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Fatigue test


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I did a test today to explore the effects of fatigue on spotting and shooting in CMBN.

TLDR:  there is no apparent negative effect on spotting or shooting for German LMG or sniper teams (comparing "rested" to "tired").

Details:

I set up a 10-lane shooting range, with the shooters looking downrange through a tall hedgerow. All units regular, rested, temp hot, no wind. I then placed some driver volunteers (ahem) from the American motor pool 80m downrange from the hedgerow and let the German LMG teams move to their hedgerow, spot downrange, and engage their targets.  I ran all 10 lanes concurrently, and then reran the whole thing 3 times.  I measured two things: time to spot after reaching the hedgerow, and time to kill the target after spotting it.

Here you can see the snipers at work:

zR0PuY9.png

I then redid the whole thing with units made tired by running back and forth.  All 10 units ran the same distance as each other, so should have been equally tired.

Then I redid all of THAT with German sniper teams, the only difference being moving the targ... um, volunteers to 200m downrange.

I was a bit surprised by the number of outliers - where the spotting or firing unit took a VERY long time to spot or hit.  Occasionally longer than two minutes.

Bizarrely, considering all of the data, the LMG teams did a much better job of shooting while tired, and the snipers did a somewhat better job spotting when tired. Stripping out all data points 60 seconds long or longer (an arbitrary value that favors the rested troops) resulted in the rested and tired troops performing about the same. Maybe you can make an argument that spotting is slightly worse when tired.

===  Raw data  ===

JkpjjcS.png

===  Removing all data points 60 seconds or longer  ===

kCRRYdm.png

For completeness the tests should also be done with fatigued and exhausted units, and I guess also veteran and a broader range of unit types.  But I hardly ever push my troops to that point.

 

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Thanks for doing these tests and posting the results here.

About the sometimes extremely long times to spot, I'm wondering if it could have to do with the way individual soldiers will decide to take up position on the hedgerow?

Sometimes, a couple of team members will decided to go prone at a hedgerow, which means their LOS is completely blocked in that direction (when using tall bocage -small bocage doesn't have this problem).

If a team is small, as is the case with LMG teams and snipers, having one guy blind takes away a lot of the spotting power of that team. Especially if it's the guy with the binoculars.

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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

...having one guy blind takes away a lot of the spotting power of that team. Especially if it's the guy with the binoculars.

This is related to the issue of a support weapon gunner not being able to see or fire at a target - even when a target is in clear view of the 3rd ammo loader.   When all it takes is to move the gun or guy with binoculars a few inches to have them in the best spotting/shooting position.

It would be more realistic if the game system gave "preference" to the guy with the binoculars (or the gunner) so that they would move to the most useful position for spotting (and shooting).  

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Back in the 1980s, the US Army did a study of the effects of sleep deprivation on an infantry platoon defending in place. The performance of the PBI in their combat tasks was 80% of that for normal rest, but that of the LT was 20% of normal when it came to making combat decisions. Recent civilian studies, verified on MythBusters, have shown 24 hours sans sleep is the same as DUI. Granted that Fatigue in the game generally isn't that severe, am still of the opinion that fatigued troops should experience at least some performance degradation on the Spotting/Reacting/Shooting effectively end of things. Further, I would generally expect the effects to be reduced as troop quality improves. Of course, if your hardened Veterans are so war weary and spent...

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Edited by John Kettler
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20 hours ago, John Kettler said:

Back in the 1980s, the US Army did a study of the effects of sleep deprivation on an infantry platoon defending in place. The performance of the PBI in their combat tasks was 80% of that for normal rest, but that of the LT was 20% of normal when it came to making combat decisions. Recent civilian studies, verified on MythBusters, have shown 24 hours sans sleep is the same as DUI. Granted that Fatigue in the game generally isn't that severe, am still of the opinion that fatigued troops should experience at least some performance degradation on the Spotting/Reacting/Shooting effectively end of things. Further, I would generally expect the effects to be reduced as troop quality improves. Of course, if your hardened Veterans are so war weary and spent...

Regards,

John Kettler

 

I'm with you %100 there, JK...

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JoMc67,

Modeling it may be a cast iron you know what, but I guarantee you that if we take some people to a firing KD (Known Distance) firing range, run them around till their tails are dragging and put them back on the firing line, the shooting scores will be worse--even with the opportunity to be still long enough to stop gasping. That's KD,, practically a test bench situation. Same thing if we take them out to the field and play Spot the Infiltrators. There is no way I can conceive of that the same core factors wouldn't apply, i.e., a significant drop in Spotting performance relative to the not Fatigued baseline results. Popup targets would show the effects of reaction time and shooting accuracy. It might also be fun to do this experiment indoors on one of those police simulators in a dynamic shoot/don't shoot simulation. There, again, I believe that the Fatigued troops wouldn't perform anywhere nearly as well as the same troops not Fatigued. Those simulators are about correct ID and reacting quickly to a threat. How can soldiers run ragged perform as well as they did before that happened? And I guarantee you a Simunition exercise would show my point even better, not to mention leaving an indelible impression on the minds of the Fatigued participants!

Regards,

John Kettler

 

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It probably wouldn't be that difficult to add an extra fatigue factor to the spotting/accuracy calculations, from a programming viewpoint. But finding the right values and playtesting and re-balancing everything might take a lot of time.

