams who went out and 'sniped' even though they were not fully trained 'snipers'.  In some cases these reported snipers were simply teenage boys separated from their unit who happened to have a rifle handy and the will to use it.  So I think you have two choices available to you.  You could sprinkle a relatively large number of low quality 'sniper' teams with maybe regular skill and normal morale all over your map or you could sprinkle one or two high skill snipers with normal morale out on your map.

Good points, thanks. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way of adding a lot of 2-man teams without also including the rest of their squads.

[MOS:96B2P]

5 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Good points, thanks. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way of adding a lot of 2-man teams without also including the rest of their squads.

Can't you just select the 2 man sniper teams from special teams in the editor? 

[Bulletpoint]

Just now, MOS:96B2P said:

Can't you just select the 2 man sniper teams from special teams in the editor? 

Yes, sure I can, I was just thinking for a moment about not even giving them scoped rifles, just making them the kind of 2-man teams you split off as scout teams. Then have them ambush at quite close ranges. So they would be snipers in function but not in official name.

[MOS:96B2P]

11 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

<Snip> I was just thinking for a moment about not even giving them scoped rifles, just making them the kind of 2-man teams you split off as scout teams. <Snip> 

Hmmm, dismounted truck drivers ..................... but then of course only one sniper not a "team".  

[Bulletpoint]

Just now, MOS:96B2P said:

Hmmm, dismounted truck drivers ..................... but then of course only one sniper not a "team".  

Well I guess that would fit well with the idea of dedicated but amateur snipers, not working in teams like professional snipers do... thanks for the suggestion, hadn't thought of that.

[Erwin]

If you want to simulate snipers as opposed to the equivalent of uncons/partisans left behind to be a nuisance, then high experience units is the way to go.  It's also way more fun to have a couple elite sniper units that can be ordered to SLOW MOVE, pick off enemy in a 5-10 second PAUSE and then SLOW MOVED away to try again elsewhere during a short PAUSE.  I playtested a scenario that had such a unit and one really felt it was a Special Ops unit.

Re SS vs Heer snipers, assuming it isn't just that the SS had fewer guys than the Heer, could it be that the SS had an almost Jap sense of what constituted "honorable combat"?  eg: The Japs didn't employ sub warfare very well as they felt it was low prestige/dishonorable to attack like that.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Erwin

[RockinHarry]

Taking aside that mentioned german "snipers" (in allied reports) could mean anything from some germans shooting from unknown locations, to "real" snipers (guys with a scoped rifle), I´d good success with this sort of setup and assuming the snipers are in AI´s hands:

Make sure the snipers observable killing grounds are well beyond the 300m range, preferable between 400 to 800m from the snipers position. That keeps them hidden long enough to achieve at least some suppression effects on the enemy and getting occasional kills.

Experience of veteran to crack is good enough to make their presence felt. Morale level IMO should be rather low or normal, so in case they receive some direct enemy fire, they have the chance to dive down or back off to some safety.

Sniper positions should be usually keyholed and well away from other friendly units.

Do not attach snipers to front line units and keep them seperated by attaching them directly to a HQ (Bn) that does not get directly involved in combat during the mission.

I like to cut the sniper team by 50% to get rid of the observer. This oftenly allows the sniper more options and better placement within an AS (or building) and without the observer guy, the sniper remains more stealthy, particularly at shorter ranges (300-600m).

If the snipers intended killing (or suppression) zones are at longer ranges (600-800m + ), the oberver guy with binocs becomes more useful, by helping the sniper finding targets.

If one can afford, one can use some trigger AI groups to move snipers to switch positions, in case the enemy units move too close (<= 3-400m) to the sniper positions.

That´s some the general ideas that worked quite well in some my own mission designs containing AI controled snipers on a suitable map.

[Bulletpoint]

5 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

That´s some the general ideas that worked quite well in some my own mission designs containing AI controled snipers on a suitable map.

Great advice, thanks. Just what I was looking for.

[JoMac]

Bullet,

Keep in mind, CM's Game Engine is all about 'Tip of the Spear' Battle'/Scenarios...Because of this, Troops (snipers, etc) tend to get Spotted quickly (1-2 Turns), and the Return Fire more deadly (especially from an opponent who will use 'Area-Fire' at every Opportunity). This would mean your Snipers will probably be short lived (either KO'ed or Ineffective).

Now, you can try to represent your idea of 'Harassing' enemy 2nd line or Transport Troops (not 'Tip of Spear') by giving your enemy Green Moral, Moderate Motivation, and your Snipers Vet, High Motivation +1 Leadership for example...This will at least give your Snipers a better chance of Harassing Enemy w/out get spotted right away ( then, re-locate).

Anyways, as others have mentioned, try Testing these ideas out to achieve the desired results. 

Joe  

Edited July 12, 2016 by JoMc67

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, JoMc67 said:

Keep in mind, CM is all about 'Tip of the Spear' Battle'/Scenarios...Because of this, Troops (snipers, etc) tend to get Spotted quickly (1-2 Turns), and the Return Fire more deadly (especially from an opponent who will use 'Area-Fire' at every Opportunity). This would mean your Snipers will probably be short lived (either KO'ed or Ineffective).

It's a scenario VS the computer, and I'm trying to keep the snipers alive and active by clever AI plan design, taking into account lots of stuff. The idea is not to do a tip of the spear mission, but rather a recce mission to scout and clear ahead of the main force. I'm trying to do "more with less", so it's a quite big map but won't have a lot of forces.

[JoMac]

Yeah, I figured your trying not to represent 'Tip of the Spear'...just keep in mind CM is fast paced by Game Engine Design, and you will for sure need to use Clever Techniques (AI Mission).

If anything, At least the initial placement of your Sniping Troops will give them additional Cover/Concealment compared to a battle that's ongoing. 

[c3k]

1 hour ago, ASL Veteran said:

You should also keep in mind that the number of actual 'trained' snipers who were operating in a way that a modern sniper might recognize were fairly limited.  I'm going to guess that more often than not, personal accounts and 'reports' of sniper activity were likely simply individual riflemen or perhaps buddy teams who went out and 'sniped' even though they were not fully trained 'snipers'.  In some cases these reported snipers were simply teenage boys separated from their unit who happened to have a rifle handy and the will to use it.  So I think you have two choices available to you.  You could sprinkle a relatively large number of low quality 'sniper' teams with maybe regular skill and normal morale all over your map or you could sprinkle one or two high skill snipers with normal morale out on your map.

Just as Brits called every German tank a "Tiger" (not misidentified, just a term meaning "German tank"), and many tanks were actually misidentified as a Tiger, it was common to blame any sort of aimed rifle fire as being caused by a "sniper". I would be leery of adding too many snipers into a battle if you're just relying on the memoir accounts of the guys on the receiving end...unless you just like to have them in there. And that's fine, too.