Quick Scenario Casualty Parameters

[Heirloom_Tomato]

I been putting together some quick scenarios for CMFI and had a request to do the same for Red Thunder. I am wondering what the consensus is about the differences in setting the battle parameters. I know the Russians had a higher tolerance for accepting casualties but how much higher?  If the German side is set for say 30% friendly casualties for a meeting engagement, what should the Russian equivalent be?  

[Erwin]

Early war would be a very high %.  Late war the rate was much less.  Re a precise %, isn't this a Google thing?

[JonS]

23 hours ago, Erwin said:

Re a precise %, isn't this a Google thing?

No, not really, since it - in CM terms - depends only on the context and the story being told.

[BletchleyGeek]

On 04/09/2016 at 8:03 AM, Heirloom_Tomato said:

I been putting together some quick scenarios for CMFI and had a request to do the same for Red Thunder. I am wondering what the consensus is about the differences in setting the battle parameters. I know the Russians had a higher tolerance for accepting casualties but how much higher?  If the German side is set for say 30% friendly casualties for a meeting engagement, what should the Russian equivalent be?  

It is very context dependent: what is the mission of either force? 

For instance, say a Soviet Army commander wants to pin down that German infantry regiment in prepared positions while it is enveloped by a tank brigade maneuvering on its flank. Then, using one or two battalions in a frontal attack on a narrow frontage - like 500 meters !! - right up the boundaries of two German battalion positions would be the "obvious" solution, no matter whether chances would be that those two battalions would be wiped out while charging through the German defenses, as that would probably force the Germans to react and commit reserves. Note here the context: those guys are being sacrificed so as to restrict the enemy ability to maneuver and create the conditions for the mobile force to cut the enemy lines of communication. Not because Red Army senior officers liked to have baths in the blood of their subordinates under the moonlight. 

On the other hand, say the same Army commander sees one of his forward regiments has its flanks turned by a German local counterattack, and that position is right in the middle of his front, so there's nothing to be gained. Then in all likelihood, that Regiment would try to exfiltrate itself during the night and rejoin the rest of the Army.

In the case of the Germans, I don't think there was a concept of "acceptable losses" for the forces tasked with taking the lead on a Schwerpunkt (especially Pioniere units). The mission - breaking through - was well above other considerations. On the other hand, the better training, organisation and education of German command echelons meant that they were way quicker to recognise that the mission - as initially formulated - had no chances of succeeding and would abort the attack in a timely fashion. The professionalism of the staffs and commanding officers was the difference between a German battalion being wiped out like one of their more unfortunate Soviet counterparts or just suffering 30% or 40% losses after getting caught on a wire line with pre-registered Soviet mortar fire. 

In terms of scenario design, I'd advise to use casualty thresholds to give the players credit for achieving their objectives while trying to minimise the loss in combat power of their commands, and enemy losses as a "bonus", taking always in mind that CMx2 models friction quite well, and a lucky blind mortar fire mission on a forest can cripple the best laid plans.

[JonS]

One other point about casualty parameters: they're all or nothing, and in every case they come down to one man. Lose that one guy (or rather, one more guy) and the enemy gets the full points allocation. Keep him alive, and they get nothing. I don't like the binary-ness of that, and therefore - as noted by @BletchleyGeek above - think they're better used as a bonus than as a core component of the scoring schema.

There are exceptions, but that's the general approach I use.

[Heirloom_Tomato]

7 hours ago, JonS said:

One other point about casualty parameters: they're all or nothing, and in every case they come down to one man. Lose that one guy (or rather, one more guy) and the enemy gets the full points allocation. Keep him alive, and they get nothing. I don't like the binary-ness of that, and therefore - as noted by @BletchleyGeek above - think they're better used as a bonus than as a core component of the scoring schema.

There are exceptions, but that's the general approach I use.

In play testing one of these battle the other night this exact thing happened to me. I had done a good job of keeping my men alive and thought for sure I was going to get the points. In the last five minutes of the battle, the AI made a last effort for the victory location and killed off two or three more of my men. I missed the points by one guy. 

The destroy units option seems like it would be a better fit as the main scoring mechanism, and then adding bonus points if a certain threshold is met.

[SeinfeldRules]

Like said before, the destroy units criteria is generally the more flexible of the options. You can assign variable points to different units; eg a single Tiger tank is worth 500 points, but the entire infantry company accompanying it is worth 500 points too. Then you can reward the player for inflicting casualties depending on the scenario you wish to depict. Maybe you couldn't knock out the precious Tiger but instead you just annihilated the tank's infantry escort, and realistically he would be forced to retire after the battle (ie a draw, or minor victory), or vice versa.

Almost all my scenario having scoring in this fashion, load one up and take a look how I assign point values.