For example, vehicles would suddenly become much better at spotting, relative to infantry, because the crew would always count as fully rested. So the basic spotting ability of fully rested infantry would have to be increased from what it is now. Or you could decrease spotting for all vehicles, which would then have other side effects...

I think it would be a very nice addition to simulate fatigue better though. Would put more emphasis on using transport to keep troops fresh, and to give squads a break once in a while. I used to do that when I started playing, but now I realised there's little point to that.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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40 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It probably wouldn't be that difficult to add an extra fatigue factor to the spotting/accuracy calculations, from a programming viewpoint. But finding the right values and playtesting and re-balancing everything might take a lot of time.

For example, vehicles would suddenly become much better at spotting, relative to infantry, because the crew would always count as fully rested. So the basic spotting ability of fully rested infantry would have to be increased from what it is now. Or you could decrease spotting for all vehicles, which would then have other side effects...

I think it would be a very nice addition to simulate fatigue better though. Would put more emphasis on using transport to keep troops fresh, and to give squads a break once in a while. I used to do that when I started playing, but now I realised there's little point to that.

I think unbuttoned stationary vehicles should be better at spotting than unrested infantry. Moving vehicles is another story.

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29 minutes ago, c3k said:

Why is the time to kill LESS THAN the time to spot?

Did you add the time to kill ON TOP OF the time to spot?

Cuz hitting a target is harder than seeing a target?  😉

The kill timer starts after successfully spotting.  I have no idea why it sometimes takes sooooo long to kill.

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Just now, axxe said:

Cuz hitting a target is harder than seeing a target?  😉

The kill timer starts after successfully spotting.  I have no idea why it sometimes takes sooooo long to kill.

Just checking what your numbers mean. Thanks.

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5 minutes ago, axxe said:

 I think unbuttoned stationary vehicles should be better at spotting than unrested infantry. Moving vehicles is another story.

We agree, but I was talking about buttoned vehicles. If we start giving infantry a negative modifier, but we don't touch the vehicles, then relatively speaking that will boost vehicles relative to the infantry. Not saying it would ruin the game, but it would change the balance.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:

We agree, but I was talking about buttoned vehicles. If we start giving infantry a negative modifier, but we don't youch the vehicles, then relatively speaking that will benefit vehicles relative to the infantry. Not saying it would ruin the game, but it would change the balance.

Hmm, I guess I am hoping buttoned vehicles already spot a lot worse than infantry.  But I do see your point that it would shift the balance.

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2 minutes ago, c3k said:

Just checking what your numbers mean. Thanks.

OOPS, just reread your post and see I read it backwards.  Sorry - my bad.

Anyway, yes, I measured spotting and killing-after-spotting separately.  I don't get why some of the times, spotting or killing, are so long.

Occasionally I saw a unit spot the target, and then lose the spot somehow, sometimes before firing and sometimes after.  Presumably the target found some fold in the ground to tuck into...

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Just now, axxe said:

Hmm, I guess I am hoping buttoned vehicles already spot a lot worse than infantry.  But I do see your point that it would shift the balance.

They definitely spot worse, but it depends on the vehicle. Some of them are completely blind in certain directions, if they don't have view ports/periscopes.

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47 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

What did you think of my theory about the way individual troops decide to place themselves at the hedgerow, sometimes going prone and blocking their own view?

It was definitely the case that sometimes units wasted spotting time, even to the point of arriving at the hedgerow, both members going prone and crawling back and forth for a while, and then sitting up and starting to actually look downrange 🙄

But that wasn't the only explanation. Sometimes they just stared through the hedgerow, with binoculars, for a loooong time before seeing the target.

I was really surprised at the range of times for both spotting and shooting.

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Maybe it depends on the target then. Sometimes infantry on open ground will sit up, or stand up, sometimes they will be prone. Never really figured out if there was any logic behind it, or if it's random. But if your targets randomly go prone sometimes, that could make them much harder to spot.

Also, did you starndardise the vegetation? The default ground has a random mix of short and long grass, and some weeds.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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I used all the same short grass, but it's true there was a mix of kneeling and prone targets. They all went prone after being shot at, and one even managed a couple of shots in return with his carbine!  I think it was one of the snipers who took two minutes to kill.  The target eventually rotated around and fired back!

 

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If support weapons teams place themselves so that the 3rd loader can see a target but the gunner, (or the guy with binoculars) cannot, that could explain the above spotting and targeting issues.

We see this happening a lot with MG and ATG teams.  Am wondering if this is also why sometimes, an ATGM team will not fire its missile at a suitable target that it seems to have good LOS to.  If the guy who has the ATGM does NOT see the target that his teammate does see, it explains why the missile is not fired.

 

 

 

 

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One would hope there would not be a lot of lag between one member of a team spotting something and the whole team spotting it, but you're right that the gunner may be prone while someone else on the team spots the target, and the gunner has to then sit up, turn, and spot himself.

FWIW, both my LMG and sniper teams were two-man.

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If I may add some  practical experience: I shot air gun and small bore rifle for about 20 years on a fairly good sportive level.

“Fatigue” was rarely the issue. I mean, being “tired“ within normal standards.

Governing was the “Stress Level”, resulting from many other factors.

Look at the Bi-Athletes. Skying for more than 20k’s before shooting does not bother them too much, it seems.

